A kick serve is one of those serves that, once you learn, can really give you this advantage because it really throws your opponent off if they don't have the correct footwork they have the kick serve. It makes it really difficult for them to return the ball. Not only that, the kick serve gives you a lot of margin and a lot of safety because when it bounces, it jumps off the court, giving your opponent a small window to step up and try to attack it. If not, the ball is going to be out of the strike zone. 

So this is why the kick serve is so effective and this is why we're going to work on it, in one second. Now, one of the things that really trips up a lot of players is the timing and the swing path for the kick serve. So we're going to go over the three major concepts that I think will really help you take your kicks serve to the next level. So let's get started. Concept number one, we have to have the right grip. The right grip is the continental grip. Now, if you watch any other serve modules, the continental grip is going to be one of these grips that you got to learn if you really want to take your entire serve game to the next level.

The continental grip is so important because it's the grip that allows you to swing up towards the ball and accelerate while controlling the racket face. And this is so key for any serve, but especially the kick serve. So how do you find the continental grip? Really easy, you hold the racket out in front of you just like this and grab the racket like you're grabbing a hammer, which means you'd be able to have this action kind of like this chopping or this hammer action. 

Another way of looking at it is taking your hand and having this pad right here and placing it pretty much on the top of the racket where you can feel that pad on the top. Pushing down having the continental grip ensures you're going to be able to accelerate the edge of the racket up, making sure that you can control the racket face, which leads us to number two, which is the racket, face and racket path. Now, the racket face sends the ball in whatever direction you're going to hit it bar none. Meaning that if your racket faces open at contact, it's going to send the ball up. Also, if your racket faces left or right, it's going to send the ball left or right. So it's really key to understand that when you're serving, pretty much only rely on where the ball is going to tell you what your racket face is doing as you get better.

What you're going to be able to do is reproduce the right racket face over and over again. So understanding the racket face produces the direction that the ball is going to go and is hugely important. Now here's the big one. It's the racket path. The racket path is what is probably the most difficult part about the kick serve. And what is that racket path? It's the most extreme away from the target. So what this means is if you're hitting a flat serve, your serve is going to go towards the target. If you're hitting a slice serve, it's going to go halfway between, meaning slightly away from the target. 

But if you're hitting a kick serve, it's going to go almost along the baseline. So you're really going up and having this waving action over the ball, which creates topspin. A kick serve is basically creating spin over your head. So if you take it like the idea of how you hit a backhand, a two and a backhand, with topspin And take that and keep lifting that over and over until it's over your head, it's the exact same idea.

You're just doing it over your head and creating topspin on the ball. And so you can see how if you're going to brush the ball up with your backhand, that same actions got to happen, but over your head and around. 

So if you understand this, this is why the quick service slightly more difficult than probably any other serve because you have to have the timing to really, really get your racquet to go along the baseline and you have to maintain the racquet face looking at the target. Now there's one more crucial concept that you got to understand to have a great kick serve, which is waiting. And I always say this is another really difficult thing for a lot of players. Making sure you let the ball come down more so you can achieve the ability to brush up on it. 

So many players start reaching too far up, and there's no more space to create more spin. By letting the ball come lower, you're going to actually achieve space. You need to create spin, and this all has to be done while really accelerating up the ball to compensate for you not hitting in that direction. So I know this might sound complicated, but it is learnable, and that's what we're going to do in the action steps.

Now it's time to take some actions for your kick serve. The two main focus is we're going to have is your swing path and also letting the ball drop first. So the very first thing we're going to talk about the swing path and what I want you to get in the habit of doing is realizing the difference between the kick serve versus the flat or the slice serve. 

And as a quick reminder if you're hitting a flat serve, the most is going to come out towards the camera. If you're hitting a slice serve is going to go halfway between. But now with the kick serve, we're going to be coming up and across. So if you're on the baseline, you'll be going along the baseline more ,so now we're starting closer because it's going to make it a lot easier for you to start practicing this without having to generate a lot of racket at speed. And that's what you want at first. So the first action step is simply to shadow the swing, making sure that you're used to the difference between the flat or the slice and the kick. So to do this, we're going to start off with having your shadow just focusing on the flat serve and then alternate to the kick serve. And I want you to recognize and feel the difference from having the racquet go forward and then along the baseline, making sure that when you're using the kick serve that you're going from the left to right along the ball.

So how this looks like and you don't need a ball making sure that you start off with this without a ball just to get yourself honed in on exactly what this new pattern you're going to be doing is. So we're going to start off shadowing just a flat going forward and then a kick going along the baseliner for me. It would be almost a service line, flat forward and kick along the service line now do this at least 10 to 15 minutes before you move forward because it's super important that you have this angle down. 

Now from here, I want you to grip up, grab more on the throat of your racket and I want you to get a ball. Once you have a ball in your hand, we're going to do a really simple roll- off drill. meaning I'm going to have sandwiched the ball and the racket, and I'm going to roll off having my racket get to the side, and I don't really want the ball to go anywhere. So this would be the action you're going to roll off coming around to the side. You can really see how my rack is going from left to right. Roll off, roll off. I'm not really trying to make the ball go anywhere, just getting used to rolling off the whole point of you doing this roll off drill. It's the feel how it feels to have that ball go against the strings as you're going left to right.

This is a very new concept for a lot of players that are used to just going through the court with their service motion. The next action step is making sure that with this new roll off, we're going to do a toss and roll off the all in a shadow. The reason we're using a lot more shadows in this particular type of drill because this motion can be challenging. 

But by using shadows, you start to slowly train yourself to have this new swing path. So how this is going to look, I'm going to still grip up and I'm going to toss and then come along this side of the court just like I was doing before. It's really important that you stick with coming along the side of a court or going along the service line because I'm inside the court. 

The whole reason for this is to train yourself to do this while looking at the ball. So many times we see a new motion. We try it once and then we go into hitting it. And it's never the same because you're asking your mind and your muscles to make such a huge jump. We're doing some incremental moves to make sure you're building on one another to ensure you have this motion down before you even try to strike the ball. So we're going to do the same motion again and you see how im coming from left to right. Left to right, and I'm slightly another thing you can do is you can see it, I'm tossing it where I can't even hit it because there's so much temptation to try to hit the ball. So this is the third action step you should go through. 

You have to have all these down before you continue onto the next one. The next action step is we're going to do the roll-off drill, so we're actually roll it again, but we're going to roll it with more acceleration. And so sometimes you may even get the ball to go over the net using this roll off draw from this position in the court. 

What I want to remind you is that when we do the roll off, we're going to have the racket face a little bit more open so the ball gets more height as it leaves my hand. So this is how it's going to look, how we're sandwiching this ball, I'm going to roll off. And you can see how that ball might even go over the net. But I'm really focusing on rolling from left to right with the racket face open again. And even though I'm going here, it's just feeling the motion of brushing to the side. Roll off again and you're starting to push forward as we're brushing, creating topspin on the ball. And that's the key to remember that kick is only just topspin on the ball above your head. And from here, we're going to start really moving forward.

So now here's the warning make sure you have these action steps down before we move forward and really start putting this kick serve to great use. So now it's time to start hitting the ball. I know you've been waiting for this, but it's time. The biggest thing is I want to make sure that you know that when we're tossing the ball, we want to make sure that the toss is actually over our head for this particular serve because when the ball is over our head, it allows us to create the left or right motion. If the ball is too far to the right, it's going to be much harder for us to create that left or right motion. And more than likely, it's going to turn into a slice, meaning that we're coming along the side of the ball versus the back of the ball, creating topspin to make the ball dip into the court. 

So this is how we want to do. We're going to do one real motion with the toss, but without the contact, and then we're going to do one with the contact. If you're really new to this, then I recommend doing two or three shadows, making sure you toss and do everything without the hit before you do one hit. So here's an example of how I go, and I'm going to be still be holding up on the racquet toss shadow. Ok, and then I would do two or three more of those and then toss.

And you can see a lot of brush. Now here's the thing as I do this, I'm not concerned about where the ball is going. As long as it has topspin, you can hear that brush. Where the ball goes depends on the racquet face. But for right now, I really want you to focus on the racquet path to develop the topspin after you develop the topspin we can start tweaking that racquet face to make the ball go either more left or right. 

Again, I go through a shadow left or right and then two or three times, and then I would go through the actual motion and you can see how I'm creating that brush and that spin. Now this is the key for this action step is that you're going to have to wait and let the ball come down more because if you don't wait and reach all the way up, you're not going to have room to brush up. And this is probably the next biggest trick other than the swing path is making sure that you wait. One quick drill you can do to see if you can get the ball to wait longer is getting the ball to hit the side of the frame. And I mean the side right here, you don't want it to get to hit the top because if it hits the top, it means we're reaching up.

We hit the side. That means we're waiting more. And you may not completely make contact if you nick the racquet. That's totally fine, but it's just where you're nicking. It is more important than actually hitting it. So I'm going to do the drill, hit it and I actually got it, so I let the ball wait and hit right here. That's the feeling that we want. 

We want to let that ball come down and get closer to us so we can brush up and create the spin we want. And finally, we're going to start moving our hand all the way down to the bottom of the racquet and slowly start picking up our acceleration. Now with this, if you've been working with the open racquet face as we pick up the acceleration, the ball is going to go higher and higher. So you're going to have to start closing that racquet face down a little bit. So we're going to still do one shadow at least and then do potentially two hits. So one shadow coming left or right, and then I'm going to do two hits making sure that I'm coming left or right and left to right, and I'll adjust my racquet face based on where or how high or how low the ball's going. Once you can do this from here, you're going to slowly work yourself all the way back to the baseline where you can start ramping up and hitting full pace kickstarts.

So in summary, number one, you've got to have the right grip. That's the continental grip. The continental grip is a grip that you got to learn because it's going to serve you in so many areas of your game. 

So go ahead. Learn that continental grip really get it down to being muscle memory if you haven't already learned it. If you have learned it, good job number two is the racquet face and racket path. Remember, the racquet face is going to send the ball in direction, which it's pointing at contact. 

The Racquet Path is going to create the spin and for the kick serve, the racket path is brushing up, but over your head and that path is along the baseline and it might be very foreign to you if you're not used to hitting the kick serve. But really practice going along the baseline to create this brush and spinning action that will bring the ball down to the court and then also have it explode off the court.

Number three, you got to make sure that you're waiting on the ball. So many players start rushing and they reach up to make a really high contact. But now they don't have the ability to brush the ball and create that spin on the kick serve that you really, really want. 

So what you need to do is let the ball come down even lower so you're able to brush up on the ball creating that spin that's going to bring the ball down to the court and really disrupt your opponent's return. If you can do these three keys, you're going to be on the road to having a really high powered kick serve that really disrupts your opponent and gives them a lot of trouble.