My version of Jun Mizutani serves

[UpSideDownCarl]

Hi Carl, that's a detailed breakdown explaining the difference between the serves. It took me while to assimilate it, but I understood what you are trying to convey to me. I take it seriously as a valuable feedback. I would work on it by the table to see the difference it can bring to the quality of the serve. BTW, I also see similar kind of thing going on when ML serves. He also contact almost with the ball within the region of the chest. I just thought that it obstructs the view of the serve. But, almost all elite players have a bend upper torso, what could be the reason?

I felt that the serve mechanics of my serve was ok. But, does shifting the energy from upper torso have such a significant differenc to serve quality. I see that people like ovtcharov, samsonov don't use the upper torso-hip shift when making their serves. Could you throw some light on it?

Well, on this stuff, the first thing I am going to say is, the serve is not just the arm and even the arm is different. But if there is that much difference in BODY MECHANICS, than calling this a Jun Mizutani serve is actually a disservice to you more than to JM and it is also a disservice to people who don't have the tools to analyze the body mechanics.

If I made a video of me walking upright and said it was the way John Green walked, but that JG walked with his knees bent and his torso bent at a 45-degree angle and the only thing that was the same was a funny back and forth hitch in the left arm, it would be sort of weird to say, here is how John Green walks.

But as a Siva Schooehauer serve, your serves actually have more value. I think, if all your serve videos had your name in the title, you actually might ultimately, over time, build more brand name recognition for YOURSELF. People might even come up with names like: THAT CRAZY SPIN SERVE GUY.

Titles like "Siva Schopenhauer Attempts to Emulate Jun Mizutani's Ghost Serve". That would be much different than the titles you use largely because you are stating you are attempting to emulate and it specifies Siva S as the server. Whereas, your titles imply that it is JM's or Ma Long's serve in some way. Perhaps it is semantics but in my opinion, it would be more genuine.

As far as body mechanics, I think I will ask a few questions and see if you have answers to the body mechanics issues. But first one important observation. When Jun Mizutani is finished with his serve motion, he is facing the table and the opponent and he is low and looks like he is ready for the next ball. His follow through motion brings him right into the ready position. When your serve is finished, you are upright and still facing the side, and not really in a position that is ready for much of anything aside from watching the outcome of your serve.

Now, some little questions.

1) a) If JM's hips start facing approx 45-degrees away from the table and end facing square to the table (so when his hips face 90-degrees to the table his hips have turned 45-degrees and when he squares his hips to the table that is another 90-degrees of rotation for a total of 135-degrees of rotation)
b) and your hips start facing approx 90-degrees to the table and end facing 86- degrees to the table for a total of 4-degrees of rotation,
c) who is more likely to get more power from the core rotation of the hips?

Now the truth is a lot of that hip rotation is not fully necessary and you make a small pop of your hips that is well timed to the stroke. So your hips are helping you well for how small a hip rotation you make. Credit for the efficiency of the hip pop. Your hip movement may be more efficient than JM's. But it is totally different and--even though the hip action is more efficient, because it is a very small movement, well timed without much wasted effort and JM's hip movement is giant--he still probably gets 2-3 times more power from the hips into the ball than you.

2) When one loops, why is it not such good technique to be upright with legs straight? Why would knees bent and torso bent forward give more power? What is that about?

Samsonov's technique on serves is special and is an adaptation for someone who is pretty tall and has long arms. But you didn't say you were imitating Samsonov. Why wouldn't you say hybrid imitation: Jun Mizutani's forward and back arm movement and Vladimir Samsonov's body mechanics?

Anyway, Samsonov's height makes the tradeoff of staying high but using the long sweep of his long arm as an acceptable adaptation for his body. You are not tall like NextLevel or Samsonov.

But, I am sure, if you answer the 2nd question you can figure out part of what the bent and forward position is about. If you loop from upright with legs straight, you can't use your body to add power to the stroke. With the serve, those guys get much more power from their body as a result of being bent and having that lower center of gravity. And they also end up bent and low so they are ready for their next shot.

As far as having the elbow back and up so that the contact is at chest height and under the upper body, this does several important things. The first one is, from the standpoint of the serve receiver, the whole entire time, your (Siva's) racket is visible. Whereas those pros who are bent over with the contact only inches away from the chest and the upper body bent over the ball, aside from a large amount of extra leverage, A LARGE AMOUNT, their racket is out of view until a fraction of a second before contact. The ball is always in view but the racket is hidden until just before it contacts the ball. The raising of the elbow up and back gives far more free range and swing to the forearm and causes the followthrough to end to the left of his chest, further back and closer to hidden (he is lefty. On a righty like Ma Long the follow through would end to the right and behind his right side at chest height). The follow through of your serve ends up past your abdomen and out towards the right. So, way lower and way farther out because your elbow is way lower than JM's and JM isolated the movement of the forearm and wrist. Where, your elbow moves out, down and forward which means you are using much less forearm and much more upper arm which is definitely lower level technique than Jun's. Upper arm stable and whip from forearm gets much faster racket speed than what happens with all that movement from the upper arm.

Anyway, with JM's elbow up and back, his arm is out of view. Whereas, there is an easy tell in your serve: when you do the normal sidespin that curves towards a righty's BH, your elbow goes out to the right and when you do the reverse spin, your elbow is still visible but moves in towards your stomach. Jun's elbow is hidden behind him so you can't even see what it does.

Also you spoke about my level of play, I haven't played any competitive level of play, except for the few months in a club nearby, Curious to know where u would put me on?

I am judging from this video.

You hitting starts at about 1:45.

My memory is, your contact and spin are decent. Your mechanics are pretty bad. By the textbook there are too many things you are doing with poor mechanics. Racket coming across to the outside and under your shoulder. Elbow higher than racket in followthrough. Your FH stroke is a good 8-12 levels lower than your serves. So, if your serves are 2200-2400, your FH stroke could be as low as 1200 level.

I think there is a risk and a flaw in judging someone's level from videos and from technique. Because a player's real level doesn't work that way.

I know plenty of guys with 1500 level technique who are 2100. And then there are other guys who look like they are 2200 in practice but really are 1800 level players because they don't have game skills.

So all I can say is, your FH technique is not good and it would be really hard to change some of those bad habits. Hopefully a fool like Archosaurus will be smart enough not to comment because he just doesn't know what he is talking about. But your FH needs real help.

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

Well, on this stuff, the first thing I am going to say is, the serve is not just the arm and even the arm is different. But if there is that much difference in BODY MECHANICS, than calling this a Jun Mizutani serve is actually a disservice to you more than to JM and it is also a disservice to people who don't have the tools to analyze the body mechanics.

If I made a video of me walking upright and said it was the way John Green walked, but that JG walked with his knees bent and his torso bent at a 45-degree angle and the only thing that was the same was a funny back and forth hitch in the left arm, it would be sort of weird to say, here is how John Green walks.

But as a Siva Schooehauer serve, your serves actually have more value. I think, if all your serve videos had your name in the title, you actually might ultimately, over time, build more brand name recognition for YOURSELF. People might even come up with names like: THAT CRAZY SPIN SERVE GUY.

Titles like "Siva Schopenhauer Attempts to Emulate Jun Mizutani's Ghost Serve". That would be much different than the titles you use largely because you are stating you are attempting to emulate and it specifies Siva S as the server. Whereas, your titles imply that it is JM's or Ma Long's serve in some way. Perhaps it is semantics but in my opinion, it would be more genuine.

As far as body mechanics, I think I will ask a few questions and see if you have answers to the body mechanics issues. But first one important observation. When Jun Mizutani is finished with his serve motion, he is facing the table and the opponent and he is low and looks like he is ready for the next ball. His follow through motion brings him right into the ready position. When your serve is finished, you are upright and still facing the side, and not really in a position that is ready for much of anything aside from watching the outcome of your serve.

Now, some little questions.

1) a) If JM's hips start facing approx 45-degrees away from the table and end facing square to the table (so when his hips face 90-degrees to the table his hips have turned 45-degrees and when he squares his hips to the table that is another 90-degrees of rotation for a total of 135-degrees of rotation)
b) and your hips start facing approx 90-degrees to the table and end facing 86- degrees to the table for a total of 4-degrees of rotation,
c) who is more likely to get more power from the core rotation of the hips?

Now the truth is a lot of that hip rotation is not fully necessary and you make a small pop of your hips that is well timed to the stroke. So your hips are helping you well for how small a hip rotation you make. Credit for the efficiency of the hip pop. Your hip movement may be more efficient than JM's. But it is totally different and--even though the hip action is more efficient, because it is a very small movement, well timed without much wasted effort and JM's hip movement is giant--he still probably gets 2-3 times more power from the hips into the ball than you.

2) When one loops, why is it not such good technique to be upright with legs straight? Why would knees bent and torso bent forward give more power? What is that about?

Samsonov's technique on serves is special and is an adaptation for someone who is pretty tall and has long arms. But you didn't say you were imitating Samsonov. Why wouldn't you say hybrid imitation: Jun Mizutani's forward and back arm movement and Vladimir Samsonov's body mechanics?

Anyway, Samsonov's height makes the tradeoff of staying high but using the long sweep of his long arm as an acceptable adaptation for his body. You are not tall like NextLevel or Samsonov.

But, I am sure, if you answer the 2nd question you can figure out part of what the bent and forward position is about. If you loop from upright with legs straight, you can't use your body to add power to the stroke. With the serve, those guys get much more power from their body as a result of being bent and having that lower center of gravity. And they also end up bent and low so they are ready for their next shot.

As far as having the elbow back and up so that the contact is at chest height and under the upper body, this does several important things. The first one is, from the standpoint of the serve receiver, the whole entire time, your (Siva's) racket is visible. Whereas those pros who are bent over with the contact only inches away from the chest and the upper body bent over the ball, aside from a large amount of extra leverage, A LARGE AMOUNT, their racket is out of view until a fraction of a second before contact. The ball is always in view but the racket is hidden until just before it contacts the ball. The raising of the elbow up and back gives far more free range and swing to the forearm and causes the followthrough to end to the left of his chest, further back and closer to hidden (he is lefty. On a righty like Ma Long the follow through would end to the right and behind his right side at chest height). The follow through of your serve ends up past your abdomen and out towards the right. So, way lower and way farther out because your elbow is way lower than JM's and JM isolated the movement of the forearm and wrist. Where, your elbow moves out, down and forward which means you are using much less forearm and much more upper arm which is definitely lower level technique than Jun's. Upper arm stable and whip from forearm gets much faster racket speed than what happens with all that movement from the upper arm.

Anyway, with JM's elbow up and back, his arm is out of view. Whereas, there is an easy tell in your serve: when you do the normal sidespin that curves towards a righty's BH, your elbow goes out to the right and when you do the reverse spin, your elbow is still visible but moves in towards your stomach. Jun's elbow is hidden behind him so you can't even see what it does.



I am judging from this video.

You hitting starts at about 1:45.

My memory is, your contact and spin are decent. Your mechanics are pretty bad. By the textbook there are too many things you are doing with poor mechanics. Racket coming across to the outside and under your shoulder. Elbow higher than racket in followthrough. Your FH stroke is a good 8-12 levels lower than your serves. So, if your serves are 2200-2400, your FH stroke could be as low as 1200 level.

I think there is a risk and a flaw in judging someone's level from videos and from technique. Because a player's real level doesn't work that way.

I know plenty of guys with 1500 level technique who are 2100. And then there are other guys who look like they are 2200 in practice but really are 1800 level players because they don't have game skills.

So all I can say is, your FH technique is not good and it would be really hard to change some of those bad habits. Hopefully a fool like Archosaurus will be smart enough not to comment because he just doesn't know what he is talking about. But your FH needs real help.

To prove your point, I made a small training video with one of my friend. He played for under 14 polish national team. The hall was a part of student dorm and all the players except for both of us are really new to the game. so, to put it short nothing sort of serious practice is going on in the practice session. I keep looking at the forehand again and I am amazed at how bad it is. I have trained for a fairly good time, since I didn't have any coach, so I fooled myself into believing that the FH was good due to the spin quality. I don't have any idea on how to rework on it. In most clubs over here, players are really old and just come over to relax after work. So, it is kind of hard to get into the right group to train on technique. I would be glad to know from you how to deal with this situation.

After the training session, actually both of us played a 21 point game and I won the game 21-19. It seems I have worked on 2 nd ball and 4th ball attack subconciously with bad technique to win most points. If you notice something else to work on, please suggest me.

P.S. Had a hard time to record the video due to lack of place for positioning the device. So, sorry for the horrible recording.

 

[NextLevel]

Not sure about the U14 Polish national team thing looking at the quality of his strokes or that such a player would play till 21 in the modern era of 11 pt games but it's okay.

The use of the arm is a little better, but there is probably still too much shoulder/upper arm involved to have a really good forehand.

This is the video I refer people to when they have issues like yours.

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

Not sure about the U14 Polish national team thing looking at the quality of his strokes or that such a player would play till 21 in the modern era of 11 pt games but it's okay.

I just conveyed the information about his playing strength from other mates. His forehand is really good. I guess he doesnt have that upper arm movement like me. I would probably put him in third division over here. But, one thing that amazed me was, when I played him in the match, he was not able to return my no deception backspins. There I was suspecting his real strength as well. We just played 21 game for fun, but after that set, I was reminscent of the diverse emotions one could experience within those 21 points. Damn, that was too much fun bro.

This video is a gem bro. Thanks for sharing, exactly what I was looking for. Ton of videos in youtube and sometime it is difficult to find the right stuff. This guy cuts it clear into the problem. One thing about my FH is my rubbers are dead as doormat, so I get power from the extra movement. By next week, I am definitely changing both of my rubbers. I have a tacky 729 sensor rubber which I am planning to use for FH. Can I get some good quality rubber for BH for 20 $. What is your recommendation? I prefer tacky ones cos I feel like I could do better with them. I really liked the feel after I used one my friends setup.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

One thing about my FH is my rubbers are dead as doormat, so I get power from the extra movement.

You may think this is true. But it is not. An inefficient movement is never more powerful than a more efficient movement. Efficiency allows you to use less effort and get more power.

Anyway, it will be hard to change the movement. But you can do it.

Shadow strokes with a mirror will help a little. Self hitting will help too.

Also a robot.

When Edmund Suen helped me rebuild my FH he had me start by self hitting and trying to move nothing but my forearm and had me hitting sideways on the table so the ball would not land on the table no matter what so I would not focus on if I hit the ball in or not: so I would focus on just the movement of the forearm. He wanted me to leave the body out entirely because he said, when I could do the forearm movement properly, I would be able to add the body automatically since the body movement was not the real issue.

I have to say, it was like torture. Aside from the self hitting trick which I have used for learning to brush, changing grips and for getting the arm movement in the stroke to improve, I also used a robot A LOT to get the mechanics. Because, at first, as soon as I was faced with the randomness of hitting with a human, my stroke mechanics would go out the window; and then the self hitting and robot really helped me get the good form back. And there was a period where my stroke would waver from good form to bad form over and over. And I kept needing to go back to the robot or the self hitting to regain the feeling of having the forearm snap in the stroke.

What was wrong with my stroke was very different from what needs fixing in your stroke. But NextLevel has the right video. That is the exact information you need. So analyze that and you might want to see if you can get the leverage of the forearm snap from the elbow joint while keeping your upper arm stable before letting the upper arm back into the movement.

This is the video I refer people to when they have issues like yours.

Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

ou may think this is true. But it is not. An inefficient movement is never more powerful than a more efficient movement. Efficiency allows you to use less effort and get more power

That is true. But, man should be optimistic na, just blame it on other inanimate things till you get it right . That second video clearly speaks about all the deficiencies in my stroke. I knew that upper arm should nt move but some how it keeps moving. But, deliberate practice should be the key. I wasnt focussing much on those strokes for a very long time. I believe i made a lot of corrections in my stroke a year ago but somehow due to lack of practice, I have returned to what I have been doing all the time

Shadow strokes with a mirror will help a little. Self hitting will help too

Thanks for putting that video. Exactly what I was needing. I prefer to practice alone and I will try to practice as you have shown in the video. Those were beautiful strokes, nicely executed, looks clean and damn fast. Seems, you are very much advanced compared to my level. Those robot practices have definitely paved of seeing those in the video. I try to adapt a style like ML recoiling like a spring and mix it with where ZJK starts his stroke. I am positive that with change with some rubbers my movement should improve atleast a little. Let's see, I ll make an update in near future. Thanks for commenting, I appreciate it

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

...man should be optimistic na,

It is always worth being optimistic. Trust me, my form was bad. Now it is okay. But in table tennis, it seems there is always room for improvement.

I believe i made a lot of corrections in my stroke a year ago but somehow due to lack of practice, I have returned to what I have been doing all the time

It is always hard to say. That is why video footage is so helpful. You think you are doing one thing. The footage shows you are doing something else. In table tennis, there are so many moving parts and so many variables, and things happen so fast, it is very hard to change mechanics and get new mechanics into muscle memory. You keep thinking you changed. You look at the footage and the footage shows you did not. But, over time, if you keep working on it, and you have outside sources for reference like video footage and/or a good coach, you can change those things.

But those habitual patterns of movement that have been engrained into muscle memory....well, it helps to have an understanding of neuromuscular re-patterning to change things like that.

Without Edmund showing me what I needed to change, I couldn't have done it. And without a decent understanding of how to change habitual patterns of movement and get more useful patterns fully into muscle memory, my strokes would still suck.

Thanks for putting that video. Exactly what I was needing. I prefer to practice alone and I will try to practice as you have shown in the video.

Cool. Glad to help.

Those were beautiful strokes, nicely executed, looks clean and damn fast. Seems, you are very much advanced compared to my level.

I am just going to be honest, I don't know.

I am one of those players who does not care much about match play. I like doing drills. So, in drills, people watch and think I am better than I am. Then in matches I am not so great at receive of serve. So, it is what it is. We may just be good at different things. [emoji2]

I try to adapt a style like ML recoiling like a spring and mix it with where ZJK starts his stroke.

This is a mistake made by many players who don't have a good coach and are trying to teach themselves how to play. The fundamentals of a player like Ma Long were phenomenal before he started playing around with extending the stroke. You need to have the basics way before you start doing that.

If you want to copy Ma Long's form you want to copy the strokes he does when he is warming up. The counterhitting stroke and the looping stroke he does in warming up for a match are more what you would want to emulate until your strokes are much better.

I hope that makes sense.




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[NextLevel]

Ma Long is one of the worst player for a learner to imitate - his technique is very advanced and he has multiple swings, many of them consequences and components of his extremely tricky game. Zhang Jike's swings are far less varied and much easier for an amateur to imitate and understand. They are more similar and easier to adapt to a wide variety of balls.

 

[ttmonster]

The last two posts are golden !!

 

[bobpuls]

This is the right stuff . i have to make video of my self playing to get some feedback.

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

it helps to have an understanding of neuromuscular re-patterning to change things like that.

How to improve the understanding of such stuff. Do we get read somewhere in sports psychology books or is there is a specific source on interent to learn more about such.

It is always hard to say. That is why video footage is so helpful. You think you are doing one thing. The footage shows you are doing something else.

My stroke improvement sessions are way before one and half years back involving deliberate practice sessions to correct them. As you said in some earlier post, it wasnt fun at all. Then I did have any equipment to shoot them as video which I regret for sure. But, I believe, I defintely made some incremental progress which I lost it due to lack of muscle memory. The proof was the resultant spin and loop quality was way different and my recovery was better.

I try to adapt a style like ML recoiling like a spring and mix it with where ZJK starts his stroke.

That shows the typical chimp mindset na. Everyone wants to be a winner, follow the leader to make it big lol. Yeah, I understand my deficiencies in terms of basic warm up training. To build strokes from the basic is a lot of work. As NL said, Loop hides and masks all those deficiences. Probably getting back to those training sessions like the ones of your practice session could be of help to improve loop. Again, working on FH drive is another thing. If you have some strategy which helped you, please feel free to share

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

Agreed. Seeing my strokes, it was probably a bad idea for taking that strategy.

is technique is very advanced and he has multiple swings, many of them consequences and components of his extremely tricky game

Never thought about that. These are once again gem coming from years of experience in understanding. I would like to observe some ML games from this perspective to know why he is so unique and way on top above all the elite players.

Zhang Jike's swings are far less varied and much easier for an amateur to imitate and understand.

Subconsciously I felt that ZJK strokes were inferior to ML. But, what you said could be the exact reason. ZJK is damn good cos of so many years of brutalish training by his pop and all those provincial team training sessions. I actually implemented the loop by starting like ZJK and there was quantum shift in stroke spin and loop height. Again, It may be all wrong till I get to look at in video

 

[NextLevel]

Siva, in all honesty, and it is not necessarily a bad thing, you sound like someone who is more interested in impressing people than in developing technique that is relatively sound and wins matches.

On a relative scale, Ma Long is a pace player while Zhang Jike is a spin player. Every ambitious adult learner should tend towards spin strokes.

It's not about copying anyone's strokes but about developing a technically correct stroke for third ball and rallying. The best loops in the world is not Ma Long or Zhang Jike for me. For me, it is the one that consistently puts the ball where I want it with quality. Mimicking a pro without understanding essentials hurts that process as you may not know what is key and what is accidental.

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

Siva, in all honesty, and it is not necessarily a bad thing, you sound like someone who is more interested in impressing people than in developing technique that is relatively sound and wins matches.

On a relative scale, Ma Long is a pace player while Zhang Jike is a spin player. Every ambitious adult learner should tend towards spin strokes.


It's not about copying anyone's strokes but about developing a technically correct stroke for third ball and rallying. The best loops in the world is not Ma Long or Zhang Jike for me. For me, it is the one that consistently puts the ball where I want it with quality. Mimicking a pro without understanding essentials hurts that process as you may not know what is key and what is accidental.

My way of looking at improvement is to look at the best player to whom I can relate to and learn why certain things work for them and not for others, How I can integrate many elements of their play into mine together with my own strenghts and gain advantage in playing. Nobody taught me how to do a proper service in person, I owe everything to internet and to communities in general. I didn't have facilities growing up to learn the game methodically, so maximising the utilisation of opportunites where it is easily available is quite natural.

Generallly my strategies have worked correctly for my part cos it helped me shorten the learning curve to a considerable extent. For me, Learning a perfect stroke is one thing and using it in match play is another. I always try to integrate practice sessions on orienting towards the second.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

My way of looking at improvement is to look at the best player to whom I can relate to and learn why certain things work for them and not for others,

You are not alone in thinking this but that is not really how it works. Learning the fundamentals would be valuable.

Generallly my strategies have worked correctly for my part cos it helped me shorten the learning curve to a considerable extent.

Based on looking at your FH stroke, I would seriously question this way of thinking.

For me, Learning a perfect stroke is one thing and using it in match play is another.

This is silly. Learning the fundamentals isn't about perfect and imperfect strokes. If you have good fundamentals you can adapt your stroke to multiple circumstances and clearly, your FH stroke shows that you never learned the fundamentals and tried to learn advanced strokes without understanding what you were looking at or how your body works.

Your serves are good enough. You get good spin on them. But they are not that good. They are too high and you don't have such great control with placement. And when you serve it doesn't look like you are ready for the ball to come back. So, seeing what happens with your serves, in a match against a player who is one level higher than you would let us see your ability to use your serves to set yourself up to control the point in a match.

However, your FH stroke definitely demonstrates body mechanics that are inefficient and not so great for you. The joint that is most compromised by the form of your FH stroke is probably your shoulder. But form like that could cause problems for your knees and lower back as well. So I would say you would be helped by receiving coaching and learning good fundamentals.




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[NextLevel]

Siva, most of your technique on all your strokes including serves has elements a coach would have to undo. That does not shorten the process AFAIK. That said, it's all relative and goal dependent.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

How to improve the understanding of such stuff. Do we get read somewhere in sports psychology books or is there is a specific source on interent to learn more about such.

Neuromuscular Repatterning has nothing to do with sports psychology but this statement did make me laugh. Learning to change habitual patterns of movement on your own would take a lot of study of anatomy, kinesiology and how the nervous system works in movement.

My stroke improvement sessions are way before one and half years back involving deliberate practice sessions to correct them. As you said in some earlier post, it wasnt fun at all. Then I did have any equipment to shoot them as video which I regret for sure. But, I believe, I defintely made some incremental progress which I lost it due to lack of muscle memory.

This is actually one of the funniest and most ridiculous things you have said. And it makes it clear that you don't actually know what muscle memory is.

When you learn how to ride a bike as a kid, you never forget. There is a phrase in English: "It's like learning to ride a bike," about things that you haven't done in years that you still can do automatically. The reason you never forget how to ride a bike is because the proprioceptive skill of balancing on the bike gets into your muscle memory. And once an action is in muscle memory, your body won't forget it even if your brain forgets how you actually do it.

So if you really improved the form of your FH and got the good form into muscle memory, your FH would still have good form. Now you may have practiced the form you have so much that you were getting a really good amount of spin with the form you have. But, of course, we can't know for sure without video proof.

But the reason kids learn to play this game, get to a good level, quit and come back to the sport 15 years later and still have impeccable form is muscle memory. So, what you said above simply indicates that you don't understand the term. Nothing wrong with that. But, hopefully, now you understand it better. And to understand Neuromuscular Repatterning you have to have some understanding of muscle memory and how, if you have a dysfunctional movement pattern and replace it with a more efficient and more functional pattern, at least with basic movements, YOUR BODY will not revert to the dysfunctional movement pattern once the healthier movement pattern has been trained into muscle memory. ***Note: muscle memory is actually not a great name for what it actually is. Because it refers to a series of neural actions that cause the movement to happen in a certain way and the muscles are actually just following the instructions of the nervous system.

From the simplest perspective, nerves cause muscles to contract, and muscle contractions move the bones. So muscle memory actually refers to the neural pattern that causes a muscle to move a bone in a specific way.

With table tennis strokes, they are not just one basic movement pattern. They are whole body actions that require synchronizing feet, legs, hips, abdomen, torso, both arms, all while adjusting to random placement of the ball with random trajectory and spin. So, Neuromuscular Repatterning with more basic movements is much easier than that kind of Repatterning of a far more complex series of synchronized actions. But it helps to break things down the way Edmund made me learn to hit FHs while moving nothing but my forearm.

Regardless of all this, keep having fun and good luck.



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[Siva Schopenhauer]

You are not alone in thinking this but that is not really how it works. Learning the fundamentals would be valuable.



Based on looking at your FH stroke, I would seriously question this way of thinking.



This is silly. Learning the fundamentals isn't about perfect and imperfect strokes. If you have good fundamentals you can adapt your stroke to multiple circumstances and clearly, your FH stroke shows that you never learned the fundamentals and tried to learn advanced strokes without understanding what you were looking at or how your body works.

Your serves are good enough. You get good spin on them. But they are not that good. They are too high and you don't have such great control with placement. And when you serve it doesn't look like you are ready for be ball to come back. So, seeing what happens with your serves, in a match against a player who is one level higher than you would let us see your ability to use your serves to set yourself up to control the point in a match.

However, your FH stroke definitely demonstrates body mechanics that are inefficient and not so great for you. The joint that is most compromised by the form of your FH stroke is probably your shoulder. But form like that could cause problems for your knees and lower back as well. So I would say you would be helped by receiving coaching and learning good fundamentals.




Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

Actually the thing is that latest video which I uploaded was recorded by my friend for a short 3 min. So, it was just warm up. Coupled together with a very bad table and my dead rubber, I could get only bad strokes into the recording. After 15 odd min, I started to warm up and my motion become more fluid. I am not saying that my follow through which goes downwards is right. But, I know when it is right. I just checked the video again, as far as I could see atleast two of the five strokes were not that bad.As i said earlier I am changing my rubber to 729 sensor on Monday, But I cant afford a good rubber for backhand, maximum which I could afford is 20 $. If you guys could recommend something it would be of great help. The biggest problem is to record in that hall. I couldnt find an ideal place place to keep my phone to record.

If you see in that video at 1:07, that was a bad movement, cos I have a broken ACL on my right knee, so swift movement on my right leg is out equation.

What I can say about my forehand is I have only shown you guys the worst part. There are definitely good parts with my forehand. Video shared by NL and your own footage would be of great help. Other than that, I am fine with fundamentals. I took a look again on ML's WTTC video against Fang Bo today. I learned a little bit about foot work. It is indeed true that success of ML has to do with pace and already being in the right place for the stroke which doesnt come out of nowhere.
But, I will adapt some elements on my next playing session.

Regarding serves, I was humble. But for most part, I usually get most points on my serves against 2nd division players. Return is something I have to work on especially on reverse serves, my reaction is damn slow. For youtube videos, I am just focussing on serves and not on return, But, in games I am already ready for return.

Inefficieny in FH is definitely a big concern, but I am not playing professionally right, so some basic drills should help me to certain extent. I will try to record more during the coming weeks, then I think it would be much clearer to settle some issues about the forehand and general game play.

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

Neuromuscular Repatterning has nothing to do with sports psychology but this statement did make me laugh. Learning to change habitual patterns of movement on your own would take a lot of study of anatomy, kinesiology and how the nervous system works in movement.



This is actually one of the funniest and most ridiculous things you have said. And it makes it clear that you don't actually know what muscle memory is.

When you learn how to ride a bike as a kid, you never forget. There is a phrase in English: "It's like learning to ride a bike," about things that you haven't done in years that you still can do automatically. The reason you never forget how to ride a bike is because the proprioceptive skill of balancing on the bike gets into your muscle memory. And once an action is in muscle memory, your body won't forget it even if your brain forgets how you actually do it.

So if you really improved the form of your FH and got the good form into muscle memory, your FH would still have good form. Now you may have practiced the form you have so much that you were getting a really good amount of spin with the form you have. But, of course, we can't know for sure without video proof.

But the reason kids learn to play this game, get to a good level, quit and come back to the sport 15 years later and still have impeccable form is muscle memory. So, what you said above simply indicates that you don't understand the term. Nothing wrong with that. But, hopefully, now you understand it better. And to understand Neuromuscular Repatterning you have to have some understanding of muscle memory and how, if you have a dysfunctional movement pattern and replace it with a more efficient and more functional pattern, at least with basic movements, YOUR BODY will not revert to the dysfunctional movement pattern once the healthier movement patter has been trained into muscle memory. ***Note: muscle memory is actually not a great name for what it actually is. Because it refers to a series of neural actions that cause the movement to happen in a certain way and the muscles are actually just following the instructions of the nervous system.

With table tennis strokes, they are not just one basic movement pattern. They are whole body actions that require synchronizing feet, legs, hips, abdomen, torso, both arms, all while adjusting to random placement of the ball with random trajectory and spin. So, Neuromuscular Repatterning with more basic movements is much easier than that kind of Repatterning for a complex set of synchronized actions. But it helps to break things down the way Edmund made me loop with nothing but my forearm.

Regardless of all this, keep having fun and good luck.



Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

I simply meant the same. The practice was not enough to get those patterns into my system, so I lost it after those short practice sessions. Due to lack of muscle memory does refer to what you have explained right?

What makes that a ridiculous statement?

I simply meant the pattern conditioning was not enough to form a habit. Regarding proof, it is subjective and disputable

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

Siva, most of your technique on all your strokes including serves has elements a coach would have to undo. That does not shorten the process AFAIK. That said, it's all relative and goal dependent.

Yes NL, but as you said relative and goal dependent answers it. I am not approaching table tennis on a competitive level. So getting better is definitely but I am happy with what I have learned to as far as now,