hey guys about two years ago i released a video titled the serve is not a throwing motion and
this video caused a lot of stir there was even a thread created on the tennis warehouse forum
where people were accusing me of trying to generate click bait and just trying to be
sensational for no reason whatsoever but this could not be further from the truth the reason
why i believe that the serve is nothing like a throwing motion is based on my experience so how
did i come to this conclusion well i'm not making this up i actually did a lot of research and had
experiences on the court where i started to realize that the serve must be different from
a throwing motion i'm going to take you back 20 years ago when i was the head pro at a resort
in hawaii i used to get a lot of celebrities that took lessons from me this was a really expensive
resort where you get tons of celebrities who would stay there and some of them would play tennis now
interestingly i was teaching two mlb pitchers they took a lesson with me and while these guys were
phenomenal athletes they had unbelievable fast arm they could hit the ball hard they had a really
difficult time playing tennis and especially on the serve where while they were serving very hard
they almost couldn't get any serves in because they were serving as if they were throwing so
this is what it looked like i'm going to try to demonstrate it would come in here and go like that
so while a throw whether it be throwing a ball or throwing a javelin on any type of throwing action
might look similar to the serve yes there are some similarities absolutely
there is some continuing pronation on the serve and there is some continuing
pronation on the throwing motion as well but this is something that happens after the ball
has been released or on a tennis serve it happens after the ball has been struck where
the fundamental difference lies between a throw and a tennis serve is how the power
is created what we do as humans intuitively when we throw something we're going to throw
our body weight in to the throw now what happens inside this movement is something very
interesting we are going to use torso rotation so unlikely is that you're going to throw in an open
position you are going to turn and now you're going to rotate into the throw and now what's
going to happen is that this dominant shoulder is going to lead the way so you're not going
to go like this and throw this would be a very weak throw so what you're going to do is you're
going to lead the way with the dominant shoulder and now the arm is going to start lagging behind
and guys if you try to do this on a tennis serve this would be absolute death
for your serve just like those mlb pitchers that i was teaching in hawaii you wouldn't be
able to serve properly your racket drop would be greatly hindered and your source of power
would be completely compromised take a look if i lead the way with my dominant shoulder before
releasing the forearm this looks very awkward this is not what you see on a professional serve
so the fundamental difference between a throw and a serve is the following when we are serving
we are doing three things at the same time what happens is that we're going to hold the sideways
position much longer than you would on a throw so the racket is going to drop and now the rotation
of the torso is going to start slowly where when the racket comes out on this side the body is
still going to be somewhat sideways and now three things are going to happen simultaneously from
this position the arm is going to straighten the forearm is going to pronate and the torso is going
to rotate take a look again three things happen simultaneously there's a rotation of the torso
an extension of the arm and a pronation of the forearm happening simultaneously resulting in
a contact on a flat and a slice serve where the shoulders are parallel to each other meaning
that the right shoulder never gets ahead of the left shoulder on right handers on a tennis serve
so it is fundamental that you hit a tennis serve in this way if you don't you have no
chance of ever learning a high level serve and if you indeed serve like you throw and lead the
way with the dominant shoulder and then release the forearm into the ball somewhere around here
you are left with a recreational level serve somewhere at the 3.0 level or worse so for
that reason my video today is titled the serve is definitely not a throwing motion
now how about throwing something upwards does the serve compare to that
absolutely not the serve is still definitely not a throwing motion
even if we throw something straight up like a shot put or even what serena and venus used to do when
they were juniors which i was inspired by by the way which is throwing the racket over the fence
so let me tell you a little bit of a back story related to throwing racquets so i was very
much inspired by richard williams having serena venus throw the rackets over the fence so i had
this one girl who was one of the best players in florida she was a nationally ranked junior
with a phenomenal serve and i've for six months had her throw the rackets over the fence for 10
to 15 minutes every day now interestingly her serve did not get better it actually got a lot
worse because of that so this got me thinking and this led me to do all this research comparing a
throwing motion to a serving motion so here's the reason why throwing a racket over the fence making
a high throw whether you're throwing the racket over the fence or you're throwing a shotput any
type of throw that's going straight up into the air it is still nothing like a serve because even
then we're still going to lead the way with the dominant shoulder when we throw something straight
up we're still going to come out here like this and then throw to get enough power into the throw
so for that reason even a throwing motion that has more of an upward trajectory
is still nothing like the service motion where we have to delay the torso rotation
and we're going to do three things at once we're going to rotate the torso
extend the arm and pronate into the contact leading to a contact that's going to be a
little bit more further behind when we throw something at an upward trajectory we have to
do the following we have to rotate first to get any type of power take a look we got to do this
to get any type of power into the throw and this is nothing like a service motion if you did this
on your serve you'll be left with a very weak serve that's going to be lacking in any type of
control and also you're going to lose a lot of power because when you rotate early this
severely hinders the range of motion of the racket and results in a racket drop that is more shallow
so it is an undeniable fact that on a tennis serve if you want to have any chance of serving
at the high level you must do three things at once as i already mentioned several times in this
video you're gonna have to rotate the torso extend the arm and pronate into the contact
in order to hit a serve properly if you did this on a throw this is what it would look like
let me try i can't even do it let me try it again i'm going to try to throw like i serve
guys i can't do it you can try it out yourself it is absolutely impossible let me try one more time
and guys the simple reason why i can't do this and you're not gonna be able to do it either
is because this is not how human beings throw when we throw we lead the way with
that dominant shoulder and propel our body weight into the release so for that reason
throwing the ball is not going to help you serve at all i'm sorry to tell this to you
guys if you want to use throwing a football or something like that as a warm-up there's nothing
wrong with that but throwing something will teach you absolutely nothing about how to hit a tennis
serve and just talk to some baseball players if you know any they're going to tell you the same
thing that i'm telling you they tend to be the people that agree with me
the most the fact that the serve is nothing like a throwing motion because these people have tried
tennis and they realize how hard it is to serve a tennis ball it is nothing like throwing so for all
the reasons that were mentioned in this video the serve is definitely not a throwing motion