how to efficiently brush the ball during a serve ?

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Guys can you please tell me how to efficiently brush the ball during a pendulum serve. When I serve it feels more like that I am hitting the ball and not brushing it. I know brushing is essential for maximum spin but I just can't do it properly. I hope you all will help me overcome my problem.:):)
 
says Spin and more spin.
says Spin and more spin.
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I don't know that there are really any short cuts. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of precision to get the control and feel to brush the ball.

Keep practicing. Practice a lot.

Practice this:


And this:


And this:


Notice, I am really not doing much at all, but the ball comes back to me each time.

It is all about how you touch the ball.
 
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The exercises mentioned are pretty good. My advice would be to focus on getting decent backspin with this motion first, once you get the contact right, it is easier to just tilt top of the bat for side and topspin. You can also practise at the table, by hitting horizontally or a bit upwards in front of the ball and making it bounce back over the net. Do not worry about getting a low bounce at first, it can bounce quite high, you really want to get the contact right. A short example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWM_a65_MrQ&feature=youtu.be&t=18

Notice that developing the feel and getting a decent serve can take really a long time, unless you are one of those few where it comes naturally :) If you spend 5 minutes on it before every training session it will do wonders. Yes, it may be really, really boring.
 
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The exercises mentioned are pretty good. My advice would be to focus on getting decent backspin with this motion first, once you get the contact right, it is easier to just tilt top of the bat for side and topspin. You can also practise at the table, by hitting horizontally or a bit upwards in front of the ball and making it bounce back over the net. Do not worry about getting a low bounce at first, it can bounce quite high, you really want to get the contact right. A short example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWM_a65_MrQ&feature=youtu.be&t=18

Notice that developing the feel and getting a decent serve can take really a long time, unless you are one of those few where it comes naturally :) If you spend 5 minutes on it before every training session it will do wonders. Yes, it may be really, really boring.

HEY what do you mean by hitting horizontally. Do you mean underneath the ball.:D:D:D:D
 
says Spin and more spin.
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HEY what do you mean by hitting horizontally. Do you mean underneath the ball.:D:D:D:D

I think this video shows what he means.


That is a good video. It has a few things that would be helpful to developing the touch.

And you can see, in some of the exercises, he is coming up from under the ball, and on the far side of the ball pulling up to create more backspin.

You should also notice, for the most part, he is not trying to make the serve, he is trying to make the spin. In many of the exercises, he is not trying to get the ball over the net with one bounce. He is just playing with spinning the ball. To develop the touch, it helps to ignore making a viable serve and focusing on the spin. Then when you have control, you try and put the whole thing together.
 
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This maybe just me, but I like to toss the ball a bit higher. It's counter-intuitive, but one of the main things that impedes my spin production is tensing up and ultimately being anxious about all the variables: wrist action, height of contact, place of contact and angle of contact. If I toss the ball higher, I can consciously relax and focus on delicately catching the ball, not forcing it over the net. The timing is more difficult as the ball is moving faster (and the playing area's light might annoy you), but it allows time for all your muscles to relax, before the point of contact. At that point, get your foot down and explode backwards into ready position. Serving should be relaxed, purposeful and graceful. I got into a bad habit of not getting into ready position because I'd spend hours serving again and again from the same position without ever practicing the move into ready position. But in general, I think it's the mark of a passionate TT player to hone service.
 
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Guys can you please tell me how to efficiently brush the ball during a pendulum serve. When I serve it feels more like that I am hitting the ball and not brushing it. I know brushing is essential for maximum spin but I just can't do it properly. I hope you all will help me overcome my problem.:):)

Good advice so far.
I would like to expand on the benefits of practice.
If we take Carl’s simple yet excellent video set we can see an easy to copy action, and its tempting to think that the lesson ends there.

However if we apply a martial arts perspective, comparing it to punching some tiles for instance we realise that even though the punching action is relatively simple to understand and execute it may take some months of training to break the tiles. During that time you are not so learning a complicated stroke but rather taking the time to learn how to FOCUS your whole body effort at the split second of impact. When you succeed observers wont see much change in your action but your serve will have MUCH more spin. It seems strange that the FOCUS is required for the small relaxed action of a chop is as important for the FOCUS on smashing Tiles
How to assess the result? The karate guy sees the tiles break.
My coach had me practice FOCUS on my short chop serve at least an hour a week and said that I would start to see a real benefit within 6 month. He said a good test result would be when playing in a high level match that a straight forward undisguised chop after the above kind of training would cause a strong opponent to put the ball in the net.
My coach was right and i did see opponents put the ball in the net- it was not misreading because the serve was not disguised at all. The result inspired me so much that I kept on with the practice and used the same approach with my pendulum and kicker serves as well They were more spectacular to execute, but it all started with a coach explaining the benefit of focus.

 
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Take it with a grain of salt as I'm not a high level player but what has helped me was keeping the bat low in the take back of the serve. Basically if you watch the pro guys the don't swing a lot high to low but they swing pretty horizontal and get the spin more by hitting the underside or side of the ball.

After doing that my underspin got much better, before I tried to generate backspin by going high to low like you do when hitting a tennis underspin slice but it didn't work so well.

But keep in mind I'm a lower level player
 
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says Spin and more spin.
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Good advice so far.
I would like to expand on the benefits of practice.
If we take Carl’s simple yet excellent video set we can see an easy to copy action, and its tempting to think that the lesson ends there.

Take it with a grain of salt as I'm not a high level player but what has helped me was keeping the bat low in the take back of the serve.
I just want to make sure you guys know that this thread is originally from 2019 and the OP has not posted since August of 2019. Good info nevertheless. But wanted you to know.

 
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Hi PPP,

that clip was from a while ago, it’s set up in my fathers garage, I moved out because of covid and just popped in to practice, both parents were classed ‘as at risk’
I rented with my partner, that lease ended in July so we rented again but a furnished property, all our stuff went into storage, bed sofa etc in the garage!!! 😪
Gradually stuff has been distributed amongst family members and last week I managed to get the table set up again!!!😀
CANT EMPHASISE HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO PRACTICE!! lost some touch and feel on some serve types, especially reverse pendulum!! And yeah you can just lose yourself for an hour or two!!!
 
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I practice this while waiting for my practice partners. I serve the ball so it rolls to the end of the table and then rolls back. This is very hard to do and still keep the ball low over the net.

I like USDC's 3rd video although his blade is a little tilted you can see it results in significant curve too.

The blade should be flat and move horizontally. The ball must be tossed up high enough to be legal but also it must hit the rubber with enough force so there is a lot of tangential friction which produces torque to spin the ball and enoughspeed to move it forward. The problem is that if you toss the ball too high, it will bounce high off the paddle so height above the table where contact is made is lower if you throw the ball higher.

I tend to use my wrist a lot to get extra speed and have better control than using just the speed of the fore arm. This means I get more backspin and speed if I I contact the ball towards the tip of my paddle. Trying hitting the ball near the handle to just for variation with the same motion.

Swing with a slightly upwards motion with the leading edge being a little higher will provide more spin and less speed but it is very tricky to do.

 
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It is actually easier to make consistent effective contact with blade when leading edge turned up with a higher toss... to me at least. I do not worry so much whether I strike the ball near the tip (that is moving faster - yes) since I am not 100% consistent striking the ball there... so it is not worth it to me,

Out of anyone on the forum since the OP made this thread is TTD Trouble maker MaTT. Matt Herrington. He did a whole series on serivng in the early days of Corona 2020. One of his keys to success... was with an effecient short whip for pendulum serve... was a TIGHTENING of grip at impact to get heavier spin.

Do a search and look for those threads from then... ah, what the heck, I think he consolodated them HERE.

MHTableTennis Tutorial Videos (tabletennisdaily.com)
 
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