Tennis Serve Lesson - powerkillers1.f... Tennis serve power comes from something called the "Kinetic Chain." In this video, Dr. Kovacs shares a simple progression for syncing your Kinetic Chain, and developing more tennis serve power.
FYB2007 interesting. this is totally contradictory to what Florian Meier shows on his chanel "online tennis instruction". he says and shows a demo of him serving from his knees vs standing and only gets 9 mph more from the normal serve stance. his claim = all power comes from the arm! I've seen differing style of instructions before and that's understandable from coach to coach but never something totally contradictory.
When Florian demos serving from his knees, its IMPOSSIBLE to use hip. He is using a little bit of torso rotation and that too only the limited amount that his body will allow as a result of the knees planted firmly into the ground. I don't agree with Florian that there is not much added power from the legs and that most of it comes from the arm. To prove it to yourself, here is a simple exercise. Try to throw your racket from the baseline with no use of legs ( from kneeling position), mark how far it goes. Now try and do the same jumping up and forward into the court and see where that goes. Pace, Spin and Bounce are all heavily dependent on how well a player use the synchronized transfer of power ( smooth slow to fast movement ) from the legs and then eventually up to the arms. These coaches just don't know how to explain it and often cause more confusion.
The whole motion is part of a chain with the arms being a vital part. For most people a slight dip with the legs is better than a full on squat because we need the body moving at a certain speed as we swing at the ball.
As a tennis teacher, I agree with everything. You can see Federer slightly lifts his left foot while tossing the ball. I think legs are the starting point of the power but the most power comes from the pronation and shoulder internal rotation because those segments can go really fast.
Agree with both TT and Will & Dr.. You will add more speed when you accelerate up with the racket butt towards the ball and pronate at contact and pull to finish and relax the arm.
This video instantly added 10 mph for me. As a former pitcher, I was definitely going shoulder across shoulder instead of shoulder over shoulder. That felt more natural but made it impossible to generate power.
I bought the 100mph course, which is great, clarified a lot of confusion around how to use kinetic chain correctly. The only thing I don't quite understand is the swing path of different serves, especially if I always swing at 45 degrees how can I hit a flat serve, wouldn't it put lots of spin on the ball resulting a slice or topspin serve?
This is absolute rubbish. Main power coming from the back leg and loading your back leg is not only misleading it is also dangerous. You end up injuring your back leg due to over stressing it! You load up your torso which will in turn throw your racket hand to the ball. That's all it is is. Serve like as if you are throwing a whip.
but legs are much bigger muscle groups then your arm so its not that easy to overstress a backleg and you dont have to bend super low, the torso is also important but without legs you are missing one link of kinetic chain
Ok for me power comes from good balance in the back leg, this is an intermediate or advanced level course, if a beginner tries to focus on that his swing path will suffer...
I need clarification. The squatting exercise to pick up the ball, and then Mark's comments suggest that you should "sit" into to back leg in your back swing. But this seems contrary to most of the serve instructions and what all the pros are doing on the tour, which is to lean back and bend the knees on the back swing. Can someone resolve this apparent contradiction?
This is an drill to help our bodies get used to loading on the back leg. If you look at the great servers, they load onto the back leg. Yes there are variations to the technique but the common theme is that energy must come from the back leg. Dr Kovacs has a lot of drills to help your body get used to certain aspects of the technique. He also does the elephant drill which is in his course that helps with rotation. So this is one part of the swing that you can train. Also, the hip rotation is important to get power, which Dr. Kovacs also goes into.
the thing is they are not really just bending the knees they are rotating and bending at the same time and thats exactly what you do when you pick up the ball next to your heel here
When an exercise doesn't resemble the actual motion, all proper muscle memory goes out the window. It starts with throwing instead of striking. These two motions are so different and the feedback on release (throw) and strike are so different that you can't really take one into the other. Same for squatting: nobody squats on a serve. So you learn zero from that technically speaking (you do strengthen legs by squatting). FYB is a great channel for tactics, for technique I wouldn't recommend it.
See I am sure I lose power in my serve somewhere. I try turn away from the ball after I throw it up . Bend my knees . Extent my legs , turn my hip . Drop my racket . Try to turn to be facing the ball by the time I hit it and lag my wrist. But how much of that I do before I hit it ? God knows. I only serve at about 60 to 75 mph and I am Six foot one and build very lean. Surely I should be able to serve harder . Let's see if the vid helps.
Throw a a tennis ball over the net with all your power and assess. You will see and sense where the weakness in your biomechanics is. Next, swing a whip and see what sort of whip effect you get. Or use a towel and see whether you can get that whip effect. These 2 exercises will show you which part of your body is not contributing to the kinetic chain. When I had problems with my serve, basically no power, I used these exercises to assess. I found I was not using my torso muscles and also noticed I was not using my non dominant hand properly. I was also not keeping my chin up until I hit the ball. I was also not tossing the ball slightly to the right of my head. Watch Vic Braden and Powerflail to correct your serve.
OK this introduces the third type of stance, besides pinpoint and platform. The backfoot-balance-and-foot-fault stance. Curious no professional is observed doing this.
You guys are missing the point. These are exercises to isolate problem areas and to feel certain things. And yes, Roger Federer often does similar things in his training. Foot fault means nothing when you're simply trying to feel smoothness and rhythm. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-W6dNCMhhhDU.html Federer often have his front foot completely off the ground until after his toss and step a foot into the court before hitting the ball.
Next video will be up next year? dude if ur doing this as a job, then put atleast 2 videos in 1 month, or dont do this, cuz people like you. i hope you will understand what have I said now. stay healthy.
Maybe he likes massage. As a cyclist, I have been told that the 2 main reasons cyclist shave their legs (besides vanity) is massage and wound management when the inevitable road rash occurs.
