More Videos Coming Soon!
Feel free to send suggestions!
Tennis Lessons / Serve / Step 3
Knee Bend
How To :
1. Weight starts on front foot and the heel of your back foot is up.
2. Rock weight onto back foot, get the toes of your front foot up.
3. Rock weight forward and bend knees so that you are on your toes / balls of your feet. Your weight will continue to come forward into the court, but you want to time it so you reach maximum knee bend when your weight is equal on each foot.
Figure 1: Weight transfer
From my stance, I rock my weight onto my front foot and my back heel comes up. That is the position I am in at the beginning of the animation above. If you want to pause here for a moment and bounce the tennis ball a few times, that’s fine as long as your arms reset. Now, I rock my weight onto my back foot and my front toes come up. Finally, as I transfer my weight back forward, I time it so that I reach maximum knee bend when my weight is equally distributed on each foot.
You may have noticed that not all professional tennis players rock their weight forward and back and forward again like I just recommended. Some, for example, start with their weight on their back foot at the beginning of their service motions (such as Pete Sampras). That’s fine. Rocking your weight forward, then back, is somewhat stylistic. I like to teach it, however, because it helps people develop rhythm.
Another thing that may have caught your eye regarding how pros move their weight early in their service motions is that virtually all of them have their weight on their back foot at some point. The reason pros do this is because they want to create forward momentum into the court. You want to do it as well. That momentum adds a little extra juice to the serve.
Common Errors:
Forgetting about your heels and toes.
Make sure you get your heel / toes up when you are shifting your weight around. This makes it much easier to remain balanced and get the best push-off.
Not keeping the weight transfer smooth.
Part of the reason, as I mentioned above, that you rock your weight forward and back is to develop rhythm. It’s hard to do this if your weight transfer is jerky.
Not staying balanced.
You should be able to stop yourself at any point in this motion and be balanced. Balance, at this juncture and later in the serve, is critical.
Sign up for our free weekly newsletter
Each week, we bring you EXCLUSIVE video instruction that you won't find anywhere else. Fill in your name and email address. It's easy, it's FREE, and we promise we WON'T misuse your info in any way!
Join the coolest tennis social network on the web!
