 Hey everyone and welcome to another video. So today I'm going to be talking about why copying professional tennis players techniques isn't always the best idea and what you should be doing instead. We'll be looking at some footage of one of the players that I work with who's recently become a WTA World Ranked Player. We'll be looking at her serve and I'll be talking through some of the things that you should be copying and some of the things that you shouldn't. Let's check it out. Welcome back. If you're new to the channel my name is Ashley Neves and I run this YouTube channel The Tennis Mentor along with the Instagram account providing tennis content for tennis players coaches and parents to get more out of the sport. The reason for this week's topic is from week to week I get lots of players coming to me after watching professionals play on television asking if they can add a certain thing into their game. It might be something like they've seen professional tennis players throw the ball much higher than they do on their serve so they want to copy that. Another example is I've had a player question why we're working on a neutral stance backhand because Serena Williams hits with an open stance. I've even had somebody come onto court changing their serving stance because they've seen how big me lost round it serves and they wanted to see if turning their racket face upwards in the setup could help with that. Now don't get me wrong there are lots and lots of things that you could copy from professional tennis players but it's about understanding what is right for you. There are a couple of reasons why copying the pros isn't the best option. The first one being there are so many different styles and what might be right for Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic might not suit your game style and the way that you play but secondary to that is that these players have trained for the whole of their lives day in day out to develop this style so physically their bodies are prepared for it but also technically they're at the level where they're able to cope with that technique. An example of this is that you'll notice that professional tennis players can afford to have a much bigger swing on their ground strokes. This is purely down to the fact that their timing is impeccable. If you're not hitting the center of your strings every single time on every single shot then actually a slightly smaller swing is going to allow you to time that ball slightly better. Another example is you'll see professional tennis players sliding on hard courts which again is something that's definitely not recommended unless you've trained for this physically for a number of years. Sliding on hard courts can be super risky and dangerous for injuries. Pros are able to do this because they spend hours upon hours of strength and conditioning training their bodies for situations like this and they're moving at such speeds that they require it. The point I'm trying to make is what you see on the pro tour isn't always right for you but also what's right for one professional tennis player isn't right for another. Rather than copying professional tennis players styles try to look at the fundamentals. The one thing that all professional tennis players have in common is that they are exceptional at the basics. Things like early preparation, being balanced through their shot, making a really good contact in front of their body, an explosive recovery step, a consistent ball toss on the serve. All of these things are what sets the professionals apart from lower level players. It's not their style, it's the basics. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to play through some footage of one of the players that I work with, Hannah Smith. She's 18 years old and she's recently got herself a WTA point, ranking her just outside the top 1,000 players in the world. Now one of Hannah's biggest weapons in her game is her serve. It's something that she started developing at the young age of five years old and now she's hitting her serve at around 110 miles per hour. So what we're going to do is look at this footage and I'll break it down into some of the things that you should be copying within your serves, but also talking about some of the things that are Hannah's style and that maybe you shouldn't be copying. So here is Hannah's serve. As I mentioned, her serve is one of her biggest weapons in her game and you can see from this footage that she hits it pretty well. One of the main reasons why her serve is such an asset is that from the young age of five every single session that we had on court we would religiously practice the overarm throw. By the age of nine Hannah was already able to throw a tennis ball from baseline to baseline and by the time she was 11 she was able to clear the back fins. What the overarm throw is amazing for is developing the right mechanics for the serve. It encourages use of the whole body and creates the right technique for using the chopper grip which we'll go on to in a minute. So I'm going to break this down into some of the things that you should be copying and then afterwards we'll talk about some of the things that you shouldn't be copying. There are four key areas that I'm going to go through on Hannah's serve which are the fundamentals for anybody's serve. Number one is the stance, number two is the pre-throw position, number three is the contact point and number four is the finish. Now when we take a look at Hannah's stance you'll notice that her feet hips and shoulders are all sideways on. With her feet they're in a relaxed position around shoulder width apart with her back foot which is her right one slightly behind her left foot. You'll notice that her back foot is pretty much parallel to the baseline and her front foot is pointing slightly more down the court which will allow her to get her leg drive going upwards and forwards. The next thing that you should aim to copy on Hannah's serve is her grip and for pretty much every player on the tour they use the same grip and it's the chopper grip or the continental grip. Now using this grip is vital if you want a decent serve. It allows you to hit every type of spin with the same grip. You can hit big flat serve, slice or a kicker but more importantly it means that you can pronate on your serve allowing your racket head to travel over a bigger distance over a shorter period of time. This allows you to get more racket head speed through your serve. Now although I say this is something that you should copy if you're not already on the chopper grip it might be something that you need to move over to gradually as it will feel quite uncomfortable to do straight away. If you do struggle with the chopper grip I did make a video a while ago and I'll pop the link above here for you to check out. So as she throws the ball up you'll notice that she keeps her arms straight she's not bending her elbow or her wrist. Keeping your arm straight can give you a lot more control over your ball toss and releasing the ball at the right point can also help. You'll notice that Hannah releases the ball just as it passes level with her eyes. Releasing the ball at this height is a commonality amongst all professional tennis players so definitely something that you should aim towards. In this pre-throw position you'll notice that Hannah's non-dominant hand is reaching as high as she possibly can. She's fully extended up to the ball. You'll see that having that left arm up creates a really good shoulder tilt. Her left shoulder is a lot higher than her right shoulder which is going to allow her to get a lot more power on her serve. The shoulder tilt is a great thing to copy if you're looking for power but if you're not at that level and you just want consistency then just focus on your ball toss and keeping your non-dominant hand up for slightly longer than you normally do. This will start to help you with your shoulder tilt without it affecting your consistency too much. What you'll also notice is that because she's using a good chopper grip her palm stays facing down. Now this is an area where lots of people go wrong. What I see a lot of is at the back of players swings their palm facing upwards. The problem with this is that you're going to end up with a pancake serve with no pronation whereas by keeping your palm down at the back of your swing it allows you to make full use of your throwing mechanics. In this pre-throw position even though Hannah's hitting arm is lower than her non-hitting arm you'll see that she still has a decent amount of space under her armpit. If your elbow gets too close to your body you're really restricting your range of movement. The next thing to look at copying is Hannah's contact point. I will go back and talk about how she gets there in a second but we'll skip through to the contact and you'll notice that Hannah is fully extended up to the ball as she hits the ball. Now this is something that you should definitely copy even if you're a player that's not yet getting off the ground with a jump you should try to aim to really extend your arm up to the ball. The higher your contact point is the longer your levers become giving you more power but also it allows you to hit the service box more frequently as your ball is at a higher point over the height of the net. By having a consistent contact point it's really going to allow you to hit the sweet spot more often. There will be a slight variance with your ball toss depending on whether you're aiming for a wide or a T serve or a slice or a topspin serve but ideally you want to make that variance as small as possible so that there's an element of disguise to your opponents. With regards to that contact point you'll also notice that as Hannah hits the ball her body is now facing forwards so she's made full use of her legs to drive her right hit squaring it up to the court which has in turn rotated her torso to face the court as well. This not only allows you to hit with power but it allows you to hit to different parts of the service box as well. The final element to Hannah's serve is her landing and if you're somebody that gets off the ground on your serve this is something else that you should copy. You'll notice that Hannah lands on her left leg with her racket on the left side of her body because of this and because of her body weight transfer going forwards you'll see that her right leg kicks back behind her to counterbalance her body weight. This is a really common position for all professional tennis players as it's your body's natural reaction to keep yourself balanced. The higher you get off the ground and the more explosive your serve is the higher that back leg kick will be. I call it the scorpion kick. I always notice Felix Algar Alasim gets a really high scorpion kick on his serve and again that's because he's super dynamic and he gets quite high off the ground. Now this finished position is something that you should aim to get towards however if you're not jumping as high as Hannah and Felix then start small. Practice with a small jump landing on that left leg and finishing with that right leg behind you and if you want to improve your leg drive it is something that you can do at home doing shadow swings. So things to copy number one is distance being sideways on in a neutral position using a chopper grip. Number two is getting into a good pre-throw position that means having your offhand nice and high creating a good shoulder tilt with your hitting arm slightly lower keep a good space under your armpit to allow for big range of movement and ideally aim to have your palm slightly downwards as opposed to having your palm upwards. Number three aim to make contact as high as you possibly can whether you're jumping up to your serve or whether you're still on the ground and number four finish with your body weight forwards landing on that left leg if you are somebody that jumps into your serve. Now let's take a look in a little bit more detail at some of the things that happen in between these key points. Now if you go right back to the start and look at Hannah's stance you'll notice that as she prepares her serve and she throws the ball up she keeps her feet apart. Now this is called a platform stance. Now a platform stance isn't for everybody and if you look at the players on the tour there are some players that like to have more of a pinpoint stance which is where your back foot slides up to meet your front foot. Hannah actually used to have this stance and she's recently changed over to the platform stance to give her a little bit more stability and to make more use of her back leg driving up and into the court. Now there are pros and cons for both but it's really down to preference so this is something that you don't need to copy from Hannah's serve but to figure out what you prefer. If you have a pinpoint stance and you like to bring that back foot up there are multiple ways you can do this as well. Some players like to slide the back foot up to the front foot, other players like to step it up. Figure out which feels most comfortable for you and obviously take guidance from your coach if they feel that you'd get more from a different type of stance. Another thing you'll notice from Hannah is she gets a really good knee bend as she throws the ball up. Now this is something that can definitely give you a more dynamic serve and give you more power but if you're newer to serving it's not something that you necessarily need to copy straight away. Work on the fundamentals first and if you're consistently getting that serve in then you can start to incorporate a bit more knee bend. Hannah's got a very advanced serve action and is able to time her knee bend perfectly. If a knee bend is something that you do what you can copy from Hannah's serve is the timing of it. You'll notice that as Hannah throws the ball up her knees sink and as the ball starts to drop on her balltoss that's when she drives up to the ball. You'll notice with the timing of Hannah's leg drive is that as soon as she drives her legs up into the serve that's when her racket drop happens. The force of her body moving upwards creates an opposite force of her racket dropping. This is because she's keeping her hitting arm nice and relaxed to allow her to get maximum power on her serve. You'll also notice that because she's using a good chopper grip and she's got good throwing mechanics that when her racket does drop it's dropping with the edge of the racket down rather than the strings. This is a common mistake that I see players make and it links to that initial palm down setup with the serve. So if you can and you're using the right chopper grip focus on getting the palm down at the back of your swing allowing your racket head to drop on edge like Hannah does. As the racket head drives up to the ball you'll see again that it's driving up on edge and it's only just before she makes contact with the ball that the strings open up with her pronation. Soon after she makes contact you'll see that her racket strings are now pointing out to the right hand side. This has now shown full pronation. I didn't teach Hannah the mechanics of pronation it just naturally happened over time through her getting better and better at her over arm throw. If you look at this pronation that Hannah does and that all pro tennis players do and you try to think about it too much it will actually upset the timing the rhythm and your contact point on the serve and you'll actually play a lot worse before you get better. So I would say to improve this element of your game yes it's something that you should be doing but try to do it in a more natural way so that you don't have to think about it so much. Practice lots of throwing and just get out there and hit lots of serves and over time it will improve if you're using the right grip. Now the serve does sound massively complex and I've gone through quite a lot of technical detail already in this video so I'm not going to talk for much longer but if there is a certain element in this serve that you are interested in let me know and I can make a more detailed video on a smaller element. Hopefully your brain's been absorbing this information through the video but what I will say is try not to focus on too many things at once focus on just one element of your serve and make it one of those four fundamental parts as they are going to make the biggest difference to your game. The bits in between come down more to style or will happen naturally if you get the other things right. Let me know in the comments below if there's anything that you found useful from this video and if you enjoyed it hit the thumbs up and consider subscribing to the channel if you haven't done so already. Thanks as always for watching I look forward to seeing you in next week's video take care.