Tips by Tomaz Mencinger Here are 10 tips to help you serve faster:
1. Loosen up! Don’t grip the racket so tight, loosen your whole body and swing freely at the ball.
2. Think “fast” instead of “hard.” The tension of your body starts in your mind.
3. Exhale when you serve. That will help you release some of the tension.
4. Make a swooshing sound. Try a few serves without the ball and just listen to the sound. Remember the feel and hit the ball in the same way.
5. Don’t aim! When you are learning how to serve fast, you need to let go. Don’t try to serve fast and at the same time get every ball in.
6. Hit a few balls into the back fence across the whole court. There is an old program running on your brain that tells your arm how fast to move. When you change your target dramatically, you can set yourself free from that program.
7. Throw the racket. Take an old racket, go to a nice lawn and throw the racket as far as you can with a similar motion to serving or throwing a ball.
8. Rotate quickly with your body. The main energy source of your serve is body rotation. Try and consciously rotate your shoulders to increase the racket head speed.
9. Drive with your legs. Legs add only about 10 percent of the racket head speed, but that could mean more than 10 km/h if you take full advantage of the leg drive.
10. Keep a high racket head speed even AFTER the contact. Don’t accelerate only to the ball, instead try and hit through the ball focusing on fast movement for a few inches after the contact.
Full article at http://www.active.com/tennis/Articles/10_Tips_for_Faster_Serves.htm
To add to point #5 - After Nadal added 10mph to his serve Uncle Tony said, "once heard Jack Nicklaus say, First learn to hit it far, then learn to keep it in." good advice!
ReplyDeleteI think this list could be improved some..or tweaked atleast.
ReplyDeleteFor one I would focus on the shoulder rotation going over eachother (like a freestyle stroke in swiming in and upward direction) and not around eachother(like a baseball pitcher throwing to the catcher). This may seem insignificant but 25 years of coaching has made me a believer in its importants. The two planes are totally diferent. It all comes down to the angle of attack of the racket on the ball which creates spin thus control and pop. I would also stress that when you do the "swoosh drill" I would focus on hearing the peak of the swoosh sound above me... If you are hearing it out in front it means you are swinging to far in front(probably long arming the throw). This would be like the baseball pitcher throwing to the catcher or worse, a bowler in cricket... again...wrong direction of force and possibly wrong throwing technique.
The "throw the racket drill" needs to stress the direction of the throw and how the racket is traveling in the air. The racket should go more up than forward and it should rotate edge over edge. This insures a more accurate practice of what your serve motion should be.
Too much to write about... I will leave it at that.