Getting enough backspin on the short push?

Two details to note:

1) How you touch the ball is important. It is easy to see in the video with Ma Lin how good his touch is.
2) You will notice in the first video, Can makes contact as the ball is rising, very soon after the bounce. In the video with Ma Lin, in the last push, he catches the ball on the rise, very soon after the bounce too. And that is the one in that video that has the most spin.

How long have you been playing? I think backspin on short balls are almost overkill and very difficult. A ball with less spin Will almost be more difficult for opponent since they might push it high. But a backspin ball is proably harder to push short so it migth be good to learn. But It is more important to keep the ball short and low than get backspin on it.

I think you should try this:
Take tha ball early. Otherwise it Will be high.
Almost just touch the ball. No long motion is needed. Longer motion make it diffixult to keep ball short.
Have longer contact. Longer contact is always equal to more Control.
And if you really need to, But i dont think it is very necessary. Brush the ball to get backspin.

The trick is touch and a lot of wrist. Use the tip of the paddle area for best effect. The balls are usually going slow so this isn't too hard to do.

Opalescent said:

Lately i've been hearing about the short push so I want to try and learn that stroke.

From my understanding, even though stroke is SHORTER and there is much less of a slicing action compared to regular long push, however the short push they are able to impart a lot of backspin (more than a long push) - sometimes the ball will bounce 2-3 times and come back towards the player.
So how is the correct way to short push and how do they generate so much backspin on this stroke?

Look at these 2 videos for what i mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVcgZi-iGeo and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDLJVw449sM

Click to expand...

It's definitely not more spin than a long push. The reason the ball bounces back sometimes is because the ball is moving really slowly, so the spin is able to make it go back. Normal shots go faster and will keep going forwards.

There are some pretty good tutorials online, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8sph27APMY
There's a lot of factors for getting more spin that have already been mentioned, like timing and a good contact, but that just takes practice.

It is always the contact and feel that gives you a lot of spin despite less movements.

in Japan, we seldom talk about a short push, the common word is "STOP" (receive - most often)

the idea is against a short backspin / no-spin serve to keep the ball short. and the best way to do this, as Lula said is to take the ball early, almost at the bounce, very softly, with the body very low, and preferably playing diagonal for more control and to prevent the ball from popping up. the main goal is not to put spin but to keep the ball short and low to prevent the opponent from doing a strong attack. Especially on BH receive if i try to receive parallel, too often my receive pops up, its more difficult so i try not to do it. Hitting the ball from the side usually helps.

Against heavy backspin serve, then its necessary to lift up the ball a bit and do some light backspin action on the ball, but it should already naturally keep most of the incoming spin from the server (making his 3rd ball attack difficult for him)

I think Lula summarized it pretty well, keeping it short and low is the essence of this shot. For me to achieve this, I have to step in to be really close to the ball and use a very short motion, while using a quite relaxed grip on the bat. If I do not pay attention to the footwork then it quickly messes up this shot. Say I did not stop in time or otherwise have too much foward momentum while executing the shot, then this results in lost control or a pop-up. I still have to work a lot on the early timing, since IMHO this results in a higher quality short push.

I notice that the videos show serves with a decent, and same amount of backspin. I find those the easiest to return short & low. Much more difficult with varying serves

Also make sure to always step out, otherwise you are open for attack by a long push or even a loop.