in today's video I'm going to explain why the tennis serve is so difficult especially
for novice tennis players so the tennis serve is basically a looping motion where the racket goes
up and then drops down it comes out goes back up again and then goes down on the non hitting side
of the body so the movement looks like a loop and this is something that I will sometimes do with my
beginner players and they can get a pretty good grasp of this movement in the first lesson but
the reason why the tennis serve is such a tricky movement for players to execute not only novices
but even intermediates and sometimes Advanced tennis players is that while this movement
might be quite easy in isolation as soon as you toss the ball to yourself This movement becomes
extremely difficult you can see there I am an experienced server and I framed that ball so
once we toss the ball up into the air Everything Changes now why would that be the case well let me
give you an example you can take a player who can perfectly execute the looping motion of the serve
but now once that ball is up in the air all of a sudden from a mental standpoint Everything Changes
because Panic sets in and players start worrying about hitting the ball so two things that novice
tennis players do is once the ball is up in the air to make the serve more comfortable is number
one they reduce the range of motion in the racket drop area and it also will toss the ball a lot
lower when they toss the ball lower the concept of making contact with the ball is a lot more simple
so novice serve will often look like this a low toss and then a very shallow short movement on the
other end often what you will find is that players will rarely hit the serve with a full extension
and the reason for that again is that players feel more of a comfort when the contact is occurring
close to them they feel a sense of security doing it that way so what can help tennis players of all
levels is to compartmentalize the serve and I'm going to explain what I mean by that so there's
going to be three basic styles of serves there's going to be the abbreviated serve that doesn't
have much of a backswing where the racket starts here and there's going to be the up together type serve
where the toss and the take back is occurring simultaneously and there's going to be the lag
where you toss the ball first while the racket lags behind so let me show you all three this
is the abbreviated serve this is going to be the up together serve and this is going to be the lag
so the confusing thing with a lot of players is that it does make sense to simplify the serve it's
a lot more simple to have an abbreviated serve or to have an up together type serve it's more simple
than having a complex serve where you toss the ball first and then the racket has to follow later
so from a mental standpoint a lot of people think that an abbreviated serve and an up together type
serve are more simple but what happens with a lot of players of all levels is that those serves are
far more complicated than a serve performed with a lag and the reason for that is the following
you see as you improve your serve you're going to start using your body so you're not going to serve
in a stationary position you're going to execute power sources on the serve if you're interested
to know what those are you can check out a video that I made a while ago on that subject but in
any case you are not going to use the in isolation the body is going to help the arm now
let's say you start with an abbreviated serve and you toss the ball up this is not going to
give you a lot of time to load the body so in essence the serve will have to perform with a
lot of acceleration and I'm not talking about the way the racket accelerates the body will have to
accelerate really fast in other words it will have to load and unload at a high speed and to
some extent this is also true for the up together type serve there's not a lot of time to be wasted
both arms are going up together and now the body will have to load and unload rather quickly and
now you're probably thinking Nick why not just throw the ball higher with the up together serve
well I'm going to tell you why that's not optimal because let's say go up together with the toss arm
and the racket arm and you toss the ball higher you are guaranteed to have to pause in the trophy
phase it will look something like this you would go up together third ball higher and now you have
this pause in the trophy phase which interrupts your swing momentum this is not the end of the
world you will even see some Elite level players that serve like that but this is by no means an
optimal serve technique because you want to build up swing momentum as the racket is traveling from
here to here it is sub-optimal to go up into the trophy phase pause and then have to accelerate all
over again so what happens with a lot of players is that naturally when they have these certain
Styles such as the abbreviated serve or the up together serve is that they will throw the ball
a lot lower and now what's going to happen is the following you have to think of it this way
when you are developing your serve and you throw the ball lower it's going to be impossible for
you to consciously work on things inside your serve the entire thing will be over
too quickly so let's say you're working on your toss or you're working on something specific in
your take-up phase well let's say that you're trying to work on power sources and load your
body a certain way because the serve is over so fast in theory this sounds like a good idea but
in reality there's not a lot of time for you to consciously adjust things in your service motion
see the whole thing is just over too quickly on top of that a lot of players that toss the ball
very low don't have fast enough body movements to adjust to a toss that's low so often they will
compensate in other areas of their serve they will not load their body the most common mistake that
I see at the recreational level with players that have a low toss is that serve with the
arm in isolation so they will use some rotational momentum but it's pretty much an arm serve because
there's simply not enough time to load the body and also some recreational players will compensate
for a low toss by not dropping the racket low enough they will shallow out their racket drop
and on top of that because the toss is so low they can't time the ball right they won't make contact
with the full extension of the arm now I know that you are aware of players at the elite level with
fast service motion but what you're not aware of is that I did a tremendous amount of research on
the serve and it's a extremely small minority of players that has a fast serving motion a la Nick
Krygios Roscoe Tanner or the Bryan brothers the vast majority of elite level serves have a slower
rhythm in other words they will throw the ball a little bit higher they will usually serve with a
lag that involves a pinpoint stance and generally it's going to be a more gradually accelerating
service motion the type of serves that you see that go from zero to a hundred a la Kyrgios are
a rare find among Elite level tennis players and the reason for that is that these type of serves
have to match the body of that type of player it needs to be a serve that was struck that way
from day one that comes natural to a player it is going to be impossible to adapt a serve with that
style if it doesn't come natural to you now I can try to demonstrate it I'm going to try my best to
do the Krygios serve and let's see what happens okay so I didn't do a good job there this is
definitely a weaker serve and what I usually do I'm sure there was problems in the loading phase
it felt really bad on my shoulder so I'll probably overused my arm in other words there wasn't enough
time for me to load the body properly now you have to understand the context it's coming from
a player like myself who has a lag serve so this is my normal serve what I do is toss the
ball first I lag the rack behind and I gradually accelerate the racket towards the trophy phase
you can see there there was a lot more body involvement so what you have to understand that
if you're developing your serve compartmentalizing the serve is going to be a great benefit to you
not only will you be able to work on the toss in isolation for example but also because the
racket is coming from a lower place this gives the body time to load you're going to be able to
consciously load the body because you'll have more time to do so think of it logically we're going to
toss the ball first now the racket is going to be on the bottom the ball is going to be up in the
air now the racket will start to go up gradually slowly as the racket is going up now we have all the
time in the world to load the body perfectly and then accelerate the entire system into the contact
now of course this doesn't work well with a low toss yes there are players who have
a lag such as Nick Kyrgios and toss the ball quite low but again this requires a super
explosive movement right from the get-go but you will see on the vast majority of elite servers
is a slow acceleration a gradual acceleration starting from the bottom to the top and if you
think of it logically while this might appear more complicated compartmentalizing the serve
going slow to fast tossing the ball a little bit higher will not only give you more time to
execute all these actions but if you happen to be working on your serve and developing it it's going
to be a lot easier to do so compared to a serve that's moving so fast where you have absolutely
no idea what just happened once you hit it that is the reality of serving a Quick Serve like this
guys this serve was so I lost my mic along the way so this is even more evidence that what you
should do is compartmentalize your serve take your time throw the ball a little bit higher gradually
move the racket up into the trophy phase and you're going to be serving much better as a result of it