Todd Scott is a training advisor to Men’s Fitness magazine and founder of the best selling book Tennis Stomper. To learn more go to the Powerful Tennis Serve homepage.
For more on mental tennis go to Mental Tennis Tips
Before I tell you about the single most effective upper body exercise for increasing the power of your tennis serve, I want to tell you that increasing the explosiveness of your serve isn't created JUST from explosive upper body strength. you'll need to develop explosive power in your lower body and be able to transfer this power up your body to your racquet. Secondly, you must develop strength endurance and the ability to recover between points, so that you can give 100% on every shot.
If you're not able to increase your endurance and have the ability to recover quickly between points, your power will diminish as the match goes on..
With that said...
"How to Add Power to your Tennis Serve With One Simple Exercise"
Single Arm Cable Pull down
Here's how to do it:
Hold the handle in the desired hand, stand 3-4 feet from the machine, bend your knees and your hips keeping your back straight. With your arm directly over head and your elbow locked, contract your muscles and bring the cable directly to your knee. To hit additional muscle fibers with a full contraction, follow through past your knee so that your arm is parallel to your (slightly forward bent) upperbody. Return to the starting position and repeat.
You can also perform this exercise with an elastic band for resistance . Simply attach the band at the top of a door or to a stable overhead object and follow the same steps as above.
No matter what type of tennis serve you prefer, this exercise will strengthen your lats to produce a more explosive arm motion for your serve.
Just having a strong upper body will limit your potential power for both ground strokes and serves, so I recommend not only performing exercises for your upper body, but also for your core, and lower body. When all three work together, you'll notice the explosiveness of both your serve and your ground strokes skyrocketing to the next level.
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