Forehand vs Backhand

It's always like that.

Ancient chinese secret: If you're more comfortable with with your backhand, hold the racket at forehand position all the time.

Yep. Most players have a preferred wing, a wing that shines. It is called the dominant wing.

For instance: Ma Long is a FH dominant player with an excellent BH although it was not always so excellent as it is these days.

ZJK was a BH dominant player whose FH developed into a very good weapon but wasn't always so good.

FZD is the most balanced player I have seen. But I still think he is BH dominant.

Wang Liqin was definitely very FH dominant with a decent BH but it was not really his weapon.

Waldner had a good FH but he was BH dominant.

Sometimes your grip effects the issue. If you are using a BH grip as your main grip, it makes FH a little harder. If you are using an FH grip, it makes BH a little harder. So as players develop, their grip sort of starts switching whether the player is like Timo and it is a big and obvious grip change or like ZJK where the grip change is much more subtle.

In the end, the thing to do is work on both wings. Your FH will come together. It is the more complicated stroke anyway. And I am guessing it is much different to hit a FH with SH grip than PH. PH puts the racket in a very good position for FH. SH the FH is more complicated because you have to adjust your wrist to get the blade face at an angle that works for the stroke.

Wetwork_Orange said:

P.S: You're the owner of OSP two blades yes?

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Well, I actually have 4 OSP blades.

1) Virtuoso Off-
2) Virtuoso Plus
3) V’king
4) Custom blade with these plies: Limba-Spruce-Ayous-Spruce-Limba.

They are all excellent. My favorite is the V+. And that and the Kim Jung Hoon blades are my main blades. But I could use any of the OSP blades as my main blade.


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backhand is more natural, it needs good timing and feeling. forehand is more technical and needs more practice.

izra said:

backhand is more natural, it needs good timing and feeling. forehand is more technical and needs more practice.

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100% correct. Excellent post.

izra said:

backhand is more natural, it needs good timing and feeling. forehand is more technical and needs more practice.

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Not sure I agree with this. Is it because of the nature of holding the paddle by shake hand/penhold/SeeMiller way and body rotations?

I don't think that BH requires less practice. Learning the "touch" on BH i.e. how to adapt it to balls of different spin, speed, height, depth at different distances from the table requires massive, gigantic amount of quality practice. Just like it is on FH, but with more difficult timing and less power to rely on.

One possible explanation why BH "seems more natural" -- it could be an illusion. This is what I experienced in a way. It is a simpler stroke (in most situations) mechanically, there are just fewer moving parts than in FH. So it is not that hard to learn the basic "vanilla" BH that one can use in practice and look good. But once you try to develop it into a weapon reliable enough to win points in matches in different situations under pressure, oh my... (see the point above about the "touch").

Ilia Minkin said:

One possible explanation why BH "seems more natural" -- it could be an illusion. This is what I experienced in a way. It is a simpler stroke (in most situations) mechanically, there are just fewer moving parts than in FH. So it is not that hard to learn the basic "vanilla" BH that one can use in practice and look good. But once you try to develop it into a weapon reliable enough to win points in matches in different situations under pressure, oh my... (see the point above about the "touch").

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Yes I agree with this analysis. I'd say BH is easier to learn to short return serve, flipping, and certain basic strokes but for better shots to win the point the FH is "more" natural. So it depends on how you define "more natural".

For me it is easier to block with a backhand because of the anatomical position where your elbow is.more.flexed and it is nearer to your body. Also, the position of the arm is more stable.

I think the SH grip is more natural for backhand. Nearly full range of relevant motion for wrist flex/extension and ulnar/radial deviation for anything from pushes to banana flicks. A lot more awkward for forehand, especially wrist extension on over the table shots, but not ideal even for coming over the ball on drives without extreme forehand grip orientation. I think the awkwardness of shake hand forehand is mostly why there are things like Seemiller grips and Tenaly blades.

Being crouched and knees bent/body balanced right as opponent impacts ball means a huge lot for ability to move to ball and be in position. Doing this well or not well can enlarge/lessen options.

It is way easier to make and take BH shots when you are on balance knees bent to get to position to do it, same with a ball going to FH or right at you, good balance and bent knees let you step around or move wide, also helps BH to FH transition.

Some players who stand up and are close to table invariably end up playing a BH oriented game, later, many of these players move their hitting foot more forward for even more BH oriented ready position.

Look at an opponent's feet position, body orientation, how they move or do not move to ball, look how upright one may play, this will give a lot of clues as to their inclinations, often they do not realize it.

I think it was an excellent post by Carl and you guys are misunderstanding what he said. He is talking about somebody who is playing table tennis with a shakehand grip for the first time ... have you seen how beginners play ? they all hold the paddle in a backhand grip and try to block everything with backhand ... in table tennis its more natural because you are having to move less number of components ( arm , wrist , shoulder, waist) etc. and its just about stepping to the direction of the ball and blocking it ... Forehand has way more components to it ....

However, once you start learning the basics or even imitating the pros , you immediately realize that forehand is more dynamic and there is no way you can cover the forehand cross court direction with your backhand or swing at high balls without missing ... then you start serving with forehand , hitting with forehand etc and you realize that the forehand stroke has more flexibility , you can cheat on the footwork and reach out and still get a ball to land on the table and you can generate more power more easily ....

now you are playing more forehand and your game becomes forehand oriented and it feels natural , now you focus on the backhand and you find out that backhand is a more rigid shot at a higher speed , you need footwork , you need timing and you need to be able to read the ball early enough to be able to do the first two correctly ... infact earlier than what your forehand allows simply because there are ways of cheating on the forehand that you cannot do on the backhand side ...

but such is the journey in table tennis ... I don't know if you have heard the story where a person has a blanket that is shorter than his height and when he covers his head , his feet get exposed , when he covers his feet , his head gets exposed .. ... but Carl is right in his original post that backhand is more natural than forehand to begin with .. a lot of us have forgotten our initial days playing shakehand ... you just need to play with enough beginners to remind you of this

To answer the OP who is a beginner in SH but a veteran with PH we need to understand also that his FH dominate PH style is a much higher level than his BH penhold. I believe this is the old PH style, not the Wang Hao's. So when he switched to SH, he expected to reach the same FH level like he used to with PH along with his improving BH that he didn't have with PH.

Like boxing, tennis, etc. the FH swing in TT is always more natural with forehand in attacking. In defense it is probably BH like someone mentioned. It depends.

Yep. Great post Monster.

At the beginning stages when you realize that the biggest component of a BH power shot is that your arm goes from bent to straight, and when you just put your racket out, you still put the ball on the table, then biomechanically, and technically, BH is easier to learn at that level.

If you are talking about touch and refining the shot to make more spin contact and on the bigger shots start adding more legs and waist, well, there is some extra to think about. But, it is still not as complex as all the moving parts of a FH: hips, legs, (are used much more on FH), upper arm, lower arm, wrist (need much more detail on FH and much more training to get your arm into a position that is "artificial" and hard to do, so that the blade face is adjusted for a SH FH loop). In PH, the racket position automatically goes to an excellent angle and position to spin the ball. In SH, you have to do things to your wrist and forearm to get the blade face close enough to spin well.

For SH BH, all you have to do is cock your wrist and it closes the blade face.

So:

1) Moving parts for basic mechanics:
2) Angle of racket for topspin:

BTW: what I said above does not change the fact that BH has a much more confined hitting zone. Some of this is because of what makes the mechanics fairly straight forward=elbow bent->elbow straight. So, for the information on the advantages of a larger hitting zone, refer to what Monster said about having much more room for adjusting your timing on the FH.


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