I'm sure you've sat on a chair or on a bench and tried to improve your kick sir
by doing various drills and you're probably wondering why your kick serve
is not getting any better? The problem with most kick serve
exercises is that they don't accurately mimic the swing path on a kick serve. So
whether you're sitting on a bench whether you're kneeling down or you have
your racket like this and you just swinging to the side. This is actually not what
takes place on a kick serve. The swing path on a kick serve is actually very
similar to a slice serve and a flat serve up to the point of contact. So what
happens is on a kick serve the racket will drop and now it doesn't come from
one side to the other. It actually will drop and then come back this way because
the acceleration of the racket head will have the tip of the racket point back
towards the fence and then actually the racket will go towards the ball and
then because of the sideways position of the torso the racket will then go
towards the right.
And high-level players are not aware of the actual swing path. The acceleration
of the racket is way too fast for us to be conscious of what actually is taking
place. So it makes sense to us that we drop the racket down and then simply go
to the side like this but what happens in reality with this type of kick serve
is that yes you will get kick on the serve but the contact with the ball will
be extremely thin and it's almost impossible to get any power with this
type of kick serve. In order to strike this kick serve powerfully you must not
do these exercises anymore because they're not gonna help you develop the
correct swing path. What you must do instead is not think of how the racket
is approaching the ball and then most likely if you have enough acceleration
once you drop the racket it will whip back like this and you will have a
forward approach to the ball and then the racket will go towards the side. And
what separates the kick serve from the other serves is two fundamental pieces
of the kick serve action. Number one there's not going to be any torso
rotation so we're going to have to stay sideways and now if we accelerate the
racket properly it will come out this way and because we're holding the
sideways position of the torso we're then going to have a contact with the
tip of the racket slightly pointing towards the side and then on most
players the racket will intuitively go towards the right. It is highly unlikely
that if you're staying sideways that the racket will try to go forward this will
feel very counterintuitive because your body is in the way and naturally most
players if they really can feel this sideways position of the torso at
contact. On most players the racket will go towards the side by itself. In
addition to staying sideways you also must position your toss to at least 12
o'clock or even 11 o'clock for right-handed players. If you do that
don't think of anything else. Do actually not concern yourself with the swing path
because you're gonna start doing things that do not accurately mimic your actual
swing path on a kick serve. So all you have to do is make sure you toss is
correct and then hold the sideways position of the torso and you will be
able to generate kick on your serve.
And if you're having trouble with staying sideways on the kicker I'm going to
show you some exercises where you can practice staying sideways. The number one
exercise is actually not using your body at all putting yourself in a sideways
position in this case you will have to throw the ball a little bit more behind
to simply throw the ball behind and then spin the serve like this. Now after you
do that for a while you can start going forward so now you
would push the ball into the court a little bit with your toss and you will
start leaning forward but maintain the sideways position the entire time. It
looks something like this. Now this is going to feel a little bit awkward but
if you can maintain the sideways position you're almost guaranteed to have kick.
And then finally once you've done this for a while you try to do a kick serve
where you're going forward and at the very end of the motion where the racket
is starting to come down you can open up your body and split up and be ready for
the next shot.
The two main reasons why I do not want you to do these common kick
serve exercises. Number one, they do not accurately mimic the kick serve swing
path and also when you're doing these kick serve exercises you are making
an isolated movement of the arm and that is not what takes place on an actual
kick serve it's a very complex shot that involves multiple actions of the body. So
what happens usually is that if you try to learn the kick serve too early you
will find it absolutely impossible to do so. What you must do instead is learn all
the fundamental elements of the serve in general and then just stick to the flat
serve once you have all the fundamental pieces down and you know how to hit flat
serves and all you have to do is make a couple of small adjustments. You have to
adjust your toss, stay sideways you will be able to kick the serve much easier.