Hi guys, Nick here from Intuitive Tennis. Does the power on the serve come from the
legs and are we actively driving our legs to generate this power or is this a
result of another action of the body? Check out today's video and find out
Let's first take a look at the history of the leg drive. Until 1961 tennis
players were not allowed to have both feet lift off the ground on the serve.
One foot had to remain on the ground or this serve was called a fault and it
looked something like this. On right-handers the left foot had to
remain on the ground while the back foot usually rotated around the body
something like this.
The International Lawn Tennis Federation changed this rule
in 1961 and allowed players to lift both feet off the ground on the serve and
this rule went unnoticed at first until Arthur Ashe came around and was one of
the first players to have both feet lift off the ground on the serve.
In the modern game all tennis players will land on their left foot after both feet have
left the ground assuming that they're right handed and it looks something like this.
Some players in the past have actually landed on their leg after the serve
serve. Boris Becker one of the great server's of all time would land on
his right leg. Ilie Nastase was another player who
would land on his right leg after the serve on the women's tour you had now
Jana Novotná and Gabriela Sabatini who also landed on
the right leg and one main reason for landing on the right leg is it gives you
a little bit more of a jumpstart if you serve and volley. See back in the serve and
volley era players we're trying to get to the net as quick as possible and
landing on the right leg first gave them a faster first step on the way to
the net and I'm going to try one out I'm going to try to land on my right leg as
opposed to the left and let's see what that feels like.
So when I attempted to
land on the right leg I felt an immediate loss of balance and it felt
very unorthodox for me. I can see that if I was going to serve and volley and
maybe with a lot of practice that could have given me advantage but since the
serve and volley era is pretty much dead of players trying to get to the net on
the first and the second serve I feel like this is an unnecessary compromise
and you're better off landing on your left leg as a right-hander. It gives
the serving action a lot more balance.
All players will leave the ground on the leg drive with their back foot first and
then the front foot and the simple explanation for this is that all players
will throw the ball in front inside the baseline on the serve so now when the
ball is in front we simply are going to follow the ball and we're going to lean
slightly forward like this so in this lean forward position it is
impossible to load at this back foot and we got to remember also when are the
legs are about to come off the ground? Well the legs are about to come off the
ground and when the racket tip is pointing to the ground like this. When
the racket tip is pointing to the ground at that particular moment the legs are
about to lift off and it also at that particular moment our body is already
going towards the ball because the time frame from here to the ball the
millisecond so we're already leaning slight forward and this moment our legs I
will leave the ground.
Of course many tennis players will have different
rhythms where they might be rocking from front you know to back and back to front
but it really doesn't have any effect on the later stages. It might be helpful
generate more momentum into the swing but as far as the leg drive is concerned
all players will have the back foot come off the ground first and the front foot
will leave the ground last.
The way we generate forward momentum is by simply throwing the ball slightly
inside the court. How much inside the court? That's going to depend on various
factors but let's just say as long as the ball is inside the baseline even
something like this this is going to be enough for a body to slightly tilt
forward as we approach the ball and therefore when we then go up and land
we're always going to land inside the court.
I'm going to demonstrate two
serves one serve I'm going to throw the ball right on the baseline or slightly
behind the baseline and you pay attention to my landing position on my left foot and
then I'm gonna serve one where I throw the ball inside the court and you pay
attention where I'll land with my left foot. So first we're gonna do one where I
throw the ball slightly behind.
okay so I actually ended up behind the baseline
there and I'm gonna serve one where I throw the ball inside the court.
And there I finish inside the court about this much
There are also differences in how high players get off the ground but the
majority of the best servers of all time including Serena Williams Ivo Karlovic
Pete Sampras, Goran Ivanisevic and many others would lift off about this
high after the serve.
The one player that we've all seen thousands of times serving in slow
motion is Roger Federer who has a very high liftoff.
On some serves it appears that Federer can get up off the ground about this much
Does the power on the serve come from the legs? I'm gonna say yes and no and it's
kind of a complicated question and it's a complex answer so let's first start
with the fact that I can match my top speed on my serve without using my legs
at all that is true so let me demonstrate I can get up to 80 to 90% of
my my top speed without using my legs at all
okay there so I did come up with
the back leg but I didn't leave the ground with both legs and I served that one
pretty hard let me try now a normal serve but I do I
allow my legs to lift off the ground now let's see what happens
when it comes tothe speed there really wasn't much of a difference there you can just go by the
sound and the way it looks and maybe there was 10 miles an hour extra with
this serve where I allowed my feet to get up off the ground but the way this
power was delivered that was completely different so let's break it down if I do
not use my legs we're basically only dealing with
horizontal power so I get here into a coiling position and I rotate and I
swing my arm up and then around the body so I am getting power but it comes at
the compromise of my arm I'm overusing my arm and this is very
unsustainable a long term. When it comes to the way these two serves felt the
first one without using my legs did not feel very good I felt a little bit of
strain in my shoulder and didn't feel good on my arm while the second one
was very effortless. When we don't allow our front leg to go up in the air and
we're basically just utilizing horizontal power and I'm gonna
demonstrate by by hitting a serve and spinning in a circle
so you see I'm really not going forward on that serve I'm just basically spinning
horizontally around my body like this and I'm missing out on the two other
power sources which is the upward power and the forward power that are generated
by hitting a serve where both feet lift off the ground. When we allow our front leg
to go up into the air we are unlocking
maximum power potential and therefore our arm as it makes contact and finishes
will feel very little strain and this type of serve is very sustainable. We can
generate power without losing strength for long periods of time and the three
power sources that are utilized by us allowing this front leg to lift up our
upward momentum horizontal momentum and forward momentum
Are we deliberately driving our legs and pushing our legs against the ground and
jumping into the serve to generate power? Well absolutely not.
This is more of a passive leg drive and it's another action on the serve that's
making our feet leave the ground and we're gonna get to what this action is
later but first let's take a look at a very peculiar way the feet leave the
ground on the serve. If we take a look at how we leave the ground on the serve it
is a very peculiar way. So on a platform stance we already saw that the back foot
is gonna come off the ground first but the way it comes off the ground it kind
of slowly rolls up to the tip of the foot and then it starts leaving the
ground and the front foot follows and leaves the ground in the exact same way
if you try to jump in this fashion trying to roll the feet this way and
this would be impossible to do so when we jump we get on the balls of our feet
and then we push the legs and we go up into the air and the feet would leave
the ground something like this. On the pinpoint stance is the exact same way we
it's not as clear to see as it is on the platform stance but in the same fashion
we will see that the back foot will roll up and leave the ground first and then
the front foot will roll like this a little bit to the side and then leave
the ground like this and if we were jumping from a pinpoint position again
the feet would kind of violently go up in the air and it wouldn't be rolling
upwards like they do on the serve.
If we were to deliberately jump on the serve
we do it in a completely different way. We would actually have our upper body
down because this is how we jump in the most effortless way we get our upper
body down and then we push the legs off the ground this way it's something like
this we go down with the upper body and then up with the legs like this and
we can generate it's a very easy leg drive, however on the serve the body is in
the complete opposite position so what's going to happen on the serve is, we're
going to get into a coiling position here and now the chest is going to be
pointing towards the sky we're going to get into a knee band on our toes and
this is going to be the position we are supposedly
pushing off the ground from so let me try that I'm gonna push off the ground
like this and I'm having a very difficult time generating any power from
this position you can try it at home it's a very uncomfortable way to jump.
However, if I try to get onto this step on a regular serve you're going to see
this is going to be a very effortless process and there's another action of
this serve and it's allowing me to leave the ground and in a much more effortless
way so let me try a serve I'm going to try to end up on this step after contact
The main factor for us leaving the ground effortlessly without even trying
is the tremendous momentum is being generated by our torso thrust so the way
the torso thrusts is this way if the chest will point up to the sky like this and
now when the racket drops we're going to start straightening this torso this way
and this happens in such a violent way that the racket can accelerate up to
over a hundred miles an hour and the professional players so when we do this
movement in a very very powerful way this force is so great that not only it
does a create racket head speed but it also allows our feet to get off the
ground.
The legs do play a big part in the serve this is why I'm not advocating to not
use the legs the legs will make this what I like to call a c-shape of the
body prior to the acceleration phase possible
and so if we try to bend our if you keep our legs straight like this and we don't
get on our toes and we try to bend our upper body backwards to create upward
momentum and this feels very awkward so we don't really get to go up that
fast, but if we in the same position have our a knees slightly bent and we get onto
our toes like this we see it it's very very easy to get to C shape of the
body and this is what is going to allow the body to generate even more upward
momentum so it's very important that you get into a knee bend, that you get on
your toes and you try to get your chest as far up to the sky as you can
depending on your flexibility and from here at the legs will very effortlessly
and go up off the ground like this.
Another reason why we're definitely not actively jumping or pushing off the
ground is that no human can sustain the same height off the ground for long
periods of time. Tiredness is gonna set in and there's going to be differences
in how high we jump. Just imagine at the professional levels players
playing matches that are five or six hours long if we were indeed jumping on
the serve these players would lose all their strength towards the end of the
matches. However most of the top servers of all time they serve their best
towards the end of the matches and you can see that in the Wimbledon match
between Isner and Mahut that lasted 11 hours both of the guys were serving aces
until the very end.
Furthermore if we were indeed actively
jumping it would make the timing of the serve very difficult so in addition to
tiredness setting it on long matches we'd also have a very inconsistent serve
because the variable amounts of heights will be able to generate if we were
actively jumping.
Is the passive leg drive something that we should practice? Absolutely yes. You
got to make sure that you get all the core components so that the feet
can lift off the ground. Number one you want to be on your toes as you begin
to get into the C shape. And number two you have to have a knee bend how low
of a knee bend? It's going to depend on the individual. Some players can bend very
low other players are a hard time coming out of a knee bend that's too low so
number one is on the toes number two is knee bend
number three is we have to get the chest up towards the sky and when the ball is
up in the air maybe at the 12 o'clock position we can line up the ball with
our chest like this and then when we're getting ready to drop the racquet and
accelerate and we're gonna start going like this very violently you can
practice this going from the C shape straightening up like this and you can
see that there's force being generated even me doing it slowly so if you
imagine doing a serve you serve hard you're gonna very easily and
effortlessly get off the ground.
Thank you guys for watching this video. If you
have any questions please leave a comment in the section below I will be
happy to respond. Hit that like button and subscribe if you haven't already
I'll see you next time.