A New Teaching System: Serving Rhythm

[johnyandell]

Would love to get your thoughts on the latest in my New Teaching System series, "Serving Rhythm"

[gazelle]

When tennisplayer comes out, it's like Christmas for me.

For some time now, I will have students count out,
"one one-thousand, two one-thousand" etc as they release
the ball from their shoulder lift.

I have found the serve rhythm gets much better if they place
the ball high enough to count to at least two before contact.

I believe this is what you say in one part of the rhythm article. I
also like to begin with a loose arm "waggle" before the
serve instead of starting with static hands. Anyway, you
are so great at what you do.

[ox110373]

Thank you for continuing to rock the vision!

[arturohernandez]

I liked the article a lot. Actually, I like the written articles better but that is a different point. In any case, for the longest time I didn't realize a lot of things about the serve including the importance of rhythm. I have experimented with all different types of rhythm in my quest to remake my serve entirely. The most important points in the article to me were the following:

1) That the serve starts from a static position and it requires us to create our own rhythm. It's a blessing and a curse. So much freedom to do what we want. It can create a nice fluid serve or a very choppy one.

2) That the acceleration in the serve is much greater than in any groundstroke.

3) That we do not need to deal with an incoming ball. So we can actually be much looser than we would be when hitting a groundstroke.

I have often wondered if the ideal way to teach the serve would actually require a ton of different drills many of them without a racket. I have tried alternating throwing and serving or even throwing 2 lb medicine balls over my head. I find that all of these exercises help with developing a rhythm.

My sense is that those who have great serves stop thinking about everything. Kind of like a chess master who can memorize a whole chess board.

I imagine that for Federer each serve has a different rhythm. Almost as if he was playing a song in his head.

Hey John, maybe someone could put different players serves to music or create some form of an auditory stream to represent the movements of each part.

Then we could hear it and not just see it.

Like a symphony!

Or maybe someone has done this already...

[johnyandell]

Like these?

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/music_videos/serve_tissue/serve_tissue_large.html

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/music_videos/true_serving/true_serving_large.html

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/music_videos/winning_edge/winning_edge_mcenroe_lendl_serve_large.html

[captnemo]

Yeah like those!

[arturohernandez]

Not quite. I was actually thinking of making a video in which the movement of body parts created a sound of sorts. So that you could hear an instrument for each body part and then when they combined in real time it would sound different for each player. At the same time there could be commonalities for each serve. So each serve would create its own tune of sorts...

[johnyandell]

I think you will be the creator of that one.