Forehand Loop against UNDERSPIN Technique

IN... before Carl triggers the trap door on his tall pile of highly tuned H3 NEO National rubbers with his honey trap bait lady having to frequently stoop down to pick up 968 blades to put in hte middle of the pile... then down go the Goonies into Carl's basement septic tank prison dungeon for a one week stay and he closes the thread... maybe.

IN before another TTD memebr becomes player #5 to do FH to FH loops with Andrew. (I think Brian can do that already even if not counted.)

Originally Posted by brokenball

Talk about opinions. Proof can you provide to back up your opinion?
Is that all you have, your opinion?
You can see I called the video bogus but that is it and some how that makes me an a**h***.

The OP asked for an opinion and I called it bogus and some how that is waaay out of line.
You are very thin skinned.
Can you do anything more than make ad hominem attacks?
Can you refute anything I said to back up my opinion?
You are the one out of line. People like you don't care about the truth just their feelings.
It is you that are out of line.
Why close the thread? Will it hurt your feelings if it continues?
Actually, I have made my point and I am OK with closing the thread.
The thread will be closed and no one has refuted what said about the contact time and maximum paddle velocity.

Just look at Your first few posts, there You set the tone...

And BTW. Almost all posts are opinions including Yours...

Originally Posted by Baal

Zeio quoted data from China on how the top players in the world contact the ball. Since this thread started with an instructional video, one question is, what is happening in the minds of someone like Ma Long when they execute that and how did they learn to do it?

1. What is going on in their minds? I'm not a pro player, but for certain, nothing about mechanics, since for them execution is automatic. They may be thinking about where they want to hit the ball.
...

They learn it wrong in terms of physics(see next passage). But because it's not physiologically possible, they are bound to do it right in terms of physics. As you mentioned earlier, there are many "mental constructs" that players use to internalize the physics model.

There's a series of infomercial/instructional clips demonstrated by WH and ML that was released in July, 2012. In the one on FH loop against half-long light backspin, @0:55, "the key to the trajectory: the swing has to go upward and then forward. You can't just go upward. And upon ball contact, the sensation of 'biting' the ball, loop forward..."

Yep. Often, in motor learning, the mental constructs we make about how we learn or perform an action and the actual technical details behind what we do are quite frequently not the same.

Some of this is because of how our minds work. We think in stories, in metaphors. Most people don't think in equations. For most people a story is easier to make meaning out of than a series of numbers.

And it is interesting how, the idea of trying to accelerate "on contact" could get us to get the racket close to its top speed by the time we make contact with the ball and still allow us to make clean contact while tracking and intercepting the ball and only touching a very small area on the edge of the ball while making tangential contact with the racket moving parallel to the edge of the ball.

When you cannot do the technique, any information that helps you go from not being able to loop backspin, to being able to loop backspin is useful. When you can loop backspin well, you don't think about the technique anymore and focus on where you are going to hit the ball, the arc you want on the ball, the pace you want the shot to have.

I remember, a long time ago, someone saying, "I don't know, I just think about the arc I want on the ball. I have an idea of the arc of the shot before I hit it. And that is usually what happens." At some point, that is how you loop backspin.

It does not change the physics. But there is no reason for someone to say that a whole video is invalid or some other word, simply because the directions are not actually in line with the physics.

There is nothing wrong with point out that the physics and the metaphor are not in line with each other. But to attack someone for posting footage is not such a great thing. And then to persist in asking the person to answer questions that are not really relevant to the video posted is a bit off base.

Originally Posted by UpSideDownCarl

Yep. Often, in motor learning, the mental constructs we make about how we learn or perform an action and the actual technical details behind what we do are quite frequently not the same.

Some of this is because of how our minds work. We think in stories, in metaphors. Most people don't think in equations. For most people a story is easier to make meaning out of than a series of numbers.

And it is interesting how, the idea of trying to accelerate "on contact" could get us to get the racket close to its top speed by the time we make contact with the ball and still allow us to make clean contact while tracking and intercepting the ball and only touching a very small area on the edge of the ball while making tangential contact with the racket moving parallel to the edge of the ball.

When you cannot do the technique, any information that helps you go from not being able to loop backspin, to being able to loop backspin is useful. When you can loop backspin well, you don't think about the technique anymore and focus on where you are going to hit the ball, the arc you want on the ball, the pace you want the shot to have.

I remember, a long time ago, someone saying, "I don't know, I just think about the arc I want on the ball. I have an idea of the arc of the shot before I hit it. And that is usually what happens." At some point, that is how you loop backspin.

It does not change the physics. But there is no reason for someone to say that a whole video is invalid or some other word, simply because the directions are not actually in line with the physics.

There is nothing wrong with point out that the physics and the metaphor are not in line with each other. But to attack someone for posting footage is not such a great thing. And then to persist in asking the person to answer questions that are not really relevant to the video posted is a bit off base.

Spoken with the assurance of a good coroner....sort of

A classic book on this from a long time ago is the Inner Game of Tennis. It discussed a lot about why trying to think about your mechanics as a whole bunch of little steps will mess you up.

Will "thinking" about accelerating just before contact help you? Maybe, if your technical problem is that you are not generating enough racket speed. And then only for awhile as you try to correct this particular problem.

Anyway, it was pretty weird that the whole physics think crept into this thread. And about 99% of the time it derails threads over nothing that is particularly relevant ot the subject at hand.

After all, this was based on maybe one sentence in a 10 minute video.

Yes, but ive seen people obsess over their wrist and arms and forget about their feet and torso -- and pretty much everything else.

Actually, I think a lot of people should concentrate more on being relaxed during the stroke (in upper body). People trying to make the stroke "perfect" are often stiff as a board. Their faces are grimacing, grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!! Another value of muktiball drills where you have to move. At a point you have to relax.

Originally Posted by Baal

Yes, but ive seen people obsess over their wrist and arms and forget about their feet and torso -- and pretty much everything else.

Actually, I think a lot of people should concentrate more on being relaxed during the stroke (in upper body). People trying to make the stroke "perfect" are often stiff as a board. Their faces are grimacing, grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!! Another value of muktiball drills where you have to move. At a point you have to relax.

One of the very things I must reveal to adult players about their looping is that they are tight... often in hte shoulder... that stops any of the nice kinetic energy they built up and they try to start it again and power it with back of shoulder. Some guys just got a primal instinct when trying to kill something to use back of shoulder.

Making that power, amplifying it and transferring it SHOULD look easy... it really is if one knows how to relax and engage the right parts of the chain in the right sequence at the right times. Over-thinking about it sure does ruin it all. I get it, on level, you have to know what is going on, but consciously thinking too much in a stroke or rally is really detrimental.

Originally Posted by brokenball

The only opinion I had was when I used the word bogus.
I could have said it was not right. Would that be better? Did that set the tone or was it my reply to the ad hominem attacks?

Here:

Originally Posted by brokenball

The video is bogus. This is how TT myths are perpetuated.
Right off the bat video loses all credibility when he says accelerate at contact and not before.

How about instead, having started with something like: "I feel it is unfortunate that you decided to describe the technique for looping with the idea that you want to accelerate on contact when actually, what would provide the best spin is to achieve maximum racket speed at the point of contact....."

Whereas, how you started was argumentative and pretty insulting whether you meant it that way or not and whether you realize it or not.

Originally Posted by brokenball

What is wrong with you guys? By the time you feel anything the ball is long gone.
Define grabbing? What does grabbing have to do with acceleration? You are side stepping the argument.
Define the contact as being too harsh. These are wishy washy meaningless words. Provide facts.

And, in your second post, you define what is going on as an argument. But you are where the argument started. There did not need to be any argument.

What was the purpose of going so far out of your way to make your comments so personal and attacking: "What is wrong with you guys?" You pitted yourself against an imaginary group (you guys) who you are arguing against and you seem intent on "defeating" Them in your "argument".

There were personal attacks sent your way as well. And I deleted a bunch of posts so I know there were and that is wrong too. But, it is clear that, attacks and the contentiousness started with the guy who was talking about busting myths. It is not the facts that get people to respond so negatively to you, BB.

So, it is worth looking at how you relate to others and how they respond as a result. The physics, the science was behind what your actual point was. But what others actually took issue with about you BB, was not the science, but the way the things you said came out in such a contentious manner. And that caused others to respond back in a negative and contentions way.

Someone who can sift through the attitude and see the worthwhile content will get that you have some things that are valuable to add to the discussion. But you have to start trying to relate without the argumentativeness and the contentiousness.

Originally Posted by Baal

A classic book on this from a long time ago is the Inner Game of Tennis. It discussed a lot about why trying to think about your mechanics as a whole bunch of little steps will mess you up.

In a movement theory class decades ago, there was this student who kept on really asking the same question over and over again, and the teacher was sort of annoyed with it.

The question was basically: "what muscles do you engage to do this ______(fill in the blank) movement." The teacher kept answering with things about the movement pattern and the quality of the movement and about how, in any movement you use a lot of muscles and you don't want to try and think about that because it will mess up the movement quality if you are trying to think about things like that.

Finally, after something like the 10th time a question about which muscles was asked, the teacher got frustrated and said:

"Do you see this movement?" And he stood up from his chair and sat back down. Then he did the movement 2 more times for emphasis. "You use approximately 180 muscles to do that movement. The contractions are a complex balance of agonists and antagonists, synchronized and timed in a complex sequence. If we had to think about what muscles to contract, we would never be able to walk down the street."

The details that get you to be able to perform the action, at some point they have to be dropped and then you just do the movement while thinking of more important things like the arc of the ball for the shot. And when children are developing and learning movement patterns they definitely are not thinking in terms of technical specifics.