Interactive Forum December 2017: Cici Bellis Serve

[arturohernandez]

It would be interesting to see if there Is a way to formulate subject demographic information of prior throwing experience. My intuitive observations over the years seemed to sense a correlation between similar sport throwing experience like baseball throw or volleyball serve and the tennis serve. But, current research for a correlation is mixed.

I agree. I think that learning to throw and specifically the motion to create a spiral on an American football is the key. Volleyball is also interesting if we think of the spike motion and the serve motion.

All of these are easier because there is no racket.

Then we simply add a racket but the throw motion is already there and can be readily incorporated.

[vanderhaygm]

Player who made a major change

I had one player who listened to me and did the work I asked him to do. Greg was going into his senior year of high school and was already a tournament player albeit not a very good one. He had the problem with the dropped elbow on the backswing that comes partly from trying to get into the "backscratch" early in his development. It's very hard to correct and is part of Cici's problem.

I told Greg that he was going to have to hit 100 to 150 baskets of serves with deliberate practice to have a chance to correct this. Not only did he hit those serves, he used the "Hiccup Drill" to help to correct the faulty position. What you want is a straight line from left shoulder to right elbow in the trophy position before you drop the racket and really start to go up. This showed up really well in the video of Rafa working with Oscar Boras in the summer before he won his first US Open.

Anyway, Greg did the work and even used the Hiccup Drill in match play for a couple of months to change the habit and he was able to make the change. The later video shows he still needed a lot more Internal Shoulder Rotation (maybe another 90 degrees of racket face rotation), but he had no chance of ever develping that out of the previous position.

Comparison video of Greg

https://youtu.be/MvWCc4dQN9k

The Stances for these drills and the "Hiccup"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NCiPeTzdw4

The Oscar Boras and Rafael Nadal serve lesson. I've forgotten the name of Magicone who is doing the narration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyNEC3gXHL8

don

That's very impressive. Great work

[don_budge]

Yeah and Federer was a soccer player...

I throw right handed and play tennis left handed. When I began playing tennis at 14 I had been playing baseball and basketball for years...right handed. At first I was switching the racquet from my left hand to my right hand to hit only forehands. But when my coach went to show me how to serve for some reason I wanted to serve left handed. Trust me...I had (have for my age) a great serve. But I cannot really throw left handed. I suppose if I practiced I could. Conversely I was a pretty darned good pitcher and played all of the positions in baseball. A lot of catching...the catcher. But I cannot serve right handed...although if I practiced I probably could.

Obviously there are some similarities in the motion, but to learn a good service motion one is not dependent upon the other. Not necessarily.