Power Serve
To have a powerful serve your racket head needs to be moving as fast as you can to the ball, which puts the ball in motion. You also get boosts of power from other sources to increase your racket velocity and power. Bending your knees, putting the racket over your shoulder, rotating your shoulder, and snapping your wrist all help add power to your serve. Your whole body, not just your arm is used to create a powerful serve. Being balanced when serving and having good timing when hitting the ball in the air also helps create a more powerful serve.
The ball toss is also really important in getting a powerful serve in. Don't throw the ball too far forward, too far behind, or too far to the side from your body because you will lose balance when trying to serve. A good ball toss is a high, confident toss made 1-2 feet inside the baseline because it allows you to spring upward and forward into the court, and that allows you to make contact with the ball 1.5 times your height. So, if you were 6 feet tall, you would make contact with the ball 9 feet off the ground since 6*1.5=9. |
A loosened up serving arm helps create a more powerful serve. Your arm allows your legs, shoulders, and torso (the accelerators) to accelerate your arm without your arm resisting the accelerators. Having a tightened serving arm could actually make you lose power instead of gaining power because your tightened up arm is resisting the accelerators.
Leg drive is crucial for a powerful serve. It is the foundation of the kinetic chain in tennis. The kinetic chain in tennis is when the parts of the body act in a system of chain links. The energy or force created in one link is transferred to the next link. The kinetic chain starts with the leg drive and ends with the snapping of the wrist. Leg drive is the base for a high speed trunk and upper arm rotations. In a powerful serve, you want your shoulder to reach a position of maximum internal rotation. Leg drive helps with that. Vertical linear momentum is when you drive your body upwards and go forward to the ball. Bending your knees to push up off the ground help you drive your body upwards and go forward to the ball, and it also creates ground reaction forces. (Force exerted by the ground on a body in contact with it) Vertical linear momentum help create a faster moving racket which helps create a more powerful and faster serve. |
Velocity of the Serve
Velocity is the speed of something in a given direction. The velocity of the serve is created by how fast the racket is able to accelerate to the ball, and how energy is transferred to the ball. As your racket comes in contact with the ball, having a forceful internal rotation of your shoulder helps create a bigger racket velocity in your serve. Forceful internal rotation of your shoulder is when your back shoulder at the start of your serve rotates forward at the end of your serve. It helps you move your racket faster. Racket technology has a greater impact of the velocity of the serve. Today's rackets have a greater energy transfer to the ball, which increases the velocity of the serve. Back then, the racket flexed (bend) back and forth when players hit the ball with their racket, and energy was wasted in the flexing of the racket. Now, rackets don't flex very much, so more energy is transferred to the ball.
The serve speed decreases after the server hits the ball. Air resistance and friction on the court surface reduce the speed to about half the speed when the returner is about to hit the ball. The fuzz on the ball also decreases the serve speed after the server hits the ball. The fuzzier the ball, the more friction it experiences and the slower it travels.