Tennis - The ball toss

Tennis - The ball toss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvm6PJ3pLbY&list=PLVOspl3tsfno90Lz3nYOzg5jlizltmfF_&index=5

Learning about the ball toss is really going to help the serve. The serve is all about the ball toss. We all struggle with the ball toss at one time or another. But really, that is the center of the serve. If we can perfect our ball toss, we can improve our serve right away.

So lets try and break down everything, every detail about the ball toss. Lets get some insights on how to improve the ball toss and ultimately, the serve.

What if we could place the ball perfectly every time - whether we try to or not, the ball is at the perfect height, in the perfect location, and the perfect timing, every single time, what would happen to the serve? What would happen is, the serve would improve right away, and the serve just would get better and better and better.

So use this as motivation to really work on your ball placement.

Lets go through a lot of different skill development ideas that are going to help us give us some knowledge, and then some drills to help practice the ball placement. And it’s going to really lead us towards serving better right away.

How to hold the ball?

There’s a couple of different ways to hold the ball.

There’s a palm up style and then there’s a palm side style.

The palm up is probably more common. We see that more often in recreational tennis where we have the palm facing the sky. The benefit to this is, it just feels comfortable and sort of natural in a way. The idea here is that all five fingers are holding the ball. Make sure that if you in a palm up you’re holding the ball on the pads of your fingers. We don’t want the ball in the palm. We don’t want the ball on the tips. We want to find that balance where it’s being controlled by all five fingers on the pads, the last section of the fingers. Palm is up. We want to make this movement from the shoulder and then we want to release the ball up, and release and go. Now the problem or the challenge with this style is, it tends to allow you to hinge at the elbow or the wrists. So we often times see players who will be flipping the wrists or they’ll come up and they’ll stall, and they’ll flip at the elbow. And both of those are a little bit extreme. Any subtle movement or any subtle hinging in the middle of this rise of the arm will definitely influence your accuracy on the toss.

So for me, I prefer the palm side. Think about holding an ice cream or a cup. And we are holding it in palm side style. We have got the palm on the side, the thumb on the side. And this time we are really not holding with all five fingers. We are kind of holding with three fingers. And when we come up to release the ball, and the fingers just expand away from the ball, and the ball tends to float out of the hand very smoothly. And this type of release and movement pattern tends to have the ball spin less. So if you’re a palm up, more often the ball is going to be rolling off of your hand. This way, if you just open your fingers, it takes the spin away, and it really purifies the release of the ball and controls it. So I’m definitely an advocate or in favor of having the palm side style. But again it’s up to you. You got to practice it and see what is more comfortable for you.

Develop the tempo to control the ball placement

Next up we’re going to work on how to enter into your serve with the right tempo so that you can control your ball toss and then also how that contributes to how you actually raise the arm and control the ball.

We see this with different styles from different players. If we look back at say Andy Rodic he had a very rapid you know movement here and that really led to a very rapid entrance into a serve. Other players have a very methodical slow movement here. What I’m really trying to establish here is the tempo that I’m naturally comfortable with. And I’m pretty slow here. I don’t like to go fast and abrupt. I like to go slow. And then when I’m ready to go, I reset here. I make sure that the ball is in my hand with the same feel I want to have when I release it. So sometimes we see players that will be holding the ball in sort of an awkward way and then they have to find the comfortable position on the ball while they’re raising the arm, and then they can’t control it. So for me I do my routine, nice easy tempo, reset, and when I put the ball, for me, inside the throat of the racket, I’m holding exactly the same way that I want to hold it when I separate the hands away and I place the ball up. So there’s no awkward or weird manipulation things going on during that phase.

Develop a meaningful routine to establish your tempo.

The key here is do a routine that’s meaningful that establishes the tempo and the speed of your entrance into the serve. As an example, from a side view, my speed here as I move into the routine is designed to match the speed here. See that so that helps me get the feel of how I enter my serve with tempo and feel and Rhythm. And that’s really really important to your Ball Toss control.

What is your body doing while the tossing arm is rising?

The next key element to controlling your ball toss is what your body is going to be doing while the tosing arm is rising.

Weight slightly back during the tossing phase.

If you watch almost every professional player, after they do their preserve routine, they will shift their weight back and put their heel down and the heel will stay down during the tossing phase.

And what’s really happening here is there’s just a little bit of a weight shift back to counterbalance the energy that’s in the rising arm in front of you. That’s really really important. When your tossing arm is rising before the ball leaves your hand, you should stay as still as possible. If we’re active in this phase here, clearly we’re going to lose control of the ball. So if you watch most servers, they’re here and they’ll come back and they’ll stay dead still to let the ball go. And that will give you consistency in your body position, your movement with your left arm is isolated. Everything else is quiet and still. And that’s going to help you with your ball placement. Another key part to this you might have seen as well is that when I’m releasing the ball, and this kind of goes back to Old School coaching and teaching tennis, and teaching the serve, in particular one of the most common phrases was “arms down together up together”. But, that’s very disruptive for a lot of reasons and it doesn’t help your ball placement either. So if you watch most high performance players now, they have the idea that they’re going to place the ball first and swing the racket second. And you’ll see more players with the racket down in this area somewhere in here when the ball’s leaving, and then they’ll bring it up to get in position to serve.

Isolate your tossing arm with weight slightly back

So when you’re when you’re doing your your movement here you want to isolate your tossing arm with your weight slightly back, just like this and leave this alone. The tossing arm will go up in front and the swinging arm racket arm will go up naturally because it has to - you don’t even have to think about that.

Angle of the tossing arm

next up is the all important angle that your tossing arm Rises as it releases the ball. so I’m going to get set up in my position to serve here, good and sideways to my target.

Extend out over my front foot = approximately 45 degree angle

And for me, I like my tossing arm to extend right out over my toe - so it’s on a 45° angle from the Baseline. this angle does a couple things for me. it keeps me in a really good alignment it helps me rotate my shoulders away from my Target and get me into a good strong coil. and it allows me to place the ball virtually almost straight up. so I don’t have to see a ball that’s floating around or coming back to me. most players WTA ATP 45° angle.

occasionally a player will go 90° like Roger Federer. now Roger Federer’s arm went out over the Baseline and came back and what happened was his ball arked back to him. and as it arked back to him he had to actually he actually had to measure when to time it it was a very tricky thing but actually it was very much an advantage but it’s a very difficult thing to try and do. it’s much easier to measure up on a ball that’s descending straight down than one that is floating across on an arc. so I would be careful about that.

There are a couple things you don’t want to do.

1. you don’t want your tossing arm going straight towards your Target because that’s not going to initiate any shoulder turn. and that occurrence probably happens if you have a forehand grip which is a different topic. but we don’t want to be facing our Target and we don’t want to be tossing forward.
2. the other one that I don’t like that’s a kind of an extreme the other direction is the is the J toss. the J toss does not allow you to get into a good trophy position. so what happens a j toss is where your tossing arm comes back and it goes let’s imagine this is the Baseline here, it’s going to go back beyond the Baseline and create this sort of a j, or this hooking effect. and when you see players do this most of the time to get the hand to go back they’ll drop the left shoulder down and they’ll be like this. and this is the opposite of a trophy position. so when you when you raise the arm properly, the way I like to do it in the modern way, and you lift it first it angles you the other way into your 45° angle here. When you do a j toss, it tends to make you do this. So I would steer away from the J toss. I would go for the 45° angle right here because it it blends together all these combinations of things that you you want to achieve on your ball toss.

Where should we release the ball from the hand?

so now that we’ve established how we want to hold the ball and the tempo we want to have when we’re placing the ball up the angle, now we’re going to identify exactly where the ball should be released from your hand. and for the most part for most players that’s going to be near or approximately at the top of the head. some players will toss a little bit lower for various reasons depending on their style. some a little bit later. but in general, the top of your head is going to be a good point of reference for where you want to release the ball. so when you’re placing the ball up, you don’t want to just be guessing. you want to know exactly where you want to let it go. and then you want to use something special to help you with that skill.

so you’ll see most players will do this Roger Federer does this. Novak jokovic does this. most of the players are doing this but it happens so quickly you don’t quite see it. but they do their routine they take one last look at the at the court, and then they shift into their serve, and then their eyes shift to the point of release, and their eyes wait right here, until we see the ball. so you shift back your eyes shift from the court to the point of release wait to see the ball and there it is. so my eyes are helping me to release the ball in the right area. when I see that see the ball get there, my fingers open up away, here we are again, there it is again, I release it and there she goes. so I use my eyes to really help me release the ball in the right area. so that combination of tempo, angle, balance, point of release, all those factors are going to lead you to placing the ball in the ideal location which we’re going to get to a little bit later.

Create a smooth tossing action

next up we’re going to take all these elements and we’re going to try to apply them to a very very smooth lift and release of the ball. so you know when you watch good servers, it’s it almost looks like the ball floats out of their hand, because it does. it floats out of the hand. so what we want to do is we want to create this Tempo and we want to make sure that this is a smooth movement. and what I mean by smooth is that the speed that I need to get to the ball, the height I want is a very gradual speed. it’s not abrupt, it’s not quick. It’s smooth. and then when I release the ball, of course the ball and the hand are moving at almost the exact same speed, so it looks like the ball just floats out of the hand. very very important that you have this sort of lofty feel that you have enough momentum to lift it and loft it up. and it just looks like it floats away from the hand with total control.

what I don’t want you to think about is tossing it. I want you to think about placing it. tossing hey toss me the ball. it’s kind of like a throw. think more like a delicate placement. and the speed the tempo the release point the way the fingers expand away from the ball all those contribute to a nice floaty ball placement that becomes more and more consistent. and controlling the toss is all about controlling the tossing shoulder. so very important that the entire tossing movement comes from the shoulder. and then after you release the ball, you want to control the arm in the shoulder. often times we’ll see we’ll see players that’ll toss the ball and they’ll not have control of the shoulder and the arm will just go flicking. it’ll go flying away. but after I release, I just want my hand to sit right under the ball, right there. perfect. so when I release it the ball’s gone I don’t need to increase my speed and throw my hand. I use this I get the speed I need to the point of release and then the hand stays right under the ball. and that will help you quite a bit. we don’t want the shoulder to be out of control or flipping. we want it to be in control all the way to the end until you’re reaching up underneath the ball.

The ball toss height

next up is the controversial but all important Ball Toss height. and of course there’s a lot of different styles and a number of different theories about Ball Toss height. and we’re going to go through that here and we’re going to try to maybe help you identify what would be the ideal height for you. before we get started I will say that I’m more of an advocate of getting the ball a little higher because I think you need time to do the things we need going to do on the serve. I think having a low toss is a little more complicated. now there are coaches and theories that say that the low toss is easier to place. maybe if it’s lower to your hand and I think that’s there’s some truth to that. and there’s also the theory that there’s more time to hit the ball, because theoretically I guess the ball stops at the top, but it really doesn’t. but it’s certainly moving slower than a ball that’s a little bit higher. but my argument is is that as tennis players we hit balls that are in motion all the time we get more and more skilled at it. so if your toss is in a is consistent height even if it’s a little bit above your contact point, it’s pretty easy to time. you’re going to catch on to that pretty quickly. low ball tosses. problem I have with low ball tosses is that if I’m going to toss the ball low I have to commit to my swing before I even toss the ball so I can hit it. so it really makes it difficult for you to really even know if your Ball Toss is in the right area or not before you’re committing to your swing. the other challenge you have with a low toss is then when we get nervous and we’re playing matches, our toss tend to get lower. so if you are if you’re trying to hit the ball right at the peak of your reach at the Apex, when you’re nervous, it’s probably going to come down and it’s going to weaken your serve. so it really doesn’t help you to have a low toss in terms of being able to control the height of the contact point, and also the tempo of your swing. argument for low Ball Toss - is you don’t have time to think. you toss the ball you go through your motion, it’s continuous motion, and in some cases it’s very natural. if we look at Players like Nick curios, it really works for him. but he’s the exception. he’s not the rule on tour so he’s got his own unique style and he’s amazingly skilled athlete. but for most players, we need to get the ball up in the air, measure it go through a full range of motion, and then play it. and I think you need that time, you need that time to get loaded into your balance, see that the ball’s in the right area, just measure onto it, and then go get it and time it. and again if your Ball Toss is a consistent height, then your timing is going to get dialed in, even if your ball placement is higher than your contact point. so I’m definitely in favor of a higher Ball Toss. you need to experiment with that and find out what your style is. but I would initially start by getting the ball up a little higher, and I’m going to show you a drill now that’ll help you with that.

so I like to use the fence as a reference for Ball Toss height. and I’m almost 6 ft tall and this fence is 12 feet high. so if you look at it initially it looks like it’s really quite high. but if I come up to the fence here and I get set up, my distance is comfortable so that I can raise my tossing arm and not hit the fence, and I place the ball up, I’m almost getting up to the fence there, and there it is. now does that ball look too high? the top of the fence? or does it look like it’s just perfect for me to attack? so it’s kind of an optical illusion. when you look at the fence it looks like it’s a mile high. but when you get over here and you start working on the toss you realize that 12 ft really isn’t that high. it’s not like the ball is diving fast at that point. it’s actually floating down to me. so I would use this as a point of reference and depending on your height, and depending on your tempo of your swing, and your serving style, you definitely got to get it over this windscreen. I don’t see how you can do a low toss and be consistent. that’s kind of really difficult to do. I don’t know how you can hit that ball at the Apex like that and and be consistent with your serve, and get through the range of motion with a with a nice balance, loading the legs and a spring up, get all those Elements into your serve and get to the top. I don’t think you could do that with a toss that you’re trying to play at the Apex for most players. so use the fence as your point of reference and your guideline for working on your your height. and that’s going to help you figure out where you need to be. then come up to the Baseline. take that height that you’ve practiced there that you feel come up to the Baseline and start practicing your serve with that height.

The right area - the contact point

now that we have reviewed all these different features of the ball placement and the different skills you want to develop the ultimate goal is to place the ball in the right area. so where is the right area for most serves and this is a little bit controversial as well. but in modern serving in modern tennis ideally we’re trying to get that contact so it’s between the shoulder and the ear, right in here. we want to get in this area where the arm is literally straight up from the shoulder and the contact is inside. now if you’re outside the shoulder you can slice the ball. but you can’t get the same level of power because you can’t use your long axis rotation that you can right through the top. so if you look at most high performance servers in today’s game they’re placing the ball inside and they’re coming up the racket is slightly inside the hand right here and the shoulders rotating through on the flat serve, even the slice serve. they’re coming in they’re attacking the ball right inside and going through it. if you’re going to if you’re going to hit a Top Spin serve the ball could be a little bit more to the left for a right-handed player. but I want that variation to be so subtle that it doesn’t look so obvious to your opponent who’s receiving your serve. and as you get more and more skillful, you’ll be able to start to get different effects on the ball without drastic changes in your ball placement. so from a front view, we’re looking right inside the shoulder here right inside the shoulder. and from a side view we want to be on a slight angle inside here and coming into the contact. so we want to be in front. you can notice also my head’s in front of my shoulder. we don’t want to be this way. I go through all that later in a different subject matter. but here’s my contact. racket is literally above my hand and I’m in this position leaning in. so that’s where your contact point is that you’re trying to get to, and that’s what you’re trying to use all these different skills to achieve is a consistent ball that’s right in that place at the same height every single time.

Identify a good toss from a poor toss.

If you’re like most tennis players you’re probably guilty of swinging and tosses that you shouldn’t even play and that happens so frequently. and what I want to show you now is how you can identify a good placement from a poor placement and then choose to not play the ball at all. and that’s another reason why I like to have a little bit more time in lead with the left hand. so that when I do my my serve and it get set up here and I’m ready to serve and I place the ball up and I get it up in the air a little bit, right here, I can say yes or no. because either the ball’s in an area I can see that’s nearby my hand or it’s not. I use my hand right here as a marker for Ball Toss accuracy. and that one was perfect. so if you if you if you really quick here you don’t even have time to think about that you’re just hitting the ball. you could be chasing the ball all over the place. but if you get the ball up a little higher and stretch that left arm up which helps you get into a good strong position, you can tell right away whether the ball’s playable or not.

Drills to improve ball placement

and next up we’re I’m going to take you through a series of different practice exercises to help you tie all of this together and improve your ball placement right away.

and the first thing I want you to do is just practice setting up and doing a routine where you get your tempo right so the ball keeps coming back to your hand. you’re controlling it back to your hand here. and then you can reset your hands, shift to your back foot and just stay dead still, and practice the skill of raising your tossing arm while everything else is still. and your eyes are just sitting there waiting for the ball to get there. and this is really useful because it’s building the muscle and getting the coordination in the tossing muscle here from your shoulder. and what I do is I hold the weight of my arm in here. I don’t go up and then release it so it helps me build that muscle up. and you can do this here. 1 2 3 4 come here again and then go 5. so you can really relate the practice of the ball placement with the movement that you were making. that’s going to help you immediately right away.

and you can take this to the next step where you actually do your routine, set up, do your ball placement and freeze. and either the ball’s going to come back to your hand or it’s not. if it doesn’t come back to my hand, I’m going to sit in my balance until I hear the ball bounce. so this one’s not going to come back to my hand. I know I’m working on my ball placement and my balance together. and you can do this every 10 seconds. so if you spend 5 minutes a day doing this, you can do this 30 times in 5 minutes. and if you do it for 30 days you’ve done it 900 times. so with the information you’ve got in this lesson today combined with this practice drill, you would think that after 30 days you start to feel pretty confident that you know how to place that ball up and get it to come right back into that area it needs to come into virtually every single time.

Take these concepts of the court and really work on your ball placement and improve your serve.