What to focus on, to generate lots of spin in pendeulum serve

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Fast, brush, and different contact points / timing, for different spin, ie side
/backspin, side & side/topspin. Bat angle / path of swing etc also make a difference. Some players use an out to in swing, contacting more of the back of the ball, some more parallel to the near side of the ball.
it can be sort of like 2 pendulums!! Lower arm hinged at elbow, and hand / bat hinged from wrist. Fastest moving point is the tip of the bat.
The most speed is produced by the snapping through of the wrist. Wrist should be cocked back and then snap through heavily brushing the ball.
Some coaches recommend ‘pinching’ the bat between thumb and index finger at the desired contact point for additional spin, although this is not necessarily a requirement!!
As a rough general example, for the spin types , imagine bat face is hanging down vertically tip pointing at the floor at 6 o’clock, cock wrist back, tip is now pointing away to 9 o’clock, snap wrist / bat through and the tip finishes at 3 o’clock. Contact ball on the way ‘down’ from 8 to 7 o’clock, sort of chopping down on the ball, results in side/back spin, contact at 6 o’clock side spin, contact at 5 to 4 o’clock side/top spin.
Sort of difficult to explain in writing!!!😀
 
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A really important thing to keep in mind is that more and more and more spin is not always better. The thing you need to be able to do is to VARY the amount of spin but not allowing the opponent to see that you are doing that. In other words, the motions must be as close to identical as possible even though the amount of spin is different. Also the velocity of the ball should be the same.

In the old days this was easy. We would just put our arm out to hide the point of contact! The best way to do it now (at least the legal way) is to have the ball hit at different place on your racket. If the ball hits close to the center the radius of motion (nearer to you hand) even with the same wrist movement, the part of the blade that contact the ball will not be moving very fast. If the ball hits at the outer part of your blade, that part of the blade will be moving faster and your ball will get more spin.

This takes a lot of practice. And still more to be able to do this while still putting the ball in different places, not serving to long (or too short) etc. etc. It is a lifetime study really.

But what coaches eventually got me to understand and implement is that a good serve is ANYTHING that is not what it appears to be. And you are not necessarily trying to get the opponent to miss the return (although it's nice when they do and put it into the net). Sometimes you just want them to pop it up.

Of course really high level players can put insane amounts of spin on the ball. But then they hit the next serve that looks exactly the same and surprise!!! It has less spin, not no spin, but significantly less. And you are going to pick up the ball because they just annihilated the third ball.

The first steps are (1) to develop loose wrists that you can still control and (2) to play around with having the ball hit different parts of your racket on the serve. The thing about goal 2, though, is that you will need absolutely perfect control of your toss.
 
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A really important thing to keep in mind is that more and more and more spin is not always better. The thing you need to be able to do is to VARY the amount of spin but not allowing the opponent to see that you are doing that. In other words, the motions must be as close to identical as possible even though the amount of spin is different. Also the velocity of the ball should be the same.

In the old days this was easy. We would just put our arm out to hide the point of contact! The best way to do it now (at least the legal way) is to have the ball hit at different place on your racket. If the ball hits close to the center the radius of motion (nearer to you hand) even with the same wrist movement, the part of the blade that contact the ball will not be moving very fast. If the ball hits at the outer part of your blade, that part of the blade will be moving faster and your ball will get more spin.

This takes a lot of practice. And still more to be able to do this while still putting the ball in different places, not serving to long (or too short) etc. etc. It is a lifetime study really.

But what coaches eventually got me to understand and implement is that a good serve is ANYTHING that is not what it appears to be. And you are not necessarily trying to get the opponent to miss the return (although it's nice when they do and put it into the net). Sometimes you just want them to pop it up.

Of course really high level players can put insane amounts of spin on the ball. But then they hit the next serve that looks exactly the same and surprise!!! It has less spin, not no spin, but significantly less. And you are going to pick up the ball because they just annihilated the third ball.

The first steps are (1) to develop loose wrists that you can still control and (2) to play around with having the ball hit different parts of your racket on the serve. The thing about goal 2, though, is that you will need absolutely perfect control of your toss.
Hi Baal,

hopefully that’s what the clip is trying to show, one motion with different contact points within that motion. Side spin is always gonna be there, back spin and top spin may not be massive, but it’s enough to either drag the return down or pop it up!!
With a fast enough action it can be difficult to pick
As you also pointed out the contact point on the blade also has an effect, towards back edge slightly less spin, leading edge slightly more spin, towards tip more spin, towards handle less spin.
The ball toss is so so so important, as I’ve been finding out when serve practicing!! You gotta consistently toss the ball same height, and same landing / impact point, I would say that for 50% of my errors made when practicing it’s because the ball toss was poor, rest are poor timing, poor contact, lack of wrist control etc!!!
Sometimes less is more as well, often a well returned ball will be carrying your spin back to you!!

 
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I practice serving balls that go to the end of the table and roll back to the net. It is hard to do 5 times in a row. 3 times isn't too hard.
The paddle must be very close to horizontal and you are right about tossing the ball consistently the right height. The ball will need to bounce up from the horizontal paddle so the horizontal motion of the paddle will need to lower than the net. The higher the toss the lower the horizontal motion of paddle must be. Higher tosses will result in more impact force and resulting grip. You to land the ball about half way to the net so it just barely clears the net. I use my wrist to very the spin. I try to hit the ball toward the tip of my paddle where the horizontal paddle speed will be highest.

I find the lack of grip while serving like this is the main thing that makes me buy new rubbers.



 
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With side spin higher toss helps since it is easy to still get a thin brush because you hit the ball at the side. Harder to get more spin from higher toss with backspin since then you need to move the racket much faster to generate spin.

practice!
 
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- take the racket between thumb and index finger like you would do with a pencil
- use the other fingers to push the handle towards your wrist
- consequence: your wrist will move faster to follow those fingers' motion, because of the weight generated by the racket's head motion also the wrist will not be able to counter, just let it ... follow in a natural way .
- HIGH toss, I mean, really high: if you want the ball to sink properly into the rubber, makes it heavier. That's why you'll see many pros tossing that high. The feel and the fingers-racket's head-wrist motion's speed will do the rest.
 
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Simple steps which I followed when I learned how to get spin on my serves. You are welcomed to try or change or remove any step which you want but basically what I am trying here is to give a stepwise breakup on generating spin on serves -
  • Move away from the table and try a backspin serve with the objective that the ball should return back to you on a smooth tiled floor
  • Once you have a good understand on how to do this on a smooth floor then try the same exercise on a carpet, or a bedsheet. Here too, try to make the ball come back to you when you do a backspin serve.
  • Don't worry about your hand, your wrist or anything. Just do the serve with an intent to bring the ball back. Your body based on your physiology will balance out and would find the most comfortable path automatically to perform this action repeatedly.
  • Once you have become successful in bringing the ball back on a carpeted floor then it is time to do the same exercise on a table. Here too, don't worry about the height of the bounce etc. just focus on spin and bringing the ball back to you or towards the net.
  • Now is the time to focus on short action and getting the same results
  • Next is the height of your serves, how to keep them low over the net
  • Last part - adding deception while keeping relaxed
  • Bonus tip - I found with my own experience that it is always beneficial to practice backspin and no spin serves together. Your mind will develop a fine understanding between both the serves and you will get two very good quality serves as a result.
 
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Another thing is ball trajectory off the rubber. Try hitting the ball up first, so it describes a shallow arc before the first bounce on your side of the table. You might find this makes it easier to keep heavy spin serves short.
 
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Here you go! I recorded my serves sometime ago. Below are the links. Please be kind with your comments, I am not the best player around.

Sidespin with backspin and sidespin with topspin:
https://youtu.be/KqrMsjO9Hcw

Backspin
https://youtu.be/ZhxLThLNaRo

Float
https://youtu.be/sQ0R120H_64

KM, I have seen this gym on some of Next Level's Vids... so you can ask him directly.

One thing I see is your elbow position... WAY to the rear... for the pendulum to get a good whip, the upper arm ought to run into your rib cage side and then lower arm go forward... you get maximum leverage and whip that way without losing any control... prolly better control that way.

This is not saying your serve is wrong. When one wants to do a SHOVEL SERVE, one would have an elbow position like yours. One GOOD thing about training your short underspin serves witht the elbow way in the back like that is that when you establish your good shovel serves... you now have a way to show shovel serve, then give opponent a hopefully unexpected conventional underspin serve.

This is a good capability to develop... an ability to serve multiple kinds of serves from the similar motion and arm slot.
 
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Simple steps which I followed when I learned how to get spin on my serves. You are welcomed to try or change or remove any step which you want but basically what I am trying here is to give a stepwise breakup on generating spin on serves -
  • Move away from the table and try a backspin serve with the objective that the ball should return back to you on a smooth tiled floor
  • Once you have a good understand on how to do this on a smooth floor then try the same exercise on a carpet, or a bedsheet. Here too, try to make the ball come back to you when you do a backspin serve.
  • Don't worry about your hand, your wrist or anything. Just do the serve with an intent to bring the ball back. Your body based on your physiology will balance out and would find the most comfortable path automatically to perform this action repeatedly.
  • Once you have become successful in bringing the ball back on a carpeted floor then it is time to do the same exercise on a table. Here too, don't worry about the height of the bounce etc. just focus on spin and bringing the ball back to you or towards the net.
  • Now is the time to focus on short action and getting the same results
  • Next is the height of your serves, how to keep them low over the net
  • Last part - adding deception while keeping relaxed
  • Bonus tip - I found with my own experience that it is always beneficial to practice backspin and no spin serves together. Your mind will develop a fine understanding between both the serves and you will get two very good quality serves as a result.

I would say follow that ONCE YOU GET TIMING OF WHIP TO IMPACT.

If a player does not have the right timing of the whip to arrive at max pseed at impact in the right place, right time, right angle... player gunna jack it up by missing ball or adjusting (usually stopping hte stroke) the stroke and esult is not good.

One way to develop this timing is to SIT DOWN, then toss ball up, hitting hand has NO RACKET, but the upper arm swings, elbow stops at rib cage, and lower arm moves forward to impact point... open hand... and you catch ball and follow through.

This exercise makes it easy for a player visualize and execute what is needed to get the timing to impact on time right place.

Once you got impact timing down, I fully support the exercises you recommend, these are the same progressive approaches I use after I get someone to develop impact timing with the whip.

I advocate getting down the motion and the underspin short/heavy serve first... and once that is capable, then do hte adjustments for side/under, dead, and topspin.... then work on after motions.
 
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Hi KM,

I was prolly WAY WORSE a level of a player when I learned serves. I was a recreational player mid 1400s level. I did 3 minutes a day practice for a year and got mostly the serves I have now.

That alone got me to 1600+ level immediately upon return to USA and I was playing zero practice matches, etc.

An arsenal of good serves along with a 3rd ball can take your level a long way.

 
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One thing that has not been covered by some excellent posts above.

The back swing before the forward whip action has to be delayed as long as possible. So the body is moving forward first and then the back swing starts for the whip. This opposite action of the body moving in one direction while the arm is moving in the other direction creates the highest whip action leading to the highest spin level. Some servers actually move their arm forward as they rock back. This allows the delay process to occur naturally.

Now if you do the above strong whip action with the correct whip mechanics with a strong forward motion and stamp on the ground you will combine a high spin level with a fast double very low bounce serve. Ma Longs backspin serve is an example.

People at my lower level are surprised by the amount of spin on the serve as it can be double bounce and fast and spiny. Most people at my level can do a spiny backspin serve that is slow due to incorrect body forward motion.

The above principle can be applied to all types of serves.
 
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