Your Strokes: Evan Chiang Serve

[johnyandell]

Would love to hear what you thought of "Your Strokes: Evan Chiang Serve"

[stroke]

"The key is the upper arm rotation". Hmm, that sounds familiar.

[10splayer]

One of Yandell's best article's IMO. The arm/racquet work is counterintuitive for most...as most try to push the racquet face thru the ball in a linear type way.. Many are surprised to learn how much RHS can be achieved by rotating the racquet around the hand.

I'm constantly bombarded with question in regards to leg drive, kinetic chain principles ,etc, but most often the real source power outage is addressed in this article....

[jamesbtripp]

Would love to hear what you thought of "Your Strokes: Evan Chiang Serve"

Wonderful analysis.

I've been working on this but only get around 150 degrees of rotation because my starting racquet face is not at 0 degrees to the plane of rotation but rather is at 30 degrees.

I'm working on the hypothesis that the left shoulder has to drop, and the plane of both shoulders has to tilt to make room for the right elbow to go up and rotation to get to a 0 degree starting point.

I noticed that Federer's left arm and shoulder really drop fast to allow the right arm to go through the loop in the back. He really yanks that left elbow down with tremendous acceleration which cartwheels the right side of his body up and over. Can't see it in the Chiang video but I assume his left shoulder is down when he completes his back loop.

Thoughts?

[bottle]

This is one of the clearest demonstrations and how-to's I've ever seen on the subject of what the arm, specifically the upper arm, should do in a great serve.

Is that a critical response? I hope so. Is it fawning? I hope not.

Is there anything to question here, or if not to question, to notice beyond the text and video content? Of course. That would be true no matter how excellent any article, lesson, speech or international forum. And there's nothing wrong with that. One-- whether communicator or recipient-- only requires the courage of a small bit of extra openness, along with recognition that every simple document, right in front of our eyes, has indeed its face value (tremendous in this case), but another set of values beyond that on the level of suggestion.

In the videos, Scott Murphy's head is moving sideways away from the ball and out of the way of his throw just as contact occurs and a little before and a little after. In the serves of Evan Chiang (both "before" and "after" the instruction at the heart of the article) and in the included videos of Roger Federer, that does not happen, and Federer's head might even move, oppositely, a bit toward right fence.

What are we to make of that? In other words, what should I, you, it, he, she, they do?

[stotty]

Like it...

I read this article three times. I always find this kind of stuff mind-boggling confusing...internal rotation, upper arm, lower arm, external, forearms. elbow joints...phew...gets hard to follow. Luckily John posts all those explanatory video clips which are superb. If a picture paints a thousand, then a video clip paints a million. And very necessary for someone as dozy as me.

The article was awfully good, and with it the teaching drills. The whole subject matter was new to me and was an education.

I have never been an advocator of wrist snap. Whenever I tried to teach it (as it was, and still is, consider correct teaching practice with many in my part of the world), I found it ruined serves...brought the follow through to a more abrupt finish in my experience. I abandoned it a bad concept off my own back many years ago. Sometimes you have to trust and go with yourself. I'm really glad I did that now. Good serves are effortless and fluid. I am fixed in my view of that.

John, I know have heard it many times before but I'm going to have to say it again: You are awfully good at what you do. You have the best tennis website on the Internet by a considerably long way.

[stotty]

Legs

I realise this is off topic, but looking at Evan's serve as a whole, and with regard to the legs - how important is leg symmetry? I've often wondered about this because I have students whose legs don't always align in what would seem to be a contributive way. It makes sense that the legs should work together and not be at odds with each other. Evan's right leg shoots out awkwardly. I wondered how impeding this is to his serve and its possible full potential.

[johnyandell]

Again to all thanks for the great great comments!

A few thoughts in respone:

I get really impatient with people who love to throw jargon around like with the biomechanical terms. I avoided them for a long time. But with Brian's work I realized that they had real explanatory power and took it upon myself to try to translate them for my own understanding into simple English...

On the shoulder thing: I tend to think they take care of themselves if other components are right. If you are coiling in the legs correctly and have a good wind up all the various tilts and angles will usually take care of themselves.

On Evan's leg--definitely! It needs to go more directly back and we examined that when he was here. One thing I think is key is working on a limited number of elements at one time. I suspect once he is comfortable with the arm rotation, he'll clean that up as well.

On the exact amount of hand and arm rotation--from a good drop something like 180 degrees is great but you see variations from serve to serve and player to player even at the pro level. So no need to make it too mathematical.