Confident when training, but s**t when playing

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He just means turning around after you serve, into a posture that prepares you for the possible returns. And you need to be ready at least by the time your serve bounces on the other side of the net, if not sooner. Or else you will be very late reacting to the receive.

The same thing applies after every shot, like Carl said. It's not as extreme as after serving because you probably aren't standing sideways to the table. But players reset their feet and balance, recover into their neutral stance, and if necessary move to cover the possible angles of return. A lot to do in .5 second.

After you serve, should you be in the neutral parallel stance?

Or should you be at an angled stance to prepare for a forehand loop?

 
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After you serve, should you be in the neutral parallel stance?

Or should you be at an angled stance to prepare for a forehand loop?

If you don't know how your opponent return the ball, take the neutral parallel stance.

If your opponent always return a certain type of your serve in a certain way, you can be ready to attack the ball.

Trust me, if your serve is spiny and low at a good placement, there is not so many options for your opponent to return such a serve even it is not a deceptive serve. All that in his mind is that 'I don't care how good is my return. As long as I can return it, they are all fine to me'.

For your question about 'I don't know which stroke should be used to return the serve', your reaction and your block are good, you can allow your opponent to open first and you just block it back and go to rally stage. You can simply push the ball back in a slow and high manner, it is easy to be done against all kinds of serve.

 
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What does that reset thing mean? Not sure I understand that

He just means turning around after you serve, into a posture that prepares you for the possible returns. And you need to be ready at least by the time your serve bounces on the other side of the net, if not sooner. Or else you will be very late reacting to the receive.

The same thing applies after every shot, like Carl said. It's not as extreme as after serving because you probably aren't standing sideways to the table. But players reset their feet and balance, recover into their neutral stance, and if necessary move to cover the possible angles of return. A lot to do in .5 second.

Brs does a good job of explaining it here.

After the followthrough of the stroke you reset to a READY POSITION where you are ready for the ball to come to any of the possible angles it can come to on the given ball that is being returned. From a technical standpoint, the stroke is not finished until you reset to a position where you are ready. The ready position you reset to may depend on how you play or what can come back to you.

Ryu Seung Min frequently just reset to a position that made him ready for the backswing of a FH because he covered a huge amount of space with the FH and the traditional PH Backhand he used did not require he took a stroke or change the side of the racket he was using. The FH rubber was also being used for the BH.

In the return of serve I posted above (copied from the same post in a different thread) Ma Long is ready to turn and backswing for either a FH or a BH.

 
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Here is a different thread where I explained the reset on the serve using Ma Long from screen grabs of one serve in a match.

==

From this video:

I chose the first serve to show the sequence:

Toss is falling:

Screen%20Shot%202022%2007%2025%20at%2010%2001%2040%20PM%20png.png


Just after contact; ML's right leg is starting to swing around to bring his torso to face the table:

Screen%20Shot%202022%2007%2025%20at%2010%2002%2005%20PM%20png.png


A fraction of a second later after the ball has bounced on ML's side:

Screen%20Shot%202022%2007%2025%20at%2010%2002%2026%20PM%20png.png


The ball is approaching the net, ML is watching FZD and his body is almost facing the table:

Screen%20Shot%202022%2007%2025%20at%2010%2002%2043%20PM%20png.png


Before the ball bounces on FZD's side, ML is almost in position and he is watching FZD, his feet just have not come back to the ground yet:

Screen%20Shot%202022%2007%2025%20at%2010%2003%2053%20PM%20png.png


Before FZD has taken his shot, both ML's feet are on the gound and he is set in a ready position where he can control the whole table as he is ready for a FH or a BH and he is ideally positioned with his right foot further back than his left, with his left foot at the BH line and his right foot in line with the midline of the table. So, if FZD takes the ball wide to BH or wide to FH, ML is in position to control the table:

Screen%20Shot%202022%2007%2025%20at%2010%2003%2015%20PM%20png.png


Without having that action of how the right foot swings around from behind to bring you into position for the return, a FH serve would not be very effective. If you are not doing that followthrough, it is hard to imagine you getting good spin on your FH serves because that followthrough is part of what ensures you are using weight transfer and your body's rotation to help spin the ball.

And if you are doing that weight transfer/followthrough that brings you into the ready position, after a FH serve, you should be in a good position to watch your opponent make his shot and be ready to cover the whole table.

With a BH serve, it would be hard to do it with your feet in the position of the last photo of ML's serve sequence. And if you start the serve with the left foot further back or the feet parallel to the table you are not as ready to control the table as you would be with the right foot further back.


 
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says Spin and more spin.
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The key point, after the serve, by the time the ball is on FZD's side of the table, Ma Long is set and in a ready position so that he is pretty much ready for any ball that could come back from the angle where FZD is about to make his return of serve over on his wide BH side. He is also in a position so he can see what FZD does while he is doing it. He has all angles covered
 
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As I said, I spent about 2 hours just receiving serve nonstop. But I have 2 questions that arose. My partner is righthanded serving to me.

1) He often served a short, wide angled serve cross court to my left with minimal spin. My instinct was to flick this ball. I started stepping forward with my right leg, as others suggested. But to do this, my right leg had to cross over my left leg because the ball was far wide. After a while, this footwork just didn't seem right to me. I started stepping to the left with my left foot to do the flick, and I had much more success with this. Do you think I made the correct adjustment?

2) His serve has no underspin, but it is very short and very low. He almost just tosses the ball high and lets it drop on his racket, with little racket movement. Do you think the best return is a push or a flick?
 
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As I said, I spent about 2 hours just receiving serve nonstop. But I have 2 questions that arose. My partner is righthanded serving to me.

1) He often served a short, wide angled serve cross court to my left with minimal spin. My instinct was to flick this ball. I started stepping forward with my right leg, as others suggested. But to do this, my right leg had to cross over my left leg because the ball was far wide. After a while, this footwork just didn't seem right to me. I started stepping to the left with my left foot to do the flick, and I had much more success with this. Do you think I made the correct adjustment?

2) His serve has no underspin, but it is very short and very low. He almost just tosses the ball high and lets it drop on his racket, with little racket movement. Do you think the best return is a push or a flick?
Hi Michael,
During the 2 hr session did you try not hitting a return, just watching and calling out which type of spin had been served? This can be a good exercise to do as you don't have to worry about hitting a return and can totally concentrate on the serve, action, contact, shape and trajectory etc
To check the spin you can hold the bat with a vertical face , track the serve and just let the ball hit the bat, this will show how much and which spin type is on the ball, call out your 'read' of the serve before the ball hits the bat. see how many you get right!!!

Regarding point 1) My coach advises to track the ball, especially with those wider serves sliding across your body to your BH wing, keeping your chest behind the ball, and moving to the left, as your partners serve was short, then move left tracking the ball and step in with right foot, but now it's not crossing your left leg. so I think your adjustment was good.

 
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Well i spent my full playing session only returning serves today. I hope this leads to tangible benefits soon.

Soon....it depends on your definition. But this takes work. And if you are returning the serves of one player who is about your level and he only has a few serves, which you seem to indirectly indicate below, then, you could get good at returning those serves without necessarily learning how to adjust to serves that another player is making.


As I said, I spent about 2 hours just receiving serve nonstop. But I have 2 questions that arose. My partner is righthanded serving to me.

1) He often served a short, wide angled serve cross court to my left with minimal spin. My instinct was to flick this ball. I started stepping forward with my right leg, as others suggested. But to do this, my right leg had to cross over my left leg because the ball was far wide. After a while, this footwork just didn't seem right to me. I started stepping to the left with my left foot to do the flick, and I had much more success with this. Do you think I made the correct adjustment?

2) His serve has no underspin, but it is very short and very low. He almost just tosses the ball high and lets it drop on his racket, with little racket movement. Do you think the best return is a push or a flick?

If the ball is outside of the white line on the BH side, you would just move to the ball. Stepping the right foot under the table is for when the table is in the way of the stroke. Does this answer your question? I don't know since you gave a very minimal description of the scenario and a description, no matter how detailed would not show the scenario. Therefore, to answer your question adequetly, you would need to show some video footage of the exact scenario.

But from your posts, you still seem to be thinking in a very small box: "what is the correct way to return this particular serve." When you are more skilled at returning serves you will understand that there is always many ways to return any serve and reading the serve accurately enough, at some point, should get you to be able to make good choices on what returns will be most effective based on the player on the other side of the table.....again, the opponent and reading the opponent would still be part of the equation.

But to get to that point, you need to experiment and explore multiple different ways of touching and returning serves. That is the work, letting yourself not get balls on the table to see how different ways of touching the ball will cause the ball to react on a particular serve. Do you touch soft, hard, do you touch the back, the bottom, the left side, the right side, left-bottom, left-top......you need to explore to figure what happens when you touch the same serve in different ways.

In theory, with the right way of touching the ball, any of the above angles could work on any spin although some will be easier to control and some will be harder to control. And theoretically, if you swing hard enough with the right trajectory, with the right contact, you can knock any spin off any ball and put your own spin onto it.

So, you need to stop thinking about right and wrong and exploring how different ways of contacting the ball and contacting the ball on different points will produce different results.

 
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As I said, I spent about 2 hours just receiving serve nonstop. But I have 2 questions that arose. My partner is righthanded serving to me.

1) He often served a short, wide angled serve cross court to my left with minimal spin. My instinct was to flick this ball. I started stepping forward with my right leg, as others suggested. But to do this, my right leg had to cross over my left leg because the ball was far wide. After a while, this footwork just didn't seem right to me. I started stepping to the left with my left foot to do the flick, and I had much more success with this. Do you think I made the correct adjustment?

2) His serve has no underspin, but it is very short and very low. He almost just tosses the ball high and lets it drop on his racket, with little racket movement. Do you think the best return is a push or a flick?

1) Never prioritize theoretically optimal technique over what actually works in points.
2) The best return is dependent on both your skills and your opponent's.

In general vs no spin it's hard to push heavy so a flick would be preferred. But same as question 1, what really happens in the points? Is your flick strong and reliable? Do you have awesome feeling on your push? Some people can take a topspin serve and push it back super heavy because their push is just that good. Does your opponent attack better against backspin, no-spin, or topspin? Does he react passively against one of those? This will change between different opponents.

Don't think in terms of better - best, or rules. Observe what happens, how your opponent responds. Then make him as unhappy as you possibly can.

 
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1) Never prioritize theoretically optimal technique over what actually works in points.
2) The best return is dependent on both your skills and your opponent's.

In general vs no spin it's hard to push heavy so a flick would be preferred. But same as question 1, what really happens in the points? Is your flick strong and reliable? Do you have awesome feeling on your push? Some people can take a topspin serve and push it back super heavy because their push is just that good. Does your opponent attack better against backspin, no-spin, or topspin? Does he react passively against one of those? This will change between different opponents.

Don't think in terms of better - best, or rules. Observe what happens, how your opponent responds. Then make him as unhappy as you possibly can.

I like hearing my thoughts expressed by someone who can present them from a different perspective. This is very clear and an excellent post.

 
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I did another 2 hours of just returning serve today. This time I just had a random 1000 level do serves to me. It sounds easy, but it's actually these types of no-spin guys that give me more trouble.

Anyway, he did this low-spin, short, wide serve to my backhand. If I do a push, I can return 95% back. Also, I feel push gives me the best chance to win the point.

If I do a banana flick, maybe I only get 70% back, but its considered a higher quality shot. Also, I feel I have a lower total likelihood to win the point with a flick.

So which return should I be practicing? The push is more practical and high percentage. The flick is in theory the better shot.
 
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I did another 2 hours of just returning serve today. This time I just had a random 1000 level do serves to me. It sounds easy, but it's actually these types of no-spin guys that give me more trouble.

Anyway, he did this low-spin, short, wide serve to my backhand. If I do a push, I can return 95% back. Also, I feel push gives me the best chance to win the point.

If I do a banana flick, maybe I only get 70% back, but its considered a higher quality shot. Also, I feel I have a lower total likelihood to win the point with a flick.

So which return should I be practicing? The push is more practical and high percentage. The flick is in theory the better shot.

I would say you want to be able to do both acceptably well. It sounds like you can do the push return decently well. It sounds like you don't have as much confidence attacking those balls with your BH. Maybe make 60% of those returns various versions of attack shots with the BH and 40% different versions of push. Remember, in training to receive, you want to let yourself experiment. For now, you should not be worrying about the percentage of shots you are winning with each return since you are training to improve on all kinds of returns so that when it is a more important match, you can choose the return that best fits whatever scenario you find yourself in.

With the flick option, do you know how to do a BH flick shot where it looks like you are hitting topspin but you are hitting no spin and float the ball back? There are certain players that this is very effective against, especially if you can aim it at the player's switching point.

Also, it might be worth you watching one of those old guys who plays traditional penhold for how those traditional penhold guys can do all sorts of tricky return of serve with the traditional penhold BH. They do stuff that in one way seems sooooo simple and yet it is very tricky and hard to handle, that many shakehand players would not even think about trying but you can do similar things while holding the racket with a shakehand grip. The idea is to get more skilled at different ways to return serves.

 
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I would say you want to be able to do both acceptably well. It sounds like you can do the push return decently well. It sounds like you don't have as much confidence attacking those balls with your BH. Maybe make 60% of those returns various versions of attack shots with the BH and 40% different versions of push. Remember, in training to receive, you want to let yourself experiment. For now, you should not be worrying about the percentage of shots you are winning with each return since you are training to improve on all kinds of returns so that when it is a more important match, you can choose the return that best fits whatever scenario you find yourself in.

With the flick option, do you know how to do a BH flick shot where it looks like you are hitting topspin but you are hitting no spin and float the ball back? There are certain players that this is very effective against, especially if you can aim it at the player's switching point.

Also, it might be worth you watching one of those old guys who plays traditional penhold for how those traditional penhold guys can do all sorts of tricky return of serve with the traditional penhold BH. They do stuff that in one way seems sooooo simple and yet it is very tricky and hard to handle, that many shakehand players would not even think about trying but you can do similar things while holding the racket with a shakehand grip. The idea is to get more skilled at different ways to return serves.

Right, I'm less consistent with the flick. When the ball is close to the net and very low, there isn't a lot of margin for error to make a trajectory onto the other side of the table. So I guess I try to put enough spin on the ball to bend the ball into the table. I don't think its a very offensive shot, it kind of just gets the point going. It would be relatively rare to hit a winner from this type of flick. The more power I put into the shot, the less certain I am of making it.

I don't know how to do that no-spin flick, but I notice that it does occur in game usually by accident when you are kind of hesitant on doing a flick.

 
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I don't know how to do that no-spin flick, but I notice that it does occur in game usually by accident when you are kind of hesitant on doing a flick.
Learning to do it on purpose and using it strategically once in a while would give you one more tool in your toolbox.

 
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While its good to practice receive and if you're lucky to have someone just serve to you over and over is great, its transferring it into matchplay where it needs to become 'second nature' rather than a considered decision as you don't have the time in play. After doing the practice for a while you should play some matches at the end to try and put it into practice.
 
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