Get More Power on Your Serve With the Djokovic Elbow Snap!

All right guys, today we're going to talk about how you can get more power on your serve by increasing your racket speed. So the goal here is to be able to get this part of the racket, the head of the racket, to move faster than the handle of the racket. And the way we're going to do that is we've got to make sure we're bending the elbow and we're pronating. That's going to allow the tip of the racket to come through quick and generate that racket speed. Now, Novak Djokovic is great at this. He's getting a lot of miles per hour on his serve by being able to snap that racket through. Back in the day, Sampras was the master at this. He had a bit more shoulder involved, but definitely got that snap. And this part of the racket starts to move really quick. And that's how you generate that racket speed. Now, a lot of times when people get onto court, they start driving in the direction that they want the ball to go. So they start muscling it and the racket isn't moving any faster than the handle. It's moving quicker on radius, but it's not really traveling quicker, right? So what we need to do is, this is where a continental grip really helps. Because if you don't have a continental grip, it's very hard for you to keep the butt cap of the racket stationary while you move the end of the racket. So you see how the butt cap of the racket here doesn't move, but this part of the racket moves a lot. If you don't have continental grip, that can be a little bit tricky to do. And you end up coming through like this a little bit more. The only way you can pronate without the continental grip is to send the racket a little bit too far out to the side and it gets a little bit awkward. So try and get the continental grip if you're looking for maximum power and to move the racket head as quick as possible. So as I said there, I'm going to try and relax my whole body and feel like I bend my elbow a little bit at the point of contact and try and keep the butt cap of the racket as still as possible. So I want as little movement as possible in the butt cap of the racket and as much movement as possible in the head of the racket. These are my first serves of the day, let's give it a go. So even without much effort, I can snap that through pretty quick. Now what a lot of people do to achieve this is to start hanging on real loose, they get the pinky off, they're holding on like this. That's not really the best way to go about it. Hold on pretty firm and just feel like you can use the joints, bend your elbow, pronate the arm and again think about the butt cap of the racket not moving. Now when you see Djokovic doing this, there is a lot of movement because he's just hitting the ball so hard that there's a lot of leftover momentum so it's not as though the butt cap is staying there and you know totally but that's the feel. They have a saying in golf, feel versus real. That's the feel we're trying to get. It might not happen in reality but that's what I'm trying to get is to keep the butt cap of the racket still and move the tip of the racket. Now remember when you're trying to execute your kinetic chain, it's not just about getting everything started. You have to stop the previous part of the kinetic chain to fire the next part and that's what's challenging about this is when I start to put a lot of energy into it, it's stopping the hand to allow the racket to move that's the most complicated bit because as soon as I start putting all the energy in I just want to keep going and going and going so make sure that you're getting things started but you're stopping the hand and allowing the tip of the racket to move. Just one thing I forgot to mention when people are trying to do this and they're snapping the elbow, what often happens is they come to this sudden stop and it often pulls on the shoulder. So as you can see here even when I'm going slow I'm bending the elbow but I'm allowing everything to tail off. Nothing comes to a sudden stop. Just one more thing if you go to the description below there's a link to tpa tennis.com slash kick and I've put together a 20-minute video on how to master the kick serve so go check that out it's free and I think it'll really improve your serve. All right guys let me know if you found that useful and don't forget to like and subscribe. Talk to you soon.