Did some short no-spin/very light backspin and short push practice with a bare beginner today. He has hit a little and he is not very skilled, but he has smooth movements. We hit a bit and I taught him some basic things like how to do the warmup rally initiation stroke and then started doing the drill.
I taught him the basic forehand pendulum serving grip and taught him how to serve low, short and very light backspin/no spin. No real serve theory, just how to produce an easy low ball that bounces short.
I was impressed that he figured out himself that you need a low contact point, and he moved to a low contact point without me telling him to and he started nailing them. Of course most went into the net or long, but he got some good consistency later on, maybe 60% or so. I advised him to use a very light, small movement and just "drop" the ball over the net. He was surprised at how easy it is to produce low serves. They were actually short too, because he understood the part about the first bounce near the net.
Of course, there's basically no spin on it, but it's a very good start I think.
While he was doing that, I was practicing my short push on them. My push is really quite bad so it needs some practice. As he got a little better, I got a little better, and he got some feedback on his serves from my push. I used some video footage on the spot (You can sadly only see the ball going over the net, so it's not worth much) to adjust my height and depth. Eventually I started taking some a little earlier and dropping them lower over the net.
We switched places, and I taught him a basic forehand and backhand short push. He was better at the backhand, so I served short no-spin into the middle of the table and adjusted his backhand push until he started getting it on the table consistently and not terribly high. We left before we could see much progress, but he went from no push to some kind of push.
I really need to, and want to do more push drills but no one wants to do them with me, so I'm happy about today. I improved a little, or at least got some direction for improvement, so that's good.
EDIT:
@NextLevel
The video of you vs Chieu A is very eye opening. There seems to be a lot of "hidden spin" in your shots that might not be visible on camera just by looking at the ball.