TheKnife FH and BH Solo Practice

There is a lot of improvement in the videos knife , especially the body mechanics part of it.

A couple of quick things :

1. Focus on the spin and dial down the speed , which will automatically make you brush.
2. Do the forehand drill exactly from the place where Carl showed you. It will help you improve the point of contact , it should be around 2 o'clock and not at 3 o'clock which I felt seeing your video. But sometimes the POC is difficult to catch from a video so you can be aware of it yourself when you do it . The reaching back should happen as part of your "coiling" not as part of connecting the ball. Connecting the ball will part of the uncoiling .. not sure if it makes sense

Knife,

One of the reasons why you do it from where Carl showed is that the forehand is properly hit beside you, not in front of you. IT looks better, but you are trying way too hard and swinging way too evenly. The way most strokes should feel is that the stroke is relatively slow but then the forearm snap or wrist snap, depending on your stroke, adds tremendous acceleration to the racket. The actual ball speed may not be great but the spin on the ball should be massive. I cannot see your stroke from the front but your finishing position from the side is excellent as the racket handle bottom is facing us as it should. The backhand looks good but you are swinging too hard. Most good strokes in TT come from relaxed effort. Tension will almost always creep in from competitive pressure in matches, so what you should be doing is trying to play the ball with proper form and mechanics to a specific point on the table. TT is more judo than jugular punching.

2 o clock as in when you are standing facing the table the , you are facing 12 o clock , and if you stretch your arms to your side parallel to the ground they make the line from 9 o clock to 3 o clock . So since you are lefty you should be hitting somwhere around the 10 o clock and if its a right hander he should hit his forehand around his 2 o clock ...

thekleifheit13 said:

I'll definitely work on that tomorrow when I meet up with my training partners! When you say hit at 2 instead of 3, is that referencing a clock face looking down on me from above? I definitely could see where that would help with spin and with contact in general. I'm totally letting my coach determine my stroke but that's a good observation regardless of stroke!

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I agree with the trying too hard comment. This does look WAY BETTER though. Just need to be more relaxed and brush more and not swing quite as hard. Also, with the FH you are a bit close in and want your body back farther and your contact a little in front of you which is what cookiemonster, I mean ttmonster was saying. I like his way of saying it. But if you are taking the ball too far back and the ball is bouncing vertically on the table, the means that you need to be further back. I would also work on taking that shot opposite cross court so from your BH corner to a Lefty BH corner or a Righty FH corner. That might sort out some of why you are taking the ball too far back.

Your BH, you have the opposite thing. With this drill you are too far back and are reaching forward and taking the ball too far away from your body. You need to move your feet forward and get your body over the table or closer to over the table.

All this being said, you keep doing that and your going to start getting better. That is really a massive improvement from the last self hitting video.

PS: I like the title of the thread and I'm glad you like the nickname I gave you. Your strokes in those videos live up to the nickname.

thekleifheit13 said:

Thanks everyone! I got frustrated on FH because my loops had less spin than my serves, so I tried to get as much hand speed as possible to see if I could make them the same. Thinking about it now, there's two high-energy impacts that ball goes through after a loop (table and wall) so I shouldn't worry. The spacing issues are something I'll work on and I'll still work on leaning farther over for everything. I will say, the BH swing I'm using right now is pretty effortless. Just rotate hips and shoulders and let the rest follow. But I do think I'm reaching too hard. We'll see how drills and games go today!

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The reason why your loops have less spin than your serves is that your serves are using whip motions and brush contact to produce spin, while your loops are using more muscle and hard contact to produce sub optimal results. The way to bridge the gap is to put more of the spin production in the elbow and wrist snap and to put the power in the core rotation. The loop for maximum spin should not hit into the ball but should follow the shape of the ball. THe elbow snap does this naturally but many people make the mistake of thinking that you can get high levels of spin and speed at the same time. Whatever the power levels you produce, there is always a tradeoff between speed and spin. What you do when you want spin is to keep that elbow snap going towards your forehead and not swing forward into the ball. If you look at your stroke in a mirror, it should look like an arc is formed by your paddle trajectory towards your forehead.

Yeah, maybe it is my vocabulary and my use of terms, but, I wouldn't call those loops on the FH. I wouldn't call them loop drives either. I might call them drives or smashes. You are impacting directly into the ball. The stroke is still a big improvement but it is too hard and it is way too much arm.

You end up out of center on the FH followthrough. Truthfully on both FH and BH.

As NextLevel already said, more body, more core rotation. Also, more compact swing and more relaxed. I hear a lot of coaches say things like 60% effort.

What you have to realize is, table tennis is more about technique than sheer power. Ultimately how you use power is important. But a general tendency is that lower level players try way too hard, use too much force and this throws them off balance so they can't recover for the next shot when the ball comes back. Which it will against a good player.

A friend of mine who is a coach has said to me recently: "Think of this as an art form rather than a sport. You have to know how to touch the ball. If you go out there and just try to kill the ball your going to be in trouble when the ball comes back. Touch, spin, and staying in balance: technique."

You could actually try looping slow and playing with how you contact, making the contact thin, feeling the topsheet grab the ball and using the mechanics of core rotation and forearm snap for a while and then slowly work up to 60% effort from say a starting point of 30-40% effort. See what happens if you try that.

With the BH: BH can be very small swing and still have lots of acceleration, spin and power. If you take a big swing I don't think you want your arm fully extended on the followthrough. And the followthrough should be more forward and less out to the side.

With the BH I would actually play around with the feeling of short strokes 4-7 inches and then play with lengthening the stroke till you feel a fuller stroke but not quite as full as what you are doing. Then you will feel a large range of lengths for the stroke from short to long even though it is really the same stroke, just longer or shorter.

In match play, often you get a very effective shot with the BH that wins the point with a short stroke and good timing on the whip action.

With the BH, for you, 60% effort should be good to get the shot a little more relaxed and fluid.

Again, regardless of all this, this is a big improvement. So the information is just to help the improvements continue. At least that is the hope.

Power and spin come from well timed use of legs, core rotation and whip action and precise contact. Not from trying to crush the ball.


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

UpSideDownCarl said:

Yeah, maybe it is my vocabulary and my use of terms, but, I wouldn't call those loops on the FH. I wouldn't call them loop drives either. I might call them drives or smashes. You are impacting directly into the ball. The stroke is still a big improvement but it is too hard and it is way too much arm.

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Yes, but usually, I consider loop and topspin interchangeable terms. But you are right - he still doesn't appreciate the tradeoff between spin and speed and where his focus needs to be for now.