Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 404 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to talk about the solution to weight or tray position on the serve. This is in my experience the hardest technical flaw to change in all of tennis.
It's not even really close. Honestly, I've been teaching tennis for over 20 years now and weight or tray problem keeps coming up over and over and as I work on it with students, it is the stickiest old habit to shift away from towards proper mechanics. If you're probably familiar, if you're listening to this very brief explanation is that in a nutshell, your tray position is the hand facing upwards and the strings facing upwards in your trophy
pose. Trophy pose on your serve is when you initially turn and coil and get set to swing the racket. It's when you first turn your body and tilt your body and make your toss. In that first position, if you set your hand up facing upwards and your strings facing upwards, you can just kind of imagine a waiter in a restaurant with a tray, holding one of those big trays with like a whole bunch of plates on it walking through the restaurant. It's
essentially the same position. The reason why it's so bad for your serve is it puts your racket and your body in a pushing position. Meaning the palm of your hand is the lead. As you push upwards and a straight line towards the ball, there isn't any loading of the shoulder. There isn't any stretching of the shoulder. There's typically very little drop of the racket. Sometimes players with a waiter tray do manage to drop the racket and get
a little bit of vertical range of motion downwards and then upwards. But usually there's very limited drop of the racket. And then most importantly, on the way upwards, there isn't any release of the racket head. There's no snap. The snap that everybody feels and like refers to on a serve and on overhead too. It's not a flexing forward of the wrist. It's the entire chain from your shoulder through your upper arm, through your elbow, your
forearm and your hand. That entire chain, your shoulder down to the racket, releasing that stretch that happens in a proper serve motion. But in a waiter tray motion, there is no stretch. It's just a push and the strings remain constant. And so instead of stretching and releasing, they just maintain like constant position and it's just a forward upward push of the racket. So how do we change it? This isn't so much going to be an episode about
like the technical details, although we will talk about the technical details. It's more so going to be kind of the mindset around how to make this change because it's a big one. It's a big one because the service, the most important shot in tennis, you can't play tennis without hitting a serve in the box. And when we go from a push to a pull and a snap, it completely blows everything up. It completely changes the relationship between
the player and the angle of the strings. And the angle of the strings is what sends the ball where it goes. So if we lose track of the angle of the strings and where the racket faces facing, we lose track of where the ball is going to go. And that completely changes the outcome or the results. And so how are we going to play tennis if we don't know where our service is going to go? Those two things do not compute. They do not play together.
And so player, I'm not even exaggerating here. I would wager that over the history of tennis, you know, decades and decades, millions of tennis players have attempted to go from a pushing motion, a weight or trade motion to a pulling motion, a snapping motion, and given up way before they ever had a chance of making the change because the first time they went out to play tennis after practicing it and working on it and maybe even having
very good practice, they don't know if the ball is going to go in the box or not. And so they step on the court to play their next match, next like league match or even just a fun match, you know, with a friend or a teammate or whatever. And they can't make the ball go in the box with the new serve. And so they just go back to the old one. And the more you go back to the old one, the more you reinforce that pushing motion, the more
you reinforce that weight or trade position. And the less likely it's going to be you actually go away from it into a proper drop and pull and snap and release of the racket. So I'm going to go through the actual steps that I took with a real life player recently just within the last year. And he made an incredible transformation like in the moment within the span of about an hour or so together. But what I want you to hear from me loud and clear
is he did not go to play a match the next day with his new serve. It took months. Let me repeat that. It took months of repetitive training back at home before he was able to finally use it in real life. That is why this is the hardest change to make and tennis because it's so hard to put aside your success and your results and your comforts in real play for weeks or potentially months. It's so hard to do that. Make that sacrifice. And
it is. It's a big sacrifice putting aside matches for a lot of players means putting aside the fun of tennis and putting aside the competition putting aside winning and that you know the satisfaction of being the person who comes out on top putting all that aside for weeks or months is a big ask. But it's necessary for 99% of players occasionally. You know you're going to come across a player who is just a good enough natural athlete
like a talented enough physically aware enough player coordinated enough player. Or maybe they start off with a way to try position and the coach says, Oh, hey, your strengths shouldn't be facing upwards. We want to get the tip of the racket down and the edge of the racket going first and then we need to release the racket and snap and you know pronate and all that. And they go, Oh, okay, sure. And then they just do it. That is like
the 1% of 1% of listeners out there. That's going to be your experience for all the rest of you. This is going to be a process and it's going to take time because we're reprogramming and rewiring significantly grooved and familiar movements that are wildly different from what a good serve should be. So to see video of this like all the steps I'm about to talk about and all the drills like the you know the real life like actual demonstration of like a real
player making this change. Make sure to go to the essential tennis YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and do a search for essential tennis waiter trace solution and you'll see the actual footage of the player doing these drills that we're about to talk about and actually making the change successfully. And I'll show you the footage of him a couple
months later and then a couple months after that. So you can see his progress. So there's seven steps that we went through together within a span of about you know an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Step one was to get the proper grip for the job. He his hand was shifted around a little bit towards a forehand grip and that is normal for frankly for most tennis players. And if you have any variety of waiter tray which there's a whole spectrum
by the way of degrees of waiter tray. Ness and if you're on anywhere on the spectrum your hand is probably a little bit shifted towards a forehand grip meaning an eastern forehand grip or a semi-western forehand grip. If you're really far on the spectrum and you have like a very pushy just like straight upwards racket face and just a full push of the
racket then you might even have a full like semi-western forehand grip. And what that does what that forehand grip does is it enables an open racket face and it starts the racket in an upward facing position. When you look at professional players or anybody that has a let's say you know a good a high level serve. So let's say four or five and above somebody who can approach hitting a hundred mile an hour serve. You will see that their strings
do not start off facing upwards. Their strings start off facing to the right. And I'm talking from a perspective of viewing that player from directly behind. We'll get professional players. We'll get any player at your local courts who can hit close to a hundred miles an hour. And you'll see that their strings begin facing to the right again looking from a back perspective. Then when their body starts to turn forwards their strings will face
to the left. The tip of the racket drops. So it's pointing down towards the court. The butt cap of the racket the bottom of the racket the bottom of the grip or the handle will be facing upwards. And their strings will be facing to the left. Sometimes their strings will also face towards the net. That's more on like a topspinner kick serve. But when I teach this generally just to kind of keep things simple. I ask them to begin in a trophy
post position with their strings in their hand facing to the right. Then position 2 is turning forwards and facing the strings or the hand to the left. And that leaves the frame of the racket or the edge of the racket leading and going upwards first instead of the strings of the racket leading and going upwards first. And so that means before position 2 where the strings are facing left. And contact we need to unwind and turn the shoulder,
turn the forearm and the hand to face the strings towards the box. Otherwise the ball will not go towards the box. And that's position 3 is the body facing forwards, the strings facing forwards, the hands facing forwards towards the box. And it requires a rotation of the racket so that the strings are facing forwards. So when you watch me working with my
student phase 1, a step 1 was just getting the right grip. That helps to get the racket facing to the right and get the frame on an on edge position with the frame facing upwards. Then second phase or second stage of our training was just to move my student through those three positions that I just described position 1, position 2, position 3. And when he first started practicing going between position 1 and 2, he would immediately
and automatically face his hand in his strings upwards into that pushing position. That was home base for him. That's just like a warm, comfortable serving position. That's what he was used to. And took a lot of repetition and good chunk of time. Just for him without a ball, without a toss, without going through this full motion. Just to go from position 1 to position 2, that took a good chunk of time. And you will probably find the same thing.
If you go through this process of trying to change from waiter tray position to a proper, with that in air quotes, like a proper serve, proper serve mechanics with a real throwing motion, a real racket drop and a real pulling motion, an edge position and snap and release. Going just from set up position to the drop of the racket is going to take some time, just to get familiar with that. Take your time. And again, go to the YouTube channel and
look at the video to see an actual visual training of that. So you can see what it looks like you can copy it yourself. Okay, so imagine if I guided my students through those three positions and said, okay, great, good job. Now you know how to do position 1, 2, and 3. Here's a ball. Go ahead, hit a serve. It's a wildly different. It's a completely different
approach to hitting the ball. There's no way that would work. Once that toss went up in the air, he go right back to his hand facing upwards, his strength facing upwards, and you go right back to a pushing position and go right back to that waiter tray position. And this is what millions of players over the years have done. He's like, okay, you don't only watch a video or they take a lesson and coach explains it to him and I go, okay,
yeah, I get it. I can see it. I understand the difference here. And I might even like physically do it a couple of times without a ball and I go, okay, yeah, I get it. I get it. I'm telling you, the vast majority of the time, once that ball goes up in the air, it pulls that old programming back to the surface because their brain is like, okay, so goal here is to put that ball in that box and the way that I know how to do that is with this
old series of movements and you're just going to go back to the old habit. So we're just to step two out of seven. So here's the other steps. This is what's necessary. And this is what my student took back with him to actually do on his own to bridge the gap between understanding and actually doing. So step one was just get the right grip. Step two was
go position by position to position one, two, and three. And just physically one step, one position at a time just physically be able to demonstrate the correct positions. Step three is now start to put together those three new positions smoothly. And at first, I would actually encourage you to take a little bit of a pause at each position. But step three is to start to put them together in one fluid motion really slowly and without
tossing a ball that's going to come in a second. But initially, just mentally keeping tabs on each of those three new positions and just hitting them one at a time is going to be more than enough challenge without adding a toss or adding a ball. Much was trying to hit the ball and make it go in the box. Forget that. We just need to physically get familiar with just moving our body through those three positions. So that's step three is just
start to put it together smoothly. Step four is now let's add the tossing motion, but we're still not physically tossing the ball. So for this stage, I gave I handed a ball to my student. I said, okay, now up until this point, he hadn't even pretended to toss it yet. He was just so focused and correctly so on just doing those new arm and body and hand and racket positions with his right side of his body. He hadn't even thought about
tossing a ball yet, which is good. But now we need to start thinking about introducing it. So he held a ball, but he didn't let it go or actually toss it. And he started to coordinate position one, two and three with what he would need to do with his left arm to actually physically toss the ball, put it in the air, go through the rest of the motion. That's step four, continuing to try to make it smooth and fluid and all that good
stuff. Step five is to do a fake toss. It might sound a little crazy at first, but if you've been following me for a while, then you're familiar with this. My student is now holding the ball. He's physically tossing it while doing the new positions and the correct motion with his arm and his racket. But I'm instructing my student to not toss it where he can hit it instead toss the ball out to the side or like way out in front to where
it's not in the way of the racket at all. So there's no temptation to hit it. And therefore, you know, mentally we're not at all worried about where it's going to go or if it's going to go in the box, like we're totally putting that on the back burner. And instead just physically practicing the combination of motions of what the right hand is doing and what the left hand is doing to physically put a ball in the air. But again, without worrying about
hitting it or where the ball is going or anything like that. So if you go watch the video, you'll see that throughout these different stepping stones, my student is going back to a waiter trade or different varieties or like flavors of waiter trade position. And each step along the way, I'm telling him immediately, nope, nope, you're opening your
hand up again. And he's going doing a great job of being like, okay, okay. And then making the proper adjustment to get his hand in his racket face back to the right position. This is what it takes. It's taking these little stepping stones to add just a little bit extra challenge and then a little bit extra challenge. And then ironing it out when he goes back to waiter trade. No, no, we got to get the hand straight again and not facing
upwards. This is this is the hard part. This is why it's so difficult to make this change. So we've done fake tosses. It's still not time to hit the ball. Now with a fake toss, when you go, if you go watch the video, you'll see that he's doing the fake tosses. But the ball would never actually line up with what the racket is doing. And so it's a whole other process to refocus in on timing and kind of sinking the toss with the hand and the
racket. So now I'm telling him, okay, keep doing the fake toss. But we need to get the rack. I'm sorry, we need to get the ball at the right height. And we need to get the racket moving at the right speed so that the two can actually meet up in space. So still
not hitting the ball. But now let's time the toss and time the racket motion so that they actually are crossing each other in the air at the right height so that we could actually if the ball was in the right place, actually hit the ball up until this point, he hadn't
done that once. If you watch the video, you'll see that. So now he puts his attention, puts his focus on timing the toss, getting the right height with the toss, getting the right timing and speed with the motion while doing the three new positions and erasing the way to try. And he does a great job with that after a couple practice tries. He actually
starts putting it together. So now it's time for step seven. I haven't do a shadow swing without a toss just to remind his brain and his body, these are the positions we want to hit. And then actually put up a real toss and actually hit the ball. But my main instruction of him is, but do the three positions right? Strings facing to the right, strings facing to the left, edge going up first and then turn the racket to face the strings forwards.
Let's hit all the check points and try to hit the ball. So now it's kind of, you know, the rubber is getting ready to meet the road and now it's time to really test it out. And he did it and he held the position and guess what? The ball didn't go anywhere near the box. But I was like so happy for him. And so you know, just happy that he achieved
it. And when if you're right handed player, the very first time you actually do this correctly, the ball is probably going to go way off to the left and not be anywhere near the box. And that's because if you're used to weight or tray, you're not used to the strings ever facing to the left and the frame going upwards first in that pulling position on edge.
And so when you first do that, usually what happens is the string stay facing way too far to the left and there, there is an appropriate amount of release or turn of the shoulder or the hand so that the racket actually faces forwards. And so the ball flies way off
to the left, like not even close to the box. And when I see that, I get super excited because I know it means that my student actually got an edge position like they actually had the frame going up first, not the strings and that pushing waiter, waiter tray position. So just doing that and sending the ball way off to the left is a huge accomplishment. But guess what? After we high five and we celebrate and we look at the replay and
we're like, oh, wow, look, look, you're not doing the waiter tray. Look, you're on edge, you're pulling the racket with the buck cap, you know, going first. Do you think if I tossed a ball in my student said, okay, now go play a match with your new serve? Do you think he could do it? Sadly, I mean, it is what it's not really sad. I guess it's just
reality. The answer is no, because as much as we're excited about him doing a new serve in a new way, he hasn't done it nearly enough times to figure out how to coordinate it all, coordinate it all and make the strings actually line up in the right direction at
the right time. So the ball actually goes in the box. That's a whole other series of painstaking training and practice to familiarize the body to the new motion, to the point where you can actually make the ball go where you want it to go while doing the right motion correctly. So my like main objective here with this episode isn't so much to teach you
the steps and like the what and the how. But more so, what I really want to get across to you is the mindset behind this is you have to have a mindset of investing long term in this process of going through the journey of going little incremental step, little incremental step at a time. That process is important, but even more important than that is accepting
the reality that the ball is not going to go in the box for a while. And I'm probably not going to be able to play tennis for a while, at least not successfully without setting myself back and just retraining my old habit. And that's a sacrifice that frankly, few players are willing to make. And I respect that completely. If you're a player that says, nah, man, I can't go two months or three months or six months without playing a match.
I go, there's no fun in that. And so if that's the decision that you've made, that's fantastic. Go have fun. But you're also probably never going to have a mechanically sound, like fundamentally sound service motion, because as long as you prioritize the fun of putting the ball in the box and playing the points, you'll probably never take the time and the energy and the effort and the frustration of going through these steps and not seeing the ball go in the
box for a long time. So just for context, I worked with a student last May in May of 2023. He sent me a video in December of 2023 going through the training progressions and doing a really nice job. But he wasn't doing it from the baseline yet and hitting like real serves with the new motion. Now that's just the video he sent me to be honest. I didn't
go back and ask him, oh, hey, are you using this like from the baseline? I'm just telling you like the video evidence that I have in front of me could be he was using the new motion and competition well before that. I haven't followed up with him to ask him that specifically. I'm just telling you the videos that I have like in front of me that he has sent me over
the months over the last year or so. December of 2023, he sent me a video of him training from the service line and hitting balls and hitting all three positions really nicely. But we still had some work to do to kind of smooth it out and make it a little bit more fluid, a little bit more natural. And then in March of this year was the first time that I heard back from him again and he sent me a video of him hitting real serves
from back behind the baseline and hitting all three positions. And there's nothing that makes me more proud than seeing a student actually do it for real. I'm telling you there's very few examples of everyday passionate competitive adult players making that transition. And he's doing go see the video. He's really doing it for real now. He went from a full-weight or trade position to a full drop position in under a year and doing it for real from behind
the baseline. And there's very, very few examples of that happening anywhere out there like on the internet. There's lots of incredible coaches out there. It's very possible that you've never seen a real example of the same player going from a full-weight or trade position to a full, proper drop edge, like pull and snap position. It's very rare because the amount
of effort, the amount of dedication it takes to make that transition is significant. These are the steps that I've personally used to help players do it, but to be totally transparent and totally honest with you. I've worked with plenty of students who have taken through these same steps that have not made the transition. They just haven't. And they've had some success. You know with me on the court, just like this player did in the day or the two
days that we had together. But then they went back home and their league season got in the way. Their club ladder got in the way. They can't put on the back burner for a while. And a year later, they're still doing the way to trade position. To be totally honest, there's not a lot of coaches that I'll tell you this. To be totally honest with you, that's normal. That's the normal experience that players have. And so hopefully you respect the fact that
I'm just telling you like it is. And you should expect for this to take months of commitment and months, potentially months of not being able to put the ball in the box and do it right, maybe one or the other, but not both at the same time. And so I hope you appreciate that. And I hope you can use something in here to make positive steps in the right direction and to see visually the steps and the drills and the progress of this student, including
the follow up videos where he's doing it correctly for real. Just go to YouTube and type in Essential Tennis, Wader Tray, Solution. And you'll see the examples. Thanks so much for listening today. Really appreciate it if you went to EssentialTennis.com, slash Studio. If you've been listening to these episodes for years, maybe you've listened to all of them and you found a lot of value. I'm working on a special project. I'm building a studio.
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is going to really streamline my production. Video specifically audio is a lot easier, but videos really, there's a huge time and effort investment to produce a nice looking video. So this is going to enable me to increase the quality of my videos dramatically and also increase the quantity of videos I can make because it's going to streamline the whole
process, make it much more efficient. So if you'd like to help me make that investment in my content, then I'd really appreciate it if you went to essentialtennis.com, slash, slash studio. Check it out. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening. Hopefully this was helpful today. I'll talk to you again next time on the Essential Tennis Podcast. For more free, Gabe improving instruction, be sure to check out essentialtennis.com
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