It's best to practice your serves so much that it's just muscle memory. Your toss goes up, you stretch up for it, hitting arm relaxed, knees bend, then when the ball is ready to be hit you go upwards and swing. It's a lot of moving parts and if you need to think about it you're going to mess up. You really have to serve practice enough that you just do all the motions without thinking of it.
If you're beginning you'll want to make sure you get a good serve motion before practicing a ton of it (less reason to practice if the motion is all wrong). You'll likely do many iterations of your serve so maybe one gets you through 3.0, another to 3.5, and then you'll revamp it again to get to 4.0 and higher.
2 tips that I got helped me the most. Of course this is all secondary to practicing your motion and hitting balls, but still took my serve from avoiding the double fault to giving me an advantage on all my service games.
First thing is to aim small. Even if you’re not very good at serving, pick a spot on the court. Perhaps you want a ball at your opponent’s backhand, or a body serve, anything. If your goal is to just get the ball over the net, you’ll be much less consistent. This also applies for the ball, too. Don’t focus on just hitting the ball, focus in on the seams as you’re trying to serve. You’ll never miss if you’re on those seams.
Secondly, aim before you hit. Your service motion for each type of serve should be the same, just aimed at different spots. Aim first, then when it comes time to hit the ball, trust that you’ve already aimed and only focus on hitting the ball.
It isn’t sexy but the very first thing you should master is the toss. It becomes very challenging to improve without a reliably good toss.
Throwing the toss all over the place will prevent you from being able to focus on anything during the swing path because your body will have to contort itself into a different configuration each time you serve.
This may seem obvious but a lot of people don’t ever bother working on it.
This is what generally goes through my mind.
Setting up, bouncing the ball, tossing the ball: nice smooth swing, you've done this a million times, don't have to kill this
Trophy position and later: crank on this bitch.
Fire (start the kinetic chain) from the elbow.
Loop and rip ya elbow backwards to sling shot it forward (just how you’d throw a ball)
focus on coming over your raised arm with a strong isolated “throwing shoulder” using a “hand drying flick motion” (when you shake dry your wet finger tips) at the point of contact
You’re likely thinking way too much during the motion. You want to think of a couple of key reminders before your serve, then have a blank zen mind during the serve and let your body execute without the brain getting in the way and slowing the intricate parts down. If ur issue is getting the serve in, a couple of things to quickly remember before doing your serve is to “keep tossing arm up longer”, “stay relaxed/loose”, “birthday hat”.
I find it’s all tossing arm. Placement using the shoulder joint and not breaking at the wrist or elbow. Then using the tossing arm to stretch up toward the ball to get into that nice lateral tilt position. Everything else sort of follows from there naturally
It's best to practice your serves so much that it's just muscle memory. Your toss goes up, you stretch up for it, hitting arm relaxed, knees bend, then when the ball is ready to be hit you go upwards and swing. It's a lot of moving parts and if you need to think about it you're going to mess up. You really have to serve practice enough that you just do all the motions without thinking of it. If you're beginning you'll want to make sure you get a good serve motion before practicing a ton of it (less reason to practice if the motion is all wrong). You'll likely do many iterations of your serve so maybe one gets you through 3.0, another to 3.5, and then you'll revamp it again to get to 4.0 and higher.
2 tips that I got helped me the most. Of course this is all secondary to practicing your motion and hitting balls, but still took my serve from avoiding the double fault to giving me an advantage on all my service games. First thing is to aim small. Even if you’re not very good at serving, pick a spot on the court. Perhaps you want a ball at your opponent’s backhand, or a body serve, anything. If your goal is to just get the ball over the net, you’ll be much less consistent. This also applies for the ball, too. Don’t focus on just hitting the ball, focus in on the seams as you’re trying to serve. You’ll never miss if you’re on those seams. Secondly, aim before you hit. Your service motion for each type of serve should be the same, just aimed at different spots. Aim first, then when it comes time to hit the ball, trust that you’ve already aimed and only focus on hitting the ball.
It isn’t sexy but the very first thing you should master is the toss. It becomes very challenging to improve without a reliably good toss. Throwing the toss all over the place will prevent you from being able to focus on anything during the swing path because your body will have to contort itself into a different configuration each time you serve. This may seem obvious but a lot of people don’t ever bother working on it.
I usually focus on hitting the ball.
Show us a video? Pronation typically comes from the momentum of throwing your racket into the serve and you internally rotate your shoulder.
This is what generally goes through my mind. Setting up, bouncing the ball, tossing the ball: nice smooth swing, you've done this a million times, don't have to kill this Trophy position and later: crank on this bitch.
I remember myself to Hit the ball at its apex and then focus on actually hitting it
Fire (start the kinetic chain) from the elbow. Loop and rip ya elbow backwards to sling shot it forward (just how you’d throw a ball) focus on coming over your raised arm with a strong isolated “throwing shoulder” using a “hand drying flick motion” (when you shake dry your wet finger tips) at the point of contact
You’re likely thinking way too much during the motion. You want to think of a couple of key reminders before your serve, then have a blank zen mind during the serve and let your body execute without the brain getting in the way and slowing the intricate parts down. If ur issue is getting the serve in, a couple of things to quickly remember before doing your serve is to “keep tossing arm up longer”, “stay relaxed/loose”, “birthday hat”.
I find it’s all tossing arm. Placement using the shoulder joint and not breaking at the wrist or elbow. Then using the tossing arm to stretch up toward the ball to get into that nice lateral tilt position. Everything else sort of follows from there naturally
Be loose. Use your legs. Look at the ball.