Whipping action on the serve...

[bottle]

Go to a special massusie who will crush your shoulder's adhesions?

The comments about Jim McClennan are political, not substantive. His illumination of low toss serving-- that would be Ljubicic, Ivanisovich AND
Tanner-- is fascinating. I refer specifically to McClennan's mentor's practice of tossing blindfolded to his service motion. You guys have a bad record of demonizing people, maybe can't feel good if you're not doing it. (I know, I know. I used to do it to Vic Braden before I met him.) McLennan never does it to any of you. Braden of course is all about low toss serving. He is not a bad man just because the service motion he teaches contains a moment with arm out to the right like a pitcher in baseball (and he writes sometimes for TennisOne).

Abruptly stopping vs. abruptly slowing! C'mon, guys. How many angels can dance on the point of a pin.
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Flexible servers generate tension between their cartwheel and their racket tip fighting to stay low. The racket tip is far back and down enough so that when it finally releases it means something.

Inflexible servers (most tennis players) have a racket tip which unfortunately is too close to the cartwheeling front shoulder.

Two different kinds of body bend should be considered in trying to improve the service results of severely stiff-shouldered players. More self-imaging is romantic but not apt to do it!

Could these pathetic cripples crank hard and athletically if they were bowed backward from both sets of toes to their head?

Yes if they could fire simultaneously from lower and upper body. Lower would overpower upper creating the slight sequence everybody wants.

Wouldn't they lose height of contact, though, and open the racket too much compared to what they were probably used to?

Solution to first problem: Bend just a little. Solution to second: Toss further in front.

Throughout, they should altogether suppress the other kind of bodybend where hips are way out over the baseline, since this for them leads to downward spin.

It's just an idea.

[johnyandell]

Uh, for the record. The poster who disagreed with Jim is a subscriber, and his points are technical. Based on reading them I highly doubt he has any "political agenda", but if you are concerned, I suggest addressing your comments to him directly.

So far as our track record of "demonzing" people, I've known Jim for many years and he is an astute student of the game and a very good writer.

The article you refer to I would have to agree is an excellent exploration of the low toss delivery.

I respect Jim and there isn't a negative word about him anywhere on the site, political or otherwise.

[bottle]

The Merry-go-round Serve of Vic Braden

Excellent, and of course it's Jim McLennan, not McClennan.

To the private emailer: Thanks for your questions. I'll click on "Talk Tennis"
right now. I always get the same message. Here it is.

"You have been banned for the following reason:
requested by user

Date the ban will be lifted: Never"

This message seems to me a partial answer to Johnny Yandell's claim on "Talk Tennis" sometime back that I like to hear my own voice.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Merry-go-round Serve of Vic Braden-- how does it work? Through its implicit recognition that ordinary people are too inflexible for the ferriss wheel serve, the cartwheel serve, or even the tilt-a-wheel serve.

In other words, the ordinary player, like any chimp, can learn a more vertical motion (i.e., with his two shoulders churning over one another on a steep upward diagonal). But will he produce ferocious upward-mixed-with-sideward ball spin like 98 per cent of playing pros?

Never and not in a lifetime-- not if his shoulder is stiff. What are his alternatives? He can accept downward ball spin as his fate, and eventually hit every short overhead so hard that it bounces over five adjacent courts. He can learn every finesse known to the pros and maybe change downward to sideways for five lucky serves in a match. He can go to special, expensive chiropracters who claim to know how to break up the adhesions in his shoulder without destroying it. He can learn upward spin-- not difficult-- but it won't carry pace.

I watched the phenomenon in a Winchester, Virginia tournament match that had nothing to do with me.

On one side was an experienced thirties player who was one of the boys and confident, with a well-publicized record in the Winchester Star and solid technique. He had requisite athleticism and ego, too. If you had probed any matter of technique with him he would immediately have transformed into a junkyard dog as vicious as any at Talk Tennis.

I felt for him though. Because, the beginner on the other side, also in his thirties, was taking him apart.

He was more flexible in the shoulder, you see, and therefore had a far superior serve.

[johnyandell]

Again for the record, it's unfortunate you got yourself banned at TW, but I had nothing to do with that.

If my desire was to ban you from message boards, I would start here with the one on my site.

[bottle]

More about Stiff Servers and Serving Stiffs

Nah, it's not unfortunate. It's a relief.
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I would like to commend gzhpcu in Lugano, Switzerland (Phil) and his indispensable graphic at # 16 . That's what this discussion is about.

May I lightly advance an alternative ritual as a possible solution to his and my and so many peoples' problem? One really does use the left hand in a bigger way to slow shoulders in an alternative, whirligig serve. One might try to wrap left hand all the way around gut and point it at right fence post behind one-- a counter-wrap so extreme it tugs left shoulder with both arms ending up crossed as Tony Pasarel taught.

An Oregon-influenced poet from Texas, Tony Hoagland, recently read at Wake Forest University. One of his poems was a beautiful catalog of the pre-sex rituals of different species. Human beings were the last item he examined. If a couple goes out to an ice cream place, he chanted, they always have sex afterwards.

Ritual is so important. The most simple one could be best.

If a ferriss wheel doesn't obtain ferocious upward spin, and merry-go-round doesn't work either, next thing to try is tilt-a-wheel.

On the surface it sounds very bad. If one changes the axis or hub mid-motion, i.e., shifts one's head, one may miss the ball altogether.

On the other hand, if one is tossing to the swing and can do it blindfolded, what does it matter if eyes and head don't stay still but go upward, forward and downward in an arc?

Such a serve is pretty good or pretty awful. Anybody doing it needs a statistical study. It's very loose and affords the opportunity for spaghetti arm to completely press the two halves of the arm together. It keeps the
hand close to the right ear as body whirls, affording extra time to reflexively twist the racket tip down.

The way I'm trying to do it seems like an abbreviated version of Pancho Segura's "forward-back-forward, roundhouse, rock-and-roll" serve as illustrated in his 1976 book "Pancho Segura's Championship Strategy."

He was short and his toss was a towering one. I am tall and have been fooling around with imitations of Ljubicic's toss, footwork, and other stuff some of which I have abandoned now that I better understand my handicap.
Toss now is low, hips and upper body working together in both directions (easy back, hard forward) in quite rapid rhythm: "One, two, threee." I'm keeping feet flat on the backswing now, up on toes and fly and conventional landing on left foot (foreswing). Because the serve is immediately rotational,
I want both feet down with weight on the balls for extra leverage on hips.
No step, therefore.

When Vic Braden originally taught whirligigs, he advised people to keep their upper arm parallel to the court. That's okay in a merry-go-round, but if you're tilted backward at end of the backswing your upper arm had damn well be perpendicular to the axis of your rotation-- down somewhat to preserve
Braden's position of leverage and strength.

The arm fires out to the right. Call it a throw or whip or snake strike-- whatever you want. The hand started from the ear, the elbow out, the tip low enough that a naive person might think you flexible. Seems to me you decelerate AND "fire the extensors, baby." That would be a simultaneous burst of energy from triceps and late front leg both.

Such a serve can definitely produce effective upward/sideward heavy and unpredictably bouncing spin, even for somebody who is tragically tight in the shoulder.

External racket range is added to the restricted internal racket range.

A last alternative is six pallbearers who carry you to the baseline on your back on top of a coffin. Your elbow will be in perfect position for an upward swipe at the ball.

[bottle]

More for Fast-twirling Stiffs

Many people along with a few fans find objectionable my method of writing about tennis.

It's people with little tolerance for uncertainty who have the most trouble.

I too am interested in pre-digested food, only less so.

I speculate, speculate and frequently correct myself a day later-- oh the shame of that! (Never be ironical in a technical discussion but I just was.)

Progress often comes from examining the opposite of one's last thought.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Any builder knows that a slight bump at the bottom runs all the way up through the house.

So, get a strong light behind you and watch the shadow of your head on a white wall.

Rotate hips on a more or less level plane while pushing your shoulders up, over and down (while rotating them in a horizontal way, too).

Now turn your front toes in and your back toes out and try the same thing again. In which sequence was there a more dynamic rise of the head?

It won't work if you let this different stance modify your whole body stance-- then you'll just get what you had before. You don't want to wind back any more than you do using a conventional stance either-- I think-- for the same reason. You need to be pigeon-toed with the ftont foot and wall-toed with the back. As you rotate, back knee goes down and front knee goes up.

About left hand: In all the tennis instruction I've ever studied, I never fully
have understood the concept of slowing body with tossing hand.

I mean, is it the physical weight of an appendage flapping in the wind? Or the tug on opposite shoulder that a half-punch might produce? Or skater's effect where someone hand-out (Tilden) spins slower. Or what?

[bottle]

Whipped vs. Torsioned vs. Torsioned and Whipped Serves

I can hear someone saying, "He's blabbing on," but I don't care. Impressing anybody is not the goal other than with an improved serve. Among other tennis activities I play someone with whom I am even two or three times a week. We only play one set and a half. Set score time before last: 4-7 .
Set score last time: 6-0 . Granted, he wasn't yet used to the new serve but I think that's only part of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Calipered arm torsion: Should anybody abandon it altogether? And how does one end up with tightness in the shoulder in the first place?

1., genetics, e.g., a dropped or otherwises skewed shoulder like Pam Shriver (or myself). She developed a quick first serve and a good sliced second, but never a kicker like everyone else.

2., accident. In my case the entire coaching staff at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, decided to take the day off. Twenty-six years later, the Athletic Director is still smarting about it. In a ski race from top to bottom of West Mountain, Glens Falls, Don Chu, the trainer and tennis player was first, and I, the oarsman, was second despite crashing and landing on my right shoulder when he and I crossed some rough snow.

3., working too much on the serve. This, like accident, causes more adhesions, at least one chiropractic researcher (and business person) has declared.

You measure in a standing or flying position with arm a perfect right angle at the elbow. Intimidating servers can hold this position while bending forearm all the way down to parallel with court (90 degrees).

With little such torsion available, however (5 or 10 degrees compared to Sampras's 100plus), should a fast-twirling stiff abandon the idea of cranking racket tip backward and low altogether? Or does that 5 degrees accomplish something? Change pitch a little? Add a little spring action to the mix? Inhibit the compensating loosey-goosedness on which he has decided to depend?

I guess everyone has to consider the opposites and then decide these things on their own.

Perhaps any alteration to natural-arm loop-caused-by-forward-body-rotation should occur beforehand with precise adjustment to the palm. Palm is supposed to be facing down, as Braden has always told us, but could it be cranked a few degrees more?

[bottle]

whirligig: "a child's toy having a whirling motion"

Any other aspects to this alternative serve? Hand goes up in shallow arc as back knee goes down? Arm bends a little as back knee goes down? Back bends ("leftward lean") as right knee bends out (back and right knee are cantilevered)? Rear knee goes down as part of foreswing? As part of backswing? Try serves both in which right leg pushes off flat foot and in which it pushes off of toes? Figure out the best breathing that goes along with this? Break down breathing habits to make something better?

Such minutiae drive the anti-intellectuals nuts. And tennis is mostly comprised of anti-intellectuals, I am afraid.

To go to older disciplines in existence for 4000 years is to receive a very different take on the thorny question of "attention to detail."

Quality of the teaching may be more important than which branch of the martial arts one chooses. In tai chi, I have had four teachers so far including a woman Finnish master and an international grandmaster.

All four have been exceptionally "down-to-earth." One of them encourages his students to look for "little tweaks" to the motions, tweaks that he or she
"stumbles upon" all by himself/herself.

So, the more things are different the more they are the same. Tennis pros almost universally agree, that, after a point, to think too much technique is bad. That works in tai chi, also.

Even in tennis majors, however, some of the great upsets occur when a player suddenly forgets everything else and applies some little tweak to one of their strokes or other motions or general timing-- a constant process, no?
But one has to authorize oneself as tweaker first, and has to want something specific before they can stumble on anything.

[tennisplayer]

Bottle, feel free to "ramble away" - it doesn't bother me at all - in fact, some of your points on TW were quite interesting - but I feel you are missing a big thing amidst all the little tweaks you are experimenting with.

The object of all the complex motions that make up the serve is to ultimately load the muscles that will get the job done. This is true for any stroke, of course. And which muscles you want to load will depend on the path you want the racquet to take and how you want to address the ball - this is mostly stroke dependent, but also varies a bit with individuals, I suppose.

Thus, it's a feel that one has to develop. The little tweaks are useless if they take you on a tangent and don't enhance the feel. The body will naturally move to the right configuration - at least, for the most part - if you try and replicate the feel you want. For example, if you try to think about how to wiggle the toes while serving without connecting the movement to an overall feel, it will only get in the way, I would think.

To develop feel, I believe one has to fixate on the racquet path and ball contact - and observe the results. One then understands what one has to do to get the desired results, over time. If you can relate tweaks and coaching tips to the feel - and this may be necessary, since tennis technique is not totally intuitive - they become part of your mechanics. One corollary of all this is that it takes doing to get there, and theorizing can only go so far.

Anyway, you have my $0.02. Happy tweaking!

[bottle]

Coil Backward, Coil Forward and Strike (and a snake doesn't have a left arm)

I quite agree with you, except how can you develop feel for winding up the
muscles that twist the upper arm if you don't have any natural range there?
Well you can. You can bounce a short overhead across three adjacent courts. Thanks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Coil, coil, strike. By slowing down the second coil you allow time for the right knee to bend (start of arm bend, too) and for the left knee to straighten (completion of the full arm bend).

Every tennis stroke is a series of delays, but in this case unusual delays occur right during the forward rotation of the stroke-- delays that might occur during the backswing in other kinds of serve.

There are always both kinds of delay (with accompanying compression or extension of muscles) in all serves.

I'm finding that this new paradigm works. I'm happy to let it replace my more unpredictable speed mechanism of acceleration-deceleration-- unless a-d can occur in an extremely vertical plane.

Organic over mechanistic every time.

Previously, backswing was slower than forward rotation, as in golf. Right now, the second coil is slower than the first in the proportion of 1 to 2 .

Additionally, Vic Braden used to say that if you keep palm down, forward rotation will form a natural loop of the arm.

It's true, but I see the two legs idea as fleshing out the concept.

The rhythm of this upward motion producing similar serve-- back leg bends, front leg extends-- is helped by your getting up on the front toes during the backswing while rear foot stays flat.

When you bend one leg you always bend the other, but in this case it happens less because of the virtually simultaneous hips and upper body (forward) rotation, and simultaneous taking of body tilt...all that leads to a very physical sense of climbing up one step of a circular staircase.

Width/narrowness of stance affects steepness/shallowness of this oaken step.

A nice aspect is that such a blended motion takes stress off of isolated body parts, especially the muscles and joints of the left leg.

I see BACKWARD body tilt occurring during backswing and SIDEWAYS body tilt occurring during the bending of right leg (at the beginning of forward rotation).

Segura, who, like Lendl, Roddick, Federer, McEnroe and Seles was one of the most innovative players ever to live, would manage to stop his shoulders in a vertical way. In other words, although they came up very fast he stopped himself in ramrod position like a palace guard for contact and landing.

This seems like a good idea, although a very tall player might want to be leaning forward a bit.

The slow forward body coil of what I have outlined allows time for the shoulders simultaneously to come up very fast and yet stop at the point which determines the desired pitch of one's racket.

One wants to strike high, like a rattlesnake, rather than low like a copperhead or water moccasin. And one wants to fire the triceps very hard.

I have played against "walking serves" in which two separate steps seem to get the racket tip down-- a related idea.

But this version can also be very relaxed and is more simple, with less to go wrong.

Next time: The Toss.

[bottle]

A Tweak is just a Tweak (as Time goes on)

An epiphanous tweak, however, is one that despite its small size causes some large movement to come alive. And this may happen more often than people think. Such a tweak, by reason or by luck, could be addition OR
subtraction.

I distinctly recall presenting, somewhere in this chronicle, the tale of a lad just beginning tennis yet finding the acquisition of a heavy topspin serve as easy as pie.

That was one time I didn't accuse dark Fate of gratuitous cruelty in giving me stiff shoulders (I've been testing the left one, too, lately). I grabbed the guy, got my own low-bouncing slice serve in order, and we won the intermediate doubles in Berryville, Virginia over the astounded first team of the local high school.

Interestingly, a Mr. Greg Didden, top seniors player in West Virginia, told me that try as he might, he never had been able to hit up the ball while serving. Of course he didn't need to. But if he had succeeded, he might have become seniors champion of the mid-Atlantic states and Kansas as well.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I envisioned myself talking here about low Braden-type tosses only with back of hand parallel to net like Ivan Ljubicic instead of turned up or down. I can at least recommend the huge profusion of moving images of this remarkable server at TennisPlayer. Note how he smooths down the front foot and then pivots the knee toward the other knee and then back knee toward front knee even as headlight turns away, all of it determined from one backward hip rotation, and then he releases ball and steps as upper body continues rotating back. At least it's something to admire. At most it's something to imitate. Perhaps this imitation would reward you more than me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was out this morning, really early when it was cool. I found myself opening
out the racket at a different place from where I ever tried that. If Ljubicic can change racket hand from palm up to palm down in mid-stream, I can try the opposite, I reasoned. I got pretty wild.

It's time for me to play but lay off my serves for a while. I've been giving them too much attention. My nerves are crying, "What do you want to do, anyway?" The mylenization is all screwed up.

Do people know about myelin? Is it just me who hasn't seen anything about it in tennis websites or publications? An article in the New York Times Magazine on Spartak dingy tennis facility in Moscow and Dementieva in particular, however, contained scads about oligodendrocytes or "oligos" in lab lingo.

It turns out that when you're a kid, you're full of oligos which are eager to
arrange themselves in new configurations. As you turn into a coot, though,
you retain five percent of these little kid building blocks. Physiologically, you're still educable if you don't let some typically lead-headed notion get in the way.

For young and old the neurons line up. Then this fatty stuff, myelin, insulates them. I rudely didn't write the author's name down but here's one of his sentences.

"Each one of these wraps can go around a nerve fiber 40 or 50 times and that can take days or weeks. Imagine doing that to an entire neuron, then an entire circuit with thousands of nerves."

Repetition, especially for the young, improves the insulation. And the better the insulation, the quicker and surer the transfer of nerve impulses, and the more liquid the athletic motion.

I thought it all quite sexy but also felt it was one more example of too much information--until I clicked on the New York Times interactive display. Color-coded myelin was running in bright strings through a human brain. I've been a believer ever since.

[bottle]

Simplification

Scott Murphy's two classic lessons on this website got me back on the track of an older, better serve much closer to the discussion the guys were having
early in this string.

I only really started to play when I was 42 (I'm 67 now). I think that's part of the reason I change stuff so much.

[bottle]

For Inflexible Servers: Where in the World is Carmen Miranda?

That Lynn Thigpen-driven kid's geographical quiz show prophetic catchword-- pre-Osama, pre-Obama and pre-Google Earth-- applies to anyone looking for anything just as much as the title of Samuel Beckett's great play, "Waiting for Godot."

The inflexible server just wants a bit more lowness of racket tip combined with smoothness of motion. The embarrassed Bottle just wants compensation for his wordiness in this string.

The answer on all counts may be unexpectedly simple (ha-ha). Starting with Scott Murphy's two "Classic Tennis Lessons" in service, especially the part
about assuming trophy position-- reviled and mocked by Vic Braden for decades-- and then touching one's thumb to the juncture of shoulder and neck, one can at the same time bend knees a modest amount and quickly become smooth and consistent as silk, possibly serving with no faults at all.

Next, to add pop, one can take to heart these exact words of Greg Ryan (#3)along with the entire early discussion in this string: "I feel (with some research to support it) that pronation is manipulated to direct the ball. The magnitude, velocity and timing of pronation may determine where the ball is going and has little to do with racquet head velocity."

To me, after all we've heard about the power of internal rotation from the shoulder, this statement astounds. In fact, IT ROCKS!

Accepting it (therefore), I return to the also wonderful Vic Braden, Pancho Gonzalez idea of staying on edge till you've practically cleaved the ball in half.

And I'm doing everything to maximize pre-neutral wrist position FLEX. This means adjusting from my continental toward eastern backhand one half centimeter for now. (Thank you, Scott Murphy, for delineating the eastern backhand grip option so thoroughly.)

Because of what leg drive makes happen to arm from trophy position's hand at chin level, forearm flex will be maximized. Since the two halves of the arm
will clench together, wholehearted triceps extension will also be enabled by body thrusting up. That leaves the fingers.

The bit more grip has put more range in the wrist since its motion now is in the direction of the two bones of the arm rather than across them.

From here I go to the 1969 John M. Barnaby, "Racket Work: The Key to Tennis," page 67, with its photographic display of 25 degrees of racket movement from fingers alone. "Many people do not appreciate the role the fingers can play in helping the wrist to give a feeling of skillful facility," Barnaby wrote.

On every serve my racket tip is now coming up from a more vertical position, with immediate benefits of more upward buzz and pace. I am going to enjoy this for a while before undertaking some new quest. This improvement has taken a long while-- too long-- and many very good people have gone through life without ever arriving here.

It would be magnificent if Scott Murphy's or Greg Ryan's or Brian Gordon's
or my or anybody's experience would help somebody else solve the same problem more quickly.

[bottle]

Lowness and Ashe

If to the toss with ball out on finger pads and starting from
inner left leg you add a little wrist (from completely laid under
gradually to straight position at release), and add a little back
bend (this like Roddick), you're no longer pursuing the ideal of
perfectly upright, static balance (well, good riddance).

Next blend the two additives into one motion-- back and wrist.

If for this toss right hand stays low, closed and minimal circling body
a bit, the human butt leading alpha looper (see Brian Gordon, The Serve Backswing: The Upper Body) can keep racket low even as he simultaneously coils arm, wrist, upper body and legs.

The slight body angle toward left fence combined with clockwise
active upper body coil now helps preserve the lowness.

I would like to mention a very good deal from Wimbledon this
year. For $25, on one's computer, one could watch every
match. And then, with no buffering, one could watch these
same matches for the next three months. And then suddenly
one day, to my amazement, there for a click was the 1975
final I always wanted to see between Jimmy Connors and
Arthur Ashe.

[airforce1]

I love this old thread and some of the video clips on here are excellent!