Congrats to Novak Djokovic and Serbia. What an accomplishment to take home the Davis Cup title prize.
It’s a pretty well known fact in tennis circles that Novak has some “issues” on his serve from time to time.
His serving arm does some funky stuff and the elbow stays a bit low. I wonder if he could make an already good serve even better if he improved his technique and got his elbow up.
In today’s video, you are going to see a student that has a “low elbow” at the trophy position. But luckliy, there are drills that can correct this problem fast.
What do you think? I would love to hear from you.
Talk soon.
Jeff
Hey everyone, Jeff Salzenstein here. And I’m really happy to connect with you again. I know it’s been about a week and we’ve got a lot of stuff going on at Jeff Salzenstein Tennis headquarters. Last time we spoke, we talked about the world championships and a great finale with Nadal and Federer. And now the Davis Cup Final is over in Serbia. Congratulations to Serbia, Novak Djokovic and his team — An amazing accomplishment for such a small country.
Now, I want to talk about the serve today as it relates to Novak Djokovic because for those of you who have followed Novak last year, you’ve noticed that he’s had some serve challenges. Now pretty amazing that he’s 3 in the world and he’s done so well with some deficiencies with his serve, and we’re going to show you some videos today in this blog that’s going to show you exactly what’s kind of going on with his serve, we’ll talk about how the elbow drops, maybe a drill that you can do to keep the elbow up.
We’ve got a student that we’re using as an example of — one example a couple weeks ago where he really got into some trouble with his technique and his elbow dropping. We’re in the process of correcting it right now. He’s doing a great job putting the work in.
So let’s go to those videos right now.
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Alright. So, you’ll see in this video, this student is hitting the serve and the elbow is really dropping. It’s tucked into the body, there’s not as much shoulder turn as there could be. You see, that’s a pretty low elbow right there. We got to get that elbow away from the body into a stronger trophy position.
When you get into this trophy position, that actually isn’t a strong power position and the elbow is low, just there’s a lot of things that can go wrong. There’s a lot more movement and just not an effective way, an efficient way to serve.
Here is a side angle and this looks a little bit like Novak Djokovic when has his serving woes but obviously he’s serving great these days to win the Davis Cup. You can see that low elbow there as he’s hitting the serve. And we really want to again get that elbow up away from the body and there’s different drills you can do that’s going to create that for you. So again, see how low that elbow is right there. This is a big strong kid. He’s got a good serve but we can make it a lot better.
Here, we’re doing abbreviated continuous swings that really helps get that elbow and that shoulder turn. You can see the different there — Huge contrast, and we were able to make that change pretty quickly. This video was taken a couple days after the one before and you can really see that elbow and that hand get away from the body into that strong power position.
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Alright. So after watching those videos, you can blithely tell that a lot of players are going to have difficulty keeping their elbow up. And if you can practice a continuous serve type motion where the arm is moving and the elbow is staying up and the big key is leading with that elbow once it gets into that trophy position. You want to practice this type of drill on a continual basis. Take your legs out to play and just work on getting into that throwing position, that trophy position, to hit an awesome serve.
I’d love to hear your feedback. Thanks so much again for coming to my blog and for supporting it and for coming to learn. I’m here for you, I’m going to share tennis tips with you and I want to know what you want to learn. So send those questions and those comments my way and we will see you at the next video. Thank you.
Jeff Salzenstein
http://www.JeffSalzensteinTennis.com
I like the generalk way how you present things but still:
- the concrete exercise/drill in the video is relatively too short (it needs more time)
- this is not a “magic” drill, as you name it – the drill is known – you should stress the right movement.
- if you are talking why not showing already the drill – you are good looking, ok. – but hearing your voice
= getting the information is enough.
Thanks for the feedback. Peter. i am always looking for ways to improve.
I wish the drill was known but you would be shocked at how many people do not know it. You are one of the lucky ones.
Loved the video. The “after” video was a good demonstration of how he improved his right elbow positioning. I do agree that his shoulder turn isn’t happening and the turn that he does have doesn’t happen long enough. It might be worth looking at what he’s doing with his left arm after it drops from his ball toss. Seems like it almost instantly moves to the left side of his body instead of tucking in to his stomach a bit, which will keep the turn that he does have intact longer.
You are right, Dutch. We are working on that with his toss arm! Thanks for the compliment on the video
Hey Jeff…Great website…wish I would have found it sooner. The serve has always been my Achilles and have watched countless hours of youtube videos and video of my own serve to try and fix it. After seeing this clip of your student, I have the exact same problem with the low elbow. You mention the continuous motion drill, do you have any other tips or can you provide a little more detail on what exactly you had your student do. I know this will help bring my game to the next level, I have been very close in open tournaments and USTA league tennis beating some of the top players and know if I could hold serve this would bring me over the hump.
Great to hear from you Ryan! Sounds like if you get your serve right, you will be right on your way. The continuous serve drill will help as well as holding the trophy position without actually serving.
Good luck.