Serving Coronas.

[johnyandell]

yeah that would be a good model.

[J011yroger]

Update: I have been working on the shadow swings and visualizations, just getting up directly into the vertical racquet trophy, and then straight into the swing without worrying so much about the drop. All shadow swings and very slow/light serves. Yesterday I got bamboozled into playing a set although I didn't want to serve at all for real.

The main thing I noticed was that I got into the ready to launch/trophy pose *much* quicker so I found myself staring up at the ball like "wtf do I do now?"

So I am going to have to get used to tossing much lower/sooner.

I barely swung at the balls because it was cold and getting dark so I can't comment on the quality of the ball but I think it's definitely simplified, one less unnecessary moving part.

J

[stroke]

seano This is what I am talking about.

https://youtu.be/jx9k2Gik7Nk

J

That is a great explanation of the 2 different drops, the on edge and open face. I think the pro explaining it is correct, both ways done properly are just fine.

[stroke]

I did some shadow swings trying to use these 2 different drops and it does seem the Roger open face style does make for a more natural movement into the wrist extension portion of the racquet drop.

[J011yroger]

Ok, moving on to phase two.

Now that I believe I have the trophy and drop sorted, I am moving on to loading the hips more, especially the right hip.

My hips are too perpendicular to the baseline at load, especially considering the amount of stagger in my feet.

Correcting this by loading the right hip back and down should create a better conduit between lower and upper body, taking some workload off the core, and if my suspicions prove correct, clean up some of the foot issues including the front foot movement and difficulty getting up on the balls of my feet.

J

[Error]

Your fundamentals look good, stance, grip, toss and contact point, You make contact at full extension. The important parts seem to be there.
The cons: You look a bit unstable, bouncy and rushed. I would suggest slowing everything down a bit, stop the bouncing around. If you're hitting deep in the 120s consistently you're doing something right.

[doctorhl]

Try rocking forward on front foot, then slowly rock back on rear foot without any knee bend to load the right hip. Then bend knees as you move arms to the trophy position. You will get more load on your back foot. It will probably require slightly changing your stance to less perpendicular to the baseline and may require a higher toss to match the difference in toss timing associated with a deeper knee bend.

[J011yroger]

Sorry I dropped off, super busy at the country club once lockdown ended. I don't like practicing my serve at work because I tear up the court with my back foot. Thinking of putting a welcome mat type of thing down so I don't dig a hole in the clay.

Monday is my day off so I try to play on a hard court with my buddy, did some serving points at the end of our training. Felt a little tight, maybe because of the wind or tired legs, maybe just because I haven't served in a while. I'll try to get some better video next week but I wanted to post something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ISty3LkxY&t=352s

J

[doctorhl]

It seems that you still rush your windup which makes you pause and wait a little uncomfortably for contact. You seem just a little tight. Can you slightly delay initial movement of the tossing arm(or release), so that it syncs with a shorter pause at trophy position? Also, check out your degree of elbow angle when at trophy position. Your serve looks really good, but looks like it requires a lot of effort for a 3 set match and could be prone to injury in a 4 round tournament. It’s hard to get self feedback on how effective the serve is after the bounce because we equate effort with power. I would get feedback from a friend to tell you if the “effectiveness” of the bounce is maintained as you gain rhythm with less effort. Obviously, determining effectiveness is a subjective and individualized evaluation by the returner.

[glacierguy]

Glad you're back. I think earlier in this thread there was some discussion of your falling to the left after contact. Having the same tendency myself, I found that concentrating on getting a strong kickback with the right leg helped. Looking from above, there is a lot of anticlockwise rotation into the contact (trunk, shoulders, arm) and IMO you need clockwise component from right leg kickback to regain balance. Your kickback could be stronger. Keep going!

[johnyandell]

Justin,
Narrow your stance bringing back leg to your right on Fed model. Square your shoulders to the net at the start of the motion.

[J011yroger]

Justin,
Narrow your stance bringing back leg to your right on Fed model. Square your shoulders to the net at the start of the motion.

I'll give it a shot, I should have a couple hour break this afternoon.

Thanks!

J

[johnyandell]

Let us know how it goes

[J011yroger]

Let us know how it goes

@JY

Really interesting.

First of all, I went with the wider stance a couple of years ago to help me get more turn and vertical component to my ball, but it always felt a little forced or uncomfortable so I was quite happy to let it go.

At first I thought you meant to face my chest to the net but I was like that can't be right so I realized I was a little open and made my shoulders perpendicular to the net, yea, square like you said, duh.

So the foot adjustment and shoulder orientation basically eliminated all the tension in my body before the serve, and it felt really weird having no pre-load.

I didn't get a chance to actually practice it since I had a busy few days, so I went right into matchplay. Played 3 sets of dubs, taught a few lessons where I served (slowly) and then played a set of singles against the captain of my 5.0+ team, a former DI player.

I felt in the warm-up like it was a much easier motion, flowed right into trophy and got in and out of the drop seemingly quicker; this could possibly help lower my toss. It felt like the ball just came off easier and cleaner. I didn't give it the beans at all, but still had nice pace and action, hit some pretty impressive targets. I went mostly spin, only went through the ball on maybe 5 serves but they were almost all aces or unreturned, even though they were likely only in the low teens.

The biggest issue was that because of the new starting alignment I had to make a conscious and consistent effort to get my toss out into the court as if I didn't think about it the toss would be in line with the baseline.

Overall I am super happy. I feel like I have a lot more potential now, and things I had to force before seem to just flow. I am going to try to get some time to just practice and I will video it.

Thanks a ton!

J

[johnyandell]

Good to hear. Good to hear.