The Second Serve Program

Elite training methods should not stop being available to you the year you turn 40.

I spent 26 years in the Army, from Combat Engineer to Special Forces Communications Sergeant to Special Forces Detachment Commander leading an Operational Detachment Alpha in combat and in peacetime. I then spent seven and a half years as head strength and conditioning coach for the Air Force Special Warfare Human Performance Squadron, working with Combat Control, Pararescue, Tactical Air Control Party, and Special Reconnaissance pipelines. My job was to keep people who could not afford to break down from breaking down, and to rebuild the ones who already had.

Then I broke my own neck and my ankle jumping out of airplanes, and I had to rebuild myself in my fifties. That is not a story I tell for effect. It is the reason this program is written the way it is.

Competitive tennis after 40 is not a conditioning problem. It is a joint capacity problem, a recovery problem, and a force production problem, in that order. Almost every program sold to adult players ignores that and hands you a junior program with the volume reduced.

This is the other approach. You earn range at the joint, you build the strength to own that range, and then you train the power that actually shows up in a serve and a first step. Recovery is programmed rather than hoped for.

How the training is built

The system draws directly on Functional Range Conditioning and Kinstretch, Functional Range Assessment, and Level 3 Fascial Stretch Therapy, alongside two and a half decades of coaching in environments where preparation is not optional. Footwork work uses the Bailey Method.

Every session includes the whole arc. Movement preparation, joint preparation, the working block, and downregulation. Nothing is in there to make you tired for the sake of it, and nothing that matters is left to the end and skipped.