• Home
• Forums
• About Us
• Blog
• Contact
• Links

Tennis Lessons / Serve / Step 8

Follow Through

This step occurs from / following your point of contact.

How To :

1. Follow through so that the top of your racket points straight down.

2. All the weight ends up on your front foot.

3. Once the racket is pointed straight down, bring it around to the other side of your body.

4. RELAX.

Figure 1: Following through

From my contact point, I follow through so that my racket points straight down at the court. Notice that my forearm and wrist continue to pronate — it doesn't stop at contact. I also have all the weight on my front foot. Now, I jump when I serve. If you do the same, you have to land on your front foot. Once I have the racket pointed straight down, I bring it around to the other side of my body to complete the motion.

You can see that I look relatively relaxed during my follow through. Relaxing allows your body to smoothly decelerate. Don't use your muscles to force your body to stop moving. That could throw off the stuff going on before you hit (if your muscles start to slow you down too early), or worse, lead to injury.

You may be wondering why I haven't mentioned what my back foot is doing. As you can see, it kicks up. I will briefly mention, although it is beyond the scope of this article, that you use the back leg to push your body around — that is, rotate towards the net — as well as up and into the court. The back leg "follows through" by kicking up because of how it pushed off earlier in the shot. If you don't jump when you serve, your leg won't kick like this. And to be honest, in terms of the follow through, it's one of the last things you want to focus on. If you instead relax during your follow through, your legs should take care of themselves.

Common Errors:

Stopping your arm and the racket too early.

This probably means you are using muscles to stop the racket. In other words, you are slowing the racket down before you hit. Or you might not be swinging hard enough, meaning the racket stops naturally pretty soon after contact.

Not finishing with the weight on your front foot.

This means you are not getting your body weight behind the serve. Having all the weight on your front foot means that you are moving into the court — you are getting into the tennis ball.

Back to Step 7 «