Marco's serve

[shootermcmarc0]

Its attached on the thread John made. For those that can view it properly, any suggestions for me to improve it? I'm working on converting it to a MOV file, but first I need to get the original file so I can use a different method of compression.

edit: trial, let me know if you can see this.

[FiveO]

Shooter,

A couple of things you may want to consider:

1) It seems your shoulders never deviate far from the horizontal. Through the toss and pre-launch your shoulders remain very close to parallel with the court surface. It isn't until you start moving up toward contact and the hitting shoulder rotates over the toss shoulder that they get off that horizontal plane. The power servers ALL achieve a near vertical shoulder alignment (70 to 80 degree angle up or more) with the toss shoulder well above the hitting shoulder in the pre-launch or trophy position immediately prior to accelerating up and through contact. Your shoulders stay extremely "flat" until the hit. Getting your shoulders angled up in this manner will afford you a much greater distance to rotate your shoulders, (hitting shoulder over toss shoulder) when transitioning to contact. The greater distance that the shoulders rotate one over the other, translates into more speed=more power and more spin.

I think getting your hitting elbow above shoulder level contributes to your shoulders remaining relatively flat. I would suggest allowing your hitting elbow to only reach a height even with your shoulder line.

An added benefit of the angled up shoulders with the toss arm extended is that you will achieve a front (toss) side stretch helping you to get into the front side body bow like a flexed vaulter's pole in the pre-launch or "trophy position". That stretch can then be used as part of the kinetic chain when your body snaps back to straight during your extension and rotation into contact.

2) A little more relaxation of your hitting arm will help in that it will allow for a greater racquet drop as you begin transitioning from pre-launch to launch.

I'd like to see another view of your serve purely from the side to have a better look at your toss and weight shift/transfer.

Good luck.

[shootermcmarc0]

Thanks FiveO, you always give excellent advice. I plan on getting a little more footage of my serve when the weather gets better. Did the file I attach work ok? Or did you watch from the AVI file from the other thread? Sorry about the poor quality, I guess its better than nothing.

It seems like when go into the trophy position, my wrist looks floppy because the racquet isn't pointing upwards. Here's what I mean:

is that gonna be a problem?

[FiveO]

Shooter,
In your photo I don't see that you're showing a markedly floppy wrist. What I do see is the angle formed between your shoulder line and your upper arm. While your shoulders appear too horizontal there is some angle up from hitting shoulder to toss shoulder. However your hitting upper arm appears, if not angled up (hitting elbow higher than hitting shoulder) certainly at least horizontal, or parallel to the court surface. Thus there appears to be something like a 135 degree angle formed between the line of your shoulders and the hitting upper arm. Compare that to the still of Sampras and you can see that his upper arm is very nearly a straight extension of his shoulder line (very little, if any angle between his shoulder line and upper arm). As Sampras' shoulders angle upward, with his toss arm at full extension it may appear that he drops his hitting elbow, but that is NOT the case. The straight line formed by his shoulders through his hitting elbow remains intact, albiet, nearly verticle as shown in this photo below. VVV

Personally I think should you achieve that straight line position, toss shoulder to hitting shoulder to hitting elbow, and rotated your shoulders into that angled up position, your lower arm, wrist and racquet position (racquet pointing skyward) would come very close to the same position Sampras achieves.

[shootermcmarc0]

After some hard rain, Seattle actually got a break today, and I was able to hit. So I tried what you were explaning to me about the straight line of the shoulders (tilting upwards), and it worked great. If I had a camera man, I would have posted a clip on here. I'll try this weekend. I'll get you more angles too.

[FiveO]

Shooter,

Great to hear you had some success! I'm looking forward to seeing some more video from you.

[shootermcmarc0]

clean contact...

I think I might have another problem, I'm not hitting the ball in the middle of the racquet. I'm hitting in the upper hoop, causing me to break a main today. Does it mean I'm reaching too much for the ball? Swinging too early?

[FiveO]

I think I might have another problem, I'm not hitting the ball in the middle of the racquet. I'm hitting in the upper hoop, causing me to break a main today. Does it mean I'm reaching too much for the ball? Swinging too early?

Shooter,

Remember, from the "trophy position" through contact, you should be accelerating from slow to top speed at contact. Not fast at the beginning nor the same speed throughout. Acceleration. Getting the shoulders angled up, stretching that left side should add some length to your motion, and should cause you move slower in that phase, from there think more of going through the gears and reaching top speed at contact. Slow to medium to fastest. Accelerate or gradually increase speed througout the forward part of the motion. It takes place in a fairly short distance but you must move through all the gears in that distance.

Are you seeing the blur of the racquet passing through the contact point? Dropping your eyes, looking toward the service box early, will pull your, head, shoulder, arm and ultimately your hitting arm and racquet down. Make sure you see the blur. To help focus on a specific spot on the ball instead of the ball as a whole. See the blur pass thru that spot. That spot is your contact point.

Are you really swinging up to the ball? Sometimes in an attempt to jack a serve, players end up throwing more forward than up. As a result they end up "short arming" the serve and possibly making contact near the top of the hoop. Think of throwing a football with your right hand at the ball you tossed with the left hand. As you would throw the football at the tossed tennis ball, up and forward, adjust your attack on the tossed ball with the racquet. "Throw" the racquet up and out at that tossed ball.

If, and only if, none of the above helps, you will have to lower the toss. I don't see that in the video you have posted so it is definitely not the place to go first. Get the next vids up when you can, again, especially from that side view.

Good luck.
5

[shootermcmarc0]

I got a different view of my serve, this was recorded yesterday. Since John pointed out that he likes a view from behind to see the racquet drop, I recorded it from this ang. I still haven't corrected the shoulder alignment that FiveO pointed out, doh!

[johnyandell]

But the racket drop is great!

[shootermcmarc0]

Thanks, hehe. Anything else I can improve on? The way my hitting arm elbow goes up looks kind of strange, but if you say I have a good racquet drop, should I still fix the elbow position?

[mntlblok]

Landing

Anything else I can improve on?

I have no idea whether it is something that would need improving, but I'm curious to know whether it is unusual to land that far to the left in the court relative to where you started. I'm guessing that it is due to a toss well to the left, maybe in an effort to really "kick" the serve.

Kevin B

[shootermcmarc0]

I posted the same video on the tennis talk forums and they all mention the same thing. A few of them suggested to try to move the toss more in front of my body and to move it to the right a little. Funny thing is, today, I tried to toss the ball more to the right and I still landed to the left. The only thing that changed was that I got more sidespin on it and less topspin (like what John mentions in part 2 of the Federer serve article). I don't think its the toss thats pulling me that way, its gotta be something else. I guess my left leg just pushes off in that direction or something

[johnyandell]

It's pretty tough to see anything in that video--that's why I haven't jumped in.

[shootermcmarc0]

multiple angles perhaps?