Take your game one step further by grabbing this 4 page Serve Action Plan and get Step-by-Step directions that will have you hitting better serves today.
Starting in a solid, loaded position is a HUGE key to success for hitting a bigger serve. We’ll be focusing on just that in today’s lesson with our recent VIP student, Bharat, who came to work with us from London.
Bharat had very good framework within his game but was lacking a vital component when it comes to the serve: the trophy pose.
The trophy pose refers to the position we are in before racquet drop and contact, where both arms point straight up in the air. For the purpose of this lesson, we’ll be solely focused on the upper body.
We compared Bharat’s service motion to Rafael Nadal’s and noticed two important technical differences.
First, we found that Bharat was not turning his chest quite far enough in his trophy pose. This is important because getting more rotation back is helpful to create a greater initial load.
The second difference between Bharat and Rafa’s serves was the amount of vertical alignment. In his trophy pose, Rafa’s body is very vertical, allowing his body potential to go up to the ball and release a tremendous amount of energy. Bharat’s alignment, on the other hand, was almost completely horizontal. His shoulders were straight across in his trophy pose, making it difficult to create force from that position.
Because of this, we were looking to split the difference between completely horizontal and completely vertical so that Bharat can be loaded better for his serve. Our team took him through a variety of progressions, beginning with shadow swings without a ball.
The first goal was to make Bharat aware of what he was doing originally so that he could feel the difference between that technique and the new technique we were about to teach him. Without this awareness, true improvement is hard to achieve.
Bharat did countless shadow swings before even having a ball in his hand so that he could commit the new physical positions to memory.
If you are practicing at home and have access to a smartphone or camera, this is an excellent time to use video to find that awareness for yourself. Take a short video of what you’re doing in your trophy pose so that you too can be aware of what you’re doing and begin to improve any technical deficiencies that are holding you back from your potential.
Take your game one step further by grabbing this 4 page Serve Action Plan and get Step-by-Step directions that will have you hitting better serves today.
