hey guys a while ago i posted a video titled slice serve myths and in this video there were a lot of
comments and in the comment section people were debating whether pronation creates slice and in
today's video i'm going to give you the answer and no i'm not gonna make you wait until the end of
the video to find out whether pronation creates slice i'll tell you right away it absolutely
does not and guys this is a little bit of a complicated subject because most people are
confused about what pronation is in reality so it doesn't matter what serve i'm doing whether it's a
slice serve like that or a kick serve like this or even a flat serve i'm pronating on all these serves but
it's not what you think i'm not necessarily pronating after i make contact i'm pronating
into the contact and pronation into the contact is a fundamental element of the tennis serve and
you will not find a high-level player who doesn't pronate into the contact and basically what it is
is that after we drop the racket the racket's going to come out on this side
and now the racket's going to approach the ball on edge and obviously we can't hit
the ball with the edge of the racket like this we're going to have to pronate into the contact
and this is the movement of the pronation it's a very simple process we are going to
high-five the contact when i teach kids i tell them to high-five the contact imagine high-fiving
a giant this is a very easy metal image to recreate what happens on the tennis serve now
here's the fascinating thing about the serve that through my research i was able to establish that
elite tennis players will not always continue to pronate so all high level tennis players
will pronate into their contact we already established that but only sometimes will
high-level players and elite level players including some of the best servers of all time
pronate after contact which is basically this it's a continuing pronation so the pronation
happens into the contact and then on some serves there will be continuing pronation and through
my extensive research that i conducted prior to starting the intuitive tennis youtube channel
i have collected evidence that the vast majority of wta players doesn't always continue to pronate
so in other words they will sometimes continue to pronate on their serves but sometimes not in
other words they will go down in this manner and it's not only the wta i was also able to
find atp players of the highest caliber that have the same mechanism on their serves they will
sometimes continue to pronate and sometimes not now to be fair there's players as well who will
always continue to pronate players such as john isner or roger federer i have not found
any evidence on their serves where there wasn't continuing pronation but i would say 95 percent
of players do not always continue to pronate now i have the evidence to prove this but i'm
not gonna be able to put this evidence in my video because of copyright reasons so you're
just gonna have to take my word for it and do your own research so now that we got pronation
out of the way let's talk about this one theory that states that pronation after
contact creates slice and this is absolutely not true so let's talk about what a slice serve is
basically what i'm trying to do when i'm hitting a slice serve i'm going to place my toss
a little bit closer to 12 o'clock this is just my personal preference but generally speaking
especially at the recreational level it is easier when the toss is a little bit to the right
for right-handed players and here's the reason why when it comes to the slice serve we need a more
vertical position of the racket face at the moment of contact and what has to happen next in
order for the ball to have slice that the racket needs to laterally move across the ball here take
a look here's a ball and i'm going to laterally go across the ball you see this this is a slice
see how the ball is spinning in this way see hold on let me grip the ball a little better
so you can see it's spinning see if i laterally go across the ball see the ball is spinning
and that is exactly the mechanism of slice so in other words it absolutely does not matter
after the moment of contact what happens to the racket so even a slice serve with continuing pronation
is a perfectly fine serve to execute but also if you have a serve that doesn't have
continuing pronation as long as you're going laterally across the ball you will still get
slice on your serve so you have to get the idea out of your head that pronation after contact
creates any type of serves whether it be slice kick or flat it absolutely does nothing to affect
the actual serve that you're attempting to do if you think about it logically why would
it so when we make contact with the ball and then continue to pronounce after the ball has
already left the racket and this movement of the racket after contact has absolutely
no effect on the ball because the ball has already left the racquet prior to that movement so what
you got to focus on on your slice is not think about pronation but actually you should never
think about pronation on any of your serves because pronation is something that will happen
naturally if you possess the correct fundamentals and if you possess a lot of acceleration on your
serve is this easy to accomplish it is absolutely not this might take years or in some cases it
might never happen i'm not going to lie to you this is a characteristic of a high level player
and it's not so easy to get to the high level and that is your only chance to be able to pronate
into the contact and what you're gonna have to do is get a lot of reps in and possess the
correct fundamentals and then through patience and resilience eventually you will be able
to pronate into the contact so when i do my pronation into the contact i'm absolutely not
aware of it because it's happening in milliseconds i'm going to hit a couple of serves
and just think logically of that moment in time when the pronation takes place
and you try to catch it with your naked eye and let me know if you were able to see it
let me try one more
so if you can't see it i therefore can't feel it it's a completely intuitive process
that will take care of itself and what happens after contact is also something that players
do not have control over whether a serve will have continuing pronation or not that's something
that i'm still conducting research on there are several factors that come into play and
i'm going to present all my research on continuing pronation when it's ready but i'll tell you one
factor that can impact whether a serve is going to continue to pronate or not that is simply
where on the string bed a player makes contact so me as a right hander if i make contact slightly
off center to the right of my string bed i'm more likely going to continue to pronate on that serve
and look guys i understand that a lot of players are fascinated with continuing pronation because
it looks really cool in slow motion a serve that doesn't have continuing pronation doesn't look as
aesthetically pleasing as a serve that does have this technical element i understand that you're
trying to accomplish this feat very badly but i'm here to tell you that if you try to do so
you're going to hurt your serve in a really bad way because what you're going to be
forced to do whether it be a slice serve or a kick serve or a flat serve if you try
to make pronation after contact happen you will be forced to slow down
this area of the serve and you will abruptly stop your service motion looking something like this
and what happens to the serve when that's the case is that you're going to lose a lot of acceleration
as a result of it so what you should do instead is absolutely not worry about pronation it
is something that will happen on its own if you possess the right fundamentals and if you have
enough acceleration on your serve but back to the title of this video which is does pronation on
the slice create slice and it obviously does not but what about this question which slice
serve is better one without continuing pronation or one with continuing pronation now i don't want
you to misinterpret what i'm about to tell you because my research has shown that there is some
evidence that a slice serve with continuing pronation is a better slice serve than a slice serve
without continuing pronation this seems to be the case but don't misinterpret this and try to make
this continuing pronation happen generally on your serve if you execute it really well the chances of
getting the continuing pronation to take place are going to be much higher now as you know
on my channel there are no gimmicks i'll tell you exactly how it is so what i'm going to do now is
i'm going to hit five slice serves and then we're going to look in slow motion on which one of those
i have continued to pronate if on any it could easily be that i don't continue to pronate on
any of them but we're going to judge it in post so you guys can let me know in the comment section
whether you think the serve with continuing pronation was better or not because obviously i
have no control over the continuing pronation part of the serve in fact i don't even know whether it
happened or not so let me hit these five serves and we'll take a look in slow motion afterwards
oh
oh no no no no nick come on man
all right uh i think i got a three out of four so last one i better make this one
let's curve that ball off the court come on
there we go that's a nice one i think that's an ace yes
as i mentioned earlier in the video i'm absolutely unaware whether i'm pronating
into the contact but most importantly when it comes to the question which slice serve is better
one with continuing pronation or one without it is important to note that i'm absolutely
unaware whether continuing pronation is taking place this is something that will happen on its
own so the best way to judge a slice serve or any serve for that matter is to go by feel after hitting a
serve how did it feel to me the most important thing that i'm feeling after a good serve is
effortlessness and also i'm looking at the result i'm looking whether the ball is going to the
intended target or in this case whether the slice serve is curving off the court enough so let's take
a look at the two best serves that i had which were slice serve number one and slice serve number five
and slice serve number one was executed without continuing pronation and let's take a look at it
and slice serve number five was the only serve that i hit out of these five that
had continuing pronation and let's take a look at this one.
So if we were to judge these two serves based on their quality i would say they're pretty
even both serves were struck really well most likely these serves would have resulted in a service
winner or maybe the opponent would have gotten the ball back and i would have had the entire court
to work with now i'm gonna be honest with you guys serve number five felt the best by far this is the
serve that felt the most effortless and i think it also had a little bit more speed than the previous
four serves so should you be practicing continuing pronation on your slice serve in order to achieve
a better slice absolutely not because what happens with most players when they try to get the ball to
go out wide with a slice for example the mental image of the racket going towards the right
even though the ball is going to the left this is something that's very difficult for us to grasp it
doesn't make any sense to us the ball is going to the left and it's going to curve to the left
and yet the racket is going towards the right side so it's better not to obsess about this because it
gets really confusing what the direction of the ball depends on is the angle of the racket face
at the moment of contact that's what determines where the ball is going what happens afterwards
doesn't have any effect on the direction of the ball so in case of the slice serve or any serve
for that matter if you were to practice continuing to pronate towards the right side if you happen to
be right-handed this is going to be very difficult thing mentally it's not going to make any sense
to you what i find with most players they have a very difficult time getting the ball to the
intended target most balls will unfortunately have a tendency to go towards the right and what will
happen if you try to practice continuing pronation on your slice serve or any serve for that matter
is that you will be forced to slow down the very crucial time frame before the contact and shortly
after contact this is a time span that takes milliseconds so the only way you will be
able to execute these movements at the conscious level would be to slow them down what naturally
will happen to your serve as a result of that is that the serve will be abruptly shortened your
range of motion will be greatly diminished your momentum will be reduced and the torso rotation
will be interrupted this is the only way to make continuing pronation happen at the conscious level
so therefore when it comes to the slice serve even though a slice with continuing pronation may
be the optimal way to strike a slice serve you still shouldn't try to practice it what you have to do
is just be resilient patient execute all the serve fundamentals correctly and there's a good chance
that you will continue to pronate on your slice also what you have to do as a tennis player this
is not just for the serve but for any stroke is you go by feel and you base the way a stroke feels
on the results so if a serve feels good and you have the result that you wanted in other words you
the serve is going with the proper speed and the proper trajectory and it's going to the intended
target then that's a feeling that you should try to recreate over and over again and that's
how you develop the proper muscle memory so what you have to do on your slice number one execute
the slice fundamentals properly if you want to know in great detail how to hit a slice serve
you can check out my video on that topic the most important tip that i can give you when it comes
to the slice is concern yourself with the finish when you finish the slice serve properly there is
more of a likelihood that you will have a lateral swing path on your serve because of the intended
finish and you will indeed get slice on your serve whether this slice is going to be executed with
continuing pronation that's a very complicated subject generally if you strike your slice serve well
or any serve for that matter continuing pronation is a natural result of a perfectly executed serve