Penhold techniques against chopping

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Hello, I am a basement/amateur table tennis penholder (I play outdoors mostly, but I am hoping to join an indoor club soon). I switched style a while ago from shake hand fh looper/bh chopper (which I was a reasonably solid amateur at) to penhold two winged looping, which I have a lot of fun with but find difficult. I play mainly against my brother, an amateur chopper.

I play with the Stiga Classic Allround Cpen and the DHS Neo Hurricane 3 on fh, TSP Ventus spin on bh.

I am having difficulty looping his backspin chops. I had no difficulty looping backspin as a shake hand player and was able to play both slow, spinny, bouncy loops and the fast, low, loopkill kind. I am having a lot of difficulty with penhold, because I find the body motion needed to produced the different loops is very different to shake hand. I contact my slow loops much too late, meaning they are very inconsistent in trajectory and my fast loops are equally inconsistent.

I find backhand rpb loops against backspin literally impossible, but considering it is a closed angle stroke and I usually have time to pivot to forehand, I am happy to concede that it is beyond my skill.

I want to continue with the style, can anyone give any advice on forehand technique, or know any good sources? Penhold stuff is hard to find. Thanks very much.
 
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Hello, I am a basement/amateur table tennis penholder (I play outdoors mostly, but I am hoping to join an indoor club soon). I switched style a while ago from shake hand fh looper/bh chopper (which I was a reasonably solid amateur at) to penhold two winged looping, which I have a lot of fun with but find difficult. I play mainly against my brother, an amateur chopper.I play with the Stiga Classic Allround Cpen and the DHS Neo Hurricane 3 on fh, TSP Ventus spin on bh.I am having difficulty looping his backspin chops. I had no difficulty looping backspin as a shake hand player and was able to play both slow, spinny, bouncy loops and the fast, low, loopkill kind. I am having a lot of difficulty with penhold, because I find the body motion needed to produced the different loops is very different to shake hand. I contact my slow loops much too late, meaning they are very inconsistent in trajectory and my fast loops are equally inconsistent.I find backhand rpb loops against backspin literally impossible, but considering it is a closed angle stroke and I usually have time to pivot to forehand, I am happy to concede that it is beyond my skill.I want to continue with the style, can anyone give any advice on forehand technique, or know any good sources? Penhold stuff is hard to find. Thanks very much.

Check out videos with Xu Xin in this playlist WTTC 2013 Training on my YT channel.

For example:

 
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As a penholder tell you: If you are improving with SH, why switch to penhold? Penhold is hard to play, I tend to say that only "chosen" people can actually play pen since their first day of practice.

It is difficult to learn PH after consolidating the techniques.

I can definitely switch to shakehand if I hurt my fingers or something that forces me to switch to SH. But if for example I hurt my right arm, and I need to learn to play with my left hand, it's so much simpler to learn to play SH, I can't even hold PH with my left hand. Only a coach could tell you if the best option is to switch to PH, think more about that, not having to stop your evolution to play PH.

Well, but if your decision is really to change to PH, make an analysis of some players to base your technique and even your grip Xu Xin, Ryu Seung Min and Ma Lin hold it with your fingers straighter to stabilize the FH more and perform the movement longer and with the arm more extended. Note that the three put more emphasis on FH in the game, and don't explore BH as much, link that to your technique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WvQuqtINMs&t=7s

Dang Qiu and Felix Lebrun who play more around BH, have smaller moves (this is more common in European players) using more forearm snap. Zhao Zihao is not European but he also follows this technique.




Xue Fei and Wang Hao who also play more around BH have a little bigger movement but it's still smaller than XX and ML and RSM, but not as short as DQ an

 
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What is interesting is that some of the younger penhold guys are almost better in their BH than their FH. Their Rpb is super good because they started doing it very early but their FH and footwork is a bit weak for a penholder.

I think if a penholder emerged with a BH like lebrun and footwork and forehand like xu xin he could win Olympics but that almost seems to be impossible.
 
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As a penholder tell you: If you are improving with SH, why switch to penhold? Penhold is hard to play, I tend to say that only "chosen" people can actually play pen since their first day of practice.

It is difficult to learn PH after consolidating the techniques.

I can definitely switch to shakehand if I hurt my fingers or something that forces me to switch to SH. But if for example I hurt my right arm, and I need to learn to play with my left hand, it's so much simpler to learn to play SH, I can't even hold PH with my left hand. Only a coach could tell you if the best option is to switch to PH, think more about that, not having to stop your evolution to play PH.

Well, but if your decision is really to change to PH, make an analysis of some players to base your technique and even your grip Xu Xin, Ryu Seung Min and Ma Lin hold it with your fingers straighter to stabilize the FH more and perform the movement longer and with the arm more extended. Note that the three put more emphasis on FH in the game, and don't explore BH as much, link that to your technique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WvQuqtINMs&t=7s

Dang Qiu and Felix Lebrun who play more around BH, have smaller moves (this is more common in European players) using more forearm snap. Zhao Zihao is not European but he also follows this technique.




Xue Fei and Wang Hao who also play more around BH have a little bigger movement but it's still smaller than XX and ML and RSM, but not as short as DQ an

Thank you for all the videos. It is very helpful.


If you are improving with SH, why switch to penhold?

I switched to penhold, because I find it a more fun style to play and watch. I already preferred having a fh dominant style (I mostly chopped on the bh when I played shake hand) and whatever backhand looping I ever did I found was getting more and more side spin based, so I figured I might not hate RPB. I will give Jpen a go as well.

Even if I eventually move back to shake hand (perhaps keeping a Jpen bat for novelty), I might as well try to improve my techniques at the moment, so that’s my thought process.

Glad to meet a fellow 16 year old penholder 👍
 
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Btw i don't think PH is a disadvantage at all against choppers. Many penhold players are chopper killers ( ma lin, xx for example) because high level players play mostly everything with the forehand anyway against choppers because choppers give you enough time to run around
 
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