Hi guys Nick here from Intuitive Tennis. Today I want to talk about pronation
so is pronation something that's absolutely necessary on the serve and
can you control pronation or is it something that happens naturally also
does pronation give you power on the serve? Check out today's video and find out.
First let's clarify what pronation is so pronation is the inward
turning of the forum so if I turn my forearm to the left my hand will pronate
from a handshake position at a position where the palm of my hand is straight to
the ground and if you have a continental grip on your serve and you make contact
you have basically pronated. Let me explain how that works. so we go up into the
trophy position and now my hand is in a neutral position and as I drop the
racket down I will go up towards the ball on edge like this and it's gonna
remain on edge until my racket tip is pointing straight towards the back fence
and at this position and my forearm is gonna start turning towards the left
and I'm gonna make contact with the ball and somewhere around here.
So the most common mistake on the recreational level is serving with the forehand grip
sometimes with an Eastern forehand grip and sometimes with a semi-western
forehand grip so if I'm in a semi-western forehand grip and I come
from this position head down I will not be able to drop my racket very low maybe
I'll get to about right here. So from here there's absolutely no
pronation you see my hand my forearm is not turning inward you see there's no
pronation because of this compromised grip. So by turning the racket into a
continental grip and from the same position just by making contact my hand
I will pronate in to the correct position.
Is it possible to have no pronation even in a continental grip? Yes it is and many
recreational players will have this position when the tip of the racquet points
towards the back fence this is after we have dropped the racquet and we're coming up
to the ball. Players will open up too early and now from here and they will
basically go like this into the ball and this is something that's very difficult
to correct because it's in the acceleration part of the serve and it
takes many years to correct this flaw in the technique. What needs to happen is
the racket has to be in this position on edge the tip of the racket is pointing
towards the back fence and then we get this rotation or inward rotation of the
Unfortunately recreational players will
not be aware that they're doing this movement prior to contact because
there's so much acceleration being generated even with serves struck at 40,
50, 60 miles an hour a soft serves. Still it's too much acceleration for our brain
to process and players will not be aware that they're doing this. On the same
token professional players or high-level players will also not be aware that they
are doing this movement at the same spot because there's even more acceleration
there and it's just too short of an amount of time to be able to feel this
position. How do we fix this problem? So we have to make sure number one that
we're in a continental grip number two that the racket drop is solid and then
number three it just has to be a lot of repetition has to be tens of thousands
of reps and to be able to have the correct on edge position prior to
contact
What most people refer to as pronation is what happens after contact and so we
have already pronated just to make contact and a proper position here so
most players on most serves not all serves will have the strings and the
palm of the hand I went towards the outside and some will do this so
extremely that this strings are actually facing towards the sky. John Isner is
so flexible that he has this position on some of his serves
So is this continuing pronation something that we should practice? Well
absolutely not because first of all we're not aware that we're doing it the
only way we would be aware of this continuing pronation is we slow the serve
way down to something like ten to thirty miles an hour then yes of course we can
feel what's going on and we can we can manufacture this continuing pronation
however once we start building in more speed into our serve this timeframe here
is so small and you're talking milliseconds there's absolutely no way
for us to make a change and make this happen in that moment so therefore our
mind should never be on this continuing pronation and therefore we should let it
happen naturally. If you were to practice pronation this is a very tedious way to
practice it since a coach cannot see continuing pronation this happens too
fast since the player cannot feel this continuing pronation you would have to
record every single serve in slow motion and after every single serve you would
have to watch and check ok did i pronate here and this is not how you develop a big serve.
There needs to be a lot of repetitions and serving you have to serve baskets of
serves multiple times a week if you want to develop a powerful serve and
pronation just simply does not come into play when it comes to a good serving.
I'm going to serve real hard and i'm gonna go through with you what I'm
conscious off and when I'm not conscious off so let's hit one
Okay so this is all muscle memory so I'm not really thinking about much but I was very focused to see
if I can feel this pronation and where I regain consciousness is maybe
around right here when the racket comes here as where I started feeling the
racket again and of course I feel the contact with the ball and this pressure
being applied to my hand but this time span is so short I am not exactly sure
that I was on edge I'm not exactly sure that I was doing this afterwards I know
that once my racket comes here I can then continue to finish but let's say
from the racket drop into this position time span is too short and that
part of the stroke is completely intuitive
What will happen if you make this continuing pronation happen by force you
will do it too late and that's what I like to call fake pronation so let me
show you what that looks like if a player hits a serve and you see
something like this somewhere around here see once that player reaches
awareness of the serve he regains consciousness of it and then he will
make this happen but this is way after the serve and you know the professional
players and most of the time do not finish this way and they will continue
to pronate and have to make a contact here and the racquet will usually come
back around this way.
Does pronation generate racket head speed? Yes it does but we have to make
sure that we put this in the proper context so the actual pronation
which is and the part of the serve where the racket at this position the tip of
the racket is pointing towards the back fence our hand is in the neutral
position the strings are pointing to the side fence and this part is the
pronation that matters and this piece here that gives us more acceleration
into the ball what happens with the continuing pronation happens after
contact and that does not produce more power. What many many recreational
players have a problem with is opening the racket a too early at this
particular moment where the tip of the racket is pointing towards the back
fence and in this case there's no pronation happening and they might be
pushing into the ball this way and even if they continue going like this this is
a serve that's greatly inferior to a serve with true pronation and you got to
remember that all high level players have this position of the racket on edge
prior to contact.
Do not worry about pronation make sure that you have all the fundamental
pieces of your serve working first. The toss the backswing make sure you have a
correct grip a strong trophy position make sure that your rhythm and timing is
accurate and then at the very end make sure that you use your body properly to
achieve maximum power so once all these fundamental pieces are synced in and
working together in unison and then this pronation will occur naturally.
Thank you guys for watching this video hope you enjoyed it. Please
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the section below I will be happy to respond. I'll see you next time.