Snake Serve by Brett Clarke

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I don't know @UpSideDownCarl , but just thought holding her arm might be more effective :p

Well, this video makes it very clear that the elbow is not supposed to move and the broom stick handle actually gives that visual really well. Besides, I am not going to hold someone's arm for 20, or 30, serves let alone the few hundred a day for a few weeks that are probably needed to feel where you really should be generating the spin from. The way she ends up with her right elbow near her left side is going to be hard to change. And that automatically means she can't be ready for what is coming back, her swing on the serve brings her completely out of position.

So, I like that how to backspin video. :)
 
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Thats what I figured, you don't want to hold her arm for too long :p . Just kidding , the video is awesome . What about teaching her the inside out service that Feng Tianwei does , may be she will learn to her right elbow stable that way ...
Well, this video makes it very clear that the elbow is not supposed to move and the broom stick handle actually gives that visual really well. Besides, I am not going to hold someone's arm for 20, or 30, serves let alone the few hundred a day for a few weeks that are probably needed to feel where you really should be generating the spin from. The way she ends up with her right elbow near her left side is going to be hard to change. And that automatically means she can't be ready for what is coming back, her swing on the serve brings her completely out of position.

So, I like that how to backspin video. :)
 
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Thats what I figured, you don't want to hold her arm for too long :p . Just kidding , the video is awesome . What about teaching her the inside out service that Feng Tianwei does , may be she will learn to her right elbow stable that way ...

I tried to teach her tomahawk, hook and shovel which are all really simple. She has to stand really far from the table to do those because she uses so much shoulder and the follow through is so exaggerated that she will hit the table and somehow she can't just go forward and keep the racket higher than the table, it always ends up lower than the table when she finishes the serve.

That broom handle might get her to stop using the arm. If she does it with one serve, she may figure it out. :)
 
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What happens when she tries to hit a normal forehand or backhand ? too much shoulder again , is it ? Here is an idea, if you try to get her to loop against heavy underspin so that she learns to use her body and not her shoulder. If she is using her shoulder for everything , she needs to first change that .
I tried to teach her tomahawk, hook and shovel which are all really simple. She has to stand really far from the table to do those because she uses so much shoulder and the follow through is so exaggerated that she will hit the table and somehow she can't just go forward and keep the racket higher than the table, it always ends up lower than the table when she finishes the serve.

That broom handle might get her to stop using the arm. If she does it with one serve, she may figure it out. :)
 
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What happens when she tries to hit a normal forehand or backhand ? too much shoulder again , is it ? Here is an idea, if you try to get her to loop against heavy underspin so that she learns to use her body and not her shoulder. If she is using her shoulder for everything , she needs to first change that .

Oh, her strokes need a lot of work. She plays shakehand but her backhand looks and acts like one of those traditional penhold punch-block backhands, but she has this weird hitch where her torso teapots over to the side as she is doing the shot. Her forehand, she has a 90 degree angle from her upper arm to her forearm when she backswings and that angle does not change at all so when she is done with the follow through her elbow joint has not changed angles at all. :)

I don't know which would be harder to fix, the forehand, the backhand or the serves. Haha. She still somehow plays not bad for a woman who is over 55 years old.
 
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LOL ! Now I get it :) Best of luck with the broom !
Oh, her strokes need a lot of work. She plays shakehand but her backhand looks and acts like one of those traditional penhold punch-block backhands, but she has this weird hitch where her torso teapots over to the side as she is doing the shot. Her forehand, she has a 90 degree angle from her upper arm to her forearm when she backswings and that angle does not change at all so when she is done with the follow through her elbow joint has not changed angles at all. :)

I don't know which would be harder to fix, the forehand, the backhand or the serves. Haha. She still somehow plays not bad for a woman who is over 55 years old.
 
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LOL ! Now I get it :) Best of luck with the broom !

By the way, somehow, with what she is doing, her forehand is pretty fast and powerful and she gets a great angle on it. And if I feed her light to medium backspin she will rip most of them. I won't say loop, because it is not quite that, but she powers it on the table with a low arc and a lot of pace. :) It is true, I am not sure she will change any of the habits. She tried to tie her elbow to her side for the forehand but.....

Actually it is funny, often, her backhand push has the same exact spin and speed as her backhand topspin. hahaha. It is murder on someone who does not know how to play short pips. Because, even though she is using smooth rubber (I did tell her she might do well with short pips) everything that comes off her backhand feels like it is coming off of short pips.

But, anyway, back to the subject. The backspin video shows something worth understanding about serving and the snake serve video shows a pretty cool deception. The sidespin is the same as a regular pendulum and the motion does really look like a reverse.
 
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ROFLAO , I am sure a lot of people would get crazy against those kind of junk balls

I still feel heavy backspin might have the solution only if she is ready to change. I know that playing against a chopper taught me the value of timing and legs and touch and I always feel very confident when I do a few loops of a quality heavy pushes off a short backspin serve. thats why I said what I said from personal experience.


By the way, somehow, with what she is doing, her forehand is pretty fast and powerful and she gets a great angle on it. And if I feed her light to medium backspin she will rip most of them. I won't say loop, because it is not quite that, but she powers it on the table with a low arc and a lot of pace. :) It is true, I am not sure she will change any of the habits. She tried to tie her elbow to her side for the forehand but.....

Actually it is funny, often, her backhand push has the same exact spin and speed as her backhand topspin. hahaha. It is murder on someone who does not know how to play short pips. Because, even though she is using smooth rubber (I did tell her she might do well with short pips) everything that comes off her backhand feels like it is coming off of short pips.

But, anyway, back to the subject. The backspin video shows something worth understanding about serving and the snake serve video shows a pretty cool deception. The sidespin is the same as a regular pendulum and the motion does really look like a reverse.
 
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ROFLAO , I am sure a lot of people would get crazy against those kind of junk balls

I still feel heavy backspin might have the solution only if she is ready to change. I know that playing against a chopper taught me the value of timing and legs and touch and I always feel very confident when I do a few loops of a quality heavy pushes off a short backspin serve. thats why I said what I said from personal experience.

You might be right. I think there is a catch 22 to that solution though. She can't handle the heavy backspin because the technique is wrong. She can't change the technique because it is a habit. Trying to loop the heavy underspin generally results in her doing the wrong technique and the ball not going in, which, for what ever reason, does not make the technique improve, but instead hightens the problems of the flawed technique as she tries harder and harder and gets worse and worse.

So I think she would have to actually change the technique first before working on something like looping heavy underspin could be effective at helping her get the good technique into muscle memory. Nobody her level can give her heavy underspin in the first place. Perhaps she is USATT Rating 1000-1100.

Besides, a more immediate issue is, her crazy shoulder movement which causes her follow through to be so big that she is not ready for anything coming back when she serves because she has not quite recovered from the followthrough while ball is already coming back, which causes her to give away a lot of free points. Her flat out missing her serve causes her to give away 3-4 points per game when she plays someone close to her level.

Fixing the serve, which may be easier, would have a more immediate impact on her level of play regardless of whether the problem with all her strokes is a parallel problem.

Now if she fixes the forehand, it is true, she may get the concept of fixing her serves. But if she fixes her serves, it may help her understand the reason why she needs to fix her forehand as well. And fixing the serve would automatically bring her into contention on 4-9 points in ever game that she was previously giving away free because of her serve technique: In 4-9 points in every game, she does not even get to use her forehand before she has given the point away. :)

Ideally she fixes both. But it might be easier to fix the serve since, on the serve, you are feeding the ball to yourself. It is much harder to change an ingrained habit when the random element of someone else hitting the ball away from you is added to your trying to change something you are doing wrong and replace it with something you need to do differently for it to work better. On the forehand or backhand, the ball coming to you, even when someone is really good at feeding you, or you are hitting with a robot, it is still harder to change the habit you have than it would be with a serve where you are really, fully in control of everything that leads up to the contact of the racket with the ball.
 
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I had a woman in my club who was on the heavier side and had similar problems. Her husband was a good player ( around 2000 ) and could chop viciously with short pips. I remember he had taught her wife to serve very bask forehand serve from the middle of the table without any pivot and she had very effective variations by sometimes serving underspin annd sometimes no spin . I can't find a video to illustrate , its almost like standing semi-chest on, almost like a tom a hawk forehand serve without frills, meaning not crouching like matsudaira :) and not so much spin, but double bounce or half long just bouncing on the edge . Infact the no spins, even if they were long were effective on people who looped without reading the spin . Worth a try ? Kind of like the first serve here
the no spin variation is just by hitting higher on the paddle
 
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I had a woman in my club who was on the heavier side and had similar problems. Her husband was a good player ( around 2000 ) and could chop viciously with short pips. I remember he had taught her wife to serve very bask forehand serve from the middle of the table without any pivot and she had very effective variations by sometimes serving underspin annd sometimes no spin . I can't find a video to illustrate , its almost like standing semi-chest on, almost like a tom a hawk forehand serve without frills, meaning not crouching like matsudaira :) and not so much spin, but double bounce or half long just bouncing on the edge . Infact the no spins, even if they were long were effective on people who looped without reading the spin . Worth a try ?

Been there, done that. You can't teach the brain to function when it won't. She is still in the mode of wanting to have serves that have vicious spin and outright win the point. The comedy is, as a result and as a result of how hard she tries, her serves don't have much spin. Close to dead balls.

I actually showed her how, I could play a bunch of people her level and use only deadball serves short and continually get an easy third ball to kill. Then I showed her how I could do that to people my level, and, even if the third ball, at my level, does not always end the point outright, the third ball gives me something I can work with every time because it is hard to do anything that is very aggressive with a short dead ball, at a certain level there needs to be deception as well. But short dead mixed in well is very effective.

But, I hand her over to you. You seem interested. I just know, that video with the broom handle could potentially help her fix what is wrong with her technique on the serve. If she feels that, she might start trying to fix the forehand. But, I will let real coaches do the broader spectrum of fixing. I just saw that video and thought it would help her.

Interestingly, I notice, both the snake serve video and the backspin video have been made private. Too bad. They are both good videos for learning something.
 
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I was just trying to help , its always fun trying to think up ways to fix somebody's technique , sometimes it helps you understand the game better . But if its a lost cause, as you said its better left to the coaches. Its that much harder to coach an adult newbie than a kid .
Been there, done that. You can't teach the brain to function when it won't. She is still in the mode of wanting to have serves that have vicious spin and outright win the point. The comedy is, as a result and as a result of how hard she tries, her serves don't have much spin. Close to dead balls.

I actually showed her how, I could play a bunch of people her level and use only deadball serves short and continually get an easy third ball to kill. Then I showed her how I could do that to people my level, and, even if the third ball, at my level, does not always end the point outright, the third ball gives me something I can work with every time because it is hard to do anything that is very aggressive with a short dead ball, at a certain level there needs to be deception as well. But short dead mixed in well is very effective.

But, I hand her over to you. You seem interested. I just know, that video with the broom handle could potentially help her fix what is wrong with her technique on the serve. If she feels that, she might start trying to fix the forehand. But, I will let real coaches do the broader spectrum of fixing. I just saw that video and thought it would help her.

Interestingly, I notice, both the snake serve video and the backspin video have been made private. Too bad. They are both good videos for learning something.
 
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I was just trying to help , its always fun trying to think up ways to fix somebody's technique , sometimes it helps you understand the game better . But if its a lost cause, as you said its better left to the coaches. Its that much harder to coach an adult newbie than a kid .

Yeah, your comments had good ideas. And you are right, it is always fun to try and figure out what will help someone. I don't know that she is a lost cause but her mindset in serving definitely gets in her way. She tries way to hard. She also doesn't seem to get how using the serve to set yourself up is much more effective than trying to win outright with the serve. I have explained to her that, no matter how good your serves are, you will play people who can return all of them without too much trouble and then you have to be able to handle what comes back. But, I guess it is also okay for her to want heavy serves.

Anyway, I do really like that broomstick handle idea. It is creative.
 
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Yes, I think more or less everybody who starts playing competitive table tennis even at the amateur level as an adult goes through this phase of trying to win it outright with the serve. But the mindset change has to be self induced and its difficult to achieve. The broomstick idea is definitely great , and its unfortunate that the video has been made private.

Yeah, your comments had good ideas. And you are right, it is always fun to try and figure out what will help someone. I don't know that she is a lost cause but her mindset in serving definitely gets in her way. She tries way to hard. She also doesn't seem to get how using the serve to set yourself up is much more effective than trying to win outright with the serve. I have explained to her that, no matter how good your serves are, you will play people who can return all of them without too much trouble and then you have to be able to handle what comes back. But, I guess it is also okay for her to want heavy serves.

Anyway, I do really like that broomstick handle idea. It is creative.
 
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The snake serve is back online

Those serves are nasty. I also like the video on how to serve backspin.


I actually just sent this to a friend who I have been trying to get to stop moving her elbow forward when she serves. I have held her arm in place, but I think she will get it with the visual that the Japanese Ninja Backspin Service Assistant provides, and the restriction of the arm movement that it ensures.

Too bad this video became private :(
Brett can you relive this one too?
 
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