The serve is not a throwing motion and how do I know this? Well just like you
I've heard hundreds of times that the serve is just like throwing a ball and
that never sat right with me, because when I grew up in Europe I never played
baseball or American football and was not particularly good at throwing and
yet I have a very good serve. And I wanted to find out if my intuition
that was correct that the serve is not like throwing a ball and I've done the
research and there are biomechanical differences between throwing an object
and striking an object.
And the first biomechanical difference between a throw and a strike is that the
elbow is positioned very differently on a throw versus a serve. So what's
going to happen to the elbow on a throw is that the elbow will start off very
similar to the serve and pointing backwards and now as I initiate the
throw the elbow will first come to the side and then will point forward before
I release the ball. So the elbow will be pointing towards the target prior to the
ball release.
The positioning of the elbow on the serve is completely different from a
throw. So you will never see the elbow come forward before we strike the ball
This will never happen on a real serve. So what will happen instead is that we
are going to toss the ball and that is going to bring our non-dominant side in
this case is gonna be my left side above the dominant side. There's gonna be a
reversal of the shoulder positions and therefore the elbow will in most cases
be as slightly lower and you don't see this on a throwing action and now the
next thing that happens, the elbow will not come forward at the elbow will
simply go up as we reverse the shoulder position. So you will see that this the
elbow will start going up towards the sky as we initiate this cartwheeling
motion. The elbow will be pointing straight up towards the sky.
And as the elbow is pointing up towards the sky now we start to straighten the
arm and we go into the contact. So if we try to throw a ball in this fashion
with the elbow is pointing up towards the sky like this and we get
extension in this fashion it would be like throwing a ball at a ceiling and we
have very little muscle memory in doing so. Just try it out. Take a ball and try
to throw it at a ceiling you will find it very uncomfortable and it is very
difficult to get any type of power doing so.
Another thing that's different between a throw and a strike is the timing of the
upper body rotation. So the biggest similarity between a throw and a serve
is that it does involve upper body rotation. I will add that this upper body
rotation only takes place on on flat and slice serves. So what will happen on a throw
is that this upper body rotation it goes much further before the ball gets
released and it happens in this fashion. So the throw starts right here and now
we start rotating the shoulders and the elbow will go to the side first and then
will go forward which will bring the dominant shoulder in front of the non-dominant
shoulder and then the forearm will start extending into the release like
this.
And you will never see the dominant shoulder get ahead of the non-dominant
shoulder on a real serve because this would make the serve to arm dependent.
So this will never take place on a serve. The dominant shoulder getting ahead of
the non-dominant shoulder. Now I'm completely disconnected from the ball
and I'm simply using my arm. This doesn't take place. What takes place instead is a
delayed rotation where we're basically rotating into the contact on flat and
slice serves. Something like this, so we start off in a sideways position and
now the racket drop is initiated and we start going up towards the ball and now
as we make contact the shoulder starts to rotate and the dominant shoulder
never gets ahead of the non-dominant shoulder. They are parallel to each other
and the dominant shoulder is above the non-dominant shoulder.
You will never be able to generate the same type of power and speed with the
throw compared to a strike with an object and the reason is that the throw
is very much dependent on the entire arm and what happens on a throw is, there is
a release of the wrist at the very end you can see that the wrist releases like
this to get additional power on the throw and you do not want to do this on
the serve. You're basically using this racquet to generate the power and you
must give this racket stability. So you don't want to release into the contact
like this but you want to have stability here and if we can see this, that we have
slight wrist extension at contact and slight ulner deviation and it's done to
create stability at impact with the ball.
There are several reasons why throwing will not improve your serve and the
first reason is that throwing completely ignores the tossing side of your body.
See the toss is one of the most important things to develop at the
recreational level and even at the professional level the toss can be a
challenge for some players. And when we throw we're simply are not using the
non-dominant side of the body and you therefore must always incorporate the
non-dominant side into whatever serve exercises you do.
Another reason why throwing will not help you serve better because it ignores the correct
biomechanics on the serve. And what happens on a real serve is that we get
into the C shape where we get on our toes, we bend our knees, we get the
tossing side of the body vertical to the ground and get our chest up to towards
the ball and this is only done on a real serve. You would never put yourself
in this type of position when you would throw the ball and so by throwing you
will not be able to develop these biomechanics and you must do so on a
real serve.
Another reason why throwing will not improve your serve is because it ignores
the context of the ball. See recreational players could do a really good job at
executing dry serving exercises of all kinds, but then as soon as if there's a
ball to be struck everything goes out the window.
The reason is mentally if we are striking a tennis ball the racquet will
do all kinds of things in order to make clean contact. So recreational players
will open the racket face too early and they will slow down the racquet and all
this is taking place because of the ball that's there to be struck. So in
order to improve the serve as boring as it sounds you must hit thousands of
serves you must get a lot of repetition so you lose some of these anxieties that
you have when it comes to striking the ball. The more you serve the less likely
you are going to open the racquet face up too early and do all these common
mistakes that happen to recreational players and throwing will not get that
done only real serves will.