HOW ELSE CAN WE USE THIS INFORMATION?

This information is not only extremely useful for those looking to improve their tennis serve, but also for those looking from a coaching perspective. The information in this blog is beneficial to tennis players and coaches at every stage of learning. A beginner can familiarise themselves with the serve by breaking it down into different parts, an intermediate player can practice through isolating an aspect of their serve and repeating it until they feel competent, and an elite player can fine tune their serve.

This information is also useful to those sports with similar throw-like movement patterns or bat swings. In sports such as baseball and softball, batters use a similar kinetic chain. The movement starts in the lower body, legs and hips, and is then progressed through the shoulders and arms, and finalised with a wrist rotation. While these four sports have completely different ball contact techniques, the overall throw-like movement principal is used to maximise power, speed, distance, accuracy and potentially the result of the game.

Figure 6. A baseball batter completes their swing using a throw-like movement pattern. This is similar to that of tennis server in the body parts that are used and the way that rotation of the body occurs. (Image credit: The Baseball Mechanic)