In this video you are going to to get a crash course on the tennis serve.
There many ways to teach the tennis serve and Some methods are better than others. I like to use video analysis often to see how closely the players I coach match up with the best pro serves out there. It just makes sense to copy the pros because they serve so effortlessly with tremendous power and accuracy.
Their body just “knows” what to do.
Last week a tennis player commented on on of my youtube videos that I was teaching the tennis serve all wrong. I always appreciate players and fans that question what tennis tips I am sharing. It makes me look for better ways to help players improve as fast as possible.
I would love to get your feedback if you think I am off on this. My goal is to get better everyday as a coach so I can help more tennis players out. It would be great to hear what you think.
Leave me a comment below after you watch this video and go try this tip for yourself.
See ya at the next video!
Your Tennis Coach,Jeff
Hey everyone, it’s Jeff Salzenstein here. In today’s video, I want to talk about a couple of serve tips that actually I had a viewer go on YouTube and pretty much bashed me about a serve video that I have up there. It is the serve like Nadal video and we’ll probably put a link on for you to check that video out as well. I did it last summer, so it’s been quite some time and actually I think the technique that I used most resembles Pete Sampras and not Rafa Nadal but all great servers use this type of technique, or most great servers.
But I want to talk about the reasons why this person I feel is wrong of what he said with his comment on YouTube. This is what he said, “Boss…” – I didn’t know I was a boss but – “…toss is way too far behind you, so your body weight is shifted to the wrong direction, losing power. Pronation was okay, but the swing didn’t follow all the way through. And what on earth are you doing with your feet? You’re supposed to land far into the court to raise the body weight distribution.” Well a lot of the stuff there actually doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I can understand why this person would say this — because there’s a lot of myths out there about the tennis serve.
First of all, I don’t follow through with the motion because I was mimicking Pete Sampras who arguably had the best serve of all time, he was able to pronate and bend his arm sooner than anybody else, and I think that was one of the reasons that made his serve so great.
To address the weight distribution getting into the court, if you look at Federer from a side view, a lot of times he actually lands on the baseline. So, there are some servers that toss the ball well in front and they land well into the court, but there are other servers, notably Roger Federer who, he has a pretty decent serve, he lands right on the baseline on a lot of his serves.
As far my toss being too far behind me, again if you throw the toss above your head and you have the correct serving stance with the platform stance that I highly recommend, your toss is going to be above your head and your body is going to be tilted, you’re going to be more sideways and you’re going to be able to hit a lot more topspin on your serve.
So basically the serve that talks about how Nadal is serving so great, the serve video that I used on YouTube, it is correct, the technique is correct, I’ve studied the serve for years, and it most resembles Pete Sampras. I like to think that that video looks like a lefty version of Pete Sampras. If could only be as good as him or serve as great as he did, but I did my best to make it look like him.
So tell me what you think. Do you think I’m on track with what I’m talking about with the serve? I know it’s different than what other people are teaching but I came up with the solutions by studying with some of the great teachers in the world and also studying with my own video analysis what the best servers were doing.
So let me know what you think. Again, go out on the court and try this platform stance, try throwing the toss over your head a little bit more so you can get more topspin and get that toss up in the air so you can reach out to it. And if you go into the court, that’s great, but if you don’t, that’s not a huge thing either because Roger Federer has a lot of success with that as well.
We’ll talk soon and let me know what you think. Thanks.
Jeff Salzenstein
http://www.JeffSalzensteinTennis.com
Hey Paul, I will work on sound in the next video…Definitely not a tech genius…
Thanks for pointing it out.
Hi Jeff,
first of all thanks for the great site!
Secondly, as a 3.5-4.0 player I can definitely relate to what you´ve been talking about all along. I started developing my serve from the second (primarily top spin) serve. The platform stance and that toss above the head I´ve been using gave also my first serves significantly more topspin, with my body tilted and sideways. A few months ago I consciously tried to land more into the court on follow-through, but then I realized it was exactly all the above mentioned things that made it virtually impossible.
There´s one more thing that I can´t seem to find the answer to. You were saying:
”First of all, I don’t follow through with the motion because I was mimicking Pete Sampras who arguably had the best serve of all time, he was able to pronate and bend his arm sooner than anybody else, and I think that was one of the reasons that made his serve so great.”
My question would be whether there´s any difference in the effectiveness between bending the arm after impact (pretzel) just like Pete or you do and keeping it straight during pronation like Fed. It seems to be the case because you say ” …able to pronate and BEND his arm sooner than anybody else…”The pretzel seems to me better for topspin, but the straight arm looks more effective for power.
Keep up the good work!
Greetings from Bosnia (another exotic country where your site is well known)
Hi Dejan, Thanks for your input and great to hear from you. It’s easier for most people to keep the arm straighter. If you can bend sooner, I think it’s better but it takes incredible strength and fast twitch muscle fiber coordination like what Sampras to make it happen.
One of my best frineds is form Bosnia!
Jeff salute!
I read coments to your youtube serve video.
I think clever people everything understand.
Be sure your video,tips and advices are realy usefull and understandable.
Thank you for your work.
P.S. Afert your advices my serve technique becomes better and better.
And main stuff is that now I clear realize what I should do.
Shake your hand!!!
Maksim, I am so happy the tips are helping you on your serve Keep up the great work.
All the best, Jeff
Placement of the toss has a lot to do with what you want to do with the ball when you hit it. The feet and the body stance have a lot to do with the quality of the placement and the power you will get in the serve. There is no doubt that height has a lot to do with where and how you toss that ball as well and whether you will get that first step into the court or stop at the baseline, because you are a baseliner rather than a serve and volleyer. The one problem i see as a constant problem with servers that have bad technique, is they take a step with the front foot rather than keeping it placed and step forward with the rear foot as the arm comes through on the serve. Your using Pete is a perfect example of excellent foot movement.
Your knowledge of the game and technique is great to see and would love to go through detailed technique with you on my own game which is far from perfect. Being tall and lazy in my ability to move is a limitation, but remembering to bend my knees is the one thing that helps the most in improving my ground strokes as well as the serve.
Keep up the good work.
Randy
Thanks for the kind words and great information, Randy!
All the best, Jeff
The placement of the toss will vary depending on the type of serve you are hitting. The flatter the serve, the more you want to toss into the court and the further into the court you will land. With a kick serve for example, the toss is overhead or even behind you resulting in a substantially different landing position. As far as the follow through, what is really important in a serve is the racquet head speed you can generate regardless of weather you hit flat or spin. To generate this speed, the racquet “whips” around a fulcrum (your wrist). If you imagine a box around your contact point, the racquet needs to enter, pass through and exit that box as fast as possible. To accomplish this, the best players actually use a double fulcrum, the wrist and the elbow. The wrist flexes to allow the racquet to move through the contact point and once the racquet head is in front of you (maximum wrist pronation) and parallel to the ground, the elbow bends to allow the tip to continue down towards the court. If you look at slow motion serves, the tip points down after contact, the elbow is bent and the racquet is on the right side of your body (if you are right handed). Your hand at this point is still relatively high. After that, the racquet tip continues down towards your right foot and then moves across your body to finish on the left side. A common mistake of lower level players is that they do not completely snap their wrist, do not flex the elbow, and they drop their hand along with the racquet reducing racquet head speed. Sampras is the best example I know of that uses the elbow flex and follow through on the same side of the body.