Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[Der_Echte]

It's definitely a balance on training. I am trying to get back on the bike and do some interval training on my free time. I've started to focus on my diet a lot now, so hoping the pieces make up the whole eventually.

@Der_Echte It feels like the arc I generate is too high on the Z, which can definitely be a technique issue. Flat smashes I struggle with a lot, but I'm getting coached to fix that. I like how linear and tacky/grippy it is, especially when I'm mid-far from the table, but it doesn't click with me when hitting through the ball close to the table. I send a lot of my shots to the baseline or further. I tried the C-1 on the FH, but it was a little catapulty for my liking. Using the H8 (not sure if it was the regular or 80) on the TB ALC felt like a revelation to me in terms of the arc I was getting.

I know I am gunna sound like such a Betty bitter baddie saying this, but when a player is developing and uses a TBS and many such modern composite blades, just about every impact feels like it was struck right... it will not tell you.

A slower rated blade, even older wood blades, will give you the feedback you need... PLUS, they let you hit harder and still land it... ultimately your shots are FASTER with a blade like the one in my sig (that only cost $25 at tabletennis11.com after 30% discount).

Try using such a blade with softer modern rubbers... and later, on FH a med sponged rubber.

A setup like the one in my sig is appropriate for just about every level...

Where you would REALLY see sum bang bang Pebbles and Bam Bam action over ur TBS is countering closer to the table. You can really wallop it and still land it.

Your issues on countering are very likely not the rubber or blade itself, but your timing of firming. However... A wood blade and softer rubber make it much easier to get the ball to the blade on hard hits and will be a combat multiplier when you figure out the timing of grip firming at impact. Then maybe later when you get this down with the help of slower wood blade you can really bang it with the TBS after this.

 

[Der_Echte]

As for arc... I think high arc shots while you are developing get the ball on the table more... especially when you are focusing on SPIN, which is what all of us should be doing instead of banging the crap outta that sucka. Spin wins. You won't make smashes if out of position and and going for 2000% on the shot anyway.

well, on the topic of smashes... @dingyibvs has seen me in person with exactly the same setup in my sig and when I get a ball to my BH at the table that sits up even a LITTLE, I let her go BANG (with the shortest of stroke - like a one foot or less stroke) and that ball is moving faster than many players' FH smashes.

This is a function of good timing, a fast bat speed at impact (with only a little wrist), and precise big time firming at the exact moment needed at impact. The sound is HUGE...

... and all this is from a SOFT 42 degree sponged older rubber on an older wood blade OFF- (Donic Persson Power Play)

 

[AutomaticBackhand]

Fast blades are fun but can also cause a lot of harm.

Especially when the racket is also heavy.


My current blade / racket isn't "slow", probably Off-.
But it weighs ~173g.

My loops are so consistent now, it's incredible.

Most of my other rackets were around 188 +-5g.
Loop quality might have been at 9/10 but only at 6/10 consistency at best.
It caused a lot of stress, insecurity and often low confidence.


Right now it is probably around 8/10 quality and 9/10 consistency.
And that ultimately makes the difference.

I am still getting praised for my loops.
Occasionally, I just need to hit it twice instead of once.
But not very often.


Only now, I can look at it in retrospect and see the issue.

Chinese rubbers on Forehand, all the way.
But overall racket speed and power needs to be tuned down a little.

 

[NextLevel]

It's definitely a balance on training. I am trying to get back on the bike and do some interval training on my free time. I've started to focus on my diet a lot now, so hoping the pieces make up the whole eventually.

@Der_Echte It feels like the arc I generate is too high on the Z, which can definitely be a technique issue. Flat smashes I struggle with a lot, but I'm getting coached to fix that. I like how linear and tacky/grippy it is, especially when I'm mid-far from the table, but it doesn't click with me when hitting through the ball close to the table. I send a lot of my shots to the baseline or further. I tried the C-1 on the FH, but it was a little catapulty for my liking. Using the H8 (not sure if it was the regular or 80) on the TB ALC felt like a revelation to me in terms of the arc I was getting.

Rakza Z is definitely high arcing and relatively slow and hard to drive balls with. If you take a step or two back and like to spin and remain consistent, it does extremely well. If you want to loop the ball past your opponent, you are probably using the wrong rubber. But that said, I would argue that switching from Rakza Z to a faster but similar hybrid or tacky rubber isn't hard, one should just be clear on why you are changing. High arcing topspins have both strengths and weaknesses depending on your play style and I generally try to discourage players u1600 and maybe 1800 from being overly concerned about their ball speed and to be more concerned about their consistency and technical stability.

If you want technique that works in matches, things like falkenberg are just interesting tidbits. Much more practice time should be spent on things like:

1. Developing serves with deception. The simplest is the underspin vs no spin combination but if you can vary side and side backspin or side back with side top, that works as well. But the variations have to be deceptive enough to draw errors and the backspin vs no spin needs ro have a heavy contrast in quality, which is usually difficult when people haven't developed the ability to spin. I can sometimes beat 1400 players just by serving pendulum sidespin serves. And I can spend a whole match simply serving backspin and no spin serves to the short forehand or wide backhand.

2. After developing the serves, practice third ball behind them against various kinds of returns, ones with both low and high quality. The key is know how to play behind your serve when you get the returns that work and when you get the returns that don't. It is completely legitimate to practice serving long, getting the ball looped back at you and either taking a block off the bounce or stepping back to be a bitore aggressive. But the point is that if you don't practice against it, it becomes a new thing to process in the match and in my experience, creative process in matches based on general training doesn't usually get good results. Good results are most easily the results of getting the things you prepared to do in practice.

3. Attacking long serves: developing the confidence to topspin any ball that comes long is very helpful as it often means you can play the opening topspin on your terms at the lower levels. This will often involve being able to use whip mechanics to generate spin on balls over the table. Being able to adapt reasonable well to heavy sidespin serves, both side and top and to read the different trajectories, as well as to get into position to see the difference between backspin no spin while attacking will also be rewarding and has enough footwork to keep a player busy.

4. Being able to loop sitting balls to various points on the table to avoid being predictable on your openers and rally shots. Usually this requires you to be able to use neutral stances that are not backhand or forehand oriented to get backswing that are powerful and deep enough to direct the ball to multiple points on the table. This can be trained as part of various drills but are also ideally worked on as part of your serve and return practice.

IMHO, unless TT is largely exercise for you, if you want bang for the buck in matches, all of these are more rewarding than focusing on footwork drills if your goal is to get better match results. Plenty of the practical benefits an adult learner gets from falkenberg makes much more sense in these drills if it is wrapped into point construction.

 

[NextLevel]

Since I try to help adult learners play reasonably efficient table tennis based on the struggles I had as a learner, for those who don't want to move too much, one of the things I try to teach early is how to play with your backhand and your forehand out of a similar stance which requires you to play the forehand with hip rotation and the backhand with a reasonable elbow position. So you build a concept of a ready position into your play early to reduce the feeling of lack of connection between your various shots.

For me, this kind of thing tends to be more valuable than Falkenberg unless you really think you have forever to learn TT. Many players either favor or backhand too much because they practice forehand and backhand out of different foot positioning and then wonder why they are stuck using one or the other during matches. The footwork that connects this in ways that allow them to work in practice is more important from a psychological standpoint than any specific drill. And while one can work on two forehand- two backhand or one forehand- one backhand drills , one can do so without realizing the need for efficient use of stance and hips to reduce movement and footwork demands. Learning how to do this and respond efficiently to balls is much more match important if one is focused on match results over exercise.

 

[NextLevel]

I've found smashes to be much more affected by the blade. They're very, very hard shots and it's just a lot tougher to control with a flexier blade. It feels a lot easier with the Viscaria compared to the W968 with the same rubber.

I know I am gunna sound like such a Betty bitter baddie saying this, but when a player is developing and uses a TBS and many such modern composite blades, just about every impact feels like it was struck right... it will not tell you.

A slower rated blade, even older wood blades, will give you the feedback you need... PLUS, they let you hit harder and still land it... ultimately your shots are FASTER with a blade like the one in my sig (that only cost $25 at tabletennis11.com after 30% discount).

Try using such a blade with softer modern rubbers... and later, on FH a med sponged rubber.

A setup like the one in my sig is appropriate for just about every level...

Where you would REALLY see sum bang bang Pebbles and Bam Bam action over ur TBS is countering closer to the table. You can really wallop it and still land it.

Your issues on countering are very likely not the rubber or blade itself, but your timing of firming. However... A wood blade and softer rubber make it much easier to get the ball to the blade on hard hits and will be a combat multiplier when you figure out the timing of grip firming at impact. Then maybe later when you get this down with the help of slower wood blade you can really bang it with the TBS after this.

I agree with a lot of this. When learning with a faster blade, most of the practical drilling should be focused on range training to develop a lot of feeling. Drills that test your ability to play different quality shots with the.balde should be a huge part of your training. Because the lack of vibration makes it harder to feel subtle.differences. Moreover, the funny thing is that when you use equipment like hardbat, a lot of your technique is designed to.improve the dwell and feeling and this is exactly what someone using a fast blade and rubber should learn- the technique and timing to catch the ball
The technique and timing to load the ball with quality spin. With a slower blade, the need to learn to generate all the power and and work with a smaller sweet spot also helps with those skills. But what I find is that the problem with most players isn't the speed of their equipment but a misguided notion that if they are not playing at 100mph, the alternative is to play at zero mph. In reality when you are playing with an opponent who just hit the ball at you at 70mph, you don't need to get to 100mph to return with quality, you need to play closer to 50mph. Until you develop thr technical stability to do this, you will be stuck just practicing 0mph shots or 100mph shots when it is extremely important with every blade to work on the 20, 50 and 80mph shots. More important if you care about winning than smacking the ball.

The main reason I am not against my students using faster blades is that I force them to play the whole range of shots because I consider defense as importance as offense. And I think defending at strictly 0 mph exposes you to players who spin at 50mph because you are so used to playing at 100 or zero that you can just take what give you and add or place it. Paradoxically, it is the ability to play at 20 and 50 that should improve the most the more you play. But since players are absorbed with 100, it unfortunately happens more slowly than it should unless tou dedicate a lot of time to doing it in messijg around games or practice matches.

 

[OvrChkn]

I'd ideally like to get my fitness up and get my level of my game up as well. Playing in my first league this year, my serves won me the most points and the 3rd ball lost me the most. I haven't found ways to consistently get in my range yet off of my serve compared to if we're in a rally.

 

[NextLevel]

I'd ideally like to get my fitness up and get my level of my game up as well. Playing in my first league this year, my serves won me the most points and the 3rd ball lost me the most. I haven't found ways to consistently get in my range yet off of my serve compared to if we're in a rally.

Yes but I would separate the drills you do for fitness from the drills you do to win points and improve in matches. They don't really translate and one of the common causes of TT frustration comes from players who add up all their training hours thinking they do instead of focusing either on ball quality/consistency in the context of point winning sequences or tactics. Drills to improve in TT can be very general or very specific and it is common to have player who spend a lot of time on general drills get frustrated by players who have point winning but limited skills.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Yes but I would separate the drills you do for fitness from the drills you do to win points and improve in matches. They don't really translate and one of the common causes of TT frustration comes from players who add up all their training hours thinking they do instead of focusing either on ball quality/consistency in the context of point winning sequences or tactics. Drills to improve in TT can be very general or very specific and it is common to have player who spend a lot of time on general drills get frustrated by players who have point winning but limited skills.

1. In your opinion NL, for someone who is a weekend warrior type, with family and work commitments, how many % drills to improve points winning chance vs general drills for fitness / ball quality / consistency.
2. This is an issue close to my heart as I am a working adult plus with family commitments as well.
3. I am also taking coaching lesson from a local coach.
4. My logical brain tells me with such limited time on table, I should just focus on strategies that win points and hence matches in those local league games.
5. Some members in my club opines that I should strengthen my consistency and quality and all these strategies and tactics will come naturally.
6. What you do think? Anyone can also chime in with your thoughts and opinions.

 

[dingyibvs]

Yes but I would separate the drills you do for fitness from the drills you do to win points and improve in matches. They don't really translate and one of the common causes of TT frustration comes from players who add up all their training hours thinking they do instead of focusing either on ball quality/consistency in the context of point winning sequences or tactics. Drills to improve in TT can be very general or very specific and it is common to have player who spend a lot of time on general drills get frustrated by players who have point winning but limited skills.

To me, the general drills are for foundation building, but pretty useless by themselves in games. My development strategy has been to do general drills to develop a solid foundation, then play some matches to find specific weaknesses, then do specific drills to address those weaknesses.

I've noticed recently for example that as I change my style to more balanced FH/BH, I've been having trouble with FH/BH transitions. So now after my general single point BH drills, I have the robot serve the same exact ball at the same frequency but I alternate between FH and BH. I've discovered things a few Thi gs through just that one simple change. I've found that my comfortable depth for FH and BH are different, as when I switch back from FH to BH I'm standing a bit farther away, so I need to be able to hit BH shots from that distance with a bit more waiting and the ball a bit lower. I've also tried to stay closer and get more comfortable with FH loops earlier in the bounce. I've found that I lean too much and don't step my left foot left and forward enough when pivoting, and I've corrected that as well. I've also found that if I don't keep my feet light and always bouncing I simply can't make the switch fast enough. Then I've found that I really need to backswing with my belly/hip on the BH side (always did that with the FH side) or else the shot feels very awkward and I can't generate any power. And lastly I've found that making 2 steps for the pivot is more accurate and efficient than one step. Just a couple weeks of this and my FH/BH transitions in games have improved immensely.

It's really surprising, but that one drill improved especially my BH across the board I think due to its requirement of getting from a FH stance to a BH stance quickly while adjusting to the different timing required for FH and BH shots. Even my BH opening loops and banana flicks improved significantly.

Another drill that had surprising effect was a randomly long or short topspin service to my FH side. To push short a topspin service I need to step in very quickly to reach it off the bounce, so I need to be ready to move either in or out on services and judge the ball as quickly as possible. I won't go into the details but while that specific circumstance has not been useful in games, it's dramatically improved my ability to quickly respond to serves with my feet and stance.

 

[NextLevel]

1. In your opinion NL, for someone who is a weekend warrior type, with family and work commitments, how many % drills to improve points winning chance vs general drills for fitness / ball quality / consistency.
2. This is an issue close to my heart as I am a working adult plus with family commitments as well.
3. I am also taking coaching lesson from a local coach.
4. My logical brain tells me with such limited time on table, I should just focus on strategies that win points and hence matches in those local league games.
5. Some members in my club opines that I should strengthen my consistency and quality and all these strategies and tactics will come naturally.
6. What you do think? Anyone can also chime in with your thoughts and opinions.

So general drills or the theory underlying general drills can be used to fix or enhance specific problems. So for example, let's say you want to play forehand after serving. Maybe the footwork for pivoting might ne helpful and worth drilling as part of a third ball movement. Or you might fo general movement exercises to help your footwork and balance around the table. But just drilling footwork without the context surrounding the footwork being a part of your game may be a waste of time.

1. I would say that 80‐100% of a learning adult's time should be drills arising out of their play and using point constructing weapons. It's not so much that you can't work on backhand punch or backhand topspin as that when you work on it, it is more helpful to serve, get a push return and third ball than to just mutliball a backhand topspin repeatedly. And if you are having problems with backhand topspin, it is okay to work on that. Or problems with footwork, it is okay to work on that. But just doing lots of stuff that works out the body is good, but it is not going to have.a swift impact on your match results unless it solves a problem that arises out of how you construct points. I know this because I was able to play decent match TT with a lot of technical issues and even after I resolved the technical issues, my change in level wasn't dramatic because some of the technical fixes didn't affect or change how I would win points (I would juat have beaten the opponents differently).

2. It should be at the heart of every adult learner because we don't have infinite hours to train usually. We have to decide what gets us the most bang for the buck while trusting our coaches. Developing an adult learner on the timeline of a kid only works when the adult learner is physically talented and extremely fanatical.

3. If he is a good coach for an adult learner, most of your lessons will be serve and third ball practice, service return practice and rally tactics to set up and score points. Finally you should record some matches and see how you are losing points and figure out what you need to learn to fix that. Might be shorter serving, returning a specific serve etc.

4. Yes.

5. This is somewhat true but not entirely true. It is true if you can spend a lot of time plugging in the gaps to connect all the things that are missing. This is what kids can do when they play a lot and mess around a lot. When you have minimal time, some things must fall to the wayside. Pivoting is great but if you don't do it much but spend a lot of time practicing it, then you aren't making your game better. You need to build tools you use.

6. My opinion is clear. I served exclusively backhand for many years and did fine. What my coach would generally do was watch my matches, see how I won or lost, and look for drills that addressed problems in my game. Or drills that enhanced strengths. Of course my game had glaring weaknesses, I used to block on the forehand and couldn't countertopspin there much. I didn't have efficient footwork for covering the ball on serve return. But I knew how I determined to win points, usually with backhand play and by trying to make sure that most balls played to my forehand were easy to attack.

It's easier to get better match results developing better serve and third ball and serve return skills and improving your efficiency around this than to focus on just extremely general drills. Now does this mean that you will have limitations? Of course yes but even well trained all round players also have limitations. The real question is that how much do you gain by working a lot now on things that may not show up in your game for a few years if ever? Isn't it better to learn how to return serves with a bit more viciousness even with lazy footwork than to drill rally skills that you might never really use?

 

[NextLevel]

To me, the general drills are for foundation building, but pretty useless by themselves in games. My development strategy has been to do general drills to develop a solid foundation, then play some matches to find specific weaknesses, then do specific drills to address those weaknesses.

I've noticed recently for example that as I change my style to more balanced FH/BH, I've been having trouble with FH/BH transitions. So now after my general single point BH drills, I have the robot serve the same exact ball at the same frequency but I alternate between FH and BH. I've discovered things a few Thi gs through just that one simple change. I've found that my comfortable depth for FH and BH are different, as when I switch back from FH to BH I'm standing a bit farther away, so I need to be able to hit BH shots from that distance with a bit more waiting and the ball a bit lower. I've also tried to stay closer and get more comfortable with FH loops earlier in the bounce. I've found that I lean too much and don't step my left foot left and forward enough when pivoting, and I've corrected that as well. I've also found that if I don't keep my feet light and always bouncing I simply can't make the switch fast enough. Then I've found that I really need to backswing with my belly/hip on the BH side (always did that with the FH side) or else the shot feels very awkward and I can't generate any power. And lastly I've found that making 2 steps for the pivot is more accurate and efficient than one step. Just a couple weeks of this and my FH/BH transitions in games have improved immensely.

It's really surprising, but that one drill improved especially my BH across the board I think due to its requirement of getting from a FH stance to a BH stance quickly while adjusting to the different timing required for FH and BH shots. Even my BH opening loops and banana flicks improved significantly.

Another drill that had surprising effect was a randomly long or short topspin service to my FH side. To push short a topspin service I need to step in very quickly to reach it off the bounce, so I need to be ready to move either in or out on services and judge the ball as quickly as possible. I won't go into the details but while that specific circumstance has not been useful in games, it's dramatically improved my ability to quickly respond to serves with my feet and stance.

There are lots of skills/drills with general applicability and to be honest, even a well trained technically adequate forehand topspin can be user to return serves, hit cross court, down the line or into the middle and sometimes counter of the bounce with touch. My main point is that working on this forehand when most of the points you lose are just the result of pushing short topspin serves or being unable to loop serves to the backhand or struggling to play a backhand after ball has been blocked to your backhand after you play a forehand will not help your game much in terms of match results even if you are a better player in some abstract sense.

As I trained more TT, I grew to appreciate the importance of the general training in building a solid player on a long term horizon, but also realized that it was not going to get the results many adult learners desired in the short term. It's one of the reasons I point out that having a coach who never watches your matches or asks about your match play is a huge red flag. A coach needs to teach you how to problem solve and deploy the skills he claims he is working on with you so that you solve problems with them. They should not be allowed to hide behind the idea that training you supposedly how they were trained is all that matters.

Drills that require you to move to play over the table strokes have a high degree of usefulness because short and half long serve return is an important topic at all levels for various reasons and especially important just because it is serve return. But you won't find many coaches drill this even though lazy slow serves are an opportunity for most adults to attack. Because many coaches hate serving for serve return practice.

 

[turbozed]

i think i finally get what it means to use my core to hit forehand strokes

i am not going to lie when i say that ive always been confused by forehand tutorials telling you to "tighten your core/stomach" upon impact with the ball. i literally just sucked my stomach in and nothing really happened aside from making me feel weird.

until i realize that when you deliberately twist your core/trunk/whatever, your core will "tighten" on its own, and when i let my arm relax and combine the core rotation with power from my legs and hips, i get more of the "whip" action that everyone so sought after.

all this while ive only been using my legs to push off the ground and rotate my hips to execute my forehand strokes. while the quality of the strokes was acceptable, my legs get fatigued quickly and my footwork were always sluggish bc of overreliance on my legs.

when i found out how to use my core, i can feel that my footwork is less clumsy than before and i do not get tired quickly bc i do not need to push off my legs as hard as before to get a good forehand stroke in.

I finally figured out the weight transfer thing too recently by using the cable machine at the gym with the help of this video.

Basically as a right hander, I grab the cable handle with my left hand, then move out to where the cable is pulling my body to the left.

With resistance, it makes it obvious which muscle groups are needed to get my swing to whip out at speed. It involves pushing off with the feet and twisting the body.

I disagree with the guy in the video where he's completely transferring all weight to the L side before twisting the hips though. When the hips move laterally as much he demonstrates, it makes hitting the ball more difficult since you've added an additional variable of your entire upper body drifting towards your left.

Just shifting weight from R to L seems like a terrible use of energy, since only a small fraction of it is directed forwards towards actually hitting the ball. And just twisting without using your lower body to help is ignoring your body's strongest muscle groups.

With waist twist, your upper body doesn't move laterally at all, it just rotates around it's axis. It's more stable, and it's also more efficient since you're generating angular momentum. With the twisting motion, you're not bracing your core like you're about to lift weights. Instead it's more of a pulling motion with your off hand which engages your rear lats and oblique muscles. The problem is that only a few small muscles groups are used for purely twisting the torso.

Adding it altogether, this is my current biomechanical model of the right weight transfer and muscle engagement for the most stable FH (while maintaining your same position).

1. Transfer some weight to R leg, rotate torso slightly
2. Push off with entire R foot, but only to the extent that it helps initiate the torso rotation
3. Pull with your L side rear lats and contracting the obliques to finish the rotation

I've been watching a lot of slow mo FH videos, and there was a really great biomechanics animation that I saw on yt recently that was created by some Chinese scientists that seems to confirm that the "weight transfer" isn't supposed to move your upper body laterally from R to L, but instead is meant to be converted into rotational force.

So you're using your lower body muscles to push off and initiate whip your torso around, and you're using the rotational muscles to stabilize and add more power.

 

[dingyibvs]

There are lots of skills/drills with general applicability and to be honest, even a well trained technically adequate forehand topspin can be user to return serves, hit cross court, down the line or into the middle and sometimes counter of the bounce with touch. My main point is that working on this forehand when most of the points you lose are just the result of pushing short topspin serves or being unable to loop serves to the backhand or struggling to play a backhand after ball has been blocked to your backhand after you play a forehand will not help your game much in terms of match results even if you are a better player in some abstract sense.

As I trained more TT, I grew to appreciate the importance of the general training in building a solid player on a long term horizon, but also realized that it was not going to get the results many adult learners desired in the short term. It's one of the reasons I point out that having a coach who never watches your matches or asks about your match play is a huge red flag. A coach needs to teach you how to problem solve and deploy the skills he claims he is working on with you so that you solve problems with them. They should not be allowed to hide behind the idea that training you supposedly how they were trained is all that matters.

Drills that require you to move to play over the table strokes have a high degree of usefulness because short and half long serve return is an important topic at all levels for various reasons and especially important just because it is serve return. But you won't find many coaches drill this even though lazy slow serves are an opportunity for most adults to attack. Because many coaches hate serving for serve return practice.

Hah, yeah, I spend usually the last 1/3 of my training with my training partner on very specific stuff. I do quite a bit of it on my own as well. For example, just a few weeks ago I was playing this LP Cpen guy, and I had a ton of trouble with his semi-long/half-long dead serves to my BH side. I was puzzled by that so I tried it out at home with the robot, and in my first 3(!!!) attempts at looping them with my BH I completely whiffed the ball! Turns out for whatever reason I was fine with receiving regular long dead serves to my BH, but couldn't do it when the pace changed, so I practiced specifically that.

The next practice session with my training partner I tried the same with him. Just the laziest serve ever, a completely undisguised dead serve half long, and he missed an obscene number of attempts to attack it. He was shocked. Most recently for our general practice, instead of starting a loop vs block rally with a topspin, we started it with a backspin of variable length, speed, and spin. That added a rather incredible dimension to the training, both for the looper and the blocker, and also showed us a common failure point in games--that first loop or block, and then the transition to a rather different second loop or block.

These specific trainings IMO are really what's needed to upgrade one's game play.

 

[dingyibvs]

I finally figured out the weight transfer thing too recently by using the cable machine at the gym with the help of this video.

Basically as a right hander, I grab the cable handle with my left hand, then move out to where the cable is pulling my body to the left.

With resistance, it makes it obvious which muscle groups are needed to get my swing to whip out at speed. It involves pushing off with the feet and twisting the body.

I disagree with the guy in the video where he's completely transferring all weight to the L side before twisting the hips though. When the hips move laterally as much he demonstrates, it makes hitting the ball more difficult since you've added an additional variable of your entire upper body drifting towards your left.

Just shifting weight from R to L seems like a terrible use of energy, since only a small fraction of it is directed forwards towards actually hitting the ball. And just twisting without using your lower body to help is ignoring your body's strongest muscle groups.

With waist twist, your upper body doesn't move laterally at all, it just rotates around it's axis. It's more stable, and it's also more efficient since you're generating angular momentum. With the twisting motion, you're not bracing your core like you're about to lift weights. Instead it's more of a pulling motion with your off hand which engages your rear lats and oblique muscles. The problem is that only a few small muscles groups are used for purely twisting the torso.

Adding it altogether, this is my current biomechanical model of the right weight transfer and muscle engagement for the most stable FH (while maintaining your same position).

1. Transfer some weight to R leg, rotate torso slightly
2. Push off with entire R foot, but only to the extent that it helps initiate the torso rotation
3. Pull with your L side rear lats and contracting the obliques to finish the rotation

I've been watching a lot of slow mo FH videos, and there was a really great biomechanics animation that I saw on yt recently that was created by some Chinese scientists that seems to confirm that the "weight transfer" isn't supposed to move your upper body laterally from R to L, but instead is meant to be converted into rotational force.

So you're using your lower body muscles to push off and initiate whip your torso around, and you're using the rotational muscles to stabilize and add more power.

If you have access to a gym there's a very simple thing you can do. Put a 2.5-5lb weight on one side of a curl bar, hold it in your hands with the weighted side to your right (assuming you're right handed), then try to rotate your body as if you're trying to loop, with the weight being in a position where your racket would normally be in a loop. You can probably duct tape some water bottles to the end of a broomstick for similar effect. When I worked on my weight transfer that's an exercise I did.

There are so many muscles involved that it's hard to describe or even show the proper motion, and for us adults it's so easy to swing around a <1/2 lb racket to smack a <3 grams ball hard. Just by increasing the weight involved really shows you naturally what you need to do.

 

[NextLevel]

One last video on developing quality in practice - hear it from an upcoming pro so that no one will say it is just what NL said. The one thing I somewhat have a different take from him is that you can also learn a lot of this quality with really spinny serving. But I did learn some of it from repeatedly looping into short and long pips.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

I played this match a few weeks ago against a young university student. He is very well trained and has imo a quite nice looking classical leftie technique. Good serves and very strong FH 3rd ball attack and drive. But his BH was not so good.

after losing G1 and G2 I dominate G3 and G4 but a subtle change of tactics enabled my opponent to win comfortably in G5.
It isn’t my best match, and it wasn’t a very important tournament but it’s the best match performance that I’ve ever recorded so far .

There are many good rallies. Countertopspin play. Very good receiving, especially with BH, and there is even a rare FH flick winner. Whenever I gave a low return or not difficult ball, my opponent killed the ball with no mercy and style so I quickly new I had to play my AAA game.

I’m also happy of my positive attitude and self -belief during the whole match

Ofc I hope I can always play at this level in the future. But for example last match I played a week later, I was quite mediocre and back to old antics 😂…(even I managed to win in deuce in g5 but to a much weaker opponent)
I have the video but don’t wanna show it

 

[Lazer]

The table in the video looks kind of cheesy. What table are you using?

Cheers
L-zr

 

[Jslick89]

Had a solid go at the round robin last night. Was #2 at my table but won all 5 of my matches. I've been focusing on taking a small step a moment before my opponent serves the ball. Once the ball is hit and i can see exactly where it s going, i take another small (or large if its wide) step to get into the best possible receive position.

I literally just started doing this a week ago after watching a video of Fang Bo teaching his students this and it's already paying off. The first week, it sort of threw off my timing so i think i actually missed some points. but in week two, i'm 100% in better position for serve returns. One opponent, who almost always gets 90% of his serve points against me..... i was getting at least 40% of his serves last night using this technique.

Video in mention:

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

The table in the video looks kind of cheesy. What table are you using?

Cheers
L-zr

I dont remember . Probably some San-ei table

Btw on the video it’s only up to G4. G5 was recorded separately due to an incident