In today’s blog we are going to give you five tips that are going to improve your serve.
Tip #1 – Use Your Whole Body. Not Just Your Arm.
A lot of beginner players, and even intermediate players, just use their arm or their wrist when serving. None of the other big muscles in the body are being used.
You could probably get a consistent serve like that but you’re not going to maximize your full potential on that serve, especially when you start learning different serves like the topspin serve.
Instead, what we want you to do is make sure that you are using all the muscles in your kinetic chain, from your legs to your core, and then rotating your body to your arm.
All your muscles should be working together so that you can hit a good, consistent, strong serve.
Tip #2 – Learn and Master a Closed Or Semi-Open Stance Before Using a Fully Open Stance
A lot of players use an open stance when serving. This is not necessarily the wrong way to serve but it’s not the preferred way, especially when you become more advanced.
Instead of the open stance, we want you in a closed stance.
In an open stance your chest is parallel to the net whereas in a closed stance your shoulder is now facing the net. It’s even okay if you do a semi-open stance which is the mid way between the two stances described above.
This way, you can really swing through the ball and it’s easy to rotate your body through the serve.
Tip #3 – Loose Shoulder, Arm & Grip Leads to Smooth Swing. Tension Is The Enemy of Power.
The third tip we have for you is to have a very smooth, low to high motion, swing path.
A lot of people don’t have any racket experience or they haven’t played past racket sports, so they’ll be really tense and tight in their grip.
By doing this you can see their motion is really jerky which leads to a tense serve that could tend to be inconsistent. What you want to do is loosen up your grip a little bit and then have a smooth swinging motion.
You actually should hit through the ball. It should be as if you were hitting through three balls instead of just hitting through one.
Start low and then come up around your body to your shoulder. By doing so it’s not a tight whip action. It’s a super smooth low to high swing.
Tip #4 – Don’t REACH back. Simply Turn Your Shoulders & That Will Get Your Paddle Most of The Way There.
The fourth tip we have for you is to not have a very big looping back swing. Don’t take your paddle way back when you’re serving.
Set yourself up in a closed stance or semi open stance and put your paddle by your hip. This is really where you’re going to get all the power that you will need.
Then, you’re just going to serve low to high, hitting through the ball, and ending up over your left shoulder.
Tip #5 – Reach Out & Just Drop It
The fifth tip today is the toss. However, it’s not really a toss, it’s actually just a drop.
A lot of beginners actually try to hit it right out of their hand which is really hard and awkward. Trying it hit it like that is actually unnecessary and it makes it harder.
The most consistent way is to hold the ball in front of you, around hip level, and as you start to initiate your swing, you’re going to drop the ball at the same time. This should be one smooth motion.