Hi guys Nick here from intuitive tennis. This is the final video of the
role of the wrist series and today I'm going to talk about what happens to the
wrist on the serve.
The beginning stage on the serve all the way up to the trophy position, it's gonna
remain the same regardless if it's a flat serve, kick serve, or a slice serve
and so let's talk about what happens to the wrist in these first two stages. So
some players will have different styles when it comes to the beginning phase and
some players will keep the wrist straight, even some players will
close the racquet a little bit even though I'm not a big fan of having wrist
extension in the beginning phase of the serve. You see beginners especially if
they have a forehand grip that will have wrist extension in the beginning
phase of the serve like this. So I like actually having the strings open and
having slight wrist flexion with the racquet and this will make it easier to
have the racquet remain on the hitting side of the body as we take it into the
trophy position like this.
Once we reach the trophy position on the serve with ideally the wrist
slightly flexed downwards and now we're going to set in place a complex series
of wrist movements. One thing we don't want to initiate is an extreme wrist
extension, because this will create a waiter serve. So we don't want this, what
we want indeed is a radial deviation meaning the racket is going to drop. Our
wrist is going to move to the left and there's also going to be slight wrist
extension, because this is the acceleration point of the serve and we
don't want the wrist to loose in a flexed state, because we will not be able to
accelerate it properly. It's gonna be too sloppy in other words. This is not what
you want on the racket drop. You do want to achieve a little bit of control and a
little bit of firmness and not too tight obviously, but there's some degree of
wrist extension, very minimal but yet it's there.
The acceleration point on the serve is when we drop the racquet and this is so
powerful that it's actually going to bring our wrist in a slightly even more
extended phase prior to the contact point. So what happens on very powerful
serves is that not only are we dropping the racket down but you can see the
racquet will often whip out this way. You're gonna see this in the slow-motion
footage and this is even further wrist extension on this side. I'm having
a very difficult time recreating this, because we as players are not aware that
this is taking place. So you can take a look at slow motion, but generally very
powerful serves will have the racket slightly over to this side, which
indicates a slight further wrist extension prior to the contact point.
On our approach upwards towards the ball we're going to maintain the slight
wrist extension until this point and now what's going to happen is going to
be true pronation, which is the inward turning of the forearm. In my case, I'm
right-handed, so it's gonna be a leftward turning of the forearm, which starts
at this position when the tip of the racquet is pointing straight towards the
back fence. This is when the pronation starts and the wrist is still
in a slightly extended position. It's not completely straight like this. So again
the pronation of the forearm is very important starting from the tip of the
racquet pointing towards the back fence in an on edge position and now the
pronation towards the contact point starts the inward turning of the forearm.
What happens next is the contact point and we have to differentiate between the
flat serve, the slice serve, and the kick serve and let's start with the flat
serve. So on the flat serve we're going to have a slight ulner deviation
on the contact point and this has to do with the position of our torso. On
the flat serve we're going to have an open position of the torso at contact
point. So in this case we cannot have the wrist straight, because that would
put our racquet-head pointing towards the left and we want the tip of the racquet
to point towards the sky and you can see that if my tip is pointing straight up,
I have slight ulner deviation at the
contact point and what happens next whether we have continuing pronation or
not, we maintain this ulner deviation all the way into the finish and once we
reach maybe the left pocket here, the wrist can straighten back out. So it's
very important that on that flat serve we maintain a solid wrist position.
What many recreational players will do here, they will actively snap the
wrist down or flex the wrist down and to achieve power and this is a very
dangerous technique and it could possibly be injury promoting to your wrist.
On the slice serve we're going to be in the exact same contact point as we are on
the flat serve. So basically it's going to be the chest positioned
towards the net, parallel to the net and the contact is gonna be with slight
ulner deviation like this, and there's two different ways to slice. Both of
these techniques will have the racquet go towards the right, maybe the right net
post and I have the racket come back around. One way to slice is without
continuing pronation. In this case there might be a little bit more wrist action
on the serve, where the racquet will go continue going this way and then back
around like this. Another technique is a slice serve with the same swing path
with continuing pronation. In this case there's going to be less wrist
action with the racquet will go to the right, but we're going to pronate this
way and then come back around like this.
The kick serve will have a different contact point and
our upper body is going to be in a more sideways position, therefore our wrist is
going to be more straight and not in the ulnar deviation that we have on both
the flat and the slice serve and it looks something like this. We're going to
maintain the sideways position and therefore as we make contact with the
tip of the racket pointing slightly towards the left you can see that the
wrist is more in a straight position and now our swing path is going to be going
this way and the tip of the racket is going to go up and then towards the
right and so this will involve a slight ulner deviation in the wrist. As the
racquet goes like this and our arm goes down and there's a slight wrist action
here and this is true for both the kick serve with continuing pronation and
the kick serve that has a slight flexion of the wrist. In my opinion the kick serve
with the bending of the wrist, the flexion of the wrist after contact
might be a problem for some players, if this player is not as flexible and
therefore might experience some wrist pain. So I'm a bigger fan of instead
of doing this it usually involves a bend of the arm. You could try to continue to
pronate while bending the arm and now the wrist is in a more natural position
this protects the wrist more. So instead of bending the wrist down and the arm
like this after contact, you could try to maintain a straight wrist while
pronating and then going into a bend with the arm like this. The most
protective technique when it comes to the wrist is the Roger Federer kick
serve technique, where he keeps the arm completely straight and then he
continues to pronate and it looks something like this. He will go to the
right and then pronate this way while the arm is completely straight and I find
this technique the most protective when it comes to the wrist.
This concludes the role of the wrist video series. If you have any questions
feel free to 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.