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

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Pronation in the Tennis Serve.

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.

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