Tennis intruction and video lessons

When you first pick up a tennis racket and serve, your natural instinct is to hold it just like a frying-pan (with a Western grip) and hit what I call the pancake service (zero pronation)..

And that is exactly how not to serve in tennis!

The reason why you can not pronate with that kind of grip is because the range of motion in the wrist is limited to 90-degree. When using the proper grip (the continental or the Eastern grip) your range of motion will get up to 270 degrees.

So, what is pronation and why use it on the tennis serve?

To put it simply it is the rotation of the forearm (wrist and hand) on its own axis. This is allowed by two bones we have in our forearm, that are called “cubitus and radius” which turn over each other in the pronation movement.

But let’s not get too technical and just look at the video below:

If you are using the Continental grip or an Eastern forehand grip for the first time it seems that you are going to hit the ball with the edge of the racket instead of the strings.

Since your forearm and wrist must turn (rotate) as you can see in the tennis video a flat racket face is presented to the ball instead of the edge of the racket.

At first it may seem hard to you, but just try it. You will hit the edge of the racket frame a few times. After a while you will start hitting the centre of the strings.

The momentum created by pronating the racket head at contact continues in the follow-through, as we see in this slow motion video of Roger Federer of the Switzerland.

Observe plenty of excellent video in this interactive tennis video tutorial that walks you through each phase of the serve...e.g. the ball toss, the service stand, the contact spins, the leg work, the upper-body rotation.

For a detailed lesson on how to develop a solid tennis service go to:

How to Master the Tennis Service

Tennis Tips for the pronation: If you choke your racket above the grip, hold it with the frying-pan (with a Western grip) and try to pronate, you will notice that the butt of the racket grip will hit your forearm.
On the other hand if you try the same with a continental grip (the correct grip), the racket butt will not touch your forearm.

This choked version of your racket hold can be used as an exercise to toss and hit a few balls to hone the pronation movement before you hit the service with a full length racket.

Post a comment on this page letting me know if you are improving your pronation and then send me a video of your serve I will personally look for more ways to help you improve it.

Have fun improving your tennis.

Sergio Cruz

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Related Tennis Service and Serve Spins Tennis Instruction

Here are other tennis video lessons:

Ana Ivanovic - Tennis Service  

Federer - Sampras Tennis Service Compare   

Alicia Molik - Kick Topspin Service  

Pete Sampras - Tennis Service

Maria Sharapova - Tennis service 

Roger Federer - Tennis Slice service   

John McEnroe Tennis Service   

Roger Federer - Service

Andy Roddick - Tennis Serve Leg Action   

Yannick Noah - Tennis Service Pronation  

What is Pronation in the Tennis Service and Why Use it?  

Yannick Noah - Tennis Serve  

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