Here’s an example of a drill that is well-meaning, but I actually think can hamper player development. As you’ll see, it shows a 3-step progression for beginning servers:
- Serve on one knee at a wall
- Serve on one knee over the net
- Stand and serve at a wall
As my initial critique, why don’t you skip Step 1 and go straight to Step 2? They’re basically the same thing.
I get how serving against the wall may be useful when you have a lot of kids. You can spread them out around the gym. That’s quite a reasonable solution. If you’re using a wall, though, it definitely makes sense to have a reference point. For example, “Serve over the green line.”
But if that’s the reason for Step 1, then skip Step 2 and go on to Step 3. The first two are basically doing the same thing.
And if you are going over the net in Step 2, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t in Step 3. There’s no real point in going back to the wall if you don’t have to. Don’t take away the clear – and very game-specific – reference the net provides.
A bigger problem with this exercise, though, is what’s purportedly being trained.
The stated intention is to work on “their toss and ball contact.” I can perhaps see something like this being useful for ball contact – in a very limited fashion to get them to understand the idea. I’m unconvinced that it’s of much use for working on their toss, however.
Think about it. How do we want players doing a standing serve? It involves a linked step-toss, or at least a back to front weight transfer. By that I mean the player is tossing the ball as they stride forward with their opposite foot, or shift the weight forward from their back leg.
Tossing effectively in this situation means tossing further in front than if the player is standing still (or kneeling) and probably slightly higher to account for the movement to the ball as they stride/shift. So the tossing in this drill isn’t really the same toss they’d use in actual serving, which means they’d then have to learn that toss. Just like when a player transitions from standing to jump serving they have to learn how to toss for that new type of serve.
Perhaps you can focus on tossing in front of the hitting shoulder. That’s really it for me, though.
I think this is a better approach to working on serve toss. There are some useful links in that post around the idea of task decomposition (which is what this drill does) vs. task simplification.
And am I the only one that’s uncomfortable watching how this young player’s body is clearly fighting the restriction against it doing what it naturally wants to do (i.e. torso rotation) while being on one knee? I feel like any time we find ourselves not allowing what you could quite reasonably call good technique to happen, we’re probably not in the best place.
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