so when is the last time you served um like with you oh that first that first video we made what
i want you now to focus on is that every time you practice you involve the serve like if you have to
hit at least i would say 10 to 15 percent of your practice devoted to the serve and then the serve
will grow along with the rest of your game okay so let me just see a couple of serves refresh my memory
that's not bad actually it's not bad at all
start with the racket in front and shift your weight onto the front foot and you can put the
ball against your strings or against the racket throat like this so i want you to start the serve
like this every time okay and then i go back all right so now the next step is you're going
to separate the toss arm from the racket arm and here's how you're gonna do it so you're going to
separate the toss arm from the racket arm by going back with the racket arm first you're not going
to toss right away but you're going to go back with the racket arm first and then you're going
to toss okay i'll do it again okay so the reason why i want you to do that because i want to build
a little bit more of a backswing into your serve so if you go straight up here this shortens this
this backswing because if you have a little bit longer take back on the serve it can give
you more power so look again go here wait on the bottom wait here toss the ball and then go at it
okay now racket will go here like this now you're gonna toss and then you're gonna hit it
okay and take your time make sure the toss goes up first you don't have to rush this part look
here's one two three and then you go like that okay now when you toss the ball you have to throw
it more in front in this case you're not going to be using your body that much so you can toss it
right along the baseline okay so this is where you're positioning if you throw
the ball behind you it's not going to be good you're going to make contact behind your head
okay what i don't like about that you're going up too quickly you're rushing everything so
you're going here and you're going like this see what i want you to do is again
one is here two is here three is here you see this yeah two three is here there you go hit it
and then hit two three and hit there you go much better always do a grip check see there's
there are several things that you can do correct every single time you serve because these are
the things that are happening before you even start the motion that is your stance that is
how you hold the racket those things you can get right every single time and now you're in
a forehand grip go slightly over there you go now you're in a continental grip there you go
what do you what do you think about that toss was it here or was it behind you no it was right up
yeah it was not actually it was actually over here behind me it was behind you so some people have
a hard time knowing where the toss was they kind of get disoriented yeah because the body position
will change sometimes so you lose orientation so you might think it was in front of you right
because you're adjusting your body to the bad toss you might throw it behind now you're adjusting so
it appears it appears that it's in front of you however it's only in front of you because your
body moved backwards right in relation to the baseline the ball was back here so always toss
and take the bass line as the orientation so you want to throw the ball in this instance because
you're not using your body you're not leaning in you want to toss the ball along the baseline okay
wow one two all right let me tell you a couple of things about the toss itself so
you don't want to flick the ball up you're already doing a lot of good things naturally with the toss
i think because you're a dancer and your arm is very elegantly going up so this is where you get
you have a lot of advantages over other people but i can see that you're kind of doing a weird
hand movement at the very end so make sure you you don't do that when you release the ball have the
hand very still what i like is having the fingers closer together upon the release it's going to
help you get a cleaner toss yeah i feel like i held it yeah don't don't don't hold it too long
there it is beautiful serve so when i hit the ball i'm on the front foot that's a great i move right
yeah that's a great question i was actually i was actually going to do the next progression which
is i want you to rotate into the serve so you're kind of staying sideways now and the arm is going
forward by itself so i want you to allow the body to come with the arm so you're going to have your
shoulders come with the racket well actually what's going to happen later on you're actually
going to get airborne that's going to be later on we're too early in the surf development to
work on that but eventually you're going to get up into the air and land inside the cord
but for now just shift your weight forward you jump the whole body it's not really a jump it's
more of a pat what i call a passive jump the body propels the legs off the ground if you set certain
parameters on the serve naturally your body will lift off the ground it's really fascinating
and we'll do that later on we'll definitely add that to you sir but it's too early for that for
now all i want you to do is go forward with your torso meaning that you're going to rotate
forward you're going to go up here and then rotate forward now naturally as you do that
the weight is going to shift onto your front foot and you can allow that to happen it's okay
the toss was too low see a lot of recreational players especially at the entry level they
find a very big comfort in throwing the ball low because they know they can make contact
right here close to them they feel the safety in that they're kind of scared to throw the ball
too high because then the timing is a little more difficult but i want you to ignore this intuition
you have with the low toss and start tossing the ball much higher from day one a higher toss is
always better you can always correct our toss is too high but you can never correct the toss
that's too low because you will not will not be able to extend the arm you'll hit it like this
all right and overall you'll rush your serve too when it's low you'll speed everything up
much better
much better you see that yeah now one thing that i noticed as you were
rotating you started pushing through the ball the arm was going like that
and that's not a good thing because you'll hit a lot of balls long if you hit them hard
so i want you to focus on getting your hand towards your left pocket if you imagine if you
had a left pocket that's your right pocket left pocket so your hand needs to go towards your left
pocket right here and that's going to guarantee you that you have more of a downward swing
one thing i want you to remember is that when you release the ball not to drop the toss arm so fast
so you sometimes do this look you release and you drop it right away so this has a bad effect on
your biomechanics on the server but what's going to happen is if you keep the toss arm up after
you release the ball it's going to put your body in a tilt and this tilt is going to be reversed
when you accelerate which called the cartwheeling effect so look if i stay up with my toss arm after
the release you see how my shoulders are tilted and now when i accelerate this tilt is going to
reverse and i'm going to be like this this is the car yeah it's the cartwheeling movement if
you drop the toss arm super fast look if you go up here and then you drop look my shoulders are level
and i don't get this tilt that i need so make sure that you don't drop too fast it helps you
here it helps of course so once you release it keep that toss arm up a little bit longer
okay now something happens every time i give a player this tip to keep the toss i'm longer right
away the toss starts going behind this is very very common right i say keep it up long and all
of a sudden they're throwing it like way behind them so you have to figure out a way to release
it at the proper point and then continue going up which is tricky but look watch me
you see how i continue going up after i released it and the ball still went in front
oh that was so good but you didn't go after it you waited too long i think it was upfront
you know it's not a bad thing actually this is what i want you to do eventually
is throw the ball in front and you're gonna start using your entire body to hit the serve
so if it does go in front don't you still hit it that's actually a really good thing i'm just
making you throw it right here because we're not using the body fully yet we're just kind of
stationary and serving but eventually you're going to have to throw it in front okay
oh yes wow what a serve i feel like i just don't overthink things no no no
don't overthink this is why even when i'm building your serve now it's like step by step i don't want
to throw everything at you with building it step by step so your body can remember it otherwise
you get information overload and especially in the case of the serve because it's so
complex there's so many moving parts there's so many different things happening using both
both hands it's very easy to have too many things in your head so we're going to keep
it simple okay we're going to go step by step the thing is like you're teaching me
step by step i learned from the big concept smaller so oh that's interesting good approach
it's really not good for me but that's the only way to learn to serve
if i if i start teaching you like a professional grade serve right off the bat it's going to be a
disaster we have to show me a few okay sure i'll show you i'll show you a serve but when it comes
to like building the serve you got to trust me that i'm giving you the right information because
no problem i'll show you as many as you
want
well so there's no way for you to replicate that because number one
wait it's happening way too fast i'm just predicting the future i'm predicting the
future right just wait all right go ahead replicate what i just did go ahead let me see
all right so you just you just destroyed your serve but the reason why you can't replicate
what i just did is number one the entire set of fundamentals in in there and there there's
multiple things that are going on okay not only that but they're executing with such speed
that you can't even catch half of the things that are happening okay
so this is why it's important like i said before to build the serve step by step
and we don't and this is also why i'm not having you use your body yet we're just working on the
on the relationship between the toss arm and the hitting arm and that part is hard enough
many people struggle their lifetime with that the toss is a very complex movement so this
is what we have to develop first once you get comfortable we start using the body later okay
lovely serve
see that toss not a bad serve but the toss arm dropped a little bit too quickly do it again
better and you're finished by the pocket and you know what that you know what that