 Hey guys and welcome back, my name is Ashley Neves and I run the tennis mentor, Instagram account and YouTube channel, sharing content to help tennis players, tennis parents and tennis coaches to get more out of the sport. If you've seen any of my videos before and you think that some of my future videos will help you out then consider subscribing to the channel and hit the notification bell so that you're alerted when I post more content. In this video I'm going to be helping you improve the most important shot in the game of tennis, the serve and in particular the ball toss, which in my opinion is one of the most important elements of the serve and sometimes can be the most challenging. In reality the serve should be one of the easiest shots in tennis because of the fact that you are in control of the ball before you hit it. Whereas every other shot in the game of tennis your opponent is dictating how the ball travels towards you making like more challenging. However we know how tricky the serve can be. There are lots of body pass involved in the serve and a complicated kinetic chain to get everything working correctly. If you can place the ball into the same position on every single ball then it's going to make your life much easier when hitting the serve. You could almost picture it like playing golf. When you play golf the ball is static it's on the floor it's still so you can focus on the technique and how you want to execute the shot. If you can place the ball up into the same spot every time then theoretically you should be able to repeat the same technique and get the same outcome at the other end. However there are a lot of variables when it comes to throwing the ball up and getting it into the right place. If you have an inconsistent ball toss then you're constantly having to adjust your technique to make up for it. Professional tennis players are able to repeat the same serve over and over again they're able to hit with power accuracy spin all of these different things because they're able to put the ball exactly where they want it to be. So let's take a look at how we can make your serve better by improving your ball toss. So the first thing that you need to consider when thinking about your ball toss is where you want it to go. In particular it's height and its dimension. When it comes to the height of your ball toss it really does depend on you as a tennis player. It depends on your height and it depends on the timing of your serve. Some people's service action is slightly slower than others. Some have a slightly bigger backswing which takes a little bit longer so the height of your ball toss will impact on your timing as well. But just a couple of basic things to consider. When the ball is traveling upwards on the ball toss it moves at a speed to get to its peak and for a very short amount of time the ball will nearly stop at the top and as it starts to drop it increases in speed on the way back down. So the closer to the peak you can make contact with the ball the easier it will be to make a good clean contact. The ball will be traveling a lot slower near the peak than it would be if you make contact with it on the way up or on the way back down. The higher you throw the ball above your contact point the more speed the ball is going to pick up as it's traveling down towards your contact point. Therefore it's much more tricky to get your timing and to get a clean contact on the ball and also with gravity having a stronger effect it's more likely to hit it. On the flip side of this if you have a very low ball toss it can create quite a rushed swing. You don't have as much time to take your racket back behind you and it can limit the amount of power you get. The ideal height for a ball toss is five to ten centimeters above the top of your racket when you're reaching up. So me I'm about five foot ten if I reach my racket up above my head here I want to throw the ball around five to ten centimeters higher than the tip of my racket. That way as the ball reaches its peak my racket can start its swing motion toward the ball and by the time I make contact with the ball it's just starting to drop and I'm able to reach up and make contact with the ball. The reason we aim higher than our racket is because when we're in our full service motion we are extending more than we would if we were static. Strong tennis players use their legs to drive up into the serve so may make contact with the ball slightly off of the ground as well. Now obviously when serving we want to make contact with the ball at our highest point possible so having a higher ball toss can help you to get the most out of it but just be careful that it's not too high so that it's picking up speed on the way back down. If you're looking for a big flat first serve then the higher the point you make contact with the ball the better. You're creating longer levers with your arms as opposed to making contact too low and it being a big pushy and lacking in power. On a second serve however if you're looking to generate spin whether it be slice or top spin then actually you can get away with having a contact point at a slightly lower point because we want your racket to be moving up after you've made contact with the ball so that you can impart some spin on the ball. A flat serve you're going to be going directly through the ball so you don't want the ball to be as low because we want those long levers. Another thing to consider when thinking about the height of your ball toss is the weather conditions and in particular the wind. Now on a windy day I like to throw the ball lower so that the wind doesn't have as much effect on the ball. If you throw the ball up higher on a windy day it can take it out of your position and make it much more difficult for you to serve so if it is windy consider throwing that ball slightly lower than you normally would to take the wind out of the equation. As I mentioned with a lower ball toss it's actually easier to hit with spin so on a windy day you're probably likely to want to hit with spin anyway to increase your margin fecura. When it comes to the direction of your ball toss placement again it depends on how you serve you'll notice that when you watch professional tennis players there are small variances in their ball toss heights and their ball toss direction depending on the way that they like to play. Generally in this video I'm going to talk to you about how you can bring more consistency to your ball toss so we're going to be focusing on a ball toss that will give you the ability to hit different types of serve. Now if you imagine a clock face in front of you you would want your ball toss to travel up to 12 o'clock. Now this way you will be able to hit a flat serve, a slice serve and a topspin serve or from the same ball toss. Now when you watch the professional tennis players play they tend to have a very consistent ball toss because they want to disguise their serve from their opponents. As club players however a slightly different direction to your ball toss can help you to impart different spins onto your serve. However this doesn't help us when it comes to consistency because what we're looking for is practicing the same ball toss over and over again so that you can develop consistency within your serve and so that you can add power and control as well. If you do throw the ball more to one block as a right handed player it can help you to impart more slice onto your serve because naturally you're going to have to come around the ball to make contact with it. On the flip side if you throw the ball more towards 11 o'clock as a right handed player this can actually help you to get more topspin on your serve because you're going to be trying to kick from left to right. As I said though as soon as you make that choice and you throw the ball to one o'clock or 11 o'clock then it gives a sign to your opponent telling them what you're going to do. So if you can throwing the ball at 12 o'clock will help you to keep your serve disguised but also more importantly it will give you more consistency to your toss and a better serve. Another small thing to take into consideration when thinking about the direction of your toss is the weather and in particular the sunshine. Now if the sun is shining brightly in your eyes and serving into the sun changing the position of your ball toss can help you to avoid looking directly into the sunlight. Now if the sun is directly in front of you where we want to throw the ball at 12 o'clock simply throwing the ball slightly more to one o'clock can help you to take your focus away from the sunshine. However as we said it isn't ideal because throwing the ball more to your right helps you with slice serves but it won't give you the ability to hit a kick serve and it makes it quite difficult to hit an accurate flat serve. However if you're really struggling in the sun you may need to consider this. The final element to where your ball toss should be is how far in front of you do you want it to go. Now again there are variables there are variances depending on your style and what your intention is but generally you want your contact point to be in front of your body. That way it makes it much easier for you to get your body weight into the serve as opposed to just forcing it with your arm. On a first serve you may want to a ball toss to be slightly further in front than on a second serve because on a first serve we're looking for a flatter contact generally and more power. So having that ball further in front of you allows you to have more space between your racket and the ball and the back of your swing allow you to generate more racket head speed leading up to contact. Having that ball toss in front of you also allows you to make that trajectory slightly more linear into the service box. If you throw the ball behind you it's much tougher to generate racket speed because your racket is closer to the contact therefore you don't have as much room to generate that racket speed but also it's much harder to get that racket face pointing down into the court. You're going to have open racket face forcing the ball to travel in a higher arm shape. Generally beginners find it easier to throw the ball directly above their head or slightly behind them so that they can push the ball up and over the net. But for advanced players we want to try to get that ball toss further in front. If you're looking to hit a second serve and you're looking for more control or more spin then throwing the ball slightly more above your head as opposed to far in front of you can help you to generate that upward spin motion and slightly more control. You won't be able to get as much power going through the ball but you'll be able to generate racket speed going up the back of the ball to create that spin that upward flight path giving you height and margin over the net. So like the other two concepts of height and direction how far in front of you the ball toss goes depends on your intention and how you like to serve but generally we need to make sure that the ball toss stays in front of your body. So as a rule of thumb we want that ball toss to travel directly up from where you release the ball. We don't want the ball to be traveling backwards or too far forwards we want a nice straight throw up. So the three things to think about when we're thinking about where to throw the ball toss. Number one is make sure that you get it up to a height that's just above how high you can reach. Two we want it to be at 12 o'clock directly in front of us and three we need to make sure that that ball stays at an arms length out in front of our body so that we can get good body weight transfer going into the serve and a good service trajectory. So now that we know where the ball toss needs to go let's take a look at how we do it. So the first way to ensure that your ball toss remains consistent and can travel to where exactly you want it is by minimising the amount of joints that you use within your arm. So a common mistake I see is when people throw the ball up they tend to use their shoulder, their elbow and their wrist to get the ball up above their head. Now using all of these joints adds complexity to the ball toss and adds inconsistency. There's a lot more that can go wrong. It's much easier to accidentally throw the ball behind you or to accidentally release the ball and throw it too far in front of you so minimising the amount of body parts involved can really help you to gain consistency. So generally we want to throw the ball from our shoulder. We want to try to avoid bending our elbow and we want to try to avoid making use of our wrist to release the ball. So placing the ball in your fingertips resting them rather than in your palm can initially stop you from using your wrist so placing them here to push the ball up can make things a lot easier. Starting with a straight arm and avoiding that bent elbow will also help. So what we're looking for from the ball toss is to try to drop the ball toss arm some pro tennis players drop it all the way down to their thigh others don't drop it quite so low but generally most players tend to keep this elbow and wrist straight. So we're looking for a nice straight arm to place the ball up and you can see there that it's much easier for me to place the ball at arms length in front of me without it going too far in front or going back behind my head. As soon as I utilize my elbow then comes a risk of this sort of ball toss happening or the ball rolling out of your fingertips and going too far. So tip number one is to try to throw that ball up with a nice straight arm and palm facing upwards. A really good exercise for practicing this is by simply throwing the ball up without the ball spinning. When watching professional tennis players some of them will spin the ball when they throw the ball up. They can get away with it because they've mastered that ball toss over years and years of practice and even when it spins they get it exactly where they wanted to go. But by simply taking the spin away it will force the ball to travel upwards in a straight line. If the ball is not spinning it would be very difficult for the ball to go too far forwards or too far back because it has to go directly upwards. So when you practice the ball toss try to look to see if the ball is turning in the air. If it's turning a lot then it's going to make for a much riskier ball toss. If you're able to place the ball up and minimize the turns then actually your ball toss is going to become more consistent. Wherever you can when practicing your ball toss it's important to try to incorporate the whole serve action. There are some exercises that isolate the ball toss itself but it can be very tricky when you're bringing the racket back into play because it adds another dynamic. So wherever you can practice the ball toss with the take back and the swing as well to make it more realistic. Another thing to think about when you throw the ball up is which direction your arm is moving. Now this comes down to preference and again if you watch professional tennis players there are many different styles and many different directions in which the ball toss arm travels. Generally you've got the ball toss arm staying directly in front of you. This can make for an easier 12 o'clock ball toss because your arm is moving in that 12 o'clock plane making it easier to keep it straight. If you look at a different ball toss style some players tend to throw the ball at more of a diagonal nearly parallel to the baseline. Now the benefit of this ball toss is that actually it's easier to keep control of the distance in front of you than the ball travels because the ball is going to be traveling in this plane here as opposed to this plane here. There are pros and cons to both types of ball toss so it really comes down to what you prefer but if you don't know and you want to try a basic one I will start off by keeping the ball somewhere in between facing the net and facing down the baseline. This way you'll be able to get the best of both. If you release the ball an arm's length in front of you without it spinning you should be able to keep the ball in front of the baseline allowing you to get body weight going forwards and it should be able to remain somewhere near to 12 o'clock. If you're an established tennis player then you'll already have a style in which you prefer so I would stick to that style and really try to improve the consistency by thinking about where you're placing the ball and how you're doing it. Another thing to think about when throwing the ball up is the point at which you release the ball. Every tennis player releases the ball in between their eyes and the top of their forehead so that's something to think about. It's slightly higher than your shoulder point here. If we release the ball slightly too early then our ball toss will end up further in front than we want it and that can result in you hitting the ball down into the bottom of the net. If you release the ball too late that can result in the ball traveling behind you and therefore making a contact point more here probably forcing the ball to go long unless you put lots of spin on the ball. Releasing the ball at the right point is important. Now it's not easy to tell when you're serving but by simply videoing yourself serve you'll be able to see roughly where you're releasing the ball and if it is slightly wrong it may be something to think about when practicing the next time round. Film from side on, film from behind you as well and from those two angles you'll be able to see all of the elements that we've spoken about. Is your ball toss at the right height? Is your ball toss in front of you and is it at 12 o'clock? If one of those things is wrong consistently then it gives you something to think about. If there's no consistency to it and your ball toss is different every time then practice the little exercises that I mentioned about throwing the ball up without it spinning and really try to minimize the amount of joints that you're using when throwing the ball up. So the next time you manage to get out there to practice your serve have a think about some of those pointers that I just went through. Think about whether your normal ball toss is at the right height and at the right placement and once you know exactly where you want that ball toss to be think about how you're going to get it there but how you're going to get it there consistently. Once you've mastered that ball toss and you're able to put the ball exactly where you want it that's when you can start to develop the other things on your serve like increasing your accuracy and increasing your power. Good luck, let me know how you get on in the comments below and hopefully I'll see you in a video shortly. Take care.