How to Improve Your Weight Transfer when Serving
by: Dave Winship @ On The Line

If you're a fairly advanced player, having a static service action can hamper your progress. To get the maximum out of your serve, you need to transfer your weight forward into the court. The foot-fault rule means you can only achieve this by shifting your weight from back foot to front foot. You can, however, exaggerate this by moving your self of gravity out in front of your body before you make contact with the ball, i.e. by leaning forwards. Weight transfer takes place as your body recovers its natural balance.

The obvious thing to try first is to place the ball a bit more in front of you.

Here's a simple tip that may sound a bit bizarre at first, but I can vouch for the fact that it really does help:

When you practice serves, you obviously have a stock of balls - maybe in a ball hopper, maybe loose on the ground, maybe in the hands of someone feeding you. Instead of positioning this stock of balls behind or beside you, put them out of harm's way somewhere on the court between you and the service line. Obviously you'll have to move forwards to collect the next ball. After a while, you should find forward weight transfer becoming much more natural.

Regards.

Dave Winship