Looping Backspin balls

I can almost guarantee you that it isn't the equipments fault. If it don't have something to do with your technique I would recommend you to study where you are hitting the ball on your racket, and look closely at your touch. Good luck!

Shiro, when this hapens, several thongs could be going on. Posting a vid would help, but until then, I mention some basic things. Many of these are inter-dependent and work with each other.

Impact Zone - Many players hit the ball too far in front of the impact zone, that causes you to reach further than natural for the ball and you will tend to swing too much upwards. Let the ball come into the effective impact zone before looping it is the fix.

Balance - Many players in their early times (or when tired) lean backwards at hips instead of being wide, bending knees and dipping waist, twisting trunk... before the loop. This causes the player to swing upwards too much instead of the proper ammount with control and power from the body.

Bat angle - Some players mis read the spin and open the bat too much, that causes the ball to go too much upwards

Swing plane - Some players swing too far upwards vs a weaker underspin, this will cause you to loop the ball long/out, go more forward vs weaker underspin, and more upwards vs heavy underspin for heavy slow loops.

i would say the pingskills way of looping backspin can be misleading about certain things...

take a look at this video instead:


notice how the bat stays in one plain and the angle doesn't change during the stroke? most of the backhands performed in this video are not on backspin balls, but the two at 1:00 mark are. notice that the only thing that is different is the angle.

i advise inexperienced players to always try to perform the backhand loop this way: keep the bat moving in one plain and use your (RELAXED!) wrist and forearm to rotate the bat around the point that is somewhere around your wrist area. if you are doing it right, the inside of your forearm should be pointing upward at the end of the stroke.

once you get the stroke right you will see that the key thing is timing. your wrist has to start moving early enough to already have quite a lot of speed at the point of contact. when you're still learning the stroke this may feel as if you are contacting the ball almost at the end of your wrist action. one of my students got it right after i told him "turn your wrist all the way around before the point of contact".

Very few players regularly attack long pushes or chops in matches

If they do, then they are advanced players.
It’s the most difficult stroke that us amateur players have to make. It’s also one of those strokes that can’t be self-taught. You have to use a coach or advanced practice partner at some point.
What the Ping Skills videos don’t emphasise is that the footwork and positioning has to be correct. In addition, the player has to have a very relaxed stroke. How many of us, during a rally, have the footwork to be in the right position, relaxed, and then time the stroke correctly taking all points from Des_Echte?
Most of us never master the stroke completely. It comes down to how well you learn to make the choice between being defensive (push in return) and when to attack. This comes from loads of practice and training with a coach.
The standard drill to practice is:
Player one serves heavy, short backspin, player 2 pushes long for player 1 to attack with topspin. Practice this sequence as much as possible with player 2 using as much variations as he can with that first push. Eventually you’ll learn which ones to lift high or drive etc.
Top players employ this sequence every time they have a practice session. This shows how important they regard it.

Edit to add: One good thing about this practice also is that you'll learn the importance of the float serve against those who tend to push short serves.

so here's the reason i said the pingskills video can be misleading: not enough emphasis on the timing of the wrist. i find the timing of the wrist is THE thing that most amateurs get wrong.

http://s22.postimg.org/b7r0583yp/New_Bitmap_Image.jpg

the top row are three consecutive times that jeff demonstrated the stroke without a ball, paused around the time of the imaginary point of contact. the bottom row are three of his strokes while he was really looping backspin balls also paused around the time of contact. you can see that jeff times his wrist a lot earlier when he performs the stroke compared to when he demonstrates it.

obviously jeff can perform the stroke with ease, but no player is completely aware of every little detail of the stroke that they are performing, not even someone as experienced as he is.

once you get the timing right you will see that you don't really have to start too low or finish too high.

Very true

izra said:

................... no player is completely aware of every little detail of the stroke that they are performing, not even someone as experienced as he is............once you get the timing right you will see that you don't really have to start too low or finish too high.

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The old "getting the timing right".
It's one of those things that separate the good from the rest of us.

Tinykin said:

The old "getting the timing right".
It's one of those things that separate the good from the rest of us.

Click to expand...

i strongly oppose the idea that timing is any different from the other elements that can be figured out and learned. sure some will get it quicker and better than others, but in the end you just have to identify the problem, find the solution and repeat it a couple of thousand times in multiball. i guarantee your timing will improve.

I think the key to looping vs. backspin is that you're trying to do most of the stroke going upwards - but you're never going as far upwards as you think. Once of the biggest reasons people miss vs backspin balls is they try to hit through it too much, when they need to focus on brushing upwards instead.

My new coach is big on timing and it has made a big difference. Much of it seems to be more a matter of waiting to be in position to make the shot instead of making the shot before being ready.

Argothman said:

I think the key to looping vs. backspin is that you're trying to do most of the stroke going upwards - but you're never going as far upwards as you think.

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The stroke doesn't need to be big. It just needs to match or exceed the tangential paddle speeds of the ball at contact.

Argothman said:

Once of the biggest reasons people miss vs backspin balls is they try to hit through it too much, when they need to focus on brushing upwards instead.

Click to expand...

Yes, but that is because they are trying to hit the ball too early when it is too far in front of them. They need to wait so a more upwards stroke can be applied. It is timing.

I would recommend you to play multi ball if you have the opportunity. It helped me very much when I wanted to improve my touch and spin

What I didn't cover in my response and what is common sense, is vs underspin to make your own heavy topspin you need to be in position, use your whole body (start low) have the right timing, and be explosive to get a very fast bat speed at impact.

Sounds easy, but a player not doing that needs some serious learning and training. I'm not saying it is mission impossible, this stroke can be done well without 10 years of straight training. I'm ust saying you just don't pick up a bat and go at it and expect to get it right without enough learning and training.

Acceleration and bat speed. That means a lot needs to happen at the elbow joint and usually the wrist as well. The more basic version is with just the elbow joint accelerating the forearm. It can be done with just that. But the more advanced version with the wrist and forearm is going to have more acceleration and more pop.

Ideally the blade starts slow as the ball is being contacted and you hold the ball on the rubber for a little extra but by the time the ball is leaving the rubber that acceleration (change from slow to fast) has kicked in and in that fraction of a second that the ball is on the rubber that bat speed goes from slow to wicked fast.

And you definitely have to have good feet, be in the right place, make contact close to you, in the power zone and not away from you. So there is a ton of technique that this shot takes. And I guarantee that Der_Echte would topspin any ball you give him, long or short, with his backhand.

So the technique could look right from outside to the untrained eye, but it still may not be actually the right technique. One thing to understand, if you are looping underspin and it goes into the net, no matter how you slice it, there is something you did not do in an appropriate way for the ball that you were hitting.

When you watch a good looper against a good chopper, the chopper is changing the spin, heavy, light, medium heavy, HEAVY (with capital letters), and no spin. And somehow, with a high level looper, with all those changes in spin, all the balls get looped back and the spin gets countered properly. And when you see a less skilled looper against the same chopper, some balls will go into the net and some will fly long. That second looper is not adjusting to the changing spin and therefore part of the technique is wrong.

But, never fear, practice is what helps this improve. Practice with a good coach would really help. But if you don't have access to a coach, then you need to figure out creative ways to practice this.

I do a serve and receive drill with a few friends where one person serves, the other person has to push anywhere, long, short, left, right, center, anywhere, totally random. The server's job, he has to attack whatever comes back. When you do this you start getting better at attacking long underspin and moving to wherever the ball is placed.

You could also do a drill where the push is put right to where you are having trouble until you get better at it. At a certain point you start feeling the arc and trajectory to get those pushes on the table and at a certain point you can return those long pushes with heavy topspin every time. It just takes practice. So, find a coach or do serve and receive drills or both.

Coach video showing many top Chinese players looping backspin.

This is a girl who plays in my club and one of the best of her age group in France.

Two things can help lifting a heavy backspin ball easily :

- Opening your bat
- Accelerating while going upwards

The professional women are doing it most of the time and this makes lifting the ball more easy for them but men can create more power by breaking the spin while going forward.

There are a few different timing going on when we say ht word timing.

There is the timing of the shot itself - waiting for the ball to come into the strike zone and hitting it in time in position inside hte strike zone.

There is the timing of the HEIGHT at which you hit the ball. I feel that if you can get into position to take the ball at its height, you have more obvious angle and time pressure options, but i feel it is NOT (I really mean nowhere near as important) as important to do that as what I feel is important is impacting the ball inside your effective strike zone while on balance. That still allows you to make a spinny, fast, quality shot with high percentage. I think this must be first, before hitting everything at its height. I think being there in position, being on balance in time and impacting ball within the effective strike zone is absoulte number one priority before worrying about other stuff. When we get more advanced we can do that better and it helps our games. Until then, if we try too hard to hit at height, but outside zone, we are asking for big-time trouble with a capital T.

There is the timing of all the muscles, this is really important to use the whole body and make accelleration that results in a high bat speed at impact.

Carl hit upon the importance of accelleration and bat speed at impact. So many things at work, being relaxed is also important. I can hit those impressive looking topsins vs and underspin ball on BH wing because I can really get my bat into gear right before impact. I see the ball better, have better confidence, and when I hit the ball inside my effective strike zone, I can really load up spin or speed or both and let it fly... it will still go in. Important thing is ti se the ball, be there, WAIT for the ball to come into zone and time your accleeration and final bat speed at impact when ball is within the effective strike zone.

Der_Echte could give a crap if he impacts the ball at its maximum height, he has other things to worry about first and he isn't good enough to forsee all that stuff to get into position and be right there when the ball is high. If it works out that way, great, then I got better options. I am not good enough to process all that at the same time, so I concern myself about simply being in position and hit ball inside my zone, the rest takes care of itself at my level and a couple levels above me. (assuming the 2100-2200 player gave me an underspin ball to my BH I was ready for) A real key for accelleration is loose intial grip, and using my body's momentum to add power to the shot. Sometimes that is from a mini step forward. Sometimes that is exploding and uncoiling from a crouch.

I need ot learn a short storke quicker to employ BH topspin vs a fast incoming ball though.

There are MANY BH shots, still alot of different ones vs underspin. Mostly in this thread we are talking about an opening topspin vs the long underspin, which is a slow/heavy topspin, or a medium pace - medium-heavy topspin shot we make.