More power needed in my forehand

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body needs to be more relaxed and bending your body a little more forward. In terms of contact with the ball and racket, there should be more sponge compression aside from brushing. The timing also helps, you are taking the ball a bit late. Hit the ball at the top of the bounce or earlier.

Yes, I'm with Yogi. I noticed something about the timing too. The movement looks stiff. There's no need to be athletic, but with the ball contact, you should be able to feel it. Snap is a good idea, but perhaps take it a bit slower first. Slow the ball feed interval down, and slow all your movements down. You'll relax and be less tense. Hit the balls with ease and try to feel it. As Yogi said, get sponge engagement. Get the timing down with a slow speed first. Then gradually build up your speed. Timing will take longer to get down if you are moving at full speed. With the slower speed, you can also isolate your movements, arm first, then add torso, and then legs. Then, still using the slow speed intervals, have the ball fed alternating center and right but use only forehand. That will train your ability to move into position with proper footwork before each stroke. Without this last bit of training, you'll never be able to get into position for proper ball contact. When you get all of this down, then increase the speed.
 
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@ttmonster You need to work on your reading comprehension, because I'm supporting Maurice.

Archo, you will buy the chicken and beer (if you were old enough in USA, but you are in Korea) for ttmonster 1000 out of 1000 times trying to bark up that tree. All the time while he snickers like Muttley with the Goon Squad.

ttmonster has English comprehension, composition, and verbal skills that easily exceed the average native speaker.

To give you the proper credit, your English is damned outstanding too, non-native English speaker or not, in both absolut or comparative subjective terms.
 
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From a glance at the quick shadow stroke drill, the OP is using way too long movements and is holding each successive muscle WAY too long to make the whole chain off time and not multiply force each step of the way. His muscle engagement route basically has his muscles getting in the way of each other.

To be fair, it is damned difficult to get this right the first year learning, or even the 5th. That is why many coaches compromise and first show a shortened version close to the table with few moving parts. That is also a fine way - a progressive path to the full stroke for a FH.
 
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@Der_Echte

I wasn't serious about ttmonster's reading comprehension skills. I knew what he was talking about. I'm just making sure that I'm not completely misunderstood. In no way am I trying to discourage Maurice or put him down. It's really great to see such progress.

@Jabugo

Arm first and torso last???!!!

I would suggest getting the torso rotation right first, then adding the arm and legs in. Then again what the hell do I know.
 
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Yep how many times have I been told to slow down!!! Back to doing some slow shadow swings and bringing more awareness to relaxation, and the flow from one movement to the other. Thanks for all the tips.
 
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@maurice101 : Don't worry it will all fall in place with time , you are doing just fine ... all roads lead to Rome ( if you walk long enough ) :)
Yep how many times have I been told to slow down!!! Back to doing some slow shadow swings and bringing more awareness to relaxation, and the flow from one movement to the other. Thanks for all the tips.
 
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says Spin and more spin.
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Shadow play. Trying to focus on staying low, forward lean, relaxed left arm, the right shoulder not lifting, whip at beginning of stroke, finish position at right eye, being more relaxed.

No wonder table tennis is so hard!

I see I am still too upright even though my head said I was leaning forward. This habit is going to take a lot of work to correct.



I think you may have misunderstood my instructions to some extent.

1) You should practice shadow strokes in front of a mirror so you can see yourself. If you can see yourself, self correction of the strokes will start happening naturally. You will see things you are doing wrong and simply correct as you practice.

2) you should do several THOUSAND. Several thousand several days in a row. Like say, 2,000-4,000 for 4 of the next 6 days. I know that sounds like a lot. But say you make 45 strokes per minute going at a relaxed pace: at that rate you will do a little less than 3,000 in 60 min. If the pace was faster, say, 75 per minute which is not that fast still, then in just about 50 min you would do just short of 4,000.

Here is a different video. I am doing shadow strokes with footwork. When your stroke is decent, you can start adding footwork. But for now, what I am showing you this for is for you to see how the mirror helps.


BTW: in this video, with the footwork, I am doing the stroke at a pace of 56 stokes per minute.

I have definitely done workouts of 90 min of shadow stroke + footwork drills at a higher pace than this many many times. That will definitely be a good cardio workout for anyone.


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy
 
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says Spin and more spin.
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By the way, I do not think you need to slow down. You just need to do the shadow strokes while watching yourself do them. And you need to relax more. Try to get racket speed from the elbow and not try to force and muscle it.

That video with the female instructor that Monster posted, somewhere in the middle of that video, they show her actually looping. I will get you a time later. Watch it. Watch how relaxed she is and how fast her arm whips as a result.


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You have shown great improvement from your first video to the last one ... I would say focus on relaxing the upper body and keeping your shoulder low , just dropping the elbow to its normal level and snapping with forearm will help ... I am not sure if your wrist injury will become worse but normally in the standard forehand stroke you don't need to put conscious power from the wrist , you just need to release the wrist at the end of the forearm snap ... I would say at this point relaxation is priority one and it should automatically help in lowering the elbow ... the power should come from the waist snap and the forearm snap not from the shoulder ... if you can ignore the silliness the rest of the technical advice in the videos by this coach is just fine ..

Here is Monster's post.


It is a good video. At about 4:08 the girl is counterhitting. At 4:16 she starts looping. Particularly watch the looping. She is so relaxed. Look for that in your shadow strokes.

And the whole video is good.


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy
 
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