Teaching Internal Shoulder Rotation on Serve

[bman]

The most difficult part of teaching the serve, in my opinion, is the racket drop, or, I believe technically..."internal shoulder rotation". Can we dedicate a thread here to ideas about how to teach players to do it?

Correct me if I'm wrong...the main instruction I gather from John's "Your Strokes" is to have them do a windmill a few times and then drop the racket at the highest point of the swing. Brian's articles seems to suggest that some people aren't strong enough do do it right, and that strength training is important, though he doesn't expound on specific exercises. This is the "million dollar question," in my opinion, on how to teach the serve. Girls, in particular, struggle with this, and sometimes I wonder if they are simply incapable of doing it because of strength, but then I see a 10 yr. old boy doing it right and it's hard to believe that a high school girl cannot be at least as strong.

Thanks for your ideas.

[gzhpcu]

Isn't it a question of the 10 year boy knowing how to throw a ball, where the girls don't? Also more of a question of flexibility than strength?

[bman]

Yeah, but the problem is, it didn't seem like it was that hard to teach the 10 year old boy how to throw where it takes the girl ages to learn the serve, if it ever happens.

[gzhpcu]

Maybe because little boys play more with balls and start throwing at an early age?

[bman]

Could be. But, to me, it's a little trickier than that. I guess the question becomes: How do you teach someone to throw? Because if it was super easy to teach someone to throw, we wouldn't have so many people who struggle mightily to learn how to serve -- particularly the internal rotation element.

[gzhpcu]

This guy has a good tip on how to teach the correct throwing motion, I find..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqRLWbF8S_I

[llll]

Could be. But, to me, it's a little trickier than that. I guess the question becomes: How do you teach someone to throw?

play catch???? the throwing motion might be a little different for a girl in that i vaguely remember the angle of the upper arm to the forearm in a girl is less straight compared to a mans alignment. maybe one of the anatomy guys could varify this.

[bman]

Thanks for the video.

I think Brian Gordon may have to consult with that guy...obviously a more sophisticated analysis than the 3-D articles we see in the biomechanics section .