THE PERSONAL BEST ACADEMY
Yesterday I visited a local tennis camp and happened to catch players working on their serve. There were players of all ages and skill levels lined up across 10 courts each taking their turn. Stepping up to the baseline one by one each took their swing and it was fascinating to watch their different styles, results and negative reactions. Too much power, not enough power, hitting in the net and yet there was one common theme that could improve their serve and it was to REDUCE TENSION!
Every one of those students had so much tension in their service motion that it interfered with their productivity and power–but they didn’t realize it.
Most teaching pros in tennis and in golf tell me that tension is their #1 enemy with their students.
Truth is tension is THE number reason for loss of power and productivity in the tennis swing–serve and ground strokes!
Today, I want to offer you the TENSION RATER DRILL. It’s a drill I’ve done in every one of my live, on-court mental game workshops.
It goes like this:
Use a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 = very loose and 10 = very tight.
Next, step up to the service line with this ONE GOAL: to rate the tension level in your arms and shoulders. That’s all! You are not rating the results of the serve (which is what most people do such as, “I liked that one” or “that was horrible–it was 2 feet wide!”). No rating of the results…got it?
Next, hit your serve and IMMEDIATELY GIVE YOURSELF A NUMBER FROM 1 TO 10. Don’t over think it. Don’t analyze it. Don’t over anything it. Just say the number that pops in your mind.
Now your mind is focused only on your tension and you become much more aware of how and where your tension is causing you to lose power and productivity in your serve.
Next: once you’ve hit one serve and rated it (let’s say a “6″) then you take another ball and purposely relax your arm/shoulder and hit another one, then rate that.
The general idea is to
1. Become aware of your muscle tension
2. Consciously shift your tension from high to low as you proceed hitting up to 10 balls in a series.
You might be amazed at what you discover and how much more power and productivity you can get from your serve!
To your best tennis,
David
Yesterday I visited a local tennis camp and happened to catch players working on their serve. There were players of all ages and skill levels lined up across 10 courts each taking their turn. Stepping up to the baseline one by one each took their swing and it was fascinating to watch their different styles, results and negative reactions. Too much power, not enough power, hitting in the net and yet there was one common theme that could improve their serve and it was to REDUCE TENSION!