MZ Match Video, more opening up

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Since you start playing with the current partner, with more BH involved your style is more modernized. Good to go.

When you are doing BH drive against topspin, your upper arm moves more and whole stroke is pushing. This is not wrong but this BH technique is outdated. Especially when it comes to mid-far from table, this technique is consistent but may be too weak.
 
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Good to see you improving.

Just like to leave you with 1 task:

When you are blocking on your BH, you are not following the ball with your body (your feet/body is not moving).
You are only moving your arm, so many times, when you are blocking the ball, you arm is no longer in front of your body, in fact your arm has passed the position of your body.
That is not good.

Step out with your left feet, and get behind the ball.
When that left feet goes out, it will drag your body with, and when you block with the body behind it, you will have more control over it. And when you want to counter the ball, you would be able to.
 
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Your opponent give you balls right to the middle of your BH zone and made it easy for you to use your BH... you got elbow in decent position and used lower arm and wrist OK and were consistent enough, but not really spinny or powerful, which comes later. You did not need to move much to use the BH. You also avoided going apeshyt on BH on balls that were 50/50 or lower for strong shots and you used lower power consistent BH there, that is good discipline for now - staying within your abilities.

vs THIS opponent, to win, you should use your FH opener more, but that is tactical advice for this match... you are trying to develop BH opening habits and need to play a little like this in matches to develop a BH topspin, so it isn't a crazy choice to go for more BH right now.
 
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Good to see you improving.

Just like to leave you with 1 task:

When you are blocking on your BH, you are not following the ball with your body (your feet/body is not moving).
You are only moving your arm, so many times, when you are blocking the ball, you arm is no longer in front of your body, in fact your arm has passed the position of your body.
That is not good.

Step out with your left feet, and get behind the ball.
When that left feet goes out, it will drag your body with, and when you block with the body behind it, you will have more control over it. And when you want to counter the ball, you would be able to.

That sounds like smart advice. I will try moving to left next time.

But the ball is coming at me so fast, i dont know if i have enough time to step left.

 
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That sounds like smart advice. I will try moving to left next time.

But the ball is coming at me so fast, i dont know if i have enough time to step left.

yeah, its been working for hundreds of players that I gave the advice too.
and yes, you will always have enough time, you just need to learn to move your feet first, not move your hand first

 
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That sounds like smart advice. I will try moving to left next time.

But the ball is coming at me so fast, i dont know if i have enough time to step left.

You are fast enough! See 4:20 when you get a short serve to your FH and are forced to move back quickly.
What's nice to see is that you are actually doing two steps to position yourself for the return! The smaller, first step starting even slightly before your opponent contacts the ball.
Try to get even closer to and into the table/the ball so you don't need to reach out that much (no straight arm when contacting the ball). The closer to the ball the more control you have over the ball and it is much easier to e.g. return really short or do a FH flick. 5:04: short serve to the middle. Also two steps but again you could have moved closer to the ball. 5:28: much better, racket much closer to the body!
 
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yeah, its been working for hundreds of players that I gave the advice too.
and yes, you will always have enough time, you just need to learn to move your feet first, not move your hand first

Now there's a gem of a tip - I spend a lot of time wondering how to get my feet to move enough to catch up with where my racket head is!

 

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you just need to learn to move your feet first, not move your hand first

This sounds so much easier than it is.It's 100% true, no argument. Just if you play a few years with your hand going first it takes so much work to start from the feet.But there is no choice really, just have to try.

Tony, do you have any exercises for people who learned table tennis badly to specifically improve at moving feet first?

 
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This sounds so much easier than it is.It's 100% true, no argument. Just if you play a few years with your hand going first it takes so much work to start from the feet.But there is no choice really, just have to try.

Tony, do you have any exercises for people who learned table tennis badly to specifically improve at moving feet first?

Yes, that was exactly my thinking - I know I need to do it but find myself not doing it!

 
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There is this arm cast style bandage that you can wear to learn top spin. If you wear that in practice matches you basically can't reach for the ball, since the upper arm is fixed at an 45° angle on your shoulder. That will force you to use the legs to get into position.

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There is this arm cast style bandage that you can wear to learn top spin. If you wear that in practice matches you basically can't reach for the ball, since the upper arm is fixed at an 45° angle on your shoulder. That will force you to use the legs to get into position.

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I have one of those but have typically only used it for robot practice - it focuses on keeping the right elbow from moving too much but I can see it also stops reaching.

 
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One thing I have seen just about EVERY old-school Korean coaches do to address the move the feet thing is to do the most brutal imaginable explosive footwork movement/ball striking combo drills ruthlessly at full speed back to back to back to back.

This isn't for everyone and everyone cannot go to Korea and live there... so I have also seen some modern coaches there make the player NOT hold a bat behind the table, hit a ball away from them, and demand that the player footwork to the spot and catch the ball in the strike zone. A few minutes of this are used in the 20 minute lessons so common there.

I know the question was addressed to Tony I might be looking forward to his response to the original question even more than the one who asked it. I just wanted to share a real easy effective approach.
 
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