Drills for a blocker

First of all, i hope you get better very soon!
Second, a drill for blocking as such doesn't exist. You can play with someone counter-to-counter which is like the warm up. You can do that and see if you stand right, and if your movement are well etc. After a while your trainingspartner should increase the speed. So to speak he or she should topspin the ball.
It is a good training for both of you. One attacks, the other blocks.

You hit or punch through it.

Ask a penholder!

Azlan, dude, when is U comin' back my man?

Serious, you time your punch or hit when the ball is higher than net. Often, you must step in, as the ball will not kick out to you. Tricky players love beating up unsuspecting players with this trick. When you get better at everything, you will cope with this better.

Dude, hope you can munch down a lot of fish and bones...

You are welcome!
Well, that is a good start after all. You may try to go back from the table a bit and give it a little bit more of a swing. This gives you the security you will need when smashing. Maybe pingskills posted some videos how to train when you are temporarily disabled to play your fullest.

First:
Maybe your rubbers are too spinny? This may sound harsh, but many (amateur) players get the newest and best rubbers á la Tenergy to be able to do spinny serves and have a "cool" racket. Many people forget that you will be very vulnerable to the spin of your opponent as well.
So you might try to get less spinnier rubbers (just borrow from friends) or at least not as hard ones. (Xiom Omega is a pretty hard one)

Second:
You might try to take the ball a little later then usual. If you have the contact to the ball immediately after it bounces off the table, the amount of spin is still very high, if you let the ball to come to you a longer time, the spin looses up a bit.

Third:
Side-spin is a tricky thing. You shouldn't be afraid too much of it. Slight amount of side-spin can be neutralized if you play enough topspin. Take Timo as an example. Whenever he blocks he also gives some topspin to it (also to fasten up the game) Maybe you could use your wrist a bit more to give the ball topspin.

Fourth:
Adjusting the angle of your bat. Depending on how much you can use your wrist you "just" turn the bat more. Whenever the ball goes far to your right try to aim much more to the left, even if it sounds silly at first. You can aim out of the table (to the left side) and the ball will land on the table again.
With the backhand it is the same. If a lefty topspins you with side-spin and you hold the bat straight like the table the ball goes to your right. Try to aim again to your wide left side and the ball should go back to your oppenent

That's not actually correct, there are drills for blockers

1. Player loops from forehand, the blocker returns all balls to the forehand and the attacking player can either:
a) loop to a set position
b) loop one to fh and one to bh
c) loop to multiple set positions
d) loop anywhere

2. Player loops to backhand, the blocking player loops one ball soft, one ball hard. This gives you a chance to practice variation of blocking, learning to disrupt the rhythm of your opponents attacks.

3. Playing free from your backhand side to the other player. Although this is often viewed as a footwork exercise for the other player, simply change the objective. The blocking player sets the goal of making life as difficult as possible for the other player. This gives you the chance to combine variation of speed and placement, figure out weak spots and target them. Often a good combination is a softer block to the crossover, giving the opposition plenty of time to move and attack, which lulls them and gives you the chance to block wide with pace on the next ball.

Those are my 3 favourite blocking exercises so I hope you can use them and once you recover and get back to an attacking game you will be the ultimate weapon!

Jörgen Persson told us that when he first arrived to China, the coach stood at the opposite side of the table. He had a huge amount of balls and started hitting them randomly on the table at incredible speed. Jörgen was very confused and did not know what to do. The coach told him to try and return som of the shots. After a while he started to pick up speed and he was able to return the balls.

Try this to increase your speed and reflexes!

strangeloop said:

OT: I see you have moved from blogspot to your own domain. Congrats!

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I have indeed. Thanks Good luck with the blocking practice!

Mikael Berglund said:

Jörgen Persson told us that when he first arrived to China, the coach stood at the opposite side of the table. He had a huge amount of balls and started hitting them randomly on the table at incredible speed. Jörgen was very confused and did not know what to do. The coach told him to try and return som of the shots. After a while he started to pick up speed and he was able to return the balls.

Try this to increase your speed and reflexes!

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LOL the dreaded multiball training, I can't see how someone will be able to survive that kind of training like this

Try contacting the side of the ball, it helps a lot with the consistency and helps you feel the ball sinking in much better (watch more Hao Shuai matches). Chop-blocks are really hard to learn, for me I can only chop-block on the FH with the tomahawk action on certain slow loops but not on the BH lol...

You can use exactly the same stroke to block sidespin, you can either "borrow" the spin by simply not doing anything with it, and manage the direction so that the sidespin does not cause your block to go out of the table. This can produce very "curly" blocks (esp. when blocking lefty sidespin loops) which are very hard to reloop. Or you can actually use your blade angle to adjust like how you normally receive sidespin serves. The blocking stroke is basically quite similar to the counter to me, to me the most important thing is to actually block a lot (you'll develop the feeling eventually when you have blocked few thousand power loops lol....) and experimenting a lot with different stuff to see what works and what doesn't.

Coach has a turbo blocking drill side to side to end each lesson by means of smoking the living crap outta you.

blahness said:

LOL the dreaded multiball training, I can't see how someone will be able to survive that kind of training like this

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Agree, like this

Der_Echte said:

Coach has a turbo blocking drill side to side to end each lesson by means of smoking the living crap outta you.

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I used to feed that to my students as their warmup except I would hit anywhere

The chinese multi ball is not suitable to OP as he is on the recovering from his ACL injury.

So, you may want to do some drill that has less impact/strain on your knee (or less movement)

dici said:

The chinese multi ball is not suitable to OP as he is on the recovering from his ACL injury.

So, you may want to do some drill that has less impact/strain on your knee (or less movement)

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sorry i couldn't resist coz someone mentioned it hehe.... it is highly strenous for all your body parts... I think best is just rest from the game and do more swimming and gym related exercises to strengthen your muscles to avoid injury when you fully recover.

First you have to find a good looper.
I am basically a close to the table hitter/blocker. I practice 3 times a week with a two wing looper but I am 50+ years old and get tired so I rest and block for him. While I am blocking for him I try little things on my own like chop blocks, pull back blocks where you draw back your paddle slowly to reduce the impact speed and block short with little or no pace, punch blocks when I feel like being more aggressive and finally I like it when the looper wants to do foot work drills and I block at extreme angles He Zhi Wen style. I keep the looper honest. If I see the looper start to step around where he thinks I will hit the ball, before I hit the ball, I change where I will hit the ball and change the pace. There is so much one can do with blocking. You can block high, block off the bounce, work on placement. You can practice consistency by learning how to close the paddle when the incoming loop has a lot of spin. I also count the points won vs points lost.

You might want to try coaching, Sir..
Coaches have the best blocks..