Kick serves require an acute angle of attack, toss and rotation of the body – these elements create significant torque that may be difficult to generate.
Effective servers use rear lateral shoulder and pelvis tilt to store energy for ball acceleration during the loading phase of their serve.
Biomechanics
Biomechanics is the study of human movement and forces applied to it, as analyzed through engineering, physics and biological sciences. This multi-disciplinary field draws upon engineering, physics and biology disciplines in its pursuit to understand how our bodies move; which forces are involved; fatigue or injury effects may alter them and how this impacts us; ultimately it has application in sports medicine, occupational health and rehabilitation settings as well as cardiovascular biomechanics (heart, cell) as well as movement biomechanics for orthopedic sports biomechanics (ortho and sport biomechanics).
Simply stated, a powerful tennis kick serve involves hitting the ball slightly behind and over your left shoulder if you are right-handed player. To ensure maximum power during this attack, maintain good lower back posture with straight legs while leaning slightly forward at knees to create momentum necessary to generate topspin on the ball.
Common to this style of serve is early upper body rotation, opening up the shoulder plane and impeding a swing path that would produce an effective kick serve. Furthermore, to generate enough spin for this style of serve it must also be executed much more rapidly than normal.
Because of this risk, many coaches hesitate to teach the serve in today’s litigious society; some even require students to sign a legal release before agreeing to teach this move!
Notably, this type of service requires considerable practice on the front court to perfect. This is due to how your body must adapt to rotating in a new way and learning to use new muscles such as shoulders, chest and upper back muscles in this movement. As with any exercise regiment, more practice equals improved performance!
Utilizing proper technique during all movements can significantly lower risk of injury and improve performance, as using correct technique will allow a player to move with greater efficiency without straining themselves physically or psychologically. A baseball pitcher who utilizes proper throwing mechanics will be able to throw further with less strain on arm and tissues around elbow area.
Grip
An effective tennis kick serve relies on its player being able to produce high levels of topspin. This amount of spin can be determined by two factors – impact velocity and angle from original position when struck – both which can be affected by grip style choice; among them there are two general approaches; one using rotating approach from below or linear from above as main concepts for grip selection.
One way a player can create more topspin on a kick serve is to increase both its velocity at impact and height of its impact on the ball, both achieved by shifting their hand forward from its natural position; and loosening their grip to allow their hand to rotate faster at impact.
Rotation and tilt of the racquet head at impact are directly proportional to how much topspin is created, with an increase in topspin coming from moving closer towards centerline or by changing tossing technique.
Some players opt to serve down the line to increase the degree of concealment on their first serve. This technique requires using an alternative throwing motion with more center approach; mastery of such serve may prove challenging given how easy it can be spotted by opponents.
Kick serves with heavy topspin are important, but high bounce is more crucial for their success. A ball with lots of topspin still needs a fast pace across the baseline in order for it to hit home quickly.
One of the biggest mistakes beginners make in trying to hit powerful kick serves is applying too much spin, which can actually decrease racquet head speed at impact and thus lessen topspin generated.
Rotation
An issue with kick serves is when players don’t use enough rotation in their hips and shoulders, causing their racquet to remain too far forward while hitting the ball, leading to too much topspin being generated from its impact and thus difficult control. As such, most players only opt for kick serves if they need additional speed or angles on their serves.
Rotational requirements for an effective kick serve may not seem excessive at first, yet still represent significant shoulder and hip rotational effort. There are various methods available to players looking to increase shoulder and hip angulation – stretching and strengthening exercises can help immensely as can adding kick serves into their regular practice schedules.
As players rotate, their arm should also move across and around their body in a crossstroke motion to help build power for hitting an effective kick serve. In addition, as it swings across their body it should remain close to them in order to reduce elbow coming up as it might with flat or slice serves.
Normal service involves both sidespin and topspin being added, due to the ball being tilted away from verticality. But with kick serves, players only need one type of spin as the axis is already tilted in that direction.
For an effective kick serve, the server must keep their arm straight when engaging the ball – this makes an effective warm-up program with stretching and strengthening exercises essential.
Players typically employ various serving styles depending on their style of play and strategy for a match. A fast, flat serve may be used to set up an offensive rally; while long high kick serves can penetrate deeper into an opponent’s court. No matter the style chosen, however, its mechanics remain constant; thus it is essential that one understands how each factor affects the final result of their serve.
Follow Through
On a typical kick serve, the ball has both sidespin and topspin when crossing the baseline, the former of which causes it to rise while its latter causes it to drop. These effects are determined by where the racquet head was when striking the ball; their amount determined by whether A or V approaches from side or vertical respectively (Figure 1). These factors combine to give a high sidespin ratio and relatively limited topspin compared with other serves.
Figure 13 depicts this process physicsily: high speed serves can reach shoulder height when they hit the court surface, depending on whether they were served down the center or baseline, while slower flat serves tend to settle around waist height when hitting.
Spin is created through the velocity of a racquet at contact. For an effective kick serve, this requires moving upward at an accelerated pace – this is difficult as its path must change quickly between upright position and downward trajectory – this makes generating spin more complex than expected!
To generate such fast velocity, the racquet must first be charged with energy before being struck. To accomplish this feat, players must arch their back and bend at their knees in preparation to strike the ball – an action that requires considerable muscle effort in maintaining correct posture while producing enough force to strike the ball with enough speed.
To maximize power, it is critical that one minimize the pauses between phases of movement. Even short pauses reduce efficiency as they allow elastic energy stored up before striking the racquet to dissipate before making contact with it again.
Idealistically, the racquet head should strike the ball with its spin axis in its normal location as shown in Figure 1 for right-handed players. A slight tilting of the racquet head may also increase sidespin production.