Setting Up the Shoulder Rotations on a World Class Serve

[bottle]

Moral of this Story?

In the repeating video of Isner, UAR takes racket both up and down before contact. (Shoot me, but I prefer UAR-- upper arm rotation-- to ISR-- internal shoulder rotation-- to describe the same thing.)

Subordinate arm extension to UAR? Whether one is nine feet tall or not?

Much later addition: Keep elbow back to make UAR a tight but speedy vertical circle and don't worry about subordinating anything. To learn this motion use opposite hand to hold elbow back and wag the racket up and over, up and back, repeating again and again until you understand that this is what you want in your serves because of the greater acceleration it produces over what you were probably doing (if you were anything like me). We hear all the easy superlatives from the sport scientists about the power of UAR but they don't bother to tell you to hold elbow back for much greater acceleration. Maybe they don't know it themselves? I certainly didn't know it until yesterday. This interpretation of the arm work core of a serve also helps define pronation (internal twist from the forearm) in a more understandable and less academic way. The pronation is the last instant change of direction that keeps you from cleaving the ball in two. But is there overlap from one to the other (UAR to pronation)? No doubt sometimes. Maybe all the time. I'm sure one contributes to the other but the delineation (when it happens) now seems pretty important (the later the better). Hope this all makes sense.

[bottle]

I just put up an addition to the previous post that is very important at least to me.

[bottle]

Subordinate arm extension to UAR? Whether one is nine feet tall or not?

I'm thinking now, after several serving sessions only, that one should subordinate arm extension to UAR, but do it as part of the preparation for forward UAR. How much flexibility does one have in one's shoulder? The less one has the higher one may want to lift elbow in down together up together design. The next question is how extended (or bent) the arm is at its acme (high point). Some effective servers have a straight arm at that point, most probably the right angle of "trophy position," others could experiment with even less angle than that between the two halves of the arm. This is something to fiddle with. There is no easy answer, but some serves may be far better than others when arm is set at a certain length. I like the idea of fingers then loosening and that occurrence only to cause one to miss hitting one's own head.

One wants to save UAR, i.e., backward upper arm rotation, for this part of the serve, it seems to me, as arm folds together combined with a bit of looseness in forearm to create vertical alignment for the forward UAR about to occur. UAR in two directions conflicting with each other as elbow is held back, perpendicular to the quick vertical wheel about to happen, seems key. Yes, arm will straighten as part of the forward UAR when it is allowed to release out of the conflict (see Brian Gordon's animation of arrows fighting against each other. The arrows are curved in opposite direction around the upper arm). UAR, I say, is what to maximize, not necessarily the amount of tract through which folding arm permits the racket head to fall.