Cocked Wrist issue

OK - in terms of what is happening, I think your coach is really complaining about your grip, not your wrist. It is likely that your finger is to high up the back with that grip you are using right now.

pgpg said:

Yeah, since there are degrees of freedom here, definition of 'cocked' can be confusing: I believe he describes ulnar deviation, and you are thinking about wrist flexion. Or something like that. I found picture below on the interwebs:

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This image gives great info to work with. Later tonight I will try and post photos of me holding a racket if I have time. But this image gives me the tools to explain ranges of good and not so good.

Ulnar deviation in itself is not a problem. But if you add wrist flexion to ulnar deviation you can hook the ball well but your wrist is in part of the follow through position (flexion) so your shot would not be as powerful as if your wrist was neutral, or had a slight ulnar deviation with a moderate amount of wrist extension. A range from neutral to ulnar deviation with a range of neutral to moderate wrist extension is good. But not ulnar deviation with wrist flexion which causes the shot to be weaker than it needs to be and causes one to tend to hook even when they don't want to. Again, it is good for sidespin loops. But, you will lose some power and there are other ways to get that hook.

Ask NextLevel: my FH wrist is in hook position and it is not because my wrists are weak or even close to it.

Shuki, in your photo of "BAD" what is not good is the wrist flexion. But why your coach is probably telling you to go all the way the other way is probably because that is a compensation in the opposite direction.

Ideally in ones stroke there is a small amount of ulnar deviation and a small amount of extension. And in your followthrough, ideally, you end up with a small amount of flexion and as much radial deviation as is comfortable. Without that, there is no movement of the wrist. No movement of the wrist is okay for stability though. But for extra power some wrist timed well to the contact is really useful.

But I am confident your wrist isn't going into that position because of weakness. It is going into that position because it feels "correct" for how you contact the ball. It is not actually an easy position to get your wrist into. So weakness is most likely not the reason you put your wrist is in that position on your forehand.

Do you put your wrist in that position for your backhand? That could have something to do with why it stays that way for the FH.

But wait, when you hit with me, I am betting you will see someone who does it worse than you. Ask NextLevel. Hahahahaha. And my FH is pretty decent for many things. Even though it is bad great for over the table play for the same reason of the hooked wrist. [emoji41] LOL.


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Shuki, do me a favor: lay your forearm on a table with your palm facing down and your wrist in a neutral position: your neutral; not what you think is neutral. Do the same with the palm facing up and the forearm resting on the table.

I will explain why after I see these two photos.


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Yep. I figured that. It is possible from those photos that it is bone shape which would mean that would be pretty not good to try and force your wrist into a position that the bones won't allow.

That is what it looks like from the most recent photos. But with your forearm resting in a flat surface it will be more easy for me to actually see the joint.

And based on the photos you showed, trying to put your wrist in the position your coach has said is "correct" could be a dangerous prospect.


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My best advice would be get it checked by a pro in person. A doctor should be able to tell you whats going on and if there is a way around it . It would also tell you whether you should be following your coach's advice or if that would ruin your wrist.

Shuki,

If you can, take videos of your forehand loop from the back and from the front - 1 minute should be enough. It will be wasy to see if this affects your loop in any important way. I still think your racket is too deeply seated in your palm.

Shuki, for reference, here is my right forearm/hand:





Of note, for my neutral position, my index finger is in line with my forearm.


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Wrist positions with racket:

This is my wrist so each of us has slightly different wrists.

Ulnar deviation & wrist flexion (hook wrist):



Ulnar deviation with wrist extension (sort of what you would want most of the time):



And a second photo of the same basic wrist position:



Radial deviation without wrist flexion or extension (not at all what you want):



Followthrough position: comfortable radial deviation with mild wrist flexion:




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Well, one more image if it helps you understand one other detail:

This is a Tenaly handle:



That kind of racket was designed so that people who can't get their wrist into that position can have the racket in that position even if their wrist can't get there on its own.

And definitely stop trying to force your wrist into that position. If you doing that is causing you to have pain in your wrist it means you should not do that and that goes with that thought I had when seeing your hand in ulnar and radial deviation about the shape of your bones. I will explain it when I see your arm how mine is in the photos where my arm is on the little table.

I got my own ideas of what is "right" (or simply effective and repeatable) and it goes along with what Ringer-Schemer, Carl, and NL are supporting.

Carl, your have seen my FH, so haz NL, it ha extreme spin on openers (yes, NL is a big fan of spin over speed on openers) and unlike NL, I generate a good deal of the extra spin than the average players does NOT by any kind of arm snap that is better than anyone by huge margin...

Carl, tell them what you think is how I get real heavy spin on FH and how I use my wrist before, and during the shot.

I think your explaination will clear up a lot of stuff.

I appreciate NL and Carl speaking up about NOT making the wrist un-natural and trying to do explosive stuff with that.

I could comment now. But I am going to ask you to do both one more time. Can you make it so your whole forearm is laying on the surface. Completely relaxed.

These photos might be, but it looks like there is tension and you are holding your arm there.

Let your fingers be relaxed too. Like, if you look closely at the shadows on my photo, when my palm is up, my fingers are not on the table. And when my palm is down, the tips of my fingers are resting on the table, but if I took a side photo, most of the rest of my fingers is not actually in contact with the table surface because my arm and hand are really relaxed and just falling onto the table as a result of gravity.

If you do this, it might make what is being called ulnar deviation look more rather than less. Because what it looks like is: THAT IS NOT ULNAR DEVIATION FOR YOUR WRIST. That actually just looks like be neutral position and if that is the case: your wrist is TOTALLY NORMAL, but a different shape than many people's.


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Anyway, I will spill the beans a little and explain what I am seeing, even though a more relaxed arm would show things more clearly.

Regardless of which way your hand is facing, your ulna is on the pinky side of the hand and your radius is on the the thumb side of your hand. The radius and ulna are the two bones that make up your forearm.

The word longer and shorter here are not accurate but I am going to use them anyway because I don't want to waste time explaining the elbow joint and how the radius and ulna function.

For most people the radius extends further dismally in the forearm than the ulna. I know anatomical terms: what the heck did he just say. The radius appears longer than the ulna. So, for a normal person, if you took an image like an X-Ray of a normal person's forearm and wrist joint, the radius on most people's would extend past the ulna by a little and the head of the radius is a much larger surface in your wrist joint than the ulna bone surface. And the radius is angles to meet the ulna.

For most people the ulna is not much "shorter": the radius is not much longer.

In this image (a drawing):



In the image, you can see the radius goes farther than the ulna.

If I had X-Ray photos of the bones of 100 different people's hands, the angle from radius to ulna would be a bit different for each. There may be a few (maybe 3-4) where the ulna was "longer". There would be some where they were pretty much even. But not that many. Then most of the wrists would have the radius varying amounts longer.

Shuki, your wrist is not that extreme. It is mildly on the side where the radius is "longer" than the ulna by more than is common. But it is totally a normal range of deviation.

So, when your wrist and hand are in that position that looks like ulna deviation and your hand is lined up with the line of your wrist-crease, that is the neutral position for you. It is not ulna deviation. When your wrist goes to ulna deviation it looks like an extreme deviation. But it is just a normal deviation for the shape of the bones in your wrist.

When you do radial deviation, because of the "length" of your radius and the shape of your wrist joint, it looks close to the neutral position for a lot of people. But for you, that is pretty extreme radial deviation.

AND YOU SHOULD NOT BE TRYING TO GRT YOUR WRIST TO GO FARTHER IN THAT DIRECTION. Doing so could damage the ligaments that hold your carpal bones together and cause your carpal tunnel to collapse: in other words Big Bad, Strong Bad.

That is most likely why, the stuff you have been trying to do, has been hurting your wrist. And why you can't keep your wrist in that position.

When we hang out, I will have a look and show you normal ranges of movement for your wrist and demonstrate to you that even though your wrist joint is different than most people's, it is actually fine and should not get in your way in real life or in playing table tennis.

And, in a table tennis stroke, you most certainly do not want your racket to be "ahead of" your hand anyway. In line with, or behind, yes. Ahead of, no. [emoji2]

I couldn't resist. Here is the reason that longer and shorter are REALLY the wrong terms:



That is your elbow joint. The bone that wraps under and around the head of the humorous (upper arm bone) is the ulna. And on this side it extends significantly father proximally than the radius. So, if you measured the full length of the ulna and the radius, the ulna would actually be the longer bone and it would be noticeably longer even on someone who had a more angled wrist than Shuki. But at the wrist joint the radius, for most people, extends farther distally.


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