Adam Stack Biomechanics on a Tennis Serve

The serve can be related to Newton’s laws of motion, more specifically Newton’s 2nd law. Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass (of the object being accelerated) the greater the amount of force needed (to accelerate the object)’ (Louviere, 2016). This can be emulated in a serve as the mass being the tennis ball and the racquet head speed being the acceleration. In order to make the ball travel with speed over the net a force greater than the mass of the ball needs to be applied. As you can see in my serve my racquet head speed is adequate as the mass of the tennis ball is able to travel with sustainable power.  

 

 

                                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If the opposite is done, the ball will not make it to its directed area. Force summation is vital when executing a Tennis serve. Hede ET AL states force summation is to obtain maximum force; it is necessary to combine or add up the forces applied by different body parts’ (HEDE ET AL, 2011). A kinetic chain is comparable with force summation. The kinetic chain is legs, hips, trunk and back, shoulder, elbow and wrist. It is apparent that with the use of the subroutines that my kinetic chain of movement is smooth. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The order of the sequential force summation of a serve is the preparation phase, the backswing phase, the forward swing phase, impact phase and lastly the follow through phase. A you can see that in my comparison to Milos Raonic we are similar.

                                                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see that we both have majority of our weight on the back foot as this is evident as the tip of the front foot is tilted upwards. This enables us linear momentum into the backswing phase. In the back swing phase there is one notable difference between the two. This can be seen when looking at the compression of the knees. The difference between the two subroutines are that I bend my knees more towards the net unlike Milos who bends his knees more towards the side fence. In Milos doing so he is able to have full extension of his body and meet the ball higher due to his leg drive achieving more power. It is also evident that when making contact with the ball we both have straight levers, giving us more accuracy and power. Lastly the follow through. As you can see Milos and I follow through with our front foot (left) out in front and our back foot (right) in the air. This enables us to set up for the return no matter what direction its goes. It is apparent that from viewing my video footage of myself serving, that I have successfully achieved the use of momentum and impulse. Momentum is defined as the strength or force that allows something to continue or to grow stronger or faster as time passes’ (Merriam-Webste, 2015 ).  It is seen that I used the momentum of my body to add power to my serve by having my bodies momentum heading towards the direction of where I want the ball to go. Impulse is the force needed to change the momentum of an object varies depending on the amount of time that the force is applied’ (HEDE ET AL, 2011). It is seen that the use of impulse is maximized as I continue the follow through after I hit the ball.