Fix Your Tennis Serve Faster | Paul Lefiti’s Biomechanical Serve Secrets

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]We're going to get into the next phase, which is a structural component for Mia's windup.

[00:00:05]In our motion capture analysis, we could see that Mia was getting a wedge. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to help her understand where her sagittal plane reference is for spatial orientation, and then we're going to start building this windup to help her stabilize that elbow. Okay? All right, so go ahead, Mia, and get into your split where you normally do, like right when you toss. I'm sorry, go into your normal motion, and then toss the ball and then freeze right after you release the ball. Freeze.

[00:00:30]Okay.

[00:00:31]Now, typically here on camera, you're usually here at a 4/4 split. Go ahead and bring that arm all all the way up.

[00:00:37]Okay, now from here, what you do is you do a great job at supinating here.

[00:00:40]But then as you're coming up, this starts to buckle in.

[00:00:43]Do you see that? So, what we want to do is we want to divide the sagittal plane here, okay? So, essentially right here, if I were to divide your body in half, okay, this is your sagittal plane field.

[00:00:54]You want to do You want to basically as you draw this racket up, you can stay supinated.

[00:01:00]You want to be able to draw the racket up, and you want to bisect that sagittal field. And the reason why you want to try to get better at this is because just by focusing on the alignment to this field here, it will naturally stabilize this elbow.

[00:01:13]If you try to maintain full supination and you go here without trying to align it, you have to really work on just keeping the elbow up, which makes it a little bit harder versus just adjusting the path of your swing. But it's your serve, but you can choose, but this elbow has to stay up until those legs fire. Does that make sense? So, when you think about this, do you think it's easier for you to stabilize the elbow from a supinated position, or draw the racket in towards that sagittal plane field in a supinated position so that you can stabilize this elbow? Which one seems more um path-wise?

[00:01:47]What do you think?

[00:01:49]The sagittal one? Okay. All right, so let me just show you an easy way to do this. Can I borrow your racket for a second? Okay. So, you stand right behind me here.

[00:01:58]So, I'm I'm going to give you this stick, okay? And what you're going to do is just all you're going to do is hold the stick so it's about a foot up above the head, okay? All you're going to do is get into your normal lag that you already have. It's a great lag. And then from here you're just going to draw up.

[00:02:10]You're still supinated. You're just going to make sure that the racket head bisects that line. You just have to tap it. Bring it back and then come up and just tap it cuz right now you're here and it just dives down, right? So, I'm going to have you do that two or three times and then we're going to move the stick, give you a ball, and then we're going to test it. Does that make sense?

[00:02:27]So, you go and stand here. You take the stick.

[00:02:29]Okay? Now, go ahead and put it right in front of your head so it's about a There There you go. Perfect. Go Go ahead and get your grip and get into your lag.

[00:02:37]Now, from here on on your own. I'll guide the first one up.

[00:02:40]You're going to bring it up. Now, look up top so you can see it. You want to feel like it just tags right up here. Do you see that? Right somewhere there.

[00:02:47]Okay, now you practice that on your own.

[00:02:49]Ready? Go. Draw it up.

[00:02:51]Keep going. Do it like two more times to to train the nervous system, yeah?

[00:02:56]You feel that? Now, on a real service it's going to go right through that field. This is not going to be there, okay? Let's do one more.

[00:03:04]Okay, now when you do that this will this will stabilize on on its own. Now, I'm just going to move this.

[00:03:10]Okay, now you just simulate. Pretend it's still there. Go ahead and hold the racket down. Get your stabilizer up.

[00:03:15]Left arm all the way up. There you go.

[00:03:17]Hold. Okay, now pretend this is right there and now go ahead and shadow swing.

[00:03:20]Go ahead. Bring the racket up. Hold right there. Yeah, don't move. I'm sorry. I said shadow. That was my bad.

[00:03:25]Go Go to the point where you feel like the stick is there. There you go. And so, if you notice just by a focusing on on this sagittal plane alignment if you have trouble with your elbow falling down, this is just a great way to stabilize the elbow here, okay? All right. So, now that we're going to go live here, I'm going to have a couple of balls.

[00:03:44]Here we go. Take that. So, go back into your ready position. And all I want you to do is this now. I just want you to go down up and do a shadow swing two times where you feel like you're aligning to that sagittal plane.

[00:03:57]Go ahead.

[00:03:59]Slowly, real slow.

[00:04:01]Yep, right there. Good. One more time.

[00:04:07]Be as literal as you can about that spatial field, okay?

[00:04:11]Action.

[00:04:13]You feel that crossover? Yeah, there you go. All right, ready? Here we go. Now, let's try it.

[00:04:18]Now, when you do this, you can you don't have to do full model. You can pretend like you're just warming up and do a couple where you're just tossing and bringing the racket across that space, okay? So, do a couple where you're not using your pinpoint. You're just going to be stationary.

[00:04:31]Yeah, you can start from your leg.

[00:04:34]See if you can draw it in.

[00:04:37]Okay, now what you'll notice here until her her nervous system is fully trained, you'll see her drop down because she'll trigger some of those old triggers.

[00:04:51]So, if that starts to happen to help her retrain this, is if she's starting from 75% scale, we'd want to get her to start actually at about 25% scale to get used to it, then back her up to 50, and then build that in. So, what I want you to do next is start from 25% scale, so you're already almost presetting the alignment.

[00:05:10]See that's a hole right there?

[00:05:11]We'll have a ball.

[00:05:13]Okay, now try to isolate that. Now, remember, right as you toss, this is just going to go right over that plane.

[00:05:17]>> Yes.

[00:05:17]>> Okay, 25% scale, ready? Action. Bring it across, bring it across. That's the idea. Good, let's try it again.

[00:05:26]25% scale, good. Feel that elbow position.

[00:05:30]Bring it right over the top.

[00:05:31]That's better. And then what you'll notice when we if we start measuring it, you'll start to see that this elbow position will start to minimize a little bit. If you're still seeing a little bit of break occur, that's simply because the legs haven't fired and and and she's manually doing this. So, so you will see a little bit of a breakdown, but this is how how you would develop this. Okay?

[00:05:52]All right, ready? Here we go. A couple more.

[00:05:56]All right, 25% scale abduction.

[00:05:59]There you go. Isolate.

[00:06:01]Bring it right over a clock. Bring it over and then around. That's okay. There you go. Last one.

[00:06:08]25% scale.

[00:06:11]Isolate.

[00:06:13]It's okay.

[00:06:14]Does that make sense? Now, I'm going to do one final one and I'm going to stabilize her.

[00:06:18]Go ahead.

[00:06:20]Action.

[00:06:24]That felt weird, right?

[00:06:26]Okay. Let's do one more for good measure.

[00:06:29]Okay.

[00:06:30]Action.

[00:06:33]There you go.

[00:06:35]All right, and last one on your own.

[00:06:37]Pretend I'm right there. I'll I'll just leave this there just for feeling and then I'll move it right as you begin to toss, okay?

[00:06:43]Ready? Action.

[00:06:44]Hold. That's better.

[00:06:51]Because now you've gone from a full 100% wedge to now maybe like 60% and we can get that up to your perfect. So, you're right at 90° of abduction. Okay?

[00:07:03]All right.