hey guys in today's video i'm going to show you massive kick serves
oh
now to prove how massive my kick serves are i set up a
radar to measure the speed of my massive kick serve
let's go check how fast that was what
dude how embarrassing are you trying to show massive kick serves 89
89 miles an hour i wanna throw my racket in the garbage that's what i want to do it's terrible i always
thought i did have a massive kick serve but i guess i don't 89 miles an hour that's ridiculous
if i don't have a massive kick serve then what am i left with my forehand so depressing man
horrible let me look up what the goats second serve percentages on their serves
wait a second nadal djokovic and federer are all serving around 96 miles an hour nadal is 96.4 mph
djokovic is 96.1 and federer is 95.9 and nick do you know what this data means this is the average
second serve speed they're not only hitting kick serves they're sometimes hitting slice serves
which is going to be much faster they'll sometimes hit two first serves so the actual average kick
serve speed is probably in the 80s so if the goats don't have a massive kick serve you're fine
guys i want you to understand how ridiculous the idea is of a massive kick serve it doesn't exist
i showed you the stats the goats federer nadal djokovic are all serving their average second
serve speed in the mid 90s what that means is their actual kick serve average is most likely
somewhere in the high 80s so if you're a recreational player and you have this idea in your
head that you're going to develop a massive kick service the most ridiculous idea that you can have
and here's the reality at the recreational level a lot of players don't even possess a kick serve
they will either push the serve in flat like this or if they're a little bit higher level they will
slice the second serve and of course there's some advanced level recreational players who can hit a
solid kick serve somewhere in the 60 70 or low 80 mile an hour speed range so what does this mean
it means that the second serve is possibly the biggest weakness recreational players have it is
such a difficult shot that even some professional level players struggle with it and the reason why
this is the case is that on a second serve we have a lot more pressure than on a first serve and most
likely more pressure than any other shot in tennis and the difficult thing about second serves is the
fact that we have to pull them off in really difficult situations in a match so i can stand
here and make a very comfortable second serve and get it in 10 out of 10 times but this does not
necessarily mean that i'm going to be able to pull it off in a match when we're in a match there's
a lot of emotions going through our mind and we are naturally going to get tight at certain score
lines and that affects our second serve so having a massive kick serve or let's say massive second
serve is something that is non-existent at the pro level right now the fastest second serve on tour
is beretini he averages over 100 miles an hour on his second serve again this doesn't
mean that he averages over 100 miles an hour on his kick serves he probably slices a bunch of them
but he is a big guy and let's say he can hit a very big kick serve but there's only
a handful of people who can do that at the elite level what that means is that having
a massive or a huge kick serve is something that is almost non-existent and impossible to pull off and
i'm talking about the elite level so how in the world are recreational players supposed to pull
off a massive kick serve this is an absolutely ridiculous concept if you are a recreational
player here is what needs to happen you need to learn a kick serve i have a lot of tutorials
on the kick serve and if you're more interested i'm going to leave the links in the description
you can check those videos out but the reason why a kick serve is the best serve for a second
serve because fundamentally the way we strike the ball on a kick serve reduces the speed and here's
the reason why a kick serve has a lot less speed than let's say a flat serve or a slice serve first of
all the way we are swinging shortly after contact is in a diagonal way so we're not going through
the ball we're not going around the ball this way we have our racket pointed slightly towards
the side and the racket is going up and across in a diagonal way most commonly towards the net post
so when the ball is struck in this way this takes the power out of the ball because the ball
is spinning more remember this anytime you put more spin on the ball there is a reduction in
speed as a result of it also on a kick serve there is very limited torso rotation yes there might be
some torso rotation into the contact depending of what kind of setup you have if you have a big coil
on your kick serve you won't be able to hit the kick serve from here yes there will be a little
bit of rotation on a setup like that if you don't have a big coil there's going to be almost no
rotation on your kicker and the reason why i say that is because we need to be in a more sideways
position if we want to achieve a more sideways angle of the racket head at the moment of contact
and without this angle of the racket-head at contact we have no chance of creating kick
and we're going to be left with a slice serve so what that means when we're
getting rid of a entire power source that we have on a flat serve for example where
we are rotating into the contact we don't do that on a kicker we don't rotate as much
obviously with this power element missing there's going to be a lot less speed
on the kick serve so for those two reasons the fact that we are striking the ball in a more
diagonal way and making the ball spin a lot more and also we are eliminating a huge power source
which is the horizontal rotation on the serve these two facts make the kick serve a lot weaker
than any other serve we have and guys this is a good thing because what are we using the
kickstarter for it is used for a second serve now because there's less power naturally on the kick
serve we can hit it a lot faster here's one common characteristic at the recreational level and that
is that players are very careful on their second serve if you happen to have a slice second serve
or even worse a flat second serve you will be forced to slow down the serve to make it
consistently go in you don't have to worry about this on a kick serve since we are naturally
taking power out we can swing on our kick serve at our max speed and interestingly when we swing at
our max speed on the kick serve it makes it more consistent than if we're pushing the ball around
often players who push their second serve will often push it a little bit too long
or they will push it a little bit too short and end up double faulting anyway since we're
swinging at max speed this swing is going to be overall more consistent than a swing that's forced
to be slowed down shortly before the contact and the reason is simple you might slow it down
a little bit too much or you might not slow it down enough if you have a consistently fast swing
path on your kicker this brings a lot of stability to your motion and double faults are going to
occur less commonly as a result of that now have you ever heard a player say i have a harder time
returning these kicky spinny serves then returning a hard flat serve now the reason for this is very
simple when we serve the ball flat and the ball is sitting right in the strike zone of our opponent
those balls are easier to handle than for example a kick serve that's dancing around and changing
directions shortly after the bounce so therefore a kick serve that struck relatively slowly let's say
at 70 75 or even 80 miles an hour is sufficient speed even at the elite level i saw djokovic at
the cincinnati tournament a few years back he was serving in a high 70s now this is not his normal
kick serve speed i would guess it somewhere in the mid 80s but in this particular match he probably
wanted to put a little bit more safety on it and he won this tournament anyway despite serving
in the mid 70s so that goes to show you the primary objective of a kick serve is consistency
a fundamentally sound kick serve is difficult to return in its nature for the simple reason that
it's very lively if i strike this kick serve and this one i hit pretty slowly probably somewhere
in the high 60s that ball is still lively enough that your opponent is most likely
not going to go for a return winner if they go for a return winner they're going to make
a lot of mistakes as a result of the liveliness of the ball so for that reason a lot of players
won't even go for the winner because they know maybe even at the subconscious level
that hitting those type of serves hard will result in a lot of mistakes and they stay away
from hitting those type of kick serves hard they just get them back into play another important
characteristic of the kick serve is that it's gonna clear the net higher than any other serve
in tennis that is due to the reason that we make contact with the angle of the racket face being
slightly towards the side and then when we go up and then diagonally across the ball that we stay
on the ball a little bit longer compared to a flat serve or a slice serve so if you're a beginner player
or intermediate you shouldn't worry about the kick serve yet it is the hardest serve to master you
should first learn the flat serve then the slice then the kick if you want to know in more detail
how to structure your serve training for that beginner to intermediate level check out my video
on that subject so for anyone who's at the advanced recreational level a kick serve is
something that you absolutely must add to your serve repertoire this is the only way you're
going to be able to swing freely on your second serve to swing with max acceleration and don't
try to take any shortcuts this is not going to be something that you're going to get done in
a day a week this might take months or years and the only way it's going to be accessible
to you in a match situation is if you get the reps in as much as you possibly can