Performing the Falkenberg Drill

Originally Posted by DukeGaGa

Then that’s not a crossover step, because you land on the leg opposite of the one you started with, i.e. you land on the left leg if you’re a right handed player, which also means your weight will be on your left leg, otherwise you’ll still be standing in the same position. Or in other words, after any jump or hop or walk or run, your weight is on the leg you land on, not the one you started on.

But you won’t take the shot until your on your right leg…
Or it would be awkward as h—l…

Originally Posted by Lazer

But you won’t take the shot until your on your right leg…
Or it would be awkward as h—l…

Ehh, no. You take the shot when your left foot is just about to land… that’s how my coach teaches it, and that’s how all the Chinese National team does it.

The correct motion is: load up right leg, push off the ground and cross your left leg in front of your right leg, and AT THE SAME TIME swing your arm forward to hit the ball, the best timing is right around when your left foot touches the floor. It’s not land on your left foot, then turn your body around and put weight on your right leg again, then hit the ball.

and yes, it is a little awkward at first, because you’ve never done it before, but almost anything you’ve never done before will feel awkward the first time you try it. And after some training most people find it to be very efficient and effective, that’s why you can see almost most top players using it to save wide forehand shots. Malong is one player that uses this quite often, because his ready position is all the way to the backhand side, and it might seem to some people that he’s really reaching for that ball, but in reality it’s just something he’s trained thousands of times.

Originally Posted by DukeGaGa

Ehh, no. You take the shot when your left foot is just about to land… that’s how my coach teaches it, and that’s how all the Chinese National team does it.

The correct motion is: load up right leg, push off the ground and cross your left leg in front of your right leg, and AT THE SAME TIME swing your arm forward to hit the ball, the best timing is right around when your left foot touches the floor. It’s not land on your left foot, then turn your body around and put weight on your right leg again, then hit the ball.

and yes, it is a little awkward at first, because you’ve never done it before, but almost anything you’ve never done before will feel awkward the first time you try it. And after some training most people find it to be very efficient and effective, that’s why you can see almost most top players using it to save wide forehand shots. Malong is one player that uses this quite often, because his ready position is all the way to the backhand side, and it might seem to some people that he’s really reaching for that ball, but in reality it’s just something he’s trained thousands of times.

Yes it’s awkward as h—l, and it’s gonna take longer time to get back in position. No the best way is just to take a natural running step and not worrying about the rest.

Originally Posted by DukeGaGa

I don’t see how it takes longer to get back into position again, because the next step is to turn your body around, just as your “running step”. It actually saves time because you’re not wasting time to finish two steps then hit, you’re now taking one bigger jump and hit at the same time, then take a step to recover. Why can’t you see that there’s a reason why most top players use this footwork? Sports training is all about effectiveness, if it is not effective in a game then the footwork will just be phased out, plain and simple.

Not surprised you having difficulty to explain with words.
If he didn't check the video I shared, then your words - even if it is the clearest will still not make any sense.
I mean, that video i shared of a super fast feed, without cross over, you will never get to the wide fh in time.

I still remember one of the first times I was invited to a provincial junior team training in South Africa (where every player there was a national player, so it was technically a national junior team).

The coaches there asked me to lead a drill (now all those players are new to me), so I told the players to do the falkenberg and cross over.
One of the coaches asked me, if we can just do side step, as some of them can't do cross over...so I said okay.
I think all of them can't do...

The players I took on afterwards, I taught all of them cross over and it required a lot of time.
and I was working with juniors, supposedly they are like sponges.

I love cross overs, especially coming back for the reverse cross over and hitting with my bh rpb.
When the motion is smooth and the ball is on and especially its been about 15 years since i've retired from training, the feeling is so GREAT.

Originally Posted by Tony's Table Tennis

Not surprised you having difficulty to explain with words.
If he didn't check the video I shared, then your words - even if it is the clearest will still not make any sense.
I mean, that video i shared of a super fast feed, without cross over, you will never get to the wide fh in time.

I still remember one of the first times I was invited to a provincial junior team training in South Africa (where every player there was a national player, so it was technically a national junior team).

The coaches there asked me to lead a drill (now all those players are new to me), so I told the players to do the falkenberg and cross over.
One of the coaches asked me, if we can just do side step, as some of them can't do cross over...so I said okay.
I think all of them can't do...

The players I took on afterwards, I taught all of them cross over and it required a lot of time.
and I was working with juniors, supposedly they are like sponges.

I love cross overs, especially coming back for the reverse cross over and hitting with my bh rpb.
When the motion is smooth and the ball is on and especially its been about 15 years since i've retired from training, the feeling is so GREAT.

My former coach in Chile, taught me to make cross over for wider balls to forehand being a kid. And then, a chinese head coach in the national team, kept reinforcing that part of the game.
These days, I only do that for really wider balls. If they're not too wide I make a big jump making the forehand to save time to be ready for the next ball.

Originally Posted by VictorMoraga

My former coach in Chile, taught me to make cross over for wider balls to forehand being a kid. And then, a chinese head coach in the national team, kept reinforcing that part of the game.
These days, I only do that for really wider balls. If they're not too wide I make a big jump making the forehand to save time to be ready for the next ball.

Just realized I missed your reply.
It is common for Europeans to not use crossover, I think it is okay. As long as the ball goes back, with quality.
In Asia, the players are normally smaller in size, so maybe that is one of the reasons why cross over is trained so much.
I think cross over mindset from get go, would allow you for a surprised wide ball, or have the mindset of full table attack, especially giving you the confidence to pivot more. For high level play, pivot FH and still way stronger than BH

I wanted to post these 2 videos to show the few that doesn't understand what it is.

Just as I thought a fancy name for something that comes natural.

Originally Posted by Lazer

Just as I thought a fancy name for something that comes natural.

Its not fancy name.
you cross your foot, so cross over step

the other step is called side step

It been around for decades and first time hearing someone complaining of the name

And it’s the natural way to do it, we use to simply call it “foot work” in the old days.

Originally Posted by Lazer

And it’s the natural way to do it, we use to simply call it “foot work” in the old days.

We call it foot work too.
but you know, table tennis is very technical and full of details.

some people call it just "hitting the ball", I won't argue with those beginners.
But for anyone who is on the forum, and is serious enough of the sport (by spending time on the forum), maybe learning the correct things is not so bad.

So, do you tell kids to go side step (A) or go cross over (B), or you just tell them, go foot work, and they might go A or might go B?
Your "old days" only few understood??.... that is why there was such a big gap until today.

From my understanding of both European and Chinese coaching.... Europeans naturally don't use cross over.

O yes we play exactly that way too, but we (at least I) don’t need an name for it. But we didn’t train it per se. It came natural when “playing wide”. The coach will correct You when your doing something wrong. No need for a particular name, that goes for a lot of modern stuff. No I’ve never heard anybody saying “today we’re gonna train cross over step” and I was still an elite player in my youth (9-14 years old).

Nothing wrong with going into detailed training and giving a certain thing a name, even if it comes naturally for certain people. It's like clicking the mouse, you can either say click, or you can specify left click when you want to be specific and make sure there's no misunderstanding. As this discussion clearly demonstrated that calling things a generic name is misleading at times. Another good example is soccer, or football if you're not from the states, you can say "kick the ball" for a lot of the maneuvers, or call them with their respective names, such as elastico or roulette. Or maybe rally driving, you can say the drivers are sliding/drifting around the corner, but there are so many different types of drifting, and if you say something like they're doing a Scandinavian flick, everyone who's serious about the sport knows what it is.

And what's wrong being "fancy" once in a while? Now you can comment on others and be like "they should have used a crossover step there so they could recover faster and wouldn't have missed the next shot", rather than "they need to be able to recover faster".

As said before different cultures, different terminology…

What is that if not terminology.

Originally Posted by Lazer

As said before different cultures, different terminology…

I know many Swedes, they call it cross over too. So this culture thing might be limited to just your town?
Including one who was elite in his junior years, in the Swedish national team

Even if you didn't call it cross over 40 years ago, the world is evolving, you need to catch up to it.
When I was young, there was no BH flick
When I was young, LGL was already do RPB, before his time, there was no RPB

Do you only call that a backhand shot, because you can't learn and evolve with time?

Don't need to catch up on anything at all, what You call it is insignificant. One thing I noticed is that today one seem to call almost any stroke with topspin "loop". Most of these strokes I call drives, to me a loop is something else. Maybe this happened with the new ball since spin is less significant these days.