Rebulding Fundamental strokes for my game play

[Der_Echte]

Thanks mate for your support. It seem really flattering and i am losing my hold on the ground

I ll try to work hard and keep up with the work I am doing.

I have some questions about who are the members of goon squad and what do you think about the beloved dictator Kim?

Well, if I told you who the real Goon Squad members were, it would take away all the fun !!

If I told you how Carl's Spy-Phone works, we would have to bump you off. We don't want that. Actually, the website word filter is set to reject the kind of Apple Phone when you submit posts, so I started a thing that whenever I quoted USD Carl, I would modify the "i" before phone and used a little imagination to build Carl's rep as a not so secret spy master.

As for the N. Korean dude you refer to, I suppose hiz nation say they love him as long as his 1 million strong Goon Squad is pointing AK-47 at them.

For the record, I use a Nexy Designed for Korean (and US) Market Kim Jung Hoon blade. That guy is a former Korean TT pro. The Kim you refer to in the north his first name is Jung-Uhn, that is a way different name.

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

Today was a good day in play and I tried to incorporate some theory into practice. Towards the end of the video, there is a backhand footage where I focussed on controlling the upper arm movement. Forearm movement as usual seems to have a lot of upper arm movement, I tried to include movement below the elbow.

This is the second game of my play with this gus. First game, I played really bad, I won the second game after I adapted to the lefty backhand serve. This is generaly how it gets rolled as below.

 

[izra]

notice how your elbow shows up behind your back during forehand warm up? that's not supposed to be happening.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

In match play, most of it, for both of you is about serve. You are both fairly week at returning each other's serves which is okay because both of you seem to have pretty good serves. But once in a rally, the play is lower level than the serving.

In the stroke video, Izra is right and he has pointed out one of the ways to see that your FH is coming from your upper arm: Your elbow is moving behind your back and then forward when you swing at the ball.

Another thing to look at in your FH stroke is the angle of the bend in your elbow. In most shots, your elbow's bend angle does not change. It starts bent, near 90-degrees, and it ends bent, near 90-degrees. That also means your stroke is coming from your upper arm.

At the point on the tape between 1:07-1:09 (pretty much at 1:08) you get out of position and you do the thing where your elbow goes up and your racket goes down so, at the followthrough of that stroke, your elbow is as high as your racket. Maybe a tiny bit higher.

The BH. It is still moving forward and back in a relatively straight line. The path of the racket would have more of a curve, more of a circular shape to it if the elbow was stable and you were rotating from the elbow/forearm.

But the thing with the BH that might be most problematic for your technique is something that only happens once in a while.

Every so often your racket starts facing down a little (a little closed) and during the stroke you open it so that by the contact and and through till the end of the stroke, your racket is actually facing a little up (slightly open). Ideally, you don't want that to happen. Examples are at 1:34, 1:36 and 1:38. 1:38 is the one that is the biggest of those three. And it is like you are doing it every other stroke between 1:34-1:38.

Still, you are working to correct these things, so this is simply info to help you improve your strokes faster. Over time, just continuing to work on things, hopefully your stroke mechanics will improve. But stroke mechanics are not everything.

My stroke mechanics are decent but it does not make me as high a level as my stroke mechanics. And I know guys whose stroke mechanics are really quite bad and they are still at quite a decent level of play and definitely higher level than I am.

In your match, there are a few times where you use a rally stroke that is pretty bad from a mechanics standpoint. And yet it wins you the point. So, no worries. We may be making more of this mechanics stuff than actually matters.

It would be nice to see enough match play to see what happens in rallies that go longer, and to see what happens when you don't think you are playing great. It may tell more about what you actually need to work on.

But from this video it looks like receiving serve and rallying skills could be improved and serving is excellent.

Hope this helps.


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

 

[NextLevel]

notice how your elbow shows up behind your back during forehand warm up? that's not supposed to be happening.

IT's not ideal but the angle makes it look worse.

 

[izra]

IT's not ideal but the angle makes it look worse.

a stable upper arm is something i like to overemphasize even if it shouldn't really be THAT stable. i believe trying to keep it overly stable promotes good technique when it's not that good yet.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

a stable upper arm is something i like to overemphasize even if it shouldn't really be THAT stable. i believe trying to keep it overly stable promotes good technique when it's not that good yet.

This piece is really worth understanding. Kevin (Can) Wang has excellent FH technique. He is from China but moved to US and coaches. I have watched him coaching. When he is feeding the ball, his upper arm is completely stable and his entire stroke comes from movement of the forearm from the elbow joint. It is impressive how flawless the form is. When he does a big swing he uses his whole arm. But, when you watch closely, the bend at the elbow happens in perfect timing with his contact with the ball. This makes his FH extremely efficient and have a ton of spin and pace.

You need the fundamentals, you need good mechanics with a basic stroke before you can make a big stroke with good mechanics. Or, as NextLevel implied, you need good control of the steering wheel before you drive at 180.


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[NextLevel]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7tDSi5YqxhM

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

hi Guys, I read everyone's post, I actuaaly had the same queston about elbow movement, which Izra already clarified here. Overall, it seems my forehand is pretty much messed up, I am putting a lot of invisible time to correct it, but I believe it will happen over time.

BH is much more confusing after recording today. I understand the circular movement for BH. I tried to implement it way back around last year and I ended up stressing my wrist to near damage. Probably I messed up something there also.

One thing about stablilising the upper arm is, I am losing all my power on the stroke due to recorrection.

My rally game is messed up as well. Touch seems okay in my opinion. I missed all those balls because of the lefty reverse spin, I used the wrong push movement. Probably wouldn't lose the point again on serve if it was clear to my eyes. But, the thing is all spins are deceptive at higher level so have to go like ML in LG serve video.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Your touch is very good. I doubt anyone would question your touch. If it wasn't good, you would not have such good serves. Reading what you are faced with, that takes time. Over time you see things quicker.


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[Siva Schopenhauer]

I did a short training yesterday on backhand and played 3 sets without spin. Lost terribly on everything like I scored 5 points in each set if I remember correctly. Lack of sleep could be one reason and recorrection could be the other. I hope to perform well in the coming days.

This is the backhand training video of fast strokes. I am yet to edit the slow ones because they look even confusing to me. Those body shrieks not to be taken as offense, I was pretty damn tired, I tried to edit them out but ended uploading the wrong video.

The favourite part of mine in the video is from 1:05 to 1:12. Would like to know has anything gone better with reduction in upper arm movement and increase in forearm movement. If anything again has gone terribly wrong, please educate me. Ah, Tupac is one of my favourite artist so thought of adding him in this video on improvement.

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

So, I played my friend Aravind once again in our dorm house. We worked on basic strokes and he got really excited to play with his new racket. So, pretty much most of FH strokes ended within very few strokes because of the difference in play level and editing them were really hard. So, if the video looked more shabby than usual, I apologise for lack of concentration.

In this video, my focus was to avoid the upper arm movement to the max. I would like to know that fast stroke at 1:45 any good?

I tried to go for some strokes with spin. I felt like some were okay and most of others had that power from upper arm to keep the ball spinning. would like to know what you guys think.

 

[Archosaurus]

I watched a little. I can't give specifics seeing as I'm not that much ahead myself, probably, but it's pretty evident that you're making progress in the right direction.

After having learned to spin the ball pretty hard myself recently and being able to finally loop properly with a fast or slow speed, I can see that you have good spin touch. I think you will naturally develop a pretty strong loop if you keep working on the stroke mechanics. It's actually quite surprising just how fast you seem to have develop pretty good topspin touch after hitting the ball flat for so much time.

Something like the shot at 29 sec in the 2nd video makes it pretty evident. You can spin the ball pretty well with the forearm movement. Now, what do you do from there, I can't say, I haven't got far beyond that myself yet.


You said you switched to 729 Friendship rubbers recently, right? Are you by any chance using 729 FX? Your slow loops look very similar in arc when compared to mine.

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

I watched a little. I can't give specifics seeing as I'm not that much ahead myself, probably, but it's pretty evident that you're making progress in the right direction.

After having learned to spin the ball pretty hard myself recently and being able to finally loop properly with a fast or slow speed, I can see that you have good spin touch. I think you will naturally develop a pretty strong loop if you keep working on the stroke mechanics. It's actually quite surprising just how fast you seem to have develop pretty good topspin touch after hitting the ball flat for so much time.

Something like the shot at 29 sec in the 2nd video makes it pretty evident. You can spin the ball pretty well with the forearm movement. Now, what do you do from there, I can't say, I haven't got far beyond that myself yet.


You said you switched to 729 Friendship rubbers recently, right? Are you by any chance using 729 FX? Your slow loops look very similar in arc when compared to mine.

Yes Archo, I am using Friendship Super FX on both sides. Black FH 2 mm, BH 1,5 mm. Thanks for the positive critique. It isn't that hard in a level that once you find the flaws, you can attack it directly with good strategy. The biggest flaw is always ignorance. Everybody told that my FH loop is really good because of the spin and power for the most part until I came to our community.

I usually download good training videos from youtube and play it many times down near the table and keep practising for some good hours till I see some progress. Visualising when you are practising will help to improve the performance like 20-30 %. Another thing which works for me is first to practise alone, because you can control you but not the way others play. Then taking them into practise against others.

I think I already crosses some 1500 hours on serves, so it is kind of natural to develop skills. Many experts agree that 80% of skill can be achieved after 1000 hours of deliberate practise

 

[Archosaurus]

"The biggest flaw is always ignorance. Everybody told that my FH loop is really good because of the spin and power for the most part until I came to our community. "

Yep.

I didn't even have a loop until relatively recently. So of course because I thought I was spinning well, I never tried to develop the spin further. Now after getting my ass handed to me by everyone in a verbal manner, my form, placement, spin and power is so much better.

 

[Siva Schopenhauer]

"The biggest flaw is always ignorance. Everybody told that my FH loop is really good because of the spin and power for the most part until I came to our community. "

Yep.

I didn't even have a loop until relatively recently. So of course because I thought I was spinning well, I never tried to develop the spin further. Now after getting my ass handed to me by everyone in a verbal manner, my form, placement, spin and power is so much better.

I didn't even have a loop until relatively recently. So of course because I thought I was spinning well, I never tried to develop the spin further. Now after getting my ass handed to me by everyone in a verbal manner, my form, placement, spin and power is so much better.

Yeah man, We don't know how strong we could become until we know who we are

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Archo, Siva never had a problem with spin generation. His touch, his contact, his ability to spin, is excellent.

The mechanics of his stroke are what he needs to work on. Not his ability to spin. And I think Siva plays at a decent level even if his stroke mechanics are not great. And that is most likely, to a large extent, because he does have the touch to spin the ball well.

You are the one who didn't have the touch to spin.


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[pgpg]

Archo, Siva never had a problem with spin generation. His touch, his contact, his ability to spin, is excellent.

The mechanics of his stroke are what he needs to work on. Not his ability to spin. And I think Siva plays at a decent level even if his stroke mechanics are not great. And that is most likely, to a large extent, because he does have the touch to spin the ball well.

You are the one who didn't have the touch to spin.


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Can someone enlighten me where 'touch' ends (same for 'ability to spin') and 'stroke mechanics' begins? Not trying to start the fight, just interested in terminology here.

 

[Archosaurus]

Carl, I meant that Siva picked up the right stroke to use his touch pretty quickly. From what I saw, he was never trying to spin, even if he probably could based on his serves. So it'd be logical to think he'd have a longer adjusting period.

 

[V-Griper]

Can someone enlighten me where 'touch' ends (same for 'ability to spin') and 'stroke mechanics' begins? Not trying to start the fight, just interested in terminology here.

I think what is meant by "stroke mechanics" is efficiency. You can manipulate the ball in order to do more or less what you want and that is the "touch" but you are wasting time and energy doing it. It's the overall economy of motion which requires balance and good footwork.

Here is an example- Bojan has touch and some efficiency relative to amateurs but compared to ML he wastes a ton of energy, especially the way his left arm flails around. That extra motion throws off his balance and makes his strokes inconsistent. This means the more energy going managing his body than the less goes into the quality of the shot.

Off topic analogy-

It's like the difference between a ICE car and an electric car. An ICE only converts about ~30% of the energy generated from the combustion process into forward motion, the rest is wasted as heat vibration and noise. An electric motor has one moving part and converts ~90% of of the electrical energy into forward motion.