So, I haven't touched a table tennis table in weeks, and of course, the symptoms start to take effect. I'm doing footwork shadow drills with my kitchen table.
For a long time now I've understood that with my forehand stroke, my body rotation is too late, or my arm is too early, or some kind of combination of that. So I've been doing a lot of shadow strokes and filming them to try to figure something out.
I've managed to nail down the feel of dragging the arm "behind" my body, or "after" the rotation, so that it looks much better. My arm is more in-line with my shoulders on the "contact point" as opposed to being way in front of my body. But oh man does this feel strange.
Well, now that I have the feeling down and I can replicate it on will, when my partner comes back, I'll hit the table and try to see if I can do something similar with a real ball. Then we will see if what I'm doing makes any sense.
It feels very, very strange, not bad or uncomfortable, just strange and unfamiliar, but I remember a quote from Greg Letts I believe where he said something along the lines of "Don't do what feels right, do what works, and it'll start to feel right".
I'd like to note a thing about this, too:
If I lean forward and wind up to the point where I can feel a tightness in my abdomen, it's easy to just rotate out and the arm will very easily follow the right path and timing. I don't need to try to "force" my arm to drag behind. If I try to force it, without that winding up, my stomach comes out during the swing so I don't think it's very right.
Is this "winding up" for power?