Shall I change from Penhold to shakehand?

Yea if you want to

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

penhold requires a more delicate touch and not everyone is born with that sort of "sense"

at least that's what a old geezer chinese coach told me when he saw me trying out penhold for the first time
he said he knew it by the way i hold my chopsticks during lunchtime.....yea its weird I know but I can really never get any good at penhold, just as he predicted.

If you feel like youre more comfortable with shake hand, go for it!

But, if you really really like penhold.....well, lets be real here. You wont turn into a pro player anyways, why dont you do what you love and keep at it? Thats the whole point of having a hobby isn't it?

My suggestion is to change and play for a while and then take a decision. If you are enjoying playing shakehand more and you think you are playing significantly better then why not ?

You can play both and have fun. There is no reason why. I tell my students that I have switched grips enough times to know that it is not as suicidal as some think if you just have fun for a while and learn.

NextLevel said:

You can play both and have fun. There is no reason why. I tell my students that I have switched grips enough times to know that it is not as suicidal as some think if you just have fun for a while and learn.

Click to expand...

Where do you teach?

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

crayon128 said:

Where do you teach?

Click to expand...

NextLevel has videos of him playing and training in his home turf all over the InterNetz. See if you can find some and figure it out. Hint, the Philly Mafia may come down hard on you if you can't figure it out.

See, Justin, that is why I wanted you to come to Lily's club in NJ that weekend. You could have wormed your way into some free coaching from a darn good coach.

As far as switching from penhold to shakehand is concerned, I have a unique way of thinking about this subject:

For a penholder to switch to shakehand, the forehand is easy to switch because the penhold player usually has the fundamentals of the forehand stroke and the transition is very easy and feels natural. For a traditional penhold player the switch from traditional penhold backhand is not so easy, BUT switching to shakehand to learn the shakehand backhand would CONSIDERABLY improve the players ability to learn and use the Reverse Penhold Backhand.

So, for a penhold player to learn to play shakehand is extremely valuable because it will help him improve his RPB even if the penholder ultimately decides he likes shakehand better. I have known many penhold players who switched to shakehand and they went on to improve and become even better as shakehand players than they had been as penhold players. But I have also known a few who used learning shakehand to help become better penhold players.

If you turn that information around, it is different but still quite useful. For a shakehand player to switch to penhold is much harder. There is a steeper learning curve for penhold. However, for a shakehand player to learn how to play penhold will definitely help the player improve his forehand and the learning the RPB could help the shakehand player improve his shakehand backhand as well.

So whichever way you look at it, taking the time to learn how to play shakehand will help improve your game. And, as NextLevel already said, if you start learning how to play shakehand, it does not mean you have to switch and stay a shakehand player. After you start getting decent at shakehand you could decide which way you have more fun playing.

I don't see why one should switch. Pen holders are at a disadvantage unless they can use RPB. If you can use RPB then you no long need to just block with the front side of the paddle when the ball comes to your BH side. RPB is the big equalizer. My main practice partner has learned how to RPB in the last two years. It improve his game immensely. His RPB pushes have much more back spin than his FH pushes.

Pnachtwey said:

Pen holders are at a disadvantage unless they can use RPB. If you can use RPB then you no long need to just block with the front side of the paddle when the ball comes to your BH side. RPB is the big equalizer. My main practice partner has learned how to RPB in the last two years. It improve his game immensely. His RPB pushes have much more back spin than his FH pushes.

Click to expand...

Depends on the level you're playing on. A good push/chop blocker with J-Pen in my level will still be just as hard if not harder to play against than a shake hand player.

Obviouslly J-Pen is disappearing on the top of national/intl rankings, but at our level where most of our backhand and footwork isn't enough to fully take advantage of the shorter/less spinny chopblocks, it actually turns into a disadvantage for us.

a very good player in my club had made this switching from penhold to shakehand, as he was young, after about 6 years with penhold grip. He was then improving a lot with shakehand grip, up to number 250 in France.

So yes it's possible, you have just to try feeling about penhold.

I've been where you are and I would suggest don't give it up entirely. I'm now at the point where my backhand (RPB) feels more natural than my forehand. While my forehand is deadlier, my back hand is more consistent.

You should also realize that RPB does require some "breaking in" of your hand. Your fingers will need to stretch and toughen in order to contort when angling/controlling your paddle.

mcaibyz2 said:

Thanks for all the advices. I do love penhold and Xu Xin is my favorite player. As brabhamista mentioned, I have a problem position myself when the ball comes long and deep in my backhand. This is not a problem during training because I know the ball is coming. But in match situation I struggle to set up RPB to top spin it. I think I need special training for this shot. Also I trust my forehand a lot more than RPB, and I sometimes scared of using RPB for fearing losing the point easily. Blocking with RPB is also an issue, because it covers smaller area of the table comparing with shakehand.

I think I will stick to penhold for the tim being and work on these areas.

Click to expand...

Based on the information you just presented, it sounds like your actual trouble is handling the random scenario of match-play. Drills where you know where the next ball is going have some usefulness. But the usefulness of those kinds of drills is limited if you do not also do random placement drills. For your backhand it sounds like you need to do drills where the ball goes randomly to different places including forcing you to turn to your forehand and turn back to your backhand. The key is that, if the ball placement is random, then you won't ever know where the next ball is going until it has been hit.

You should also do some serve and receive drills and some game simulation drills. The more you train for the random element the more your game will improve. I am pretty sure this is what is missing and what you need to add to your training.

Here is a video that explains the idea of training the random element. Watch it. Watch it more than once. It will help give you ideas for more effective ways to train.



Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

do you have long fingers or short ?

I played with penhold grip between 2013 and 2015, I liked it greatly, but backhand with long fingers is hard, there isn't a lot of place to hit the ball and if you move the fingers to get more place, the wrist become steeper ...