The Beautiful Biomechanics of the Power Serve: Part 1
By Chris Lewit
The tennis serve is an incredible marvel of the human kinetic chain and a beautiful sight to behold when performed well. The serve is generally considered the most important shot in the game by coaches and sport scientists.
The serve is also the most complex and difficult shot in the game to master. Mark Kovacs, a leading biomechanics expert, says that the tennis serve may be the most difficult skill to master in any sport.
Science
Remarkably, the first scientific study of the kinetic chain in nationally ranked players occurred only in 1986, and to this day there is still a relative scarcity of research on tennis serve biomechanics when compared to biomechanics research in other sports like baseball. This article and the one to follow will present some of the important biomechanical and technical details of the power serve to help coaches and players build a beautiful world class serve motion.
According to researchers Kovacs and Todd Ellenbecker, the tennis serve can be described using an eight stage model with 3 phases. I have found this biomechanical model of the serve to be very useful when trying to diagnose and fix serve technique.
The three phases are preparation, acceleration, and follow-through. The eight stages are the following:
1. Start. The start is the beginning stage of the serve movement and includes the grip, stance, and initial arm and leg movements.
2. The Release. The release is the stage of the serve when the ball is being tossed from the hand.
3. Loading. The stage where the body stores a maximal amount of energy. movements.
4. Cocking. In this stage, the energy from the legs is transferred to the upper body and arm. In this stage, the arm is primed to maximally accelerate up to the ball.
5. Acceleration. Acceleration is the explosive release of energy when the racquet moves upwards to strike the ball.
6. Contact This is the stage when the racquet contacts the ball and the related body movements surrounding that contact.
7. Deceleration Deceleration is the stage describing the body movements after impact with the ball to slow down the swing.
8. Finish The finish is the completion of the entire service motion and the body positions related to the end of the serve.
Next month we will go into much more technical detail about every stage as well as identifying permissible ranges of correctness. Stay Tuned!
