Throwing the tennis racket over the fence is used by some players to improve
their serve. Venus and Serena did this as kids and they have amazing serves so it's
logical to think that throwing a tennis racket over a fence will help your serve
because on the surface these two actions seem identical but to really answer the
question whether this will help your service motion we must take a look at
the biomechanical differences between throwing a tennis racket versus serving
a tennis ball.
So the key biomechanical difference between a throwing motion and a service
motion is the timing of the torso rotation. It's is irrelevant whether
you're throwing the ball or actually throwing a tennis racket the timing of
the torso rotation on the throw will always happen before the release of the
forearm. So in order to throw the racket we must rotate first and then release
the forearm while on a tennis serve we're not doing that. We're delaying the
torso rotation and we are going to hold the body position sideways and then
we're going to extend the arm pronate and rotate into the contact.
Even if you throw a ball or a racket at a higher trajectory the release point
might change but the timing of the torso rotation will not. You are still
propelling the object that is thrown forward and the torso rotation will
happen early as a result of that.
If you throwing a football for example or even throwing your racket over the
fence in order to warm up your shoulder there's nothing wrong with that. In fact
many high level players will often throw a football in order to loosen up and
warm up their shoulder before a match. However, if you have technical
deficiencies on your serve and are throwing in order to improve your serve
this will not work because the very unique timing of the torso rotation on a
tennis serve and this includes throwing a tennis racket over the fence. While
throwing a racket over the fence and serving might look identical on the
surface the key difference is the timing of the torso rotation and that's what
makes a tennis serve very unique.
Only on a tennis serve will you rotate into the contact extend the arm and
pronate simultaneously. So in order to learn that you must practice a serve
within the context of the entire service motion.