"Corkscrew" vs side top loop

The axis of topspin is parallel to the ground and left to right (perpendicular to the flight of the ball). The axis of backspin is the same axis as topspin but the ball spins the opposite way.

The axis of one sidespin is vertical. The axis goes from the top of the ball to the bottom of the ball. The spin is on the side.

The axis of the other sidespin is parallel to the ground and parallel to the flight of the ball. So the axis passes through the very front and the very back of the ball.

See that video I posted that shows the 4 theoretical axes of spin.

Next subject: If you are hitting topspin and you are taking the ball early, a little in front of you, you should naturally--without thinking about, without consideration for what kind of spin you are trying to create or what part of the ball to try to contact--if you take the ball early and your racket is in a neutral position, you should/would contact the outside of the ball and therefore generate some side with your top.

So, if you are learning from someone who tells you you should contact the ball early, they may also be teaching you to contact the side and get some side top.

But where a beginner should contact the ball and what kind of spin they "should" try and generate, I guess that would go down to teaching philosophy.

And my opinion is, any teaching philosophy that is too rigid and has come to conclusions before the person learning is in front of the person with the philosophy will tend to go a little wrong since we are all so unique and have such different needs as we learn.

But I definitely know a coach who teaches brand new beginners third ball attack vs backspin, contacting the outside of the ball, playing aggressive on all strokes, drive loop rather than brush, and he has gotten more than one player to 2600+. So, sometimes different things work.


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

Archosaurus said:

Shuki and myself are referencing the ground's axis'. Seeing as we don't have much experience playing table tennis in zero G conditions, it works pretty well.

Click to expand...

Archo - he said axis, not equator. Listen to the man. IT's easy to fight over meaningless stuff.

UpSideDownCarl said:

The axis of topspin is parallel to the ground and left to right (perpendicular to the flight of the ball). The axis of backspin is the same axis as topspin but the ball spins the opposite way.

The axis of one sidespin is vertical. The axis goes from the top of the ball to the bottom of the ball. The spin is on the side.

The axis of the other sidespin is parallel to the ground and parallel to the flight of the ball. So the axis passes through the very front and the very back of the ball.

See that video I posted that shows the 4 theoretical axes of spin.

Next subject: If you are hitting topspin and you are taking the ball early, a little in front of you, you should naturally--without thinking about, without consideration for what kind of spin you are trying to create or what part of the ball to try to contact--if you take the ball early and your racket is in a neutral position, you should/would contact the outside of the ball and therefore generate some side with your top.

So, if you are learning from someone who tells you you should contact the ball early, they may also be teaching you to contact the side and get some side top.

But where a beginner should contact the ball and what kind of spin they "should" try and generate, I guess that would go down to teaching philosophy.

And my opinion is, any teaching philosophy that is too rigid and has come to conclusions before the person learning is in front of the person with the philosophy will tend to go a little wrong since we are all so unique and have such different needs as we learn.

But I definitely know a coach who teaches brand new beginners third ball attack vs backspin, contacting the outside of the ball, playing aggressive on all strokes, drive loop rather than brush, and he has gotten more than one player to 2600+. So, sometimes different things work.


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

Click to expand...

I would add that you would generate some "sidespin" if you contacted the ball late as well.

Shuki said:

I think this is a style disagreement we're having more than anything. When I used to have more sidespin on the ball I was unable to make it more pure. What I found was the reason I had this sidespin was because it was simply easier for me to get the ball on the table against backspin. It was inhibiting me from developing proper footwork and proper rotation.

I couldn't understand for the life of me why my coach and danny also wanted me to have a pure topspin. I couldn't do it as consistently and it frustrated me to do a stroke I couldn't do at the time. But then as my stroke became "more correct" using more knees and body rotation it became quite clear to me that there was no amount of backspin that I couldn't loop with even a pure topspin stroke.

Now that training the pure topspin has given me better footwork and fundamentals, my coach has been having me add sidespin to my strokes for variation, not for ease of returning a ball to the table any easier.

Click to expand...

The main reason you couldn't get topspin was probably because you weren't swinging in a straight line, if I had to bet. That's the main thing I notice with people who have this problem - their strokes tend to be shallow and finish low (across the body) habitually.

Again, you can treat most of my loops a topspin loops. IF you looked at the players I posted, you would treat their loops as topspin loops. But a large part of this is semantics.

Archosaurus said:

Why do people keep misusing vertical? Or do I not get something?

A sidespin spins along the horizontal axis of the ground, right? A topspin spins along the vertical axis of the ground.

Click to expand...

In all this, I just got a laugh. Archo doesn't actually know what the word axis means. A flat surface that is not spinning has no axis. The surface of a ball that is spinning is not the axis unless it is one of the points of the axis. And both of those points on the surface of the ball that the axis passes through ARE ACTUALLY BARELY MOVING. That is how spin avoidance actually works.

And if you don't know what the word axis means, there is no way you could understand the term spin avoidance.

Definition: "Axis: an imaginary line about which a body rotates. The earth revolves on its axis once every 24 hours."

That comes from Apple's dictionary on this computer.

The earth's axis runs from the the north pole to the south pole. It is not exactly north and south so the axis is slightly angled and the sidespin of the earth has a little bit of corkscrew in it and that sort of explains the behavior of weirdos like me and kukamonga who like to cause trouble.

The axel of a car wheel, the very central point of the axel is actually the axis of spin for the car wheel.

Hopefully you now understand what the word axis means. But this really does make all your previous statements really, just that much more entertaining. Especially how hard it seems that you are trying to sound like you understand the concepts and how now, all of a sudden you are looking for spin a avoidance and are getting more sidespin in your loops. Amazing how fast this stuff turns into experiences.

Well, no harm done. But, I am still laughing like a giddy little girl. Makes me want to go back and reread all those comments.

This right here is totally priceless:

"A sidespin spins along the horizontal axis of the ground, right? A topspin spins along the vertical axis of the ground."

The horizontal axis of the ground!!!! The vertical axis of the ground!!!! I think I may have just seen an axis fly past me off the wall and that axis was in the horizontal axis of the wall. Yep the vertical wall's horizontal axis. Nope, the wall wasn't spinning at the time. Just the axis.

Archosaurus said:

Shuki and myself are referencing the ground's axis'.

Click to expand...

Okay, why not, this has nothing to do with table tennis. And perhaps it is bad form in light of my previous comment where I am goofing around and poking fun. So, sorry.

But since spelling and grammar have come up in the past....well, here goes:

Myself, is a reflexive term. What that means it is supposed to refer back to the subject. It is supposed to mean the same thing as the subject.

For example:

I hit myself by accident. In this sentence the the reflexive pronoun "myself" refers to the subject "I" and "myself" is the object of the verb "hit".

"Shuki and myself" technically incorrect usage. Myself can never be the subject of a sentence because then it could not refer back to the subject.

This should read: "Shuki and I". But I do have a feeling that Shuki is not referring to the "ground's axis".

Okay. None of this really matters because we knew what you meant. And I certainly make plenty of mistakes when I am writing on the forum. This is a forum for learning. So, hopefully the dictionary definition of axis helped and hopefully the grammatical rules for reflexives help me not to make a mistake:

He hits with powerful topspin like myself. (totally incorrect usage). He hits with powerful topspin like me. (correct usage; not true, but correct usage).

For it to be true, it should read:

He hits with powerful topspin like Der_Echte.

Haha since when did I get credited with the machine man power topspin... I just thought I was extremely heavy topspin in general haha.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

OK... I guess if I get a no spin long return or a medium topspin I go loop kill lust crazy...

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Vertical axis means the ball isn't moving, horizontal axis means the ball enters a the 4th dimension before reappearing on the table with a new spin.

Glad we cleared that, let's move on


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

don't know if this was quoted earlier, but this seems like a definitive explanation on corkscrew and spin avoidance

https://thoughtsontabletennis.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/spin-evasion/

Shuki said:

I think this is a style disagreement we're having more than anything. When I used to have more sidespin on the ball I was unable to make it more pure. What I found was the reason I had this sidespin was because it was simply easier for me to get the ball on the table against backspin. It was inhibiting me from developing proper footwork and proper rotation.

I couldn't understand for the life of me why my coach and danny also wanted me to have a pure topspin. I couldn't do it as consistently and it frustrated me to do a stroke I couldn't do at the time. But then as my stroke became "more correct" using more knees and body rotation it became quite clear to me that there was no amount of backspin that I couldn't loop with even a pure topspin stroke.

Now that training the pure topspin has given me better footwork and fundamentals, my coach has been having me add sidespin to my strokes for variation, not for ease of returning a ball to the table any easier.

Click to expand...

So there is a lot of stuff in here that I didn't address. I never saw your original sidespin stroke. But it is important to be able to hit topspin because topspin dips and travels straight. Sidespin requires touch - you can't hit it hard - you need to rely on the incoming backspin. Corkscrew is somewhere in the middle, but more on the topspin side. There is a guy I mentor and he has a strong backhand opener that just hooks with real sidespin (lateral), not cork, so it curves in the air and after the bounce. It is his best shot. But the problem with hook shots is that they fall apart when you hit them hard. This is because the sidespin is not going to bring the ball down.

Spin avoidance topspin (which is what I am doing in the video I first posted, though very slowly so you can see the spin effect and not against an incoming ball, so you don't get the real impact) does not have this problem as significantly - obviously, pure topspin has the most dip, but it is all about compromises and how many strokes you want to learn as an amateur player. So I had to work on teaching him a different contact so that he could have loops that dipped more consistently if he needed to drive the ball. That's the real reason why you need a topspin type stroke, IMO - for security of direction and dip. What I call cork is often a result of trying to get topspin but getting it with spin avoidance.

You may have heard me say this elsewhere, but no one can or should practice swinging at the ball in one way or at one speed all the time. You need to experiment with swings to understand your stroke and being able to produce topspin is a part of that. Being able to make the ball go straight is a part of that.

Finally, what I will say is in addition to reading Carl's post about coaching philosophies, realize that as spin gets heavier, the game gets more interesting and plenty of stuff that you do will break down if you are doing them as you think you are. That's when you need things that don't break down when you are in trouble. I don't know whether you are doing a pure topspin stroke when looping heavy backspin or using some spin avoidance. Many people think they are doing things that they are not doing - you may be getting topspin with spin avoidance. I don't know how consistent your opener is under pressure (it's one thing to be hitting balls against opponents/coaches when you can estimate the spin and vs opponents in a tournament where you don't know their spin level). Over time, you need to build more and more things into your technique and game play for simplifying it.

Let's look at the best forehand vs. backspin in the world. Note whether his racket stays in view on the backswing. Note whether he is producing pure topspin on most of his loops, especially the slow ones. He has far more racket head speed than any of us. So why is he not producing pure topspin?

"Corkscrew" vs side top loop

Archosaurus said:

The way we use the axis word in Finnish can sometimes be a bit weird compared to English, so I was thinking in terms of a 3D chart, with the Z-direction being the ball's direction of travel and so on. I'm probably misusing the term.

It's just semantics, because I think we're all talking about the same thing, and the reference points don't just suddenly start changing depending on what you call them.

Click to expand...

Sorry dude. This is stupid. It would be better for you to just say, "oh, wow, you are right. I guess I don't know what the word axis means."

But in Finish English the word axis means something else???? Come on. That is just as stupid as it gets. It's okay not to know something. It is better to admit that you don't know something than to pretend which really keeps getting you in trouble. We'll all be way more understanding of you mistaking a word in a different language for something else than if you try and pretend some weird silliness to play it off.

https://translate.google.com/#en/fi/axis

Archosaurus said:

What I mean is that I don't know what exactly axis means and doesn't mean in English. When it can be used and so on.

Click to expand...

Arch. you're refering to planes. a ball spinning on vertical plane would be spinning on a horrizontal axis.

No. It is spinning on a vertical axis. The string around which the ball is spinning is the axis.