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Hello everyone. I’ve been enjoying reading the forum for a while now, but this is my first post. I’d like your thoughts on an idea I had about how one bends the knees in preparation for certain strokes. I’m mainly talking about the forehand powerloop (the forehand topspin against backspin) here. In most coaching manuals (see for example ITTF Coaching Manual 1), you’ll read that during the backswing for the forehand powerloop you should put around 90% of your weight on your right knee. For the past two years or so, I’ve been thinking about this instruction while doing the shot, and I’ve found myself really planting my foot hard into the ground. By thinking about putting so much weight on my (poor) right knee I’ve been lowering my shoulder and therefore my upper body far too much – really forcing myself to lower my upper body onto the knee. What’s happened is that my forehand powerloop (against push) has now become extremely spinny but extremely slow and quite high. Obviously the weight transfer is too vertical and not horizontal enough. Sometimes that’s fine, but I’m never going to hit a winner with a forehand powerloop. The other problem is that I started having problems with my right knee! It would ache after every practice session. Anyway, having noticed these problems I thought about that 90% instruction again. So, instead of thinking about putting weight on the right knee, I’m now thinking about bending the right knee a good deal – but not necessarily putting weight on it. That was the eureka moment for me. By bending the knee a good deal (let’s say at a 90 degree angle), I’m still giving my body the chance to move up and add vertical power to the shot, but I’m also keeping my shoulders more even, and putting less pressure on my (forever thankful) right knee. The action feels more like a squat – like lowering the ‘posterior’ between the knees rather than hauling weight onto the right knee. Has anyone else come to this conclusion? Does anyone else have a problem with the stereotypical line about putting 90% of your body weight on the right knee?