felt really good let's see what the people have to say about my serve this sounds interesting
i can't even imagine how big your serve would be if you had a full leg drive
it reminds me so much of warinka's serve his serve doesn't have a full leg drive but still
hits 130 miles per hour would save your arm from doing a lot of work
impressive such accuracy on that serve well thank you so much for this comment
you know what i'm going to try to get more leg drive on my serve alright here we go let's get those
legs working let's get that leg drive activated come on all right here we go so basically i'm
going to try to jump on this serve and get a nice leg drive and let's see what happens
did not feel good on my shoulder though yikes this is supposed to save my arm my arm is killing me
that hurts i gotta stop let me do my regular serve
without the leg drive and let's see what happens on this one
so the person that wrote that comment I know that comment
was well meant and i thank you for making such a nice comment but you obviously
didn't take a look at my research on the leg drive on the serve i've made two videos that encompass
the leg drive in its entirety i even looked at the greatest servers of all time
and i studied how their feet leave the ground the first video i want everybody to take a look at is
the leg drive and the second video i made is the passive leg drive and basically in those videos i
explained that on a tennis serve there is no leg drive there is no active jumping remember driving
the legs pushing with the legs is basically the same as jumping there is no such thing
on the tennis serve there's not one high-level player that intentionally or consciously jumps
on the serve you saw what happened when i tried to jump on my serve it completely destroyed my
serve i couldn't get it in at all this is not how you serve what happens on the tennis serve
is that the legs come up on their own the players are not consciously jumping now before i get into
detail why the things that i just said are not based on my opinion these are based on hard facts
they're based on data this is based on the way the feet are behaving when they leave the ground
these are hard facts guys this is an undeniable fact that what i'm saying is the truth but before
i tell you in great detail what the reasons are that we as tennis players don't actively
jump let me tell you a quick little story about the greatest coach that i've ever known my dad
rest in peace when i was 16 years old i played the state championship the westfalen meisterschaften
in germany and i played against a guy in the semifinal that i've beaten maybe a month before
very easily and in this match for whatever the reason may have been maybe i saw some pros on tv
and this match started bending super low on my serve and i was jumping i remember this
now the only reason why i remember it because my dad started yelling at me and telling me to
stop jumping on the serve and after the match we had a long talk and he told me
which i lost that match by the way he told me i don't know what you were doing that match is
the worst serving i've ever seen from you you barely got any serves in you couldn't get any
free points on your serve whatever you're doing there you got to stop doing it now he knew that
when i was trying to jump this wasn't right now he didn't know the exact reasons why he just knew it
by feel by instinct and i've always known by feel an instinct by common sense that tennis players
don't jump on their serve but i wanted to know in great detail what is the case so i conducted
a lot of research on the subject now here's the thing guys there's two ways to jump you can
run and jump something you see in basketball something you see on a high jump something
you see on a volleyball serve this is obviously not what happens on a tennis serve we don't run
run forward and then take the momentum from the running by bending our knees and then jumping up
that's not what we do we jump from a stationary position now the hard fact you can try all the
stuff that i'm telling you out at home when we jump from a stationary position which basically
the tennis serve is it's a stationary position we would never set up a jump like we set up a tennis
serve it makes for a biomechanical standpoint absolutely no sense so why would we get on our
toes bend our knees and bend our body backward in some instances even bend the body forward nobody
in their right mind would try to jump from a position like this in fact if you try to jump from
a stationary position what you're going to do is bend your upper body slightly forward and you're
going to push against the ground and get airborne so obviously this is not what happens on a tennis
serve what happens in fact is there's a lot of different power sources executed on the serve
there's something that i call vertical momentum which is basically when the body
is bent in this way where the knees are bent we are on our toes the body is either slightly bent
backwards or forwards in conjunction with that there's also forward momentum where the
player slightly leans in and when that entire system is accelerated upwards the entire
torso is thrusted upwards and yes the legs are involved in that process so the legs
straighten as well if you take a look at the calf musculature you can see that the calves are
tightened so the legs are straightening but it's in conjunction with the entire body straightening
why because we're straightening into the contact so this is what propels the legs off the ground
look in the first leg drive video that i made i took my shoes off and i'm going to take them
off again you know why because i want to show you something super interesting so
here's what happens to our feet when we leave the ground now we don't violently spring up off
the ground like this let's just say we're in a in a pinpoint stance like this right
and now the feet do not violently come up like this here's what happens the back foot
will leave the ground first and the foot will roll towards the tip of the foot and then will
get airborne first and slowly the front foot will follow this is absolutely impossible to
do if you consciously try to jump also if you take a look at the player's feet the feet are passively
dangling in the air this is not just the case on the serve is the case on the forehand
the backhand anytime a player is executing a passive leg drive the feet will passively
dangle in the air now do players ever jump on any strokes yes they do they do it intentionally
players will do a jumping forehand or jumping backhand players like kyrgios or marat safin back
in the day marcelo rios the jumping backhands that is an intentional jump completely different to how
federer or djokovic hit a forehand they get airborne you'll see the feet are passively
dangling in the air and that's what happens on every single tennis serve on every single player
and here's the important question what about you guys at the rec level should you leave
the ground with both feet is this something that's important it absolutely is an optimally
struck serve will have both feet in the air it doesn't matter how high in the air if you take
a look at my first leg drive video i showed you that even some of the greatest servers of all time
only leave the ground by a little bit how high you get off the ground has absolutely nothing
to do with the quality of the serve i know some mechanically unsound serves especially on the
wta tour where players are getting a huge lift off the ground they're up in the air about this much
but they still have a really bad serves from a technical standpoint there's a lot of flaws in
those serves i'm not going to name these players by name but this is absolute fact
the amount of height that you get on your serve has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of
the serve and now let's get back to the commenter who said that it's going to be hard on my arm
if i don't use a leg drive and this is something that's absolutely wrong in fact
when i was jumping on my serve i hurt my shoulder a lot more than when i was doing my passive leg
drive so here is what will help you guys at the recreational level is if you execute all the power
sources in unison so there's going to be forward momentum there's going to be vertical momentum
there's gonna be horizontal momentum it's gonna be swing momentum when you utilize all four in unison
what should happen in your serve is that the feet will leave the ground and now the two
power sources that are gonna make that happen the most is gonna be forward momentum
and vertical momentum so if you attempt to throw the ball inside the baseline you load your body
in a way where you're going to be on your toes bending your knees leaning slightly forward and
starting to bend backwards as much as you can as you accelerate upwards and from this position
naturally most players will get airborne especially when we're talking about forward
momentum it's almost as if players are losing balance and they're just falling with their body
weight into the court and naturally they'll get airborne they'll land inside the court i've had
many many students at the recreational level even some older students 70 years plus who are never
able to get airborne on the serve and i taught them the fundamentals all of a sudden
they started getting airborne they were getting the passive leg drive now here's the crazy thing
every single one of them would always ask me nick did i leave the ground on the serve
so they had absolutely no idea that they left the ground i sometimes will have to record them
and prove it to them i have to pause the tape right at the moment of contact to prove to them
that they were actually off the ground because they had no idea whatever happens down here is
not happening consciously guys you don't actively drive the legs you don't push the legs the legs
come up on their own i'm not just making this stuff up i've taught the passive leg drives to
hundreds if not thousands of students now does it matter how high you get up off the ground
not at all even if you do what brad gilbert calls a credit card jump meaning that you're
leaving the ground by such a little amount that you could stick a credit card under your
feet this is still adequate and this will still allow you to land inside of the court so what's
going to happen at any level of play is that the amount of vertical lift that you get the amount
of height that you get on your serve is going to depend on your athletic abilities and here's
what happens with many players as the athletic abilities decline so does the amount of vertical
lift that they get on the serve personally i've experienced this i want you to take a look
at my serve when i was 16 years old take a look at how high off the ground i was getting then
and take a look at how high off the ground i'm getting today i'm 44 years old i stopped
training many many years ago i'm not in the same athletic condition as i used to be and obviously
my body is not accelerating upwards as fast as it used to also i'm heavier than i was back in the
day and obviously i'm not leaving the ground the same amount as i did many many years ago
and by the way i'm not worried about that at all it is not causing any problems on my serve
because the vertical momentum is not where the vast majority of power actually comes from the
vast majority power on the serve comes from the swing momentum but when the swing momentum meaning
that the arm is supported by the other power sources you're going to get this feel of effortless power
so you do not need to concern yourself how high you get off the ground if you get off the
ground even with a credit card jump now to put your mind at ease i want to tell you that even
the greatest female server of all time serena williams when she was younger she was getting off
the ground a lot higher than she does now and one of the greatest servers of all time greg rusedski
lefty he had a very very a small height when he left the ground it was somewhere
around here and this is one of the greatest servers of all time so
in conclusion as long as you're utilizing all the fundamentals on the serve of course and if
you're utilizing all the power sources in unison it doesn't matter how high you get off the ground
what's it's important that you do get off the ground and land inside the baseline