Backhand service return %

Nice video, btw!
After watching your video, I feel like the problem isn't reading serves. I think you are judging the spins correctly.
I feel like spacing is more of an issue for you. When opponent sends you a long serve, you have a greater chance of being jammed up and send the ball into the net.
My suggestion is stand back a little more. If the serve is shorter than you think, simply move forward a little. Moving forward is always easier than backing away.
Also, I noticed a lack of variety in your service receive. A high percentage of your returns are topspin across the court. That's why many higher ranked players countered your receive so easily.
If you incorporate short, long, topspin, and backspin receives into your game, your opponents will have a harder time predicting and returning your receives, making it easier for you to attack later.
Just my 2 cents, hope it helps and good luck!

Another idea, switch to a fast inverted that plays similar to short pips, Joola Rhyzer 48 2.0. Cheaper and safer to try this of a club mate first.

You seem to return quite ok and your reactions imply that you know what you did incorrect when the return fails. This will improve with time. I may be wrong but your consistency with the FH is quite low and you seem to loose a lot of points here. Maybe it’s worth putting some hours into this instead of being obsessed with your return game?

i saw the video MOG
I think you receive actually quite well generally speaking

from what i can see most of your mistakes were because of quality serves, the last guy serves were really fast and deep, the guy with glasses were more deceptive and had some variations.

I think the guy in red with glasses served sometimes with no spin while you thought it was backspin so the ball popped up. sometimes it had more sidespin than you thought ans you returned in the net because you are slightly wrong footed. a few times you try to aim straight down the line whereas if the receive is more tricky its better to play diagonal for safety.

I think you dealt better with topspin than backspin and no-spin is what gave you most trouble. against the last guy whose serves are really deep, you react a bit too slowly. try to focus really on the point of contact of the ball and decide quickly if the ball is long or not, and go a little bit away from the table. if the guy doesnt serve short a lot it might help to change your waiting stance by going back 5-10cms away from the table. you can always step in to receive a short serve.

PS if i was playing against you i would serve mainly short to the FH and sometimes fast long to BH. for me your FH is nowhere as good as your BH as others noticed here.

usualsuspect said:

I think you hit the nail on its head. Totally agree with you. This is how I read serves too.
But I use inverted rubbers on both sides. The OP uses pips on one side. I don't know any receiving techniques with pips.

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You mean pimples?

tabletennislover99 said:

You mean pimples?

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Pimples is another term for pips. They are synonymous. Short pips is short pimples.

UpSideDownCarl said:

Pimples is another term for pips. They are synonymous. Short pips is short pimples.

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With short pimples you can recive a little bit with less variety. I think basicly the fast or long services are harder to recive. But you can chop and flip easily with the short pimples.

As Carl said, move your feet! I'm struck by how incredibly static you are. You're crouched but your feet are flat on the ground and nothing happens until the serve is well under way. Regardless of everything else being suggested - reading the serve, shot production, etc. - you have to start moving way, way earlier. Pick a video of any world class player and you'll see they're in motion much, much earlier than you are. Move your feet!

MOG said:

Would you advise me to stand more wide on my bh corner too and back myself to cover the fast one down to the fh on receive of serve?
This may help combat the fast long serve and I guess might give me a chance to play a fh if it is served to my crossover?
It would cover the wide bh serve better to and maybe stop me reaching, assuming I improve my footwork.

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Two pieces of info. When you train to work on something, progress is often not a smooth even path where you can chart your progress. Often the way it goes, you think you are not improving for quite a while and then all of a sudden you realize you just made a jump where you can do things you couldn't before.

Now, a few simple comments about what you are doing on serve receive.

In watching a few clips in your video of matches, you start to move after the opponent has contacted the ball on the serve.

If you watch most top players, they are crouched low like you are, and as the ball is tossed the come up and start moving while the toss is in the air, before the server contacts the ball. Your body positioning is good. You crouch and come up a little as you start moving which most of the pros do also. You are just doing it WAY WAY later than they do.

Watch some footage.

Then the second thing is, where you are standing left to right, that looks fine. But you look like you are a little too close to the table. When you receive, if you go into your crouch and reach your racket forward to touch the edge of the table, the tip of your blade should barely touch, or not quite touch (within 2cm) when your arm is straight. It looks to me like, if you went to touch the table, your racket could reach 10-20cm over the table. You should have enough space to move in a little, even on the long serves as you receive them.

And this part is complicated: How you wrote above, you don't want to do that.

1) When you are farther back, you do have more time. But so does your opponent. You don't really need that much more time. You just are starting very late if you start moving after the ball is contacted.

2) Being a little farther back is for you to have space to move in a little on all serves including the long ones.

3) If you are farther away, even though you seem to have more time, you have to move farther. If you move in to take a ball off the bounce, no matter how wide to your FH, if you cut off the angle by moving in as you move over, you will not have to move anywhere near as far. A high angled shot still has to bounce on the table; so if you take it off the bounce by cutting in and over instead of going out and over or straight over, you cannot have to move farther than to get your racket to the FH side line: because the ball has to bounce on the table so it cannot be wider than that FH side line.

4) When you do what I just described and move forward as you move over to take a wide ball just after the bounce, a) you do not have to move as far, b) your shot will be quite quick with a small stroke so you are ready for the next shot because you are using the momentum of the shot off the bounce, c) and your opponent will have the ball coming back much sooner than usual.

BTW: What I just said means, that to move to the wide FH if you are ready early and take the ball off the bounce, your right foot should only need to get to the mid-line on the table. That is one small one-step over towards the FH side. If you go parallel to the end line from a meter back, for a ball angling towards the FH side, you would have to move 4-5x as far. If you are fading back, even farther. And if you are moving back or parallel to the end line you do not have body momentum behind you. If you are moving forward to take the ball off the bounce, your body will have to be behind your movement. No two ways around it.

Think about a boxer punching will moving backwards as apposed to a boxer moving forward while punching. The boxer moving forward will have much more power behind his shots.

Now go watch some top level players and watch what they do. Pause as the server is tossing and see what the receiver is doing. Do the same for your serve and receive.

You really are doing so many things right. You just are starting late which makes you feel you need to rush.

bircham boi said:

As Carl said, move your feet! I'm struck by how incredibly static you are. You're crouched but your feet are flat on the ground and nothing happens until the serve is well under way. Regardless of everything else being suggested - reading the serve, shot production, etc. - you have to start moving way, way earlier. Pick a video of any world class player and you'll see they're in motion much, much earlier than you are. Move your feet!

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Apparently, I was writing while you posted this and we said pretty much the same thing.

I think Carl has given you many good points to work on. I totally agree with what he said.
I just want to add another point, which Carl has touched upon too.

You should try to take the service earlier off the bounce, preferably before the ball reaches its peak. Whether your are doing a short touch or a flick, taking the shot earlier off bounce will increase your shot quality and give your opponent less time to get react. Again, if you look at how pros return serves, you'll notice they move early and touch the ball as soon as it bounces off the table. The only time you see any pro take a service late is when he/she is doing a FH loop. Any other receiving techniques are performed way earlier.

Faster recovery! Adjust your center of gravity and position after each shot, and get ready for the next shot ASAP.
As soon as you finish your opening BH loop against a serve, stop leaning back. Move your feet and get your center of gravity back to a comfortable point and be ready for the next shot.
You cannot attack effectively or hit a quality shot if your center of gravity is still leaned back from the previous shot. Even if you know the next shot is coming straight at you, you should still move your feet a little and get your body into the optimum position for hitting it.
In short, always move your feet after each shot, even if you don't need to move your location around the table.

I too have trouble with serve return and there is some great advice here BUT... if we are supposed to move before ball hits the servers racket, how the -beeep- are we supposed to know whether the serve will be to FH or BH?

frankhond said:

I too have trouble with serve return and there is some great advice here BUT... if we are supposed to move before ball hits the servers racket, how the -beeep- are we supposed to know whether the serve will be to FH or BH?

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Use the FORCE, Luke.

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frankhond said:

I too have trouble with serve return and there is some great advice here BUT... if we are supposed to move before ball hits the servers racket, how the -beeep- are we supposed to know whether the serve will be to FH or BH?

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Here: part of the idea is that, if you are not moving, it is much harder to start moving. Think of standing flat footed and then trying to run from there. For the first few steps it will be hard to accelerate and then as you are moving it becomes easier to accelerate. For this reason, when you see people running for exercise in city streets, if they come to a crossroads where there is traffic and they have to wait, a seasoned runner will jog in place until they can accelerate forward again. From jogging in place, they will be able to accelerate forward much sooner than the runner who just stands and waits.

If you watch what the pros do when receiving serve, as the opponent tosses the ball, they go from low to high, and as they do they move a tiny step closer to the table so their feet are already moving before they commit to where they think/see the ball is going. But, you can also see from body position, body language, and racket angle, before the ball is contacted where the ball may go. You just don't want to commit till you see where it actually is going. But you still can take a very small step in the direction you sense the ball will go. That won't prevent you from changing directions.

The idea of being just far enough back that you would even want to move in a hair on a long, fast serve ensures that, if all you do is move in a tiny step towards the table on the serve, that you are going in the right direction no matter where the ball is actually served.

One more detail. A TT table is 5 feet side to side (approximately 152.4cm). A human adult's arm is, on average, somewhere between 20-30 inches (51-76mm)[more than 1/3 of the width of the table]. If you are standing solidly in the BH corner, the most you really would have to move, given the arm length, from the BH corner, to cover the FH corner (if you cut off the angle and take the ball off the bounce) is 1.25 feet (38cm). We are really talking about very small adjustments to positioning on return of serve to make it so your feet are in place to take a good stroke.

A good part of what a player not skilled at those small, simple movements do is:

1) Start late.
2) Rush because they already are starting from behind the 8 ball.
3) Make too large a movement because they think they need to move farther than is the case.
4) or, not move at all and just reach and therefore force themself to take a shot with suboptimal mechanics because their arm is contorting or reaching to make the shot.

For MOG, there are many many many times when the serve is to his switching point and, in looking, from my vantage point, it seems the obvious shot would be to turn to his FH to return the serve. However, instead, he does not move his feet, he does not move his body and he moves his arm over to take a funny BH with the arm way too far towards the FH side.

One thing I would actually think about trying for a few weeks if I was MOG is, try to make it so, every serve that is anywhere closer to the FH side than 1 foot from the BH side line, he should try to turn and take that with a FH. I will restate that again. This would be an exercise. He would have to forget about winning points for about a week and commit to trying this. The only serves he would receive with his BH would be closer to the BH side line than ONE FOOT (30cm). Everything else, he would have to try and turn to use his FH. That would be the footwork of the turn in a Falkenberg from the BH to the first FH. That footwork, legitimately, can make it so you can take any serve between the two end lines with only your FH. I have seen decently high level players return serves that were several feet wide of the BH side line with their FH. But this would only be so that, if there was any serve where MOG had to move at all towards the FH side to take a BH, that, instead, he would turn to the FH for ALL OF THOSE SERVES.

After about a week of trying, he should start having success doing it. That is my guess. That movement is also a pretty small movement relative to how one might think of it. It is one normal sized one step while turning open for the FH.

But this would not replace getting his feet moving while the server TOSSES the ball.

BTW MOG: as I see it, you are playing pretty well. So keep up the good hard work you have already been doing.