Why you need to pause in the trophy position

Today we're going to talk about the serve. The serve is a really complex movement and today we're going to try to break it down in smaller movements and pieces that you can follow in order to make your serve better. This is more for people that are just starting to learn their serves or want to improve their rhythm. The rhythm on the serve is everything. If the rhythm is repeatable, then your serve can become consistent, then you can practice can also start aiming and not only serving the ball inside the service box. You have to understand that whenever you serve, you have to have a pause. That pause enables you to do a full swing. If your toss is very low and you don't have time for the pause and let's say your movement is like something like this, you can still get the balls in, but because every time you're rushed through it, you don't have this nice pause, you don't load and you can't really move into the ball as you serve. So today I'm going to teach you how to find that rhythm. It's just another way. There are many ways out there. This is just one method that you can use that hopefully will make your serve better. So we're going to break it down in three steps. The first step, like I prefer to start from here with an abbreviated back swing. That way I don't have to think about bringing my racket back. If you bring your racket back and you do it like this, then you should just do it at the same time as your toss. Nothing changes in that point. You still have to have the pause. As I said, I prefer putting my racket right here, then I don't have to worry about it. If you're a beginner, you can try the same thing. If you're already playing and you don't want to start with an abbreviated back swing, you can start from here. Just make sure that you will pause right here. So then in this case, your toss will count as a movement with taking your racket back. All right. So the first movement, the first step is the toss. So you toss. After that, after you toss, you have to be in that trophy position for, I don't know, a split second, right? For some short period of time, but it is a pause. When the ball is still up there, you drop your racket back while your upper body is still sideways to the net, like this. And then after you drop your racket all the way, you start rotating. And like that, like throwing your body, like, and that is your movement to the serve. So basically, it's three simple movements, as I said, toss, drop, throw, okay? So if you do it like that and you talk it through in your head every time, toss, drop, throw, you will have a full, complete swing with a full, complete loop without cutting anything out and so on. Obviously, you can then add your legs more, your hips, pushing into the ball, jump, and so on. But just to begin with, try this simple advice where you focus that you toss first, you drop your racket, and then you turn. The wrong way to do it, just so that you guys understand what I'm talking about, is this. When you, for example, stand like this, and as you toss, you drop your racket back. That is wrong. As soon as you drop your racket back, your pause becomes down here. Now you don't have the loop. Now you don't have the momentum of the racket to swing from behind your back. So you're losing out on most of the power. The other thing is that when you put your racket back with the same time as the toss, you see my elbow goes up because it's an uncomfortable position to stay like that. My elbow goes up and my body turns a little bit. As soon as I turn my upper body like this and I wait in this position, I cannot use my upper body rotation anymore, so I'm forced to hit just with my arm. So watch. Here, I'm forced just to hit with my arm. Yes, I can get the ball in like that, I can tap it, I can maybe try to even hit harder, but there's only so far that I can go with that type of serve. Hope you enjoyed this video. Please like and subscribe, and we'll see you guys soon.