Shownotes
- The basic techniques of a Tennis serve
- How to launch a perfect throw
- Importance of Palm Down
- How Chicken Wing can be one of your key tools in taking you body into the perfect position for service
- Yeo’s approach to design serves uniquely to suit players ability, specially, if they hail from other sports backgrounds.
- Understand how a simple childhood game of Catch can improve serving skills in tennis serve in future.
Transcripts
[Music]
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Speaker:Justin Yo, today 10 minutes of tennis. Justin is our world-renowned tennis coach,
Speaker:Australian in Puerto Rico. And right now, he's not in Puerto Rico, looks like he's in a car.
Speaker:But today, we're going to talk about the serve.
Speaker:And you say you've got some easy tricks.
Speaker:Or is it tricks for an easy serve?
Speaker:Or is it easy tricks for a better serve?
Speaker:What are the tricks easy?
Speaker:Or is this something that's going to make my serve easy?
Speaker:Where are we going with this, Justin?
Speaker:Wow, that's, yeah, you said it.
Speaker:It's a lot of questions for 10 minutes of swear on the serve.
Speaker:But the serve, probably the easiest trick in the world is,
Speaker:I've had, I've probably had two things that have really
Speaker:based my career on teaching serves.
Speaker:And that is just teaching people how to throw.
Speaker:Learning how to use the palm down.
Speaker:Learning how to use the two fingers on the ball,
Speaker:because that tends to be where you snap on the racket.
Speaker:Learning how to use left and right arm together as a combination.
Speaker:Learning how to rotate your hips, because you're driving your serve as your back hip.
Speaker:It's not necessary, you shoulder.
Speaker:Yeah, and then teaching a female how to serve like a female in a male,
Speaker:serve like a male, that's another whole 10 minutes of tennis on a tone.
Speaker:Deal, I already have that.
Speaker:Yeah, well, people don't understand this, and this is where it goes wrong even on the tool level.
Speaker:If you try to teach a female to serve like a male, it just can't happen for the reason that
Speaker:a male uses his torso and rotates a lot from there.
Speaker:A female tends to use her legs more because she's about two-third legs.
Speaker:And so she drives a lot from her legs, the men drive a lot from their torso.
Speaker:And so you have to teach to serve differently for that reason.
Speaker:That's why we see a lot of females with a more modified style looking serve.
Speaker:And you see the guys with a bigger, bigger wind up.
Speaker:Females has been proven over the last, I don't know, at least 20 years,
Speaker:that majority of their issues, they usually tear abdominals or shoulder joint because they are
Speaker:serving like a male and winding up too far and not using enough legs.
Speaker:So there's a lot of factors that need to go right when teaching a serve
Speaker:for male and female, but I would say the biggest thing of all is teaching them how to throw.
Speaker:The amount of people even male and female.
Speaker:So as a trick, and I'm going to say, all right, I'm going to ask for one to three tricks and say,
Speaker:okay, there's one trick. Throwing gets me that snapping thing. Is it the elbow back?
Speaker:What about the throw? And that maybe again, is it's only, it's only 10 minutes or 10 minutes.
Speaker:But the throw, all the things, the components with that, it's the snap of the wrist,
Speaker:but it's also the elbow back versus the elbow forward like the baby throw.
Speaker:Right. Usually easiest way is to teach slight rotation.
Speaker:Because when you rotate, you generate from the hip so you're already learning that,
Speaker:you're already learning the internal muscles of internal rotation around the core.
Speaker:But what that does is it tends to break away from the elbow leading this way, because as you turn,
Speaker:you start to generate a decent throw. But it is amazing how many people that struggle to throw,
Speaker:that obviously then struggle to serve. So I've taught a lot of, especially females,
Speaker:how to serve correctly just by teaching them how to throw. And utilize the left and the right.
Speaker:A lot of people struggle to use both together. It's a coordination thing that they, you know.
Speaker:Obviously junior development, every kid should be learning how to throw, even the little girls,
Speaker:especially throwing is, you learn weight transfer, you learn angular rotation of the upper body,
Speaker:you learn linear movement between the legs, you learn rhythm around the whole body,
Speaker:you're learning all the mechanics coming together to generate the pace on the ball. So there's a lot of
Speaker:factors that happen from the age of young, from learning how to throw and palm down. I mean, palm
Speaker:down is the absolute. If I was going to say if there's nothing that's a trick, but a fundamental that
Speaker:has to happen is palm down. Okay. Tell me about palm down. Well palm down, you're using, when you go to
Speaker:throw, you're using your mechanics correctly, you're using your pack, use your shoulder, and then
Speaker:everything joins forces to let go. If you don't have palm down, the first thing you're going to do is
Speaker:lose the pack, and you use your shoulder joint incorrectly, you also can't use the shoulder,
Speaker:tend to be external rotation because you're already, you're already up. See? So palm down allows the
Speaker:external rotation of the shoulder as well, which is where you generate a lot as well. So there's a lot of
Speaker:factor. The leader tree thing with everybody can be perfect. Yeah, yeah, the bartender serve. Yep,
Speaker:you get rid of that. But the palm down is definitely probably the number one thing that you want to
Speaker:make sure every, every child or every person is learning to throw. They have to learn from here and
Speaker:learn what it feels like to get all the mechanics to go together. And that's probably the biggest trick.
Speaker:You know, obviously then when you're teaching to throw, you want to throw towards the sky versus
Speaker:throw down towards the net because they're in a tennis serve. You're going this way. You're not going down.
Speaker:But overall, once they learn how to throw and probably another one is the chicken wings. If they
Speaker:learn how to get the chicken wings going, they tend to learn how to get the elbow there and get the
Speaker:other arm going at the same time. So that's an easy way to get both arms going as well.
Speaker:Well, in the chicken wing, you have to use as a good thing on the serve because we always say that's
Speaker:a bad thing on the forehand, right? Yeah, well, it's not that bad on the forehand though because
Speaker:on the forehand, it all depends on the wind up. You know, if you haven't got time, then you don't
Speaker:want to have that big chicken wing. But you've got time. Yes, it's been a very effective way of
Speaker:wind up on the forehand. But yes, on the serve, the chicken wing is hard to express in the car, but
Speaker:the whole concept is to get both arms going at the same time so that you get into a position where
Speaker:one elbow is one way and then the other chicken wings there, but really it's an extension doing a full length.
Speaker:Okay, so what we have to do one on court with this is a follow up. It makes me think there you go.
Speaker:There you go. You've said also that you've taught some former volleyball players and some former
Speaker:baseball players. I think that's a nice incoming client, so to speak. Like if you've done some
Speaker:previous sporting, maybe quarter back obviously, but if you've done some previous sporting and you've
Speaker:done some catch and throw, you're serve. I've seen this in my career as well. You see that one adult
Speaker:that just has the serve that seems to work better than the rest of them. You can always ask and
Speaker:every single time they've played some sort of sport where they were throwing as a kid.
Speaker:Yeah, well, we haven't got enough time for that one because that's we can do a quick intro, but that's
Speaker:what I call mind mapping and we've talked about this before. We're basically the person already has
Speaker:a short throwing action, which means really you should be designing a short serve versus a long
Speaker:serve. I learned very quickly in a I met a baseball recruiter going from US to Australia on the
Speaker:plane one time and that was over 20 years ago and he was explaining to me that he recruited people by
Speaker:the way they threw for the position on the field and what that made me realize is if you look at someone's
Speaker:throw, see what's already mechanically automatic for them and then you build the serve around that.
Speaker:That is a lot smarter way of doing things than trying to build everybody with the same serve.
Speaker:It just doesn't work. It does naturally, exactly. Correct. Correct. And so I have a volleyball player
Speaker:right now. She was a very high level volleyball player just started learning tennis and we built her
Speaker:server in a volleyball serve and she crushes it. As you say, let me guess her serve is the best thing
Speaker:about her game. It is definitely her best thing about a game. It's our word and she just and we don't
Speaker:have to work on it because she just I built it around her volleyball serve. We just released the ball.
Speaker:Her elbow is too high, but it's where she's used to being. It's where she's easy to just let go and serve.
Speaker:And it's effective. She can place it anywhere she wants and that's all she needs on a serve.
Speaker:So, and the greatest thing about the volleyball service, she doesn't like overfollow through at the
Speaker:end and not being prepared for the next ball. So it's really to her advantage to just use what she
Speaker:knows that she's done a million times and that makes it really effective serve. I love it. So my my tricks,
Speaker:I've got calm down. Yep, and that is part of the throw or do I also need to just go play catch with
Speaker:my kids and that's going to help my serve anything else for 100% playing catches the best thing you
Speaker:could do and it's giving you time when you kid at the same time playing catch and family time. That's
Speaker:fantastic. Absolutely, but throwing throwing is the biggest trick with palm down if it was you know
Speaker:without going into all the other thousands of things that we can do. Yep, and it really does help.
Speaker:Obviously serving towards a target too is a good trick because it teaches them to let go towards
Speaker:something because that's eventually what's going to control the racket face. So there's another trick.
Speaker:I like it. A bonus trick. Justin, yo Australian in Tampa, usually in Puerto Rico. I appreciate it.
Speaker:Thanks, mate. We'll talk soon. Well, there you have it. We want to thank Rejovenate.com for
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