How To Hit Powerful Serves In Tennis – Serve Power Drills

The serve is the number one shot in tennis. It’s the only shot we are fully in control of and have time to execute properly.

Being able to hit powerful serves in tennis is what most tennis players want, yet how do we get more power on our tennis serve?

There are many different serve power sources, these include:

• The leg drive
• Hip snap
• Reaching a good power position
• The throwing mechanics
• Supination and pronation
• The speed of your service motion

Creating good racket head speed is what we are trying to achieve on the serve.

Anything that helps you generate racket head speed, will help you get more power and allow you to hit powerful tennis serves!

It’s important to train your serve properly if you want to increase the power on your tennis serve, here are three serve drills to help you hit more powerful serves in tennis:

Drill One

The serve is very much a throwing motion, once we reach the trophy position, we throw the racket into the target, the ball.

Most big servers have a very good throw, in fact, they work on throwing a weighted ball or an American football to get a faster arm.

In this serve drill, you will throw tennis balls as high and as far as you can, the peak of the ball flight should occur above the net.
Start off in the power or trophy position and throw the ball, using the body to create power.

Drill Two

The leg drive is one of the major sources of power on the tennis serve.
If you can drive up off the court using an explosive down and up motion, you’ll create a lot of power and height on your serve.

In this serve drill, place a few cones or small hurdles just inside the baseline.

Shadow your normal serve and jump over the hurdles, focus on having a quick down and up action, and not pausing in the knee bend.

Once you feel confident, add the ball and hit normal serves over the hurdles.

Drill Three

Rotational power is another major source of power on the tennis serve.

By coiling the upper body at the start of the action, you will stretch the core, storing elastic energy in the major trunk muscles.

Once you start to open up or uncoil, you’ll create a lot of rotational power on your tennis serve.

In this serve drill, start off with both of your feet pointing towards the net. Hit serves using your normal motion but in this front-on position.

Try to coil the upper body and hips as much as you can, creating the coil and uncoil action.

Video Timeline:
00:00 – Powerful Tennis Serves Intro
00:20 – Power sources on the tennis serve
00:58 – Creating power from the trophy position on the tennis serve
2:48 – Creating power from the legs on the tennis serve
4:55 – Creating rotational power on the tennis serve
6:58 – Serve training in Malta
7:20 – Tennis serves in slow motion