Knee Serve Mistakes At The Rec Level

At the recreational level, the serve is definitely the most complex stroke in tennis. There are always so many different elements to think about. One of these is how to bend your knees correctly on the tennis serve. At your local club there are tons of mistakes committed with the knee bend in two ways. Players either mistime their knee bend or they position their knees wrong when they're bending down. Therefore, today we will be discussing what these mistakes are and how to fix them.

Double Knee Bend

Players will assist their toss with their knees, so they will bend down, toss the ball up, and then bend again. The problem with the double knee bend is that you're not going to have a lot of time to load your body correctly. So when you bend to toss the ball up and then bend again, the second knee bend is usually going to be lower and rushed, and you're going to mess up your serve as a result of it.

So, how should you time the knee bend? Well, there's going to be a lot of different styles at the high level. You've got to find a style that's going to suit you best. But what you have to avoid at all costs is bending twice. Some players, like Rafael Nadal, for example, bend the entire time. They will start bent, toss the ball, and then it will remain bent and finally unload on a serve.

Other players, like Serena Williams, will be straight and then bend once that ball has been released. I personally find it uncomfortable to bend while tossing the ball. There's an uncomfortable position to be in, and the vast majority of players will keep their body somewhat upright and initiate the knee bend with the other parts of the body.

These players will release the ball; most players serve with the lag, and then as the racket starts to go up into the trophy phase, that's when that knee bend begins. This is the easiest style to adapt: you're compartmentalizing the non-dominant side with the dominant side.

Wrong Knee Position

The second most common knee bend mistake at the recreational level is the wrong knee position. Some players will stick their knee inside the court like this, and this is how they bend their knees. When you do this, you are harming your serve severely because now you're locking your hip. So, you can't get your hips into the court.

Also, you might be transferring the weight into the court too early, and your body gets inside the court too fast. Often, this will result in a contact that's occurring too far behind the head. Most importantly, when you stick your knee into the court like this, you're going to have a difficult time coiling the body. So you're going to not only lock your hip but you're going to prevent yourself from having the ability to coil your body and turn your chest towards the back fence.

Opposite Directions

A rare occurrence at the recreational level is when players have both of their knees going in opposite directions when they bend. Now, I have seen this, and that's why I'm bringing it up. This is even a worse position to be in because it's going to be very difficult to come out of a position where your knees are going in opposite directions. You're going to be stuck down here; it's going to be very difficult to get vertical momentum on your serve.

It is important for you to understand that players who commit this mistake of sticking their knee into the court usually have a platform stance. Players with a pinpoint stance will naturally pull the back leg up correctly if they have an initial position of the back foot that's parallel to the baseline.

In order to fix this, you have to align your front knee correctly. When we're talking about the tennis serve, the entire body is working in unison. So what happens on top very much has to do with what happens on the bottom portion of the serve. Players with a large coil, meaning that their chest is going to be turned towards the back fence, will usually have a position of the front knee that's parallel to the baseline. This makes sense because the more my knee is turned forward, the less I can naturally coil.

Big Coils

Examples of players with this setup are Federer, Sampras, and many others. What you will see on Federer, for example, is that his front knee is parallel to the baseline; the back knee is parallel to the baseline. He has a separation between his feet in a platform stance, and he has a large coil, meaning that his chest is towards the back fence.

Sampras, on the other hand, had a more extreme coil. So, Sampras would stick his hip into the court, which meant that his back knee would be slightly tilted forward as he got into his loading phase. On the other hand, Federer had his hip more inside the body; he didn't stick it out. In this case, both of Federer's knees were aligned perfectly and parallel to each other.

If you go on the Internet and you search Roger Federer serve, you're going to see a beautiful serve. Both of his knees are aligned and going in the same direction. However, I don’t recommend you to copy this because it's a lot easier to go forward if you slightly lean into the court. Federer does lean; but Sampras, for example, leaned in more severely, and to counteract that more aggressive lean, Sampras would stick his non-dominant hip into the court in this fashion.

The main purpose here is to be more comfortable when leaning forward if it's done in conjunction with a reverse C where players are not only getting the hip into the court but also bending backward. Now, both of these can work really well in conjunction with the player straightening the body violently, and a lot of energy can be created from this movement.

Pinpoint Serves

How about the pinpoint serve? For you guys that don't know the difference between a platform serve and a pinpoint serve: on a platform serve, we're going to have the feet in the same position until they get airborne, while on a pinpoint serve, that back foot is going to come up to the front foot.

Now, how does this matter in regards to how the knees are positioned? Well, it's going to depend on where the player drags the back foot. If it's dragged slightly behind the front foot, the player will have the option of being more parallel because, again, it's going to be more of a turned position with a larger coil. If the player pulls the back foot up directly behind the front, it is going to be more of a neutral position, and the coil has to be manufactured more on top, and it's generally going to be lesser. Interestingly, that front knee is going to go slightly forward.

Interestingly, there are players who drag the foot up to the outside. Here, of course, the body on the bottom is going to be more open; the coil has to be forced. This is something that's very tough to pull off at the recreational level, but interestingly, both knees are going to be pointed slightly forward as a result of it.

Final Thoughts

Sometimes, the front knee will point a bit forward, which can be correct. Think about players with a platform stance that have less of a coil, for example, Novak Djokovic. Well, here, because there's less of a coil, in other words, the chest is not as turned towards the back fence, that front knee will be often in the same position that I described on the pinpoint stance where it's slightly going in. But under no circumstance are players going forward with their knees and locking their body movements because of it.

So, if you have a double knee bend, if you're sticking your front knee into the court, or if both your knees are going in opposite directions as you're bending, these are really bad errors that need to be corrected immediately with the methods that I recommended in this article.