Tennis Kick Serve Progressions Step 1 Swing a
Subtitles: 
| Dubbing: N/A
The first step in the kick serve progressions is to learn how to swing up at the tennis ball correctly Now, in the kick serve fundamentals section of the website we said that you needed to swing up AND across the tennis ball generate both top spin and side spin But we didn't go into much detail about exactly what direction you were swinging.
Well, behind me here we've got a tennis ball we're gonna pretend that this tennis ball is a clock assuming that you are right handed when you hit a kick serve, what you wanna do is swing from approximately 7 o'clock to 1 o'clock across the tennis ball maybe 8 o'clock to 2 o'clock, what you're trying to do is swing on a diagonal across the ball, again that generates the side spin and the top spin Another way to think about it is to take a tennis ball hold it out in front of you like I'm doing and again, visualize that clock around the ball you wanna go from 7 o'cklock to 1 o'clock, brush up across the back of the ball when you're hitting a kick serve.
Now, if you're left handed like I am it's a little bit different You're gonna be swinging instead from 5 o'clock to 11 o'clock maybe 4 o'clock to 10 o'clock. But again, same concept applies What you're trying to do is swing on a diagonal generate side spin and top spin.
Now that we've got a firm understanding of exactly what direction you wanna swing up and across the tennis ball we can start shadowing the motion Now, when you start shadowing one of the keys is to hold the tennis racket with an acceptable serving grip, continental, maybe eastern backhand (?), something in that range but you wanna choke up on the racket handle.
I'm holding it at the top and that's what you wanna do because that lets you really control the tennis racket and figure out how to pronate properly when you're first learning how to hit a kick serve.
So, what you wanna do like I've done here behind me is I'm standing up at the service line and I've got my racket and my hitting arm in the "L" position and I'm just gonna shadow the swing again since I'm a lefty I'm gonna try and swing from approximately 5 to 11 I'm gonna swing up, I'm gonna pronate and I'm going to freeze like I've done here because I need to make sure that I'm pronating correctly.
If we zoom in on this motion a little bit you'll see that when I pronate the handle of my tennis racket is off to the side of my forearm and that's key, that ensures that you pronate properly.
For comparison sake, this is what incorrect pronation looks like I pronate and now the handle runs straight into my forearm That's NOT what you want, again, you need to pronate so that the handle goes off to the side of your forearm and for all you righties out there we're gonna put on a mirroring effect on my motion and now you can see what it should look like if you're right handed.
Again, the handle is off to the side of the forearm once you swing up and pronate, and that's what you're looking for that guarantees that you've pronated correctly.
Once you've mastered the shadowing now you can actually try and hit the tennis ball.
When you're trying to hit a kick serve you attack the ball with the side of your frame so sometimes I like to have my students actually just frame the ball when they are first trying to learn this motion.
That's what I'm doing here behind me I'm swining up and I'm just framing the ball, you can see it's flying off to the side but again, that gets me in the habit of swinging up and attacking the ball with the edge of the frame so if you want to you can try and do this Now, when you actually hit the ball you're gonna freeze right after you pronate just like we did in the shadowing motion and you wanna make sure you're not hitting the ball hard at all; You're really just trying to work the technique So, if we watch me hit a couple serves I'm not hitting them very hard, I'm getting some spin on the ball I don't really care where it's going I'm just trying to make sure I've used the correct mechanics and then I freeze like I'm doing right here right after I make contact with the tennis ball and again, this ensures that I've pronated and swung properly and it allows me to learn how to do this motion correctly.
