Rather frustrating...

[bottle]

You're right. But I believe that someone such as yourself can give himself tennis lessons and actually improve. This is an article of faith.

[gzhpcu]

IMHO, teaching needs to differentiate between players starting with a clean slate, and those that have played for many years with a cluttered slate.

I watch persons who have played tennis for many years, regularly taking tennis lessons from a pro, and making no visible progress...

It is the young kids who progress rapidly, and evolve having nice strokes.

Often the pro takes the easy way out with the players that have played for many years, and just acts as a sparring partner, feeding the student nice balls, giving him/her the impression that they are playing better, whereas it is just that they are being made to look nice.

I also hear the players having played for many years, telling the pro "yeah, but don't change my grip..." etc. The pro quickly gives up...

[bottle]

When to Kiss and Not

Probably, I should put this in the other thread where you (don_budge) talk about "bonafide" artists.

I figure that a good tennis player is an artist and scientist both, and an athlete, too, of course.

What brought down Roger in 2011 Wimbledon was not his scientist or his athlete, but Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Roger's ARTIST.

Just didn't come in enough. Became more predictable than early in the match. Lost his enthusiasm and his fire.

Learning new tricks in tennis is not the same as playing high level tennis, but the same faults Roger demonstrated all apply if we interpret "coming to net" in its figurative sense of seizing one's own destiny.

I agree with Don and you both on KISS. The minute one becomes a sports teacher-- of others or of oneself, as Don says-- one has to index a huge amount of information.

If dealing with some innocent or one's own heated brain, one cannot afford a single extraneous bit of information, and I have been as guilty of this sin, at times, as any wheedle-voiced joker on a tennis court showing off for his girlfriend who is a beginner.

But, we need a higher offering of courses for more advanced and more imaginative players. (I would mix these students together with carefree lack of discrimination.)

The whole group needs to start learning tennis the way Pancho Gonzalez did, by looking through a fence.

[don_budge]

Lcd...

When I think in terms of "simplicity" many times I think that I mean...lowest common denominator. Just to make sure we are all on the same page. Boil it down to the essential. It ain't easy, you know. It doesn't imply that any of us is necessarily simple either. Lord no!

[bottle]

I'm sticking with your drills and they're working. But who is "simpler than thou?" Moebius strip? Buy an 8-board? Hold the coil? All pretty simple and right brain stuff.

And I think the mantra of "simplicity" all too often leaves too much out but may work well in the advertising world.

[tennis_chiro]

All look interesting

Bottle,
All these things look interesting, but if you just do my Figure 8-with-feet-together-forward drill, you will achieve the action you are trying to create with the racket. Go to my GlobalTennisDC channel on youtube. I haven't got the drill up with audio yet, but it's there and I've described it other times here on this site. Do it with a weighted racket (1/2 to 1 lb weight at the center of the strings) and you will feel your body being forced to use the hips and shoulders to curl and uncurl appropriately.

Must say, I want to have the 55 page book of serve secrets, but $37. I would be happy to get $5 to $10 for a pdf of a manual of all my "secrets". But then, that's,of course, why I am still working for a living!

Keep it simple, please.

don
PS I in no way intend to demean the complicated articles that are presented here. They are great when you are trying to understand the stroke. But whether you are a teacher trying to prepare your presentation for your student or the student trying to arrange your approach for yourself, you better be able to reduce the learning experience to much simpler elements someone can do thinking about one thing at a time. That's not that hard. The real trick is figuring the sequence in which to go after individual elements to enable the right brain to put it all together in an engram of neurological perfection, or at least achievable effectiveness and efficiency. And that is no easy assignment.

[gzhpcu]

Actually bottle, I'd just rather appreciate something relaxed, like Bobby Riggs does here in the video I posted elsewhere...

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=50406

No jumping, no enormous deepknee bend, just a nice loose arm....

[bottle]

A key phrase that Jack Broudy uses for this kind of motion is "hold the coil."

From watching his demonstrations and knowing that he espouses "moebial" rather than flat plane figure eights, I think one can come up with a constant hip motion that is more workably continuous.

One can raise rear hip as butt winds back and raise front hip as butt winds forward, all while keeping good balance.

[bottle]

Brouder Chowder Starting with an Appositional Phrase

Jack Broudy, he don't like the kinetic chain either. But if you, Phil Picuri, don't like this whole entry, just go past it and choose another dish-- something that starts with a salad and early leg drive perhaps and ends with decaffeinated coffee.

I've never bought one of Broudy's eightboards since they remind me too much of hula-hoops and The Twist. But a whole tennis court full of boys and girls on eightboards is a marvelous sight, their hips churning in unison as their feet pivot underneath and their shoulders pivot up above.

http://www.figure8tennis.com/Jack_Broudys_Figure_8_Tennis_System/Glimpse_F8TS.html

Not that Broudy entirely rejected the notion of "chain." It's just that his theory uses two kinetic chains instead of one.

The starting point is the ceaselessly rotating hips, a Goodyear rather than Michelin tire suspended on a rope and twisting this way then that. Later, maybe, one can start altering the axis of this big wheel mid-serve.

One chain goes down. (The hipbone's connected to the thighbone. The thighbone's conected to the kneebone. The kneebone's connected to the ankle bone. Now hear the Word of the Lord.)

The other chain goes up. The hipbone's connected to the shoulderbone. The shoulderbone's connected to the elbow bone, etc.

In conventional serves and ground strokes, there is a pause between backward and forward rotations, and this builds "gather" and control-- of toss, of mechanics, of longitudinal forces.

Here, in the Brouder chowder, you've got to wing your toss. As hips rotate back? As they rotate forward? Somewhere in there since there is no other choice!

Again, I present a pitch while recommending that no one buy. (Ideas are free!) Note the pitcher video halfway down, to see how angulation might best work in this contraption.

http://optimumtennis.net/tennis-serve-lesson.htm

Certainly, there's no big somersault forward at work to spoil some rotorded server's upwardness of accelerative runway. (What somersault there is goes
more to the side to get head out of the way?)

This is just a thought. For better or worse, I myself am using a variety of service motions right now, questing rather than indulging in league play.

[gzhpcu]

phil you are still on vacation
in italy no less
you lucky guy
you should be romancing your wife more and ipoding it less

True, but I do it when she is shopping...

[llll]

phil you are still on vacation
in italy no less
you lucky guy
you should be romancing your wife more and ipoding it less

[gzhpcu]

Am accessing the forum via iPhone... should be back towards the end of the week... patience Larry... Appreciate your suggestion...

[llll]

Will have to wait a bit, am currently on vacation in Italy, and don't have my video camera...

just a bump
phil lets see your overhead
while you are at it lets see your throw to the 3rd deck at yankee stadium

[gzhpcu]

Will have to wait a bit, am currently on vacation in Italy, and don't have my video camera...

[llll]

phil
take a video of your overhead and check your racquet drop with that
ill tell yoiu why after you tell us (me ) the results
you can pm me if you want