Please help me become better player - video

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Hi,

I need some advice with my play. You can see the video cut with some warm up and a match play. My friend in the video is a top player in our club, he is already 52 years old but still he is top guy in league 3. I am in the dark blue t-shirt.
I am 37 years old and do not have much time for practice, only 2 times a week, but we are playing mainly matches. I know my footwork is really poor and I am standing to high, maybe you can recommend some exercises which will help me stand lower.

Thanks
 
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You look like you can play decently well. Good work. If you are concerned for your footwork practicing footwork drills would be useful. But you need to work with someone who is good enough to do those with you if you want to practice those drills.

The biggest thing that stands out to me that is a technical detail that could be fixed and would help you is a mechanical detail with your forehand. If you watch the part where you are warming up, on forehand, your elbow starts bent at a 90-degree angle and stays that way for the whole stroke. This is the case when you are counter-hitting and when you are looping. What this means is that your stroke does not have good acceleration which causes you to try too hard because the stroke is coming from the wrong place.

In match play, where it stands out the most is when you are trying to loop off of a push, you are working way too hard and not getting much from it.

If you watch your older friend, in the same video, even when you are counter-hitting with him, his stroke comes from his forearm moving at the elbow joint. This is called forearm snap. Your friend's arm starts with significantly less bend in the elbow than yours (almost straight) and ends with his forearm pretty close to his upper arm at the end of the follow through of his stroke.

The result is, he works less and the ball gets more pace and spin. Magic.

Your habit of keeping the elbow stiff and at a 90-degree angle the whole time through the stroke will be a hard habit to break, but see if you can learn how to get your forearm to start a bit closer to straight and end more bent than now your forehand level will go up dramatically: more spin, more speed, less effort. Sometimes you hear people say, "keep your elbow stable". If you keep your elbow stable and the only movement from the arm, is at the elbow joint, your forehand will improve significantly. Once you have that in place, then, if you let the rest of the arm move a little, you will have a much better forehand stroke and looping backspin will be twice as easy, perhaps more than twice as easy, and your counter-loops will become lethal.
 
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Yes you are right, I did not see that. Of course after playing many years it will not be easy to change it, but I can try to think about it more. I remember one coach told me some time ago that my arm is to stiff, that I should relax more. I will try to focus on that next sessions and will see if it helps.
Thanks for advice Carl.
 
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Somehow missed this thread, good catch Carl.

What Carl is describing is really taking away a lot of power and control from you. If you were a bit lower and were swinging slowly, you have enough control. many players get this from starting their days out trying to hit slow for control. it makes sense on one level, but when one doesn't learn how to use the whole body to accelerate, you get this.

What you are doing is locking up your entire upper body and making your acceleration hinging on your shoulder joint. There isn't a whole lot of muscle oven in the Hulk himself to do that with any power or control.

When you start looping starting the power from your legs and torso with a wide base, you get power and control if synced with the ret of your body, so start low like that then channel that power through your shoulder, elbow and use elbow as a hinge (especially over the table with less use of body) and finally your wrist if you have learned to time it. That produces a very stable shot with power and spin consistently if you were in position on balance in a good enough stance. You will get away with some other technical errors if you can do this well.

Many players do this and/or impact the ball out of the effective strike zone and it saps away power and control. Maybe you can fix it soon by being aware, maybe it is too inbred that it isn't easy to fix.

About staying low, it helps to practice being a bit wider, open, and knees bent. this will be a huge change at first and your body will feel it. Go along and listen to your body, but incrementally as your body allows you, get down and bent more until you are there. it will take a lot of conscious awareness and time for your body to get there.

Look how your partner hits BH and how you hit them. he is better balanced (although you have good touch and timing) and his timing and feel of the wrist are advanced. that allows him to topspin with control and ease, while you are pretty much banging it back without much spin. That kind of BH shot you have is valuable in close to the table bang bang exchanges, but if you can learn the timing and effective impact of your partners BH, you will be able to counter topspin and totally change up the spin, pace, direction and rhtym of the rally.

Carl does that really well and I wish I had his timing right now.
 
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Thank you Der Echte for further explanation. I already tried this at home with robot, but unfortunately it is not that easy, because there are too many points to do at one shot, like:
1. Staying lower
2. Open my arm
3. Relax my arm
Anyway now I am aware of that. First of all I will start with different position. Someone told me that important is to stay low and the head should be straight. My problem is that I am not low and bow only the upper part with the head. I already tried to change it and I saw some advantage that I have more time and better balance.
I think I will start with this one change and try to fix it for let's say about two weeks and then try other stuff. I think if I try to fix all I will do nothing.
 
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says Spin and more spin.
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Sali, that is a good point. Start with one thing at a time. It is much more possible to fix things if you start one at a time. Besides, if nothing changes, you still play quite well. Your receive of serve is good, your serve and attack is effective. Good luck.
 
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What you are doing is locking up your entire upper body and making your acceleration hinging on your shoulder joint. There isn't a whole lot of muscle oven in the Hulk himself to do that with any power or control.

well there is one player that plays like this but it looks weird and not natural


this guy in the red shirt, he doesnt move his body at all in his shots.
 
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Hidetoshi Oya was 2013 top 12 Japan winner. He's a very unorthodox player, but has amazing touch and timing which is how he's able to compensate for the lack in technique. We thought of him as an asian Thomas Keinath sort of player. His last minute adjustments makes him so hard to read as player as far as where he's going with the ball and add to that fact how he goes off the bounce on so many shots.
 
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