Couldn’t find a better explanation than this. “Power will naturally come”, “Power in the timing”. They all come down here. It should be consciously attempted but not too direct.
”Relaxing”, “Liberating”, or “Being Flexible”, or “Soft”. Whatever words we come up with. They seem obvious but to some, like me, take time to get. I only realise how hard it is when I look back at lower level players and see how they can’t even get it after much more years of playing than me.
So, I have tried to describe some of what I do for work. A lot of the time, people who are trying to teach people how to do handstands, talk about how you have to engage your core or contract your abdomen, or what ever language they choose to use. The statements are not incorrect. But, invariably, telling people to do that causes the entirely wrong thing to happen, causes the wrong abdominal muscles to activate and causes them to activate in a manner that is contrary to holding your spin lengthened in space while balancing upside down.
So, frequently, to show how the abdomen does what it is supposed to without you thinking about it, I would jump into a handstand with my legs parallel to the ground. In that position, you cannot hold it unless the abdomen does more of what it needs to. And when I hold it, the abdomen pulls in as it engages rather than how, when people try to consciously engage their abdomen, it will usually push out.
Instead, things I talk about with people trying to improve their handstands are, how to keep their fingers relaxed; A way of using the hands so you actually create an arch with your hand like the arch of your foot; What part of the hand they should feel pressing into the ground; Not to worry about where the legs are in space until you are solidly balanced, when solidly balanced you can adjust the legs much more easily; And how to try and feel your hips centered over your shoulders, over your hands (your base of support).
Why the info about the hands? Because people also make their hands rigid and then the hands cannot be responsive to adjustments that allow you to maintain balance, so you can use your hands more like the way we use our feet to maintain balance and never even think about how we use our feet.
When they start thinking about those things that will help them find and control their center of gravity, the abdomen will definitely do what it is supposed to, which is quite specific and different than how many people think of it. But, for you to stay balanced, upside down, with good posture, your abdomen will have to do its job. But it is also worth noting that you can stay balanced and upside down without good posture (where the abdomen won't have to do as much) and that is still better balance than squeezing your abdomen, tightening your hands and not balancing.
If you are thinking about tightening the grip on impact, you might mess it up. But, maybe think about digging into the ball on impact (while brushing) and the grip pressure you want might happen.
Also, Der_Echte talks about soft grip pressure for interesting effects. It would be interesting to see what happens if every so often you try to consciously make your grip pressure really soft and relaxed on contact: while pushing.....while looping.
The first time Der and I met NextLevel, NL had been talking about how, at their level (the level of Der and NL) someone couldn't just push and beat him.
Der proceeded to play a match with NL where he kept pushing long and changing his grip pressure on the pushes and NL thought he was playing a magical LP player who could alternate heavy and light backspin at will, while the motion and effort of the stroke looked the same.
When you know what it should feel like, then manipulating your grip pressure is different than thinking of squeezing or tightening on contact.
By the way, all this stuff I am talking about is entirely related to why that movement professor, 20 something years ago got so frustrated and made that demonstration about moving from sitting to standing, how it takes over 180 muscles acting, timed, in synergy, in opposition, on both sides of joints, and how, if he was consciously attempting to activate the muscles to do the work, our ancestors would have been eaten by predators when they tried to run and none of us would be here. (That is closer to what he actually said than the more PC version I posted which is quoted below although he did mention walking down the street as well).
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.