What's Wrong with Harimoto's FH?

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Ok, at this point I'm just so done with this topic. Sure, Harimoto has the most consistent and best FH ever.
All must bow down to master Harimoto-san. He's the greatest tt genius to ever emerge from mankind.
(never mind that everyone can see that there's something off about his FH, never mind that at all...)
 
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Judging from most people's reply on this thread, my take-away is that good form is not important at all in tt.
Surely, consistency and success isn't built on top of good forms derived from endless fundamental training.

It seems that many here thinks the Chinese have not figured out the most biomechanically efficient FH stroke.
So the CNT just randomly trains all their players FH strokes based on the same template for the aesthetics?
 
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Isn't there a difference between saying, "Harimoto is a kid and he is pretty good even if his FH isn't perfect" and saying "Harimoto's FH is terrible" or "Harimoto has the best FH"?

It is interesting to me that people who want to frame arguments seem to want to put people who don't agree with them into extreme categories and seem to become unable to understand any kind of nuance.

Harimoto is a kid. He is young. For how young he is, he is pretty impressive. We will only know how good he can become when he is in his prime. He is nowhere near that yet.

Can he work on and improve his FH? Of course. He can also improve his BH. He is not fully developed.

And I believe, part of the issue that was being talked about with China is that, even though China does have the best players in the world (I feel comfortable saying that), even if they have the best training system (I feel comfortable saying that as well), they also have the most money to spend, the most people to choose from and a government funded machine that starts scouting children for talent by the age of 4. By the age of 12 most CNT prospects have already been training for 8 years. By the age of 8, the ones who show the most talent go to a special school where they train TT 6 hours a day and that is the bulk of their "schooling".

So, by the time they are ready for the CNT, or the Provincial teams, they have been vetted, trained, weeded out from thousands of prospects who all have hundreds of thousands more hours training than any prospects from any other country.

No other country puts this kind of effort or priority on training TT players. None.

BTW: I am not sure. But I have a feeling that was some of what NL was referring to when he used the term "Darwinian" was how kids are selected and trained. There is a vast pool of entrants. There is a long vetting process. And there is a survival of the fittest aspect to how China developed talents like Ma Lin, Wang Hao, Ma Long, ZJK, FZD.......They end up with the best of the best. To me, that does sound a little "Darwinian".

All the while, Harimoto was one kid who was trained part time by his parents. We will never know how good he could have been if he was brought up through the Chinese system. :)

So, yeah....CNT players often have great FHs. Harimoto's isn't perfect. Interestingly, ZJK's FH wasn't perfect in 2010 and there were a lot of people back then who I remember saying he could never be a top player because, even though his BH was amazing, his FH was awkward. Maybe he never fully fixed the FH. But within a year he got it a lot better, and good enough to do some amazing things.

So, all I would say is, give the kid a chance to grow up. All he is, is good for a 16 year old. But he is very very good for a 16 year old. Thank goodness his FH isn't as good as ML's or Ryu Seung Min's. If it was, we would never hear the end of his screaming. :)
 
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Bottom line, all of us have better FH than TH on his age...

Run away quickly...

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You have made statements in the past about form determining whether someone makes the Chinese team vs results. My point is that people don't talk about your flaws when you mostly win points on balls to your forehand. When you lose points, people ask why and ask you to fix the stroke. People who focus on form often talk about how ugly Timo Boll's forehand is. Or Jun Mizutani. Or Quadri Aruna. Then it becomes more like a China fanboy syndrome rather than focusing on whether the strokes win or lose matches.

To me, it is obvious that Harimoto is continually working on his stroke. As he gets stronger, his forehand will continue to become more and more conventional. Like I said, the coach is the one who will address the issue, the player will continue to work on it, but his placement on the team will be determined by wins and losses. Not by visual inspection of his form. For a 15 year old to be able to hit winners past Ma Long is impressive. The biggest thing he is missing is true strength.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMIgxVnUjSQ



My 2 cents, no expert here. I think most people here can see and think that THs FH is off and I think most people agree that TH has achieved a lot more than most other world class players at his age.
My observation - his FH has recently become even more off/not perfect/awkward whatever you want to call it. I think the reason is that he is learning/(being taught by his coaches) how to make it strong. This is my theory - They are focusing on getting a big stroke at this time ie. shoulder movement, later on when he grows older/stronger the elbow movement will be added. So bottom line for me is he is working hard on his FH, once he gets strong his FH will definitely improve, his form will improve too. Will he be World Champion, now that is a million dollar question, I don't think any one can predict that. Does he have the potential - absolutely. A lot of members on this thread have said this already, maybe I have a slightly different point of view.
 
So in summary.

Very few people bothered to define what standard they are comparing TH's forehand too.

There really isn't a lot of actual disagreement in this thread if people bothered to define their context, bothered to read what context other people have said, and didn't argue from a standpoint the people they are arguing with didn't use in the first place.

I will define exactly the contexts in which i think of his forehand.

Harimoto, has overall, a pretty good forehand (duh, he's a professional, international level player).

For his level of play, as a top 5 international player, his forehand is actually pretty bad.

For a 16 yo, is forehand is pretty effective, or he is able to play well enough around it, it doesn't stop him from being at a seriously elite level of play.

His forehand is mechanically inefficient, flawed fundamentally. Despite the overall effectiveness of his game, and there is massive room for improvement on his forehand if he can change it to be more fundamentally sound.

I think overwhelmingly, people in the thread agree with those, there might be some disagreement. But there is a lot of arguing between people who don't actually fundamentally disagree about his forehand, but assume the people they are arguing with are comparing his forehand to, say, normal 16 yo TT players, when they are actually comparing to international top 10, or vice versa.

Again, some people might actually disagree with this, but it seems the last few pages of this thread have been arguments between people who don't even disagree with what they think of his FH, they are just arguing from different points of comparison, and insisting other people use the same standard.
 
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So in summary.

Very few people bothered to define what standard they are comparing TH's forehand too.

There really isn't a lot of actual disagreement in this thread if people bothered to define their context, bothered to read what context other people have said, and didn't argue from a standpoint the people they are arguing with didn't use in the first place.

I will define exactly the contexts in which i think of his forehand.

Harimoto, has overall, a pretty good forehand (duh, he's a professional, international level player).

For his level of play, as a top 5 international player, his forehand is actually pretty bad.

For a 16 yo, is forehand is pretty effective, or he is able to play well enough around it, it doesn't stop him from being at a seriously elite level of play.

His forehand is mechanically inefficient, flawed fundamentally. Despite the overall effectiveness of his game, and there is massive room for improvement on his forehand if he can change it to be more fundamentally sound.

I think overwhelmingly, people in the thread agree with those, there might be some disagreement. But there is a lot of arguing between people who don't actually fundamentally disagree about his forehand, but assume the people they are arguing with are comparing his forehand to, say, normal 16 yo TT players, when they are actually comparing to international top 10, or vice versa.

Again, some people might actually disagree with this, but it seems the last few pages of this thread have been arguments between people who don't even disagree with what they think of his FH, they are just arguing from different points of comparison, and insisting other people use the same standard.

I agree with you.

And I believe Harimoto himself and his coaches are very much aware of the problem and working hard on it. Actually i see already significant improvement in recent months. Harimoto is changing a bit his stance when hitting FH. He's got more power. I still think he will keep a close-to-the-table style so because he is trying to take the ball very early his FH will never look like some other pros who would step a bit from the table during rallies. If the form is different I don't think you can call it flawed. If he misses or loses FH rallies yes, you can say it. I think we need to judge the effectiveness not the form. If TH can win against the top Chinese and other top players then it means his FH is good enough
 
I agree with you.

And I believe Harimoto himself and his coaches are very much aware of the problem and working hard on it. Actually i see already significant improvement in recent months. Harimoto is changing a bit his stance when hitting FH. He's got more power. I still think he will keep a close-to-the-table style so because he is trying to take the ball very early his FH will never look like some other pros who would step a bit from the table during rallies. If the form is different I don't think you can call it flawed. If he misses or loses FH rallies yes, you can say it. I think we need to judge the effectiveness not the form. If TH can win against the top Chinese and other top players then it means his FH is good enough

Just to be clear, I don't think his FH technique is flawed just because it looks different. There are many types of forehands (over the table loops, loops from far back etc) and more than one valid way to play each type of forehand. The problem is, sometimes his action is none of these, and he ends up with a shot that is just a bio-mechanically inefficient way to produce the shot that he ends up making.

I think a lot of this is just because his FH is in transition, and as he matures as a player his forehands will be more optimised.
But there is a difference between a forehand that is 'different' and one that's 'That is not a good way to use your body to produce that shot' and some of his forehands are definitely in the latter category at the moment.

They might not end up looking like the CNT forehand, but it will most likely end up looking like some kind of commonly played forehand.
 
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Also find it interesting to think of the chinese forehand is the most optimal? Of course they are great at technique But they start to train earlier, train more hours and proably harder because of the competition. What i mean is that they would be become good even with a somewhat flawed technique. Maybe the europeans that proably have trained much much less really are the guys with the optimal technique? With that Said i like the chinese technique and they are proably very good at it, But still interesting to think about.
 
Also find it interesting to think of the chinese forehand is the most optimal? Of course they are great at technique But they start to train earlier, train more hours and proably harder because of the competition. What i mean is that they would be become good even with a somewhat flawed technique. Maybe the europeans that proably have trained much much less really are the guys with the optimal technique? With that Said i like the chinese technique and they are proably very good at it, But still interesting to think about.

I think this exactly cuts to the issue of the difference between "different" and "flawed".

There is a tradeoff between the "Chinese Forehand" and the "European forehand" though most top players play a bit of each anyway. Where the Chinese forehand requires better positioning/footwork, but gives you more power, whereas the the European one trades power for quicker recovery and less required preparation. These are both fairly optimal for what they set out to achieve. While something might be said for maybe one philosophy of play being better able to able to win you points, the fact is neither technique is flawed, they are just different.

The difference with flawed is that you could probably achieve a better outcome with no real trade off. My example would be the Quadri Aruna forehand. No one would argue it's not effective, but there are probably better ways for him to generate the same shot that would give him either even more power, or a better recovery position.
 
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Kanak from US also lacks FH skill and he has been working hard on it. He is now 19 and improving but kind of slow.

Can HT (only 16 y/o now) improve his FH significantly to top 5 FH players in a few years? I think he can.

And here is the great difference.
Many will disgree, but for me Kanak Jha development is based on pattern modeling, and still his form is out of the best template.
He has a great desire, he is training hard, very hard, spent a lot of money for training, but for me he lacks the talent to reach the top.
On the other side Harimoto is trained with no pattern modeling, but according his personal abilities, characteristics and peculiarities. And he has a Talent for TT. He is playing his Own style.
For now.
Future might tell more.
 
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I think this exactly cuts to the issue of the difference between "different" and "flawed".

There is a tradeoff between the "Chinese Forehand" and the "European forehand" though most top players play a bit of each anyway. Where the Chinese forehand requires better positioning/footwork, but gives you more power, whereas the the European one trades power for quicker recovery and less required preparation. These are both fairly optimal for what they set out to achieve. While something might be said for maybe one philosophy of play being better able to able to win you points, the fact is neither technique is flawed, they are just different.

The difference with flawed is that you could probably achieve a better outcome with no real trade off. My example would be the Quadri Aruna forehand. No one would argue it's not effective, but there are probably better ways for him to generate the same shot that would give him either even more power, or a better recovery position.

Yes. I think the stuff the chinese really know more about and are better at are the footwork and balance. Quadris is like Bambi on ice sometimes.
 
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I think he plays always BH stance .With BH stance you cannot have good FH,He is BH dominating player

as i wrote few months ago,

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...apan-Open-2019&p=278287&viewfull=1#post278287

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...-2019-Platinum&p=281653&viewfull=1#post281653

I think he has lost some power now vs his 2-3 years ago. I think it is due to his reaction time which has evolved.

I don't think so.

Basically, there is nothing wrong with is FH-strokes, he has to work on is basic footwork BH > FH, after this, his strokes will be much faster/harder and his reaction BH > FH!!! vs FH > BH will be much better.
He also has to develop his body. After a few years nobody will remember yet his less fh-strokes from now.
Go ahead TH!
 
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