Getting back into TT properly with the DHS Neo Hurricane 3

UpSideDownCarl said:

This is an excellent post. More people should be pounding the like button on this one.

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Then there will be somebody coming in and say "Oh. But Timo Boll doesn't use the leg. he just snaps the arm. I can learn from him, and so I need T05". It's just like my clubmate says I want that long arm loop from Xu Xin...
Sometimes it's actually quite difficult to see things that are so obviously there LOL, particularly if you don't train your eyes to see them. (When I first watched TT years ago, I thought the same about Timo Boll tbh)

Tango K said:

Then there will be somebody coming in and say "Oh. But Timo Boll doesn't use the leg. he just snaps the arm. I can learn from him, and so I need T05". It's just like my clubmate says I want that long arm loop from Xu Xin...
Sometimes it's actually quite difficult to see things that are so obviously there LOL, particularly if you don't train your eyes to see them. (When I first watched TT years ago, I thought the same about Timo Boll tbh)

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In the past I have posted video of slow motion side views of baseball players hitting and boxers throwing power punches. Bigger movements are easier to see. But the mechanics of the body are the mechanics of the body. In any action where you are transferring power from your hand and arm into another object, the legs, hips, core, spine helping can add more power.

George Forman was a boxer with incredible power whose arms and body often did not work together. He was sooooo strong that without the help of his body, he still lifted Joe Frazier off the ground several times over the course of a 2 round knockout. It may be good for the health of other boxers from that time that he was not fully utilizing the power of his body to help add impact to his punches.

But it is a natural thing that, when you get that coordination of upper and lower body it makes it easier to add the power. If you watched Mike Tyson's feet when he punched, you would see his feet compress the floor of the ring. Forman was much bigger and stronger. Tyson used his whole body in his punches. As a result he was extremely precise and his knockouts seem to have been even more lethal, more devastating. Of course, at some point he thought he was so good he did not have to train, and eventually, that caught up to him.

If you train, the body figures out how to help the action of the stroke.

Shadow training can really help.

The reason shadow training can help is, your body can learn the coordination and timing of the whole kinetic chain of action in the circuit without the need of adding the eye hand coordination needed to contact the ball. When the circuit of timing the legs, hips, core rotation to the upper arm, lower arm, wrist action, then, the action is performed without the need of conscious thought while trying to track the ball and while trying to time the stroke so the racket intercepts the ball.

In other words, Shadow training lets you separate the body mechanics for the stroke from the skill of tracking and intercepting. When the body mechanics are in muscle memory, they happen more naturally while attempting to track and intercept. Simply stated, break down the actions into their separate parts, and then add them back together.

When my FH was really messed up, and I used all upper arm and my elbow stayed at a 90-degree angle throughout my entire stroke, I broke down the stroke and only did the forearm movement, then over time, added the upper arm and upper body, then added back the full body, legs, hips, etc. Most people would not have been disciplined enough to do that in their late 40s. I study movement. I had help. But I also had the tools to learn how to change the old habits and add more functional movement patterns. It is hard. But it can be done at any age.

Self hitting really helped also:You have to approach an issue like improving technique with a variety of methods.

Ooops! I scratched UpSideDownCarl again!
Nah. I’m going to the gym and will double my weight in 1 month time. You’ll see me loop kill Mike Tyson!

Slow motion video is another real good thing. And fortunately it’s abundant these days, unlike a decade ago. Tbh I was shocked how impactful it was when I saw a Butterfly ad featuring the very same Timo Boll. Really, his arm doesn’t move an inch relatively to his body and the bat is still moving forward!!! If you see those things regularly, you cannot pretend to disbelieve.

At this point, I forget who I made this video for but it was for a specific person. And it was me trying to break down the mechanics of a FH stroke and how to look at all the different elements that can be added together into it.

Yes, it has me as my goofy self as well. So....I remember, when Der_Echte and I first me NextLevel, he said something like: "it is really good to meet you guys in person and find out you are as crazy and goofy in person as you appear to be from online. hahahahahaha.

UpSideDownCarl said:

At this point, I forget who I made this video for but it was for a specific person. And it was me trying to break down the mechanics of a FH stroke and how to look at all the different elements that can be added together into it.

Yes, it has me as my goofy self as well. So....I remember, when Der_Echte and I first me NextLevel, he said something like: "it is really good to meet you guys in person and find out you are as crazy and goofy in person as you appear to be from online. hahahahahaha.

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Super helpful video.

Sent from my BBB100-1 using Tapatalk

All of my videos about TT strokes were originally for some specific issue with a specific person. But they all have straight forward info about biomechanics that it is worth understanding for TT strokes. I am not a TT coach. Nor would I ever want to be one. That is a hard and thankless job....But I do help people in real life with moving from dysfunctional movement patterns that are causing them problems and how to train your body into replacing those dysfunctional movement patterns with more effective ones. So, I have a lot of experience with biomechanics and how the body works in movement. I did not get that stuff from any one place. It really just comes from analyzing TT strokes and piecing things together.

But....regardless of how or why, I am happy if my breaking down the movements is useful to a few.

RunawayAtLarge said:

I've just caught up with the discussions here and actually I am quite surprised that many people think that it's all arm. I don't know whether my surprise is a by-product of the fact that I've had some coaching before, but it does surprise me there are people who don't think legs or other parts of the body are involved in a hit. Like Carl said, I've been finding shadowplay training really helpful to get my mind back into that coordinated state rather than simply being lazy.

I wonder why people think legs don't come into it though. Even when you watch some of the big players, I believe one of the replies mentioned people idolising Xu Xin, you can quite clearly see the leg and weight transfer at work. Well, at least for me that is. Sure he has a long loop arm, but he throws his weight very noticeably too.

I wonder if the reason why some reviews claim certain rubbers are slow because they are playing with just their arms.

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From my experience, most players and coaches do think that using the legs is important. There's a lot of talk about weight transfer. But there seems to be some confusion as to how it's done and over emphasis that one should "use" the wrist, forearm etc. Maybe it's just a language problem and I've been misinterpreting. Maybe they assume that because they are using their legs properly that the player they're trying to help is doing the same. Or in some cases, maybe they're not seeing it?

Even when I knew what to do and saw myself on video, I still couldn't figure out many things until quite recently. It's possible, for example, to be rotating your waist without using your legs and you can still get good power and spin that way. But I think it's even more efficient to be using your dominant leg to push the ground to drive the rotation. It's a very subtle distinction. It's also not just pushing with the legs, on most shots you need to also fold your torso/bend at the hip (more so against heavy backspin).

In this video I'm trying to push with my dominant leg, using mostly my quad and glute to push off and put my body into rotation:
In this video I'm mostly rotating my waist and not pushing the ground:
Unfortunately you can't see my feet much, maybe you can still see it? Since changing my focus to the technique in the first video (pushing with my dominant leg), my FH has become more stable and efficient. I've been making some more small adjustments since then.

I think quite a few coaches coach the arm structure of the shots rather than how to get the arm moving efficiently by using the body. When a coach now tells me to "use more wrist" I instead think they mean to let my arm backswing in such a way that will get my wrist moving more on the forward swing. I used to think that I was supposed to consciously whip my wrist or when told to use more forearm to tense my forearm muscles.

In the right context this advice can be helpful, but it can be difficult sometimes if you're inclined to take the advice literally like I often did.

Brett Clarke helped me realize much of this and a lot of practice, shadow play and visualization helped my technique tremendously. I recommend checking his work out, he's truly a world class coach.

You are talking about my problem!!! I’ve just realised that recently too when I started to feel that my legs are not flex enough and the lower back is taking too much pain. And you are exactly right that it’s very important to feel how your muscles have been doing. Otherwise no matter what coaches say, you wouldn’t get anything. (I have a training partner that learns these rotations in a very very stiff, mechanical way and it’s been painful for him. I say the same, try to feel your muscles rather than to force the swing into a certain shape.) To me this is the most important part in shadow practise, as Carl and you say, to have a sense of how your muscles are working, rework them and get used to that sort of sense.

I think without that in mind, shadow practises are going to be a lot less efficient than people would expect. (And probably why people give up on them, saying they only work if you know the right swing. Which itself obviously sounds like an excuse. If you already have the swing, why would you need shadow practising anymore 🤣🤣🤣)

Also it’s kinda funny that all posts asking about “should I use H3” end up being stolen by discussions about techniques. Isn’t it a hidden advantage of using H3? Had I been using Tenergy, would I ever open this post, let alone getting involved in it?

after I reviewed H3 I imagined that the H3 rubber was very difficult to play compared to the esn rubber

Tango K said:

You are talking about my problem!!! I’ve just realised that recently too when I started to feel that my legs are not flex enough and the lower back is taking too much pain. And you are exactly right that it’s very important to feel how your muscles have been doing. Otherwise no matter what coaches say, you wouldn’t get anything. (I have a training partner that learns these rotations in a very very stiff, mechanical way and it’s been painful for him. I say the same, try to feel your muscles rather than to force the swing into a certain shape.) To me this is the most important part in shadow practise, as Carl and you say, to have a sense of how your muscles are working, rework them and get used to that sort of sense.

I think without that in mind, shadow practises are going to be a lot less efficient than people would expect. (And probably why people give up on them, saying they only work if you know the right swing. Which itself obviously sounds like an excuse. If you already have the swing, why would you need shadow practising anymore 🤣🤣🤣)

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Yeah you need to find that feeling. I think it's important to do things in the "right" order. This channel talks quite a bit about that, I've found it useful:

There are many ways to do it, I just think pushing with the legs is the most efficient. Like I said, you could turn the waist and still pull off a decent swing, you could also fold and unfold your torso and you could swing that way too, or rely more on the shoulder and arm. Other than pulling off the technique in the most efficient order there are many other things that need to be on point - like timing the backswing, making the appropriate backswing for whatever ball you're receiving, judging the spin on the ball, having the touch and feeling to know when to go for a thicker or thinner contact etc.

Personally I just focus on getting the pushing with my legs feeling right and I trust the rest to happen automatically (the timing, contact, arm movement etc). I've used shadow practice quite a bit when trying to find the feeling for how to push off and experimenting with how much I can bend at the hip. I think it's helpful to get that feeling before putting a ball in play so that it's automatic. If you're not sure how to swing in the right order and you're backswing isn't in sync with your body then I don't think any amount of shadow swinging will fix it until you change your perspective a bit.

There are so many ways to play table tennis. Lots of players don't have very efficient technique but they can still be very good players - Carls boxing example was good. At the top level everything is optimized. You have to adapt to what works for you. Even if you start swinging in the right order, if you start swinging like crazy without being a bit fit, you might hurt yourself. Even the pros injure themselves (though they are practicing every movement much more). So yeah.. there's a lot to consider.

Man. This is really convincing. I drew exactly the same thing last night to remind me to fix my top spin. I learnt that by watching the V>11 Extra review actually although the review didn’t say anything about it.

I was trying hard to make my drive perfect and dealing well with people side-spin, so I built the tendency to go ahead of the ball and aim a straight line swing. The drive is just 1/4 of a circle so imagining it as straight is fine. But when the swing get larger and I want more spin, that doesn’t work out very well. Then I sorta realise this.

You are late twice man. You must have posted these 2 a month ago, saving me a lot.

Btw they work wonder. (I did these before but not in a consistent manner since I thought they were wrong). 4 hours training and no lower back pain today. (I’m not even sure if it’s called lower back or upper hip, or hip itself)

Tango K said:

Btw they work wonder. (I did these before but not in a consistent manner since I thought they were wrong). 4 hours training and no lower back pain today. (I’m not even sure if it’s called lower back or upper hip, or hip itself)

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Glad it helped! A few years ago I'd also have some occasional back pain from practice, I think because I was twisting my waist and doing some odd things with my back a lot. I remember Nextlevel said I played a lot of "upper body" table tennis. He was pretty spot on. Funny how I've wandered through the years from using only arm, upper body (and still do to some extent), waist and perhaps finally the legs, though there is still a lot of work to do. It's a process, and since we're not pros we have no pressure - so we might as well enjoy it. I hope you continue to be pain free 😀

I am painfree today. That video showed the leg push so well it just clicked instantly. I couldn’t believe. I was jumping around the table powering everything effortlessly.The swing got off a little bit I feel but that’s normal when you are focusing on a new pick-up. The toe push on the left and square on the right to fully engage the right leg is phenomenal.

It’s going to take time to do it consistently and to have the swing more proper with it but I’m certainly happy.

Thanks a lot!!!

Tango K said:

Also it’s kinda funny that all posts asking about “should I use H3” end up being stolen by discussions about techniques. Isn’t it a hidden advantage of using H3? Had I been using Tenergy, would I ever open this post, let alone getting involved in it?

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That's why coaches recommend tacky rubbers to their students in China. Using hard rubbers forces players to think, otherwise they get poor quality shots. It is not booster or speed glue that makes players better, it is technique. Using hard tacky rubbers for training and get the right technique, then players can choose to keep using it or switch to grippy rubbers.