Did you ever watch Boris Becker serve? He didn’t move his feet all that much but he did stick his big butt out there before pushing off to unleash a brutally hard serve. Look at Andy Roddick also. Again, not much foot movement but he sticks his butt out, bends his knees and launches the fastest serve ever recorded. We all know we should bend our knees when we serve but many of us take our butt out of the serve.

I don’t know about you but my butt is one of my biggest attributes and I’m sure it’s good for something so try this instead. As you bend your knees during the serve, stick your butt out. In Alexander Technique we call this the monkey. You use the monkey position all day long, every time you sit down in a chair you get into the monkey position. The muscles in your butt and legs are some of the biggest and strongest in your body so use them to increase the power in your serve.

Do you actually see your racket hit the ball when you serve or do you move your head forward thus taking your eye off the ball and blindly wish it into the other court like most of us? One of the reasons this happens is that we think we should move forward in space and so we bend our head forward. The way it should work is that our head and spine should be moving up towards the ball to allow our spine to extend and give maximum freedom and power to our arms and legs. Think about your head moving up next time you serve and see if it helps you keep your eye on the ball.

Practice and Competition Report: played in the league today, one set of doubles and one set of singles: 6-1, 6-1.
Solutions Analysis: it helps a lot to aim for the baseline and beyond during practice and warmup – my groundstrokes are getting deeper.
Success Analysis: I beat someone I should beat.