Something to think about regarding technique

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Hi all,

Since the dwell time discussion made my eyes glaze over, I thought I might try starting a different conversation for anybody wanting to join in - you might want to grab your bat for this.

Think and discuss regarding the following:

* A table tennis ball only weighs around 2.7g. That's actually incredibly light when you stop and think about it.
* Most table tennis bats are under 200g. Not really all that heavy.
* Think about your body movement during a normal forehand loop - hip turn, shoulder turn, forearm, wrist etc.
* Do a shadow stroke forehand loop, and pay attention to the speed at which you can move and accelerate the bat.
* Now try relaxing your body, and try making the same stroke using just a relaxed and whippy shoulder, forearm and wrist movement. Don't use much waist or upper body turn. A bit like skipping a stone.
* Was there much difference in the speed of the racket? (I personally didn't find all that much difference)

Having done all that, here's a question.

If the speed you can produce just by relaxing and whipping the racket is almost the same, why do we use the whole body movement for fh looping?

Any thoughts?

PS: I do have an opinion or two on the subject, but I don't claim to have any hard facts. I do have some anecdotal thoughts after I spent some time mucking around with various techniques due to injury problems, which I'll share later on if anybody is interested to discuss.

Cheers,
Greg
 
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You have more control over your movement the more group of muscles you use.
Also a full body motion prevents energy loss(idk how to express more clearly) in your joints, all energy goes to the racket and your racket's side leg discards the rest. Its clean, natural.

Other thing about the whip loop its about the movement during the game. If you are standing and doesnt have your legs and hips already engaged any ball would be difficult due your lack of preparation and recovery. All youd do is hit.

It is easier to whip loop/hit, but not practical at all as the level of play scales.
 
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At first, I kinda thought D-Top waz describing a hardbat FH. :D

I think the "Standard" sequence of bio-mechanics has a much better advantage of stability and ability to time the impact with the effective hitting zone.

I have in many of my explanations to players at the clubs is that the uncoiling is a kinetic energy I borrow to help make my whip more powerful. The kinetic energy needed for my explosive flat BH smash has almost no backswing, but borrows a movement, a step forward, an uncoil of waist, moving upper arm and elbow to teh spot and stopping it to allow lower arm to snap, moving up from a crouch... all these make a kinetic energy I can borrow on BH to make the "Whip" really accelerate and result in a really powerful flat hit.

EDIT: That is why I believe one can make a result of a hard fast ball doing that. NL does that. I am a believer seing him firsthand.

On the FH side, I would say if you are in exactly the right position and do a swing like D-Top described, you could make good whip, but you would have to be right there in position. The standard bio-mechanics give you a better base and likely a more dynamic effective zone and much easier to time and control the whip. That is why I think we don't see players doing that when having to move to a ball to FH attack.

Next Level can make a LOT of comments since his knees are in a condition to almost hit like this on FH wing. He can first hand say how it is I believe.
 
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I agree with Der and Paccheco.
I'd like to add one more point in favor of using your whole body.
When using just your arm, you rely on your shoulder to make the backswing and to develop all of the speed of the stroke; while if you use your whole body, you're only using the shoulder to stop all that energy at the end of the stroke. Which of these methods do you think is safer on the shoulder?
I've got shoulder problems, which is why I have to use my whole body for a stroke, otherwise, I WILL feel something's up with my shoulder.
P.s. my shoulder problem is the reason why smashing back high lobs is my least favorite thing to do.
 
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Hi all,

Since the dwell time discussion made my eyes glaze over, I thought I might try starting a different conversation for anybody wanting to join in - you might want to grab your bat for this.

Think and discuss regarding the following:

* A table tennis ball only weighs around 2.7g. That's actually incredibly light when you stop and think about it.
* Most table tennis bats are under 200g. Not really all that heavy.
* Think about your body movement during a normal forehand loop - hip turn, shoulder turn, forearm, wrist etc.
* Do a shadow stroke forehand loop, and pay attention to the speed at which you can move and accelerate the bat.
* Now try relaxing your body, and try making the same stroke using just a relaxed and whippy shoulder, forearm and wrist movement. Don't use much waist or upper body turn. A bit like skipping a stone.
* Was there much difference in the speed of the racket? (I personally didn't find all that much difference)

Having done all that, here's a question.

If the speed you can produce just by relaxing and whipping the racket is almost the same, why do we use the whole body movement for fh looping?

Any thoughts?

PS: I do have an opinion or two on the subject, but I don't claim to have any hard facts. I do have some anecdotal thoughts after I spent some time mucking around with various techniques due to injury problems, which I'll share later on if anybody is interested to discuss.

Cheers,
Greg

Very interesting point.

I used to do experiment like what you did, and to be honest, i didn't see my swing getting any faster. And the more i tried to swing faster, the more exhausted i get. However, the blocker on the other side told me that when i do the whole body, weight shifting type of swing, the ball travels faster and spinier. However, the motion took lots of effort, and my legs took quite a toll since i have chicken legs.

The thing is, speed isn't everything. If a bike running at 20 mph hits you vs. a car moving at 10 mph hits you, i'm pretty sure you can tell the difference.

Hypothetically, each person can only exert a certain amount of power with a swing motion. The question remaining is "Efficiency" - how many % of power of your swing did you put on the ball, how much of it got transferred to the ball, how much of it got lost along the way! So practice will make you more efficient each and everyday. Some people forget about this, and they keep mimicking top players, though they never get the results they wanted. The goal is to make your strokes efficient by minimizing power loss during contact, not focusing on competing with other people's strokes. With that being said, it doesn't mean that we cannot copy the basics from the pros, and develop our own approach to the sport. After all, creativity is what human do best, and that's what makes us evolve into anything we want.

Many coaches have told us all that we have to shift weight from right to left, and with an upward motion when we do the forehand loop. But do you realize how much work do our legs have to do? Especially the right one? Imagine you have to do 1000 loops per day, and your right leg have to push all of your weight from down to up, right to left 1000 times. Guess how tiring that would become, let alone we're just recreational players. But doing this, will make sure we accelerate half of our body at a certain speed, so the power will go straight to the ball. Let's say a moving bike @ 20 mph (your arm only) vs. a moving car (your arm + body weight) @20 mph hit you straight up.

LOOSING IT UP!

The idea behind loosing up all your muscles, removing tension is actually a very natural state of motion. Some of us got the wrong idea that the muscles always do all the work. That's not true. Let me ask you this: " do you constantly flex your legs when you stand up, or walk?" You simply don't. A toddler doesn't have to develop his legs muscles to stand and walk. It's bone structure does all the support work. Let me ask you another question: "when you build a house, is it the frame that holds up the house, or is it the concrete wall that holds it up?". I'm pretty sure when you remove the concrete walls, the house still stands tall.

To sum it up, in regards to human anatomy, what helps us create motion power is actually our bone structure & the tendons. The muscles will add the effect, but too much of it will actually causes diminishing returns. This explains why some huge body builders couldn't punch through bricks like the skinny martial artists would do. It all comes down to efficiency.

The earth is the source of power, this is the lever that you need. From earth, the power will go through legs, hips, torso, shoulder, long arm, wrist, blade and finally to the ball. If you loose all of these up, your ability to gain more power from the lever will improve significantly, and yes, it will add more power or spin to your ball, however you want it. So it's best for us to practice the loop thinking of our feet first.

It would be interesting to have another topic to focus on maximizing our shots' efficiency, and how to transfer energy from legs to ball, but that would be a big challenge, wouldn't it? :)

I hope my 2 cents helps.
Cheers,
 
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Very interesting point.

I used to do experiment like what you did, and to be honest, i didn't see my swing getting any faster. And the more i tried to swing faster, the more exhausted i get. However, the blocker on the other side told me that when i do the whole body, weight shifting type of swing, the ball travels faster and spinier. However, the motion took lots of effort, and my legs took quite a toll since i have chicken legs.

The thing is, speed isn't everything. If a bike running at 20 mph hits you vs. a car moving at 10 mph hits you, i'm pretty sure you can tell the difference.

Hypothetically, each person can only exert a certain amount of power with a swing motion. The question remaining is "Efficiency" - how many % of power of your swing did you put on the ball, how much of it got transferred to the ball, how much of it got lost along the way! So practice will make you more efficient each and everyday. Some people forget about this, and they keep mimicking top players, though they never get the results they wanted. The goal is to make your strokes efficient by minimizing power loss during contact, not focusing on competing with other people's strokes. With that being said, it doesn't mean that we cannot copy the basics from the pros, and develop our own approach to the sport. After all, creativity is what human do best, and that's what makes us evolve into anything we want.

Many coaches have told us all that we have to shift weight from right to left, and with an upward motion when we do the forehand loop. But do you realize how much work do our legs have to do? Especially the right one? Imagine you have to do 1000 loops per day, and your right leg have to push all of your weight from down to up, right to left 1000 times. Guess how tiring that would become, let alone we're just recreational players. But doing this, will make sure we accelerate half of our body at a certain speed, so the power will go straight to the ball. Let's say a moving bike @ 20 mph (your arm only) vs. a moving car (your arm + body weight) @20 mph hit you straight up.

LOOSING IT UP!

The idea behind loosing up all your muscles, removing tension is actually a very natural state of motion. Some of us got the wrong idea that the muscles always do all the work. That's not true. Let me ask you this: " do you constantly flex your legs when you stand up, or walk?" You simply don't. A toddler doesn't have to develop his legs muscles to stand and walk. It's bone structure does all the support work. Let me ask you another question: "when you build a house, is it the frame that holds up the house, or is it the concrete wall that holds it up?". I'm pretty sure when you remove the concrete walls, the house still stands tall.

To sum it up, in regards to human anatomy, what helps us create motion power is actually our bone structure & the tendons. The muscles will add the effect, but too much of it will actually causes diminishing returns. This explains why some huge body builders couldn't punch through bricks like the skinny martial artists would do. It all comes down to efficiency.

The earth is the source of power, this is the lever that you need. From earth, the power will go through legs, hips, torso, shoulder, long arm, wrist, blade and finally to the ball. If you loose all of these up, your ability to gain more power from the lever will improve significantly, and yes, it will add more power or spin to your ball, however you want it. So it's best for us to practice the loop thinking of our feet first.

It would be interesting to have another topic to focus on maximizing our shots' efficiency, and how to transfer energy from legs to ball, but that would be a big challenge, wouldn't it? :)

I hope my 2 cents helps.
Cheers,

Starting with the earth and focusing on your feet is the best thing I've read all day! My karate instructor (4th Dan) always made us focus on that; he'd tell us "why try to create your own power, which is limited, when you can borrow energy from the earth?" This guy could punch through plyboard without much thought or preparation!
He didn't mean it in some mystical, energy-of-the-universe way, he just meant it scientifically.
Also, when I squat heavy weights I focus on my feet being firmly planted I can lift an extra 30 lbs easily.
 
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I'm about to head to bed (I'm up way too late), but I'll just quickly share this and hopefully write a little bit more tomorrow in reply to the above comments when I get up:

If you have bad knees or a bad back, or otherwise poor mobility in general, you might be interested in the following:

Think about your wrist snap on the forehand loop, where we are often encouraged to snap our wrist in the general direction of the swing path - sort of following the edge of the blade.

This isn't really the most powerful use of the wrist - compare power in the the slapping motion of the wrist to the lesser power of the normal forehand wrist snap.

If you are willing to lose a little backhand flexibility, you can harness a lot of this powerful wrist snap by simply rotating your racket to a very extreme forehand grip. Keep the tip of the index finger on the backhand, but turn the racket in your hand as far as you can to the forehand. You may want to drop the other fingers down the handle a bit to make things more comfortable - I do.

Now the forehand looping motion becomes sort of a hybrid between a throwing motion and a normal loop. But notice how you can use the powerful wrist slap movement to produce angled contact on the ball - both speed and spin. Whereas with a normal grip the slapping motion would normally just give speed, but no spin, since you would be driving through the ball.

Using this technique, I have greatly increased my forehand power and ability to swing quickly with a much smaller backswing and much less body turn. My training partners have certainly noticed the results!

Also because I don't need a big body turn or big backswing, I don't have to go back from the table to counterloop - I can pretty much just stay at blocking depth and counterloop from there.

Now, one downside is that it does affect the backhand wrist movement a little, but as a combination bat user that isn't a problem for me, I'm pushing or driving with the pips on the backhand, not looping. When I twiddle I just go to a normal grip for backhand looping and forehand driving with the pips, then back to the extreme forehand grip when I twiddle back. No problem - it isn't hard to pick up.

This technique would probably also work for double inverted players who don't have a backhand loop to begin with, since you don't have a backhand loop to affect. It wouldn't be so great for standard two wing loopers.

But what it is great for is somebody like me who has bad knees, a weak lower back and is struggling for fitness as I get back into the sport. It allows me to stay right up at the table, I don't need to bend knees or rotate much, and the shorter forehand loop swing allows me to counterloop most of the time instead of blocking.

Needless to say, I am enjoying the style quite a lot and I am thinking of sticking with it to see just how good I can get with it once I get a modicum of fitness and match conditioning back. It's not something I would recommend for everybody but I think older players who struggle with mobility, bad knees etc could find something useful in giving it a go.

Anyway, as I said, just something to think about and discuss.
 
says what [IMG]
You want to use your body's axis' to accelerate the other axis' to produce the highest bat speed.

The reason you can get so much spin with a pendulum serve is because your legs are twisting your upper body which is twisting your shoulders which has an arm attached to it that is rotating around the elbow joint with a forearm that's rotating around it's joint and a wrist that's rotating around it's joint. The effect is a non-linear adoption of kinetic energy.

The reason you want to use your entire body in the forehand loop is because that way, you can rotate your wrist axis with the assistance of every other axis for maximum effect.

Say you have a long stick and you swing it at something. Now imagine another stick attached to a hinge on the original stick so it just rotates around and around on the same axis. Swing the stick. Which is moving faster, the stick you're holding or the stick attached to the stick you're holding?
 
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EDIT: That is why I believe one can make a result of a hard fast ball doing that. NL does that. I am a believer seing him firsthand.

On the FH side, I would say if you are in exactly the right position and do a swing like D-Top described, you could make good whip, but you would have to be right there in position. The standard bio-mechanics give you a better base and likely a more dynamic effective zone and much easier to time and control the whip. That is why I think we don't see players doing that when having to move to a ball to FH attack.

Next Level can make a LOT of comments since his knees are in a condition to almost hit like this on FH wing. He can first hand say how it is I believe.

Yep. I read this and I said that this looks essentially in some ways like my forehand looping technique. I think it has its power limits, and there are reasons why if you play further back that you would want to use standard looping technique, but in many ways, what Greg is saying is an element of forehands like Ovtcharov and Mizutani already, IMO. But maybe I don't understand what he is writing.

I do it a bit differently though and I continue to experiment. To get the kind of rotation he is talking about, I have lowered my neutral grip all the way to the bottom of my paddle. This allows me to rotate the paddle and bend the wrist backwards in either direction. for both my forehand and backhand strokes. This is how I bias my grip to different degrees for all my strokes without grip switching.

Videotape is always helpful.
 
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I don't accept the argument that adding more muscles give you more control. Physiologically it makes no sense to me (I teach physiology at university). Core muscles are innervated by large motoneurons. The resulting motor units are larger. Not many people can play the piano with their abs or intercostal muscles.

We can observe optimal technique by examining the top players in the world. They all hit the ball differently, but they all get huge body rotation.

My strong suspicion is that D-top's initial premise must be wrong. I suspect that the top players get greater racket speed that way than if they don't rotate. BUT, and it's a big "but", they also have perfect timing, vision, and anticipation, and they stay in balance at the end of the stroke, even when they put everything they have in it.

So the question for people like us, who are not the top players in the world, and who are not perfect, does emulating that kind of stroke make us better or worse? In other words, does the advantage of slightly greater blade speed get offset by more mis-timing (and resulting errors) and/or finding ourselves off balance after the shot? It is a complex question but the answer for me is clearly yes, on some shots.

In practice when I know where the ball is coming (somebody is just blocking for me to the same place every time), my loops are much stronger in terms of both pace and spin with pro-like body rotation. My technique is pretty good, and there is no doubt about that. But things are a bit different in free play, where I may have to move some considerable distance to get to the ball, and not knowing where the ball is going to go adds a moment where I have to decide what to do. Often then, the full-out body rotation that all top players use on nearly all their shots becomes a bit of a liability for me. Hence, I play better with somewhat faster blade-rubber combination than when a few years ago I tried slower stuff and where I don't try to rotate the rip. (Among other things also, I am less inclined to rush and take the ball too far in front of me, a problem I think I share with the OP).
 
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well I guess it is to save energy and you get more power anyways. I can't be bother to whip my hand around until its rlly tired, using ur body i means you dont get tired easily and its easier to control.
You also can't say u can generate more power with just the hand.
I think the reason is just mostly about control and consistency.
 
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I'm at an age and state of health where I have to look for changes in my technique that make things a bit easier on my body, while still allowing me to compete at a similar level to what I used to do. So these thoughts have come about from that search for techniques that are easier on my body.

Modern forehand loop technique used by the pros requires:


1) deeply bent knees
2) biggish body rotation
3) largish swing
4) Footwork to move you left-right and back-forward to put you in position to use your optimal forehand technique. You need time to make that big body turn and large swing, so you can't always play up close to the table.

If you get older or injured and you can't fulfill some or all of these requirements, what can you do about it to allow you to hit a decent forehand loop using normal technique? How do you work around it?

Most things I read on the internet focus on managing your body rather than modifying your technique - i.e. take painkillers, only really bend your knees for important matches, massage, yoga, get fitter etc. But if your knee isn't going to get better, or your lower back has arthritis, what then? Do all older players with physical limitations either have to make things worse trying to emulate the pros, or just stick to pushing, blocking and flat hitting?

Let's face it, with modern table tennis the loop is the killer stroke that you want to be able to play if you can. So rather than taking the modern loop template and trying to fit a 40-50 year old body into that mold, perhaps there are other ways to still allow us to move the racket through a loop swing path and achieve a loop, but that don't actually require the ability to bend the knees deeply, or do big body turns, or be able to move around quickly. It might not be standard loop technique as we know it, but it allows people with physical limitations to still achieve a quite powerful loop. By shifting the emphasis to the wrist and forearm, and making better use of the strong wrist motion instead of the weak wrist motion, a lot of power can be achieved without needing a big body turn or deep knee bend, or even a large swing.

Could even more power be generated by using these things? Sure. Do I still bend my knees and turn my body when using this technique. Yep - although not as much as I had to before - and I've got 20+ years of habit in bending my knees and turning my body as well. But I guess I'm coming from the point of view of what can be done by someone who is physically restricted, not a free moving 20 year old.

I'm not saying I've discovered a magic new method or anything. But I do think that with a couple of months of practice, an overweight 45 year old with bad knees and a bad back can still produce a pretty strong forehand loop without aggravating his physical problems too much, and not needing to use excessive footwork. I know, because I'm doing it now.

I might try to get a little video this week to demonstrate what I'm doing. I'm hitting on Friday so I might be able to put something together for the weekend, with luck.

TLDR: If you were a player that can't bend your knees, rotate your back much, or move around that much, how would you go about changing your technique to produce a strong forehand loop? What options do you have?
 
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Using larger or more muscle groups does not mean more control. You have more muscles to control, after all.

What it can result in is more control if the technique is more grooved in and you know HOW to control said muscle groups to account for error. I know my margin for error in hitting a very strong, all or nothing loop is higher than when I'm trying to hit a very spinny, very soft loop. Only because of grooving one in more than the other, though.

I'd also like to add that I'm at pretty much the ideal age to be playing, and I'm in relatively good shape. Especially in the core and legs.

People who do not have an ideal condition should produce a more suitable technique for themselves. There's a reason why the Chinese retire early, while the Europeans keep playing into their 40's.


I'd also like to add that you cannot physically produce as much bat speed using only the forearm and wrist as you can using the entire body with a bias on the shoulder in the initial swing geometry. Perhaps if your technique is not any good, but it's been empirically proven quite a few times that a fuller swing does indeed have a bat speed a few m/s faster.

Bat speed is not always everything, though. I'm working on my recovery right now. If you have a shorter swing, you probably won't need to work on your recovery much.
 
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Okay. I don't have time to read all but I think I have read enough.

When you are doing a movement pattern well, you will be thinking of the movement pattern not the muscles that engage or don't engage. Baal has a really good point about more muscles.

But I am going to break this down from two perspectives:

1) the person whose body is working well and can add the hips.

2) the person who has knees, back, hip injuries that make using the hips a sort of dangerous prospect.

I think D-Top was addressing the second scenario.

If you reach your right arm (read left if you want the other side) and keep your shoulder, elbow and wrist joints stable and turn from the waist, YOUR ARM WILL MOVE. Uh....did I just say something obvious? Yeah, I guess you all knew that. It is interesting how much and how fast that movement can be without adding anything else.

If you just move from the elbow joint and the hips, you can get a pretty fast motion. If you add the wrist and it is times to the impact of the ball, the racket is moving quite fast on impact. If you add a little shoulder movement, that adds too. If you have a full extension of the arm and time the forearm and wrist to the contact, the racket will have more momentum and pace behind it than if you use less shoulder and rely more on forearm snap from closer to the body. But if you use a straighter arm and the forearm is not timed to start flexing on contact or just before, then the stroke with more forearm will achieve a greater top speed than the stroke with more shoulder and less forearm.

If you take out any of those elements (wrist, forearm, shoulder, hips), there will be a bit less speed, power and inertia during that brief period while the racket is in contact with the ball. But I wouldn't think about it as the number of muscles acting.

To stand up from a chair, there are about 180 muscles that act synergistically in a complexed and well timed sequence. If we had to think about that, we'd all be in trouble.

The amount of hip rotation and weight transfer that is used by a top player is interestingly small compared to how we sometimes think about it. But the movement is darn fast and exquisitely well timed. And I think that is an important element to understand.

When Mike Tyson used his hips and a weight transfer to punch full force into the dead weight of a body ready to fall, the amount his hips moved as his glove was digging into his opponent was gigantic in comparison to that short, fast pop from the hips in a good loop.

So, if everything is working properly and you don't have knee, hip, lower back or shoulder issues, a stroke with that whipping action for maximum speed and the hips added will have more oomph behind it than if you remove any one of those moving parts.

However, if you are dealing with the realities of life as NextLevel undoubtedly is with his managing pain from a joint disease called rheumatoid arthritis (that is an auto-immune disease that causes inflammation and pain in joints and should not be confused with ostio-arthritis) then you would obviously want to move what is okay to move and not move the parts that hurt too much.

In September at NYISC Edmund and I watched as NextLevel looped to PingPongHolic and we were admiring how his forehand loop comes almost entirely from his shoulder, elbow and wrist (not necessarily in that order). And I can tell you from first hand experience that forehand loop has a lot of inertia behind it. When you block it, it kind of feels like your racket was hit with a baseball, not a table tennis ball. So....he's gotta be doin' somethin' right.

Hahaha.

Hope that all makes sense.

By the way, in D-Top's example of a "normal" stroke with the hips and arm, vs a stroke with more whipping action where the arm alone is as fast as the arm and hips of the "normal" stroke: totally possible.

And, then, for the healthy person, the trick would be to take that arm stroke with the extra whipping action and add the hips. However, for someone with pain that makes keeping the hips out of the movement safer, I think that is a pretty intelligent ADAPTATION to help you keep playing, not lose your edge, and stay safe.

You can have your cake and eat it too! [emoji41]


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus
 
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turning your legs,hips,waist is adding more acceleration and explosiveness to the stroke if done with coordination and with proper sequence. The best advice a coach ever gave me on looping was to treat my body as a spring and my arm as a whip.

For the FH loop for example, you turn your whole body backwards,stop before contact storing energy and then releasing it freely and relaxed at the moment of contact. Of course counter looping close to the table doesnt need whole body movement, so the technique I described is optimal for balls that you have enough time to get into optimal position

The difference between full body & no body usage at all is immense, full body strokes allow you to loop kill or create chances for a bad return that's why they are essential especially in high level play. Now if you can play like a blocker and counterloop when you can ,using only your arm, there is nothing wrong with that as long as you dont mess up your technique

It all boils down to using your whole body unleases more energy than using only your arm
 
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Nikoli, one tip.

Look what your legs are doing on contact: you're jumping AWAY from the ball! Keep your legs on the ground for a better shot. Advanced players sometimes jump into the ball as well, on kills.

People really need to be forced to post video of their strokes before criticizing the strokes of other people. Seriously.
 
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