(smashes tennis ball) - Whoo!
In every complex system,
there are things called leverage points.
These are small tweaks you can make within the system
that set off a chain reaction,
that create big ripple effects throughout everything else.
And when you find the leverage points on your serve,
you're able to simplify the technique.
You're able to stop overthinking or being confused
or feeling overwhelmed when you step up to the line
and instead have that feeling of confidence.
Cool, calm, mastery, when you step up to the line,
because you know that you can bomb serve
whenever you want to, with power and control.
And you're going to learn exactly
how to execute the ATP swing in three steps,
let's get into part one.
(upbeat music)
The first step is to get into what we like to call
"The Pre-Throw Position."
It kind of looks like this.
(smashes tennis ball)
The way you get into this position
is defined by three characteristics.
First, your elbow needs to be elevated away from your body
about 90 degrees and it's done
through the shoulder flexion motion.
Number two, you've got to have 90 degrees
of what's called shoulder horizontal abduction.
You could see this by the fact that when pros
finish their windup, their elbow is going to be positioned
away from their body and to the side
when you view it from the back.
And lastly, their elbow is going to bend in about 90 degrees
until their palm is facing toward the court.
Now, if you look at the top ATP servers,
every single one of them is going to reach
a similar position to this by executing
the three motions that we've just covered.
The reason why is because it sets up your arm to get into
what we like to call "The Pro Drop."
Now, by getting your palm down toward the court,
we do something really powerful.
We set up your arm to be able to rotate back externally.
You see with the palm down and your arm bent,
you're in what's called internal shoulder rotation.
And this is followed by a powerful external shoulder
rotation that pros execute in the racquet drop.
So again, it's going to look something like this.
Number one, my shoulder is raising away.
I'm going to draw my arm back.
I'm going to bend my arm in.
Now from here, I'm ready to blast the ball.
Now, if I take my racquet out of my hand,
watch what happens.
I get into a very similar position to what you'll see
in baseball pitchers and NFL quarterbacks.
Well maybe not the NFL, I don't look like that.
By getting into this position, I'm setting my arm up
to flip back and snap in.
And that's where all the fluid power comes from.
Just like this.
(projectile dropping sound)
No, nah.
Every single time.
It's like I can't control it. (guy laughing)
All right.
Now this pre-throw position is so powerful
because it allows you to utilize
what's called "The Stretch Shorten Cycle".
The stretch shorten cycle happens when you lengthen
or you stretch your muscle prior to contracting it.
It's kind of like when you stretch back a rubber band
and then release it.
The stretch creates the powerful snap.
And when you're able to get that same stretch
and load on your serve, you're able to create the same snap.
Now, step number two is going to be all about
the wrist here.
You want to perform ulnar deviation
so that you can absolutely smash the like button.
Guys, (laughs) in order to help us grow the channel,
we'd really appreciate it if you hit the like button.
Second step is all about activating
the stretch shorten cycle through
the correct dynamic racquet drop action.
It's called The Pro Drop position because you'll see
that almost every single top ATP pro
will reach this position prior to snapping into contact.
But I rarely see it executed at the club or junior levels,
but you're going to learn exactly how to execute it today.
As pros drive through the ground and they rotate their hip
and torso into the net.
This, combined with the inertia of your racquet
is gonna cause the racquet to flip down
and back behind your body.
Now this force is what allows your arm
to subsequently slip back into external rotation.
As we talked about, your arm is up,
drawn back and bent, ready to flip.
And if you've executed step one correctly,
and you've gotten into this pre throw position,
then you're able to create this nice
left-to-right swing path with your racquet
as you drive your legs through the ground.
And you can feel this right away,
simply by getting into your pre-throw
and rotating your torso and driving your legs.
Just feel the flip right there.
If you have your racquet, you can do this with me.
And when you feel comfortable,
you can go here and snap that racquet in.
Now pros are going to remain in
this externally rotated position all the way
until the last few milliseconds before contact.
And this gives them the appearance of leading up
with the edge of the racquet.
As they go from their initial acceleration
in this full flip to starting this elbow extension motion.
As they start to straighten their arm out,
it's almost like they're chopping the ball.
And in fact, if you didn't internally rotate your shoulder,
you would in fact chop the ball.
But, a few milliseconds before contact,
they set their shoulder up to flip back in
and rotate the racquet in as powerfully as possible.
And in fact, according to Dr. Bruce Elliott's studies,
this internal rotation of your shoulder and forearm,
which has turned the long axis rotation is responsible
for over 50% of your rocketed speed at contact.
So again, I've reached this full fluid
racquet drop position.
And as my shoulder propels up,
I'm going to have this natural elbow extension motion.
Then at the last second,
they internally rotate their shoulder
for tons of rocketed speed.
It's going to look like this here.
Pre throw position, fluid racquet drop,
snapping that racquet right into contact.
Now, if you don't have the Lamborghini of shoulders,
don't you worry, I've got you.
For those of you out there who don't feel
like you have as much mobility or flexibility
in the shoulder and you can't reach those same deep
athletic positions you see the top pros reaching.
You could still utilize the same technique.
You see, the same biomechanics apply.
You just need to use a little bit less of an extreme version
of the same motion.
Here's exactly how that works.
Get into your same pre-throw slot.
And from here, instead of getting your racquet
all the way down here in this deep position,
what you're going to do instead
is utilize more horizontal shoulder adduction.
This is where your arm comes forward in front of your body.
And you could see this done even at the pro level
in some players like Federer.
So compare Federer's serve to Radek's serve,
and you'll see that at the start of Federer's acceleration,
his arm will start going in front of his body
faster than you'll see on Radek's serve.
Now here's how you do that, from this pre-throw position,
simply think about pulling your elbow forward to the ball
and feel your arm going forward in front of your body.
And as you relax, and if you reach the correct
pre-throw position at your start,
you're going to naturally get the same fluid motion.
And as you could see,
you could still get a good amount of power on your serve
by utilizing the same technique,
but just making it less extreme, just like this.
(smashes tennis ball)
Now, there is another way that you can add even more power
to your serve and we're going to cover that
in the next part of this video series.
So stay tuned, click the link below
and until next time, athletes.
I will see you in the next video.
Oh, I should become a volleyball player.
Volleyball, volleyball? I don't know.