by Tomas Patino (Ki Serve Fellow) and the Ki team
The 80/20 Principle is a powerful book written by Richard Koch, in which he popularized Pareto’s Law. In simple terms this principle tells us that almost everywhere we look, we find unbalanced relationships. We might for example notice that a company makes 80% of its profits from just 20% of its products, or that 80% of a country’s population is condensed in just 20% of its cities. When we look at other areas of life we tend to expect a more balanced distribution. For example, we might expect that 50% of our efforts lead to approximately 50% of our results, but very often that is not the case. Koch also writes that there isn’t anything special about the numbers 80 and 20. We could find that we spend 90% of our free time with just 5% of our friends/family, leading to a 90/5 ratio (notice the 2 numbers don’t have to add up to 100). The key takeaway is that there are a few important “inputs” that will generally lead to the vast majority of our desired outputs. By the same token, the majority of inputs don’t produce a great deal of value for us (in an 80/20 distribution, 80% of our efforts only produce 20% of results). This is what he refers to as “the vital few and the trivial many.”
Why is this important in the context of the tennis serve? If we look at the serve through the lens of the 8 Stage Model, we can then start to apply the 80/20 Principle to it. The first step is to recognize that the tennis serve is a sequence of movements where the earlier stages have a direct influence over each subsequent stage. Because of this, we might detect a problem at contact (Stage 6) but the root of that issue might be a poor toss (Stage 2). In this example the bad toss leads to ineffective loading, cocking, acceleration & contact (Stages 3-6) as the player is making adjustments in order to make decent contact with that bad toss. It is a domino effect where each previous domino falls a certain way and affects the rest.
If we could tip those first few dominoes in the direction we want, the chances of everything else falling into the right place go up significantly. After analyzing hundreds of servers of different ages and levels, Dr. Kovacs has noticed that a great majority of issues (probably over 80%) come from just 2 stages. Those are the Release (Stage 2) and Loading (Stage 3). When a player has issues in those 2 stages, all sorts of problems start to appear. The good news is that we don’t need to play whack-a-mole with all the different issues that we may see. If we understand the 8 Stage Model and the 80/20 Principle, we can address the root cause of the majority of our serve issues.
From theory to practice
Now that we understand the why, let’s look at how to apply it. The goal is to optimize the fundamental aspects of Stages 2 & 3. No need to worry about changing your style (if you want to understand the difference between Style and Fundamentals, you can read this article
Whatever happens in Stages 2 & 3 has a big influence on all the subsequent stages, and on the end result.
Here are a few players with different styles showing good fundamentals on Stages 2 & 3:
How Should You Practice This?
The best way would be to find a Tennis Serve Specialist (TSS) who can help you improve the fundamental aspects of your serve. However, in the spirit of the 80/20, here are the vital few exercises that can help your serve. We will focus specifically in those aimed at improving Stages 2 and 3.
Stage 2:
• Record your serve motion from the back and from the side. Check to see if you have a bent arm, if your arm is not pointing toward the net post, and if the release point is either below eye level or above the top of your head. Once you identify what the issue is, it is actually a pretty easy fix.
• Step I: Isolate the ball toss at first to get used to the changes.
• Step II: Then you should try to incorporate your serve routine, your racquet, legs, etc. and do a few tosses as if you were going to do your full serve, but stopping the motion after the release (don’t hit the ball yet). Record yourself again and see if the changes you are trying to make in your toss are still there. If the answer is yes, then take a mental note of what this new tossing motion feels like.
• Step III: Do Step II a couple of times making sure you have that feeling in your tossing arm. If you feel like you do it right twice in a row, do it once more and actually hit the ball this time. Keep working on a couple of good tosses before actually hitting the ball on the third toss.
• Step IV: Do a few serves without any “practice tosses”. Still focus on that feeling of your tossing arm in each of those serves. Record yourself again and see if you’ve successfully assimilated those changes. If not, spend a little extra time on Steps II & III.
Stage 3:
Ki Serve Loading Drill: This drill is great for learning how to load affectively into the back hip. Again, focus on what it feels like to shift your weight back and down. Take a mental note of what it feels like to lad into your back leg and back hip.
• Ki Shot Put Serve Drill: This drill is focused on optimizing the kinetic chain and transferring energy from “back and down” to “up and out into the court.” I’ve found this drill to be immensely valuable as a progression from the Serve Loading Drill. Find that feeling you had on the Serve Loading Drill of loading the back leg, and then explode from there. Watch the video for the description of how to perform it correctly. Focus on what it feels like to load into the back hip and then transferring the energy up.
• Once you can do the Shot Put Serve correctly a few times, grab your racquet and hit a few serves (using normal tennis balls, not the weighted ball) trying to use your lower body in the same way as you were during the Shot Put Serve Drill.
• Single Leg/Back Leg Serving: If you are going to read just one article for improving your serve, this should be it:
This drill forces you to hit a full serve off your back leg. It will feel awkward at first, but it really is one of the best drills for improving your Stage 3. It is one thing to be told “load your back leg”, but for those of us who are kinesthetic learners it is important to feel what loading the back leg and hitting a serve is like. Once again, you can try to create a mental note of what your back leg feels like during the drill.
• Once you feel a bit more comfortable with the drill, you can start mixing it up with normal serving (using both feet). The key when you go back to serving with both feet is to try to find that feeling of pushing into the ground and generating force through your back leg. Keep mixing in 2-3 back leg serves with 4-5 normal serves. This drill does not get old, make it a part of your routine whenever you practice your serve!
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