role of hip snap in the serve?

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interesting... now i gotta find his name!
i follow all the short folks... chang, rochus, schwartzman, cibulkova, henin, etc..
according to: https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/inde...-serve.307940/ rochus supposedly hit over 130, and he's about my height!

but you're right... the location and consistency are more important that squeezing every mph out of my little frame.

I saw this guy, play at the US OPEN qualifiers. He had a huge serve and he's like 5'7". He won vs who I think was the number one seed.. I could be wrong about that.

[johnyandell]

NY,
Thought you were going to send me some video of that serve of yours!

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I remember when we would go out to practice serve, hundreds of serves and my daughter would be so excited she reached the back fence in one bounce which happened maybe once or twice a month. Literally thousands of serves and then one that hit the fence.. and thousands more and one or two would bounce to the fence.. and thousands more and now maybe 5% would hit the fence in one bounce.. Its happens so slowly, MUCH slower than we imagine it would. But those little things show you that you're learning, you're improving, its not a waste of time and effort.

[nytennisaddict]

Trust me we understand. My daughter's serve has changed many times. As well as her forehand and backhand. There were times were her forehand was as perfect as you can ask for but very slowly old habits creep in and before you know it it goes to sh*t again. So its back to the drawing board. We have had to rebuild her strokes many times. Some of this had to do with poor coaching when she was younger. We had to undo certain things. Luckily even though it can be very frustrating, she loves practicing. She was certified USTPA at 19 and teaches part time. One of the local high school coaches brings his entire team to her because he says she's the only one who knows what she is doing. LOL.

hehe i teach too, and IMO not being athletically gifted, and having made all the mistakes... is what makes me a decent teacher :P

She has a no nonsense teaching approach focusing on simple fundamentals and she doesn't let her students get away with anything some of the other coaches who sit by and say nothing as they watch their student hit 50 late balls in a row. It's like huh? Why aren't you teaching your student to get his/her racket back? That's your job! I get frustrated as well seeing these kids putting in the time and effort and the parents paying for it and receiving sh*tty coaching.

i get that.... but i also understand where they are coming from.
i've had quite a few students that weren't willing to put in the work, or make changes, or had their own way of doing things. in the end i chose to stop working with them, because (a) this is not my full time job/business (b) no point continuing to teach if they insist on doing it wrong
on the flip side, full time coaches, that are struggling to fill their 40h or whatever to make a living can't afford to take that approach... some are afraid to correct their wealthy clients, some are afraid to make their client "worse" even if in the long run the correction will make them better, etc...
i'm also in the fitness industry, and there alot of adults out there, that pay to be coddled and get attaboys. they don't want to listen to the advice (that they supposedly payed for). and they are also too weak to hear the blunt truth (want to lose weight? stop stuffing yourself like you're preparing to be next thanksgiving's main course).
anywho, i typically just fire those clients

[nytennisaddict]

NY,
Thought you were going to send me some video of that serve of yours!

will do... just waiting for some warm & sunny days, so i can film at a high resolution... at slow mo as well. the lighting at indoor courts by me are often less than 150lumens which is terrible for recording the fine details of something like the serve.

here's an old vid (match lesson) from last summer... where i only know how to topspin and kickers. for the last 9 mos or so, i've been working hard to hit flat, slice/topslice... particularly deuce wide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuRWQPh-4ps&list=PLf_8vBE70YVodKeKiCY0O3fShHl_Bw9xV&index=2&t=0s

since that lesson, i've also revamped my 2hbh, and fh, and lost weight :P

[don_budge]

will do... just waiting for some warm & sunny days, so i can film at a high resolution... at slow mo as well. the lighting at indoor courts by me are often less than 150lumens which is terrible for recording the fine details of something like the serve.

here's an old vid (match lesson) from last summer... where i only know how to topspin and kickers. for the last 9 mos or so, i've been working hard to hit flat, slice/topslice... particularly deuce wide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuRWQPh-4ps&list=PLf_8vBE70YVodKeKiCY0O3fShHl_Bw9xV&index=2&t=0s

since that lesson, i've also revamped my 2hbh, and fh, and lost weight :P

Super video...you've got a tiger by the tail there. How long had you been playing tennis to this point when the video was made?

[johnyandell]

Can't see much! I need higher fps with a shutter!

[nytennisaddict]

Can't see much! I need higher fps with a shutter!

lol, i know... next sunny day i can practice, and have time to record, i will. i was also trying to figure out how to do the picture in picture thing... so i can also display sony sensor stats, and views from front and rear.

[nytennisaddict]

Super video...you've got a tiger by the tail there. How long had you been playing tennis to this point when the video was made?

thanks, i've been playing for a while (decades on and off),... arguably poorly... i played as a kid, mostly learning from (coincidentally) a don budge how to book that my dad had, and alot of DIY
wasn't til later (as an adult that could afford lessons) that i took real lessons
but now with the advent of yt, websites like this, etc... i've been dedicated to fixing/improving the things i've been doing wrong, now that i have a much better idea of how to practice. for example, for the last year, weather permitting, i've been practicing serve almost daily for at least 30 min (usually 60 min) a day (eg. ~100 serves a day).... or even just practicing "toss & load" indoors.

[johnyandell]

Forget about the pic in pic for now.

[nytennisaddict]

I saw this guy, play at the US OPEN qualifiers. He had a huge serve and he's like 5'7". He won vs who I think was the number one seed.. I could be wrong about that.

yeah, i know him well. some places in manhattan that i play, are all dominicans... and that's all they talk about is burgos
i was at last years quallies (Q2 Q3) too. was disappointed to not see him get through.

http://2014.usopen.org/en_US/scores/stats/day12/1308ms.html

top speed 126, avg 106
5'7"... is still a "giant" compared to me :P
lol i compare myself 5'4" to cibulkova 5'3, rochus 5'5.

played a match yesterday...
first serve: top speed was 94 (according to sony sensor), but mostly mid to high 80's
second serve: 50's (kicker)

[nytennisaddict]

Forget about the pic in pic for now.

ok, so record from behind? (eg. over my right shoulder so you can also see where the ball lands?)

[nytennisaddict]

I remember when we would go out to practice serve, hundreds of serves and my daughter would be so excited she reached the back fence in one bounce which happened maybe once or twice a month. Literally thousands of serves and then one that hit the fence.. and thousands more and one or two would bounce to the fence.. and thousands more and now maybe 5% would hit the fence in one bounce.. Its happens so slowly, MUCH slower than we imagine it would. But those little things show you that you're learning, you're improving, its not a waste of time and effort.

haha, i still get excited when my ball hits the back fence... that said, the bounce of the ball, and surface do make a difference.
these days i get really excited about making a kicker hit the back fence... but most excited about a wide slice hitting the side fence, or a kicker hitting the side fence

what's your, or your daughter's practice routine and frequency?

i'm settling in on about 100 "hard" serves a day...
i might extend that to about 250 serves if i'm just focus on accuracy and form.
i also spend quite a bit of time on my toss indoors (eg. toss and load, and make sure my toss is a) going to the target location b) is landing approximately in the same place..

[stotty]

Good plan. I tell my performance students to try and practice around 200 serves a day, six days a week. That's 1200 a week...4800 a month...57,600 a year. Then, assuming you are developing and improving things technically, you'll get somewhere for sure.

[nytennisaddict]

Good plan. I tell my performance students to try and practice around 200 serves a day, six days a week. That's 1200 a week...4800 a month...57,600 a year. Then, assuming you are developing and improving things technically, you'll get somewhere for sure.

thx for the response. any insights on how to maximize practice?
so my typical routine used to be, warmup, then serve "hard" at targets... a good day is i hit all the targets.
these days i'm isolating things... and probably spending more time "not serving"... eg. i'll stop if the toss is not perfect... i'll isolate loading various power sources...
eg. focus on shoulder tilt
eg. focus on legs
eg. focus on hip thrust
eg. focus on the follow through (keeping elbow high for example to promote hitting up)
eg. experiment with various timings of linking all the elements together
etc...
i did find that "serving slow", pretty helpful... hard to mask poor technique speeding through things.
so out of say 300 partial/full motions, i'll only hit like 20 "hard" serves

it's actually a routine/philosophy i got from training martial arts.... eg. in bjj, we don't "go hard" all the time... we spend alot of time "going slow" breaking things down and decomposing techqniues or combinations,... then only go "hard" once all the fundamentals are down.