How to Generate Effortless Power On The Tennis Serve in 3 Steps

In every complex system, there are things called leverage points. These are small tweaks you can make within the system that set off a chain reaction that create big ripple effects throughout everything else. And when you find the leverage points on your serve, you're able to simplify the technique. You're able to stop overthinking or being confused or feeling overwhelmed when you step up to the line. And instead have that feeling of confidence, cool, calm, mastery when you step up to the line because you know that you can bomb serves whenever you want to with power and control. And you're going to learn exactly how to execute the ATB swing in three steps. Let's get into part one. The first step is to get into what we like to call the pre-throw position. It kind of looks like this. The way you get into this position is defined by three characteristics. First, your elbow needs to be elevated away from your body about 90 degrees and it's done through the shoulder flexion motion. Number two, you've got to have 90 degrees of what's called shoulder horizontal abduction. You could see this by the fact that when pros finish their windup, their elbow is going to be positioned away from their body and to the side when you view it from the back. And lastly, their elbow is going to bend in about 90 degrees until their palm is facing toward the court. Now, if you look at the top ATP servers, every single one of them is going to reach a similar position to this by executing the three motions that we've just covered. The reason why is because it sets up your arm to get into what we like to call the pro drop. Now, by getting your palm down toward the court, we do something really powerful. We set up your arm to be able to rotate back externally. You see, with the palm down and your arm bent, you're in what's called internal shoulder rotation. And this is followed by a powerful external shoulder rotation that pros execute in the racket drop. So again, it's going to look something like this. Number one, my shoulder is raising away. I'm going to draw my arm back. I'm going to bend my arm in. Now from here, I'm ready to blast the ball. Now, if I take my racket out of my hand, watch what happens. I get into a very similar position to what you'll see in baseball pitchers and NFL quarterbacks. Maybe not the NFL, I don't look like that. By getting into this position, I'm setting my arm up to flip back and snap in. And that's where all the fluid power comes from. Just like this. Every single time. It's like I can't control it. Now this pre-throw position is so powerful because it allows you to utilize what's called the stretch-shorten cycle. The stretch-shorten cycle happens when you lengthen or you stretch your muscle prior to contracting it. It's kind of like when you stretch back a rubber band and then release it. The stretch creates the powerful snap. And when you're able to get that same stretch and load on your serve, you're able to create the same snap. Now step number two is going to be all about the wrist here. You want to perform ulnar deviation so that you can absolutely smash the like button. Guys, in order to help us grow the channel, we'd really appreciate it if you hit the like button. The second step is all about activating the stretch-shorten cycle. Through the correct dynamic racket drop action. It's called the pro drop position because you'll see that almost every single top ATP pro will reach this position prior to snapping into contact. But I rarely see it executed at the club or junior levels. But you're going to learn exactly how to execute it today. As pros drive through the ground and they rotate their hip and torso into the net, this combined with the inertia of your racket is going to cause the racket to flip down and back behind your body. Now this force is what allows your arm to subsequently flip back into external rotation. As we talked about, your arm is up, drawn back and bent, ready to flip. And if you've executed step one correctly and you've gotten into this pre-throw position, then you're able to create this nice left to right swing path with your racket as you drag your legs through the ground. And you can feel this right away simply by getting into your pre-throw and rotating your torso and driving your legs. Just feel the flip right there. If you have your racket, you can do this with me. When you feel comfortable, you can go here and snap that racket in. Now pros are going to remain in this externally rotated position all the way until the last few milliseconds before contact. And this gives them the appearance of leading up with the edge of their racket. As they go from their initial acceleration and this full flip to starting this elbow extension motion, as they start to straighten their arm out, it's almost like they're chopping the ball. And in fact, if you didn't internally rotate your shoulder, you would in fact chop the ball. But a few milliseconds before contact, they've set their shoulder up to flip back in and rotate the racket in as powerfully as possible. And in fact, according to Dr. Bruce Elliott's studies, this internal rotation of your shoulder and forearm, which is termed the long axis rotation, is responsible for over 50% of your racket head speed at contact. So again, I've reached this full fluid racket drop position. And as my shoulder propels up, I'm going to have this natural elbow extension motion. Then at the last second, they internally rotate their shoulder for tons of racket head speed. It's going to look like this. Here, pre-throw position, fluid racket drop, snapping that racket right into contact. Now, if you don't have the Lamborghini of shoulders, don't you worry, I've got you. For those of you out there who don't feel like you have as much mobility or flexibility in the shoulder, and you can't reach those same deep athletic positions you see the top pros reaching, you could still utilize the same technique. You see, the same biomechanics apply, you just need to use a little bit less of an extreme version of this same motion. Here's exactly how that works. Get into your same pre-throw slot, and from here, instead of getting your racket all the way down here in this deep position, what you're going to do instead is utilize more horizontal shoulder adduction. This is where your arm comes forward in front of your body, and you can see this done even at the pro level in some players like Federer. So compare Federer's serve to Roddick's serve, and you'll see that at the start of Federer's acceleration, his arm will start going in front of his body faster than you'll see on Roddick's serve. Now, here's how you do that. From this pre-throw position, simply think about pulling your elbow forward to the ball and feel your arm going forward in front of your body, and as you relax, and if you reach the correct pre-throw position at your start, you're going to naturally get the same fluid motion. And as you can see, you can still get a good amount of power on your serve by utilizing the same technique, but just making it less extreme, just like this. Now, there is another way that you can add even more power to your serve, and we're going to cover that in the next part of this video series. So stay tuned, click the link below, and until next time, athletes, I will see you in the next video. Ooh, I should, I should, I should become a volleyball player. Volleyball? I don't know.