Any tips on how to consistently looping backspin?

[sky500]

Hi,

I'm having trouble to consistently looping either with forehand or backhand. So I got three questions.

1. Sometime I can feel the friction of the ball on my blade, so that I can loop but a lot of times the ball just leaves the blade too fast and goes into the net. It happens with either forehand or backhand. Any idea why this is the case?

2.

When I try to loop like this shown around 6:33 in the video with my backhand, I rather give sidespin to the ball instead of topspin, which makes sense in my head because the blade goes to the side. If the ball goes into the net, I can sometime see the heavy sidespin I gave the ball, but not topspin.
What am I doing wrong?

3. Do you have general tips on how to loop backspin more consistently?

 

[vossi39]

First of all a video footage of you performing the BH Topspin would be perfect to help you best. From your description it is challeging to help you.

The fact that you generate side instead of topspin is in many cases related to the wrong timing, when hitting the ball. So your are hitting the ball to far way from your body.

Try forgetting your arm movement for a moment and try to brush the ball only with wrist movement bottom to top (even without any forward movement). You will notice that this already is enough for the ball to clear the net. Do not worry in the beginning about the height of the ball. Even it it is sky high. It has enough spin to be dangerous and you can work on the forward/speed component at a later stage.

 

[NextLevel]

Hi,

I'm having trouble to consistently looping either with forehand or backhand. So I got three questions.

1. Sometime I can feel the friction of the ball on my blade, so that I can loop but a lot of times the ball just leaves the blade too fast and goes into the net. It happens with either forehand or backhand. Any idea why this is the case?

2.

When I try to loop like this shown around 6:33 in the video with my backhand, I rather give sidespin to the ball instead of topspin, which makes sense in my head because the blade goes to the side. If the ball goes into the net, I can sometime see the heavy sidespin I gave the ball, but not topspin.
What am I doing wrong?

3. Do you have general tips on how to loop backspin more consistently?

With backspin especially truly heavy backspin, the most common mistake is people misunderstanding how inverted rubber works and hitting into the ball. Inverted is grippy and rotates the ball on impact, your goal is to make sure your swing is adjusted to the spin and make the ball rotate. This is especially true for heavy spin. If you catch and rotate the ball appropriately, many of your issues go away. But if you swing forward into the ball before catching it properly, everything tends to not work.

 

[NextLevel]

Hi,

I'm having trouble to consistently looping either with forehand or backhand. So I got three questions.

1. Sometime I can feel the friction of the ball on my blade, so that I can loop but a lot of times the ball just leaves the blade too fast and goes into the net. It happens with either forehand or backhand. Any idea why this is the case?

2.

When I try to loop like this shown around 6:33 in the video with my backhand, I rather give sidespin to the ball instead of topspin, which makes sense in my head because the blade goes to the side. If the ball goes into the net, I can sometime see the heavy sidespin I gave the ball, but not topspin.
What am I doing wrong?

3. Do you have general tips on how to loop backspin more consistently?

For Question #2, the reason you are not giving the ball topspin is that you are not coming over the top of the ball with your stroke. You don't need too catch and probably shouldn't catch a backspin ball at the top unless the ball is really high, but if you want to give a ball topspin consistently, you need your follow through with the forearm come over the top of the ball broadly in the direction you want the ball to go. One of the common mistakes people make when playing topspin strokes is that they see a follow through end up sideways and they think the first movement of the looper demonstrating the follow through was to go sideways. The truth is that the looper is coming over the top of the ball and the follow through ends up sideways because that is how the human body is designed - the stroke is first and foremost forward and the side motion is because all strokes lead to circular movements - one way to think of forward strokes is big circles or curves over and into the ball.. In other words, the stroke is conceptually different from how you are executing it.

You can catch the ball on the side and still follow through over the top. Don't think that the advice to follow through over the top means that you have hit the ball on the top - that is a common mistake. Many advanced loopers hit the ball on the side or side top as their first point of contact but to get topspin, the follow through needs to be forward.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

For sure, as was stated, footage of what you are actually doing would be helpful.

The most important thing with getting loop of backspin solid and consistent is doing it 100s of 1000s of times.

Multiball backspin could help get the reps in. Serve and receive drills could also.

- Player 1 serves backspin medium length
- Player 2 pushes long
- Player 1 loops
- rinse and repeat

When you have looped a few 100,000 FHs and BHs vs varied backspin you start really having a feel for what you are doing and become much more solid at it.

That being said: NextLevel and Vossi were giving you some good ideas on theory. That is important too.

 

[dingyibvs]

Hi,

I'm having trouble to consistently looping either with forehand or backhand. So I got three questions.

1. Sometime I can feel the friction of the ball on my blade, so that I can loop but a lot of times the ball just leaves the blade too fast and goes into the net. It happens with either forehand or backhand. Any idea why this is the case?

2.

When I try to loop like this shown around 6:33 in the video with my backhand, I rather give sidespin to the ball instead of topspin, which makes sense in my head because the blade goes to the side. If the ball goes into the net, I can sometime see the heavy sidespin I gave the ball, but not topspin.
What am I doing wrong?

3. Do you have general tips on how to loop backspin more consistently?

For question #1 the answer is usually timing. If you're accelerating your racket too early or too late then you won't "catch" the ball. Having a setup with more dwell can help with that, but it's primarily a technique issue.

For question #2, try contacting the back of the ball, if you start your stroke with that aim, the rest should follow and allow minimal sidespin. If you're having trouble executing that, you ou can try Seth Pech's method of "over correction training" by trying to contact the right side of the ball first to get a feel for that, then move on to the back of the ball.

For #3, Lifting backspins is mostly about timing. Get the acceleration timing right and every backspin becomes easy.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

- Player 1 serves backspin medium length
- Player 2 pushes long
- Player 1 loops
- rinse and repeat

One more detail on progressing this drill: when you are not so great at looping backspin, having an idea of about where the long push will go will help you improve. When you start becoming adequate at looping backspin while knowing where the ball is going, then you need to start making the placement of the long push more randomized so you have to read where the ball is going, move to it, and loop.

 

[blahness]

Hi,

I'm having trouble to consistently looping either with forehand or backhand. So I got three questions.

1. Sometime I can feel the friction of the ball on my blade, so that I can loop but a lot of times the ball just leaves the blade too fast and goes into the net. It happens with either forehand or backhand. Any idea why this is the case?

2.

When I try to loop like this shown around 6:33 in the video with my backhand, I rather give sidespin to the ball instead of topspin, which makes sense in my head because the blade goes to the side. If the ball goes into the net, I can sometime see the heavy sidespin I gave the ball, but not topspin.
What am I doing wrong?

3. Do you have general tips on how to loop backspin more consistently?

watch this: you have to learn how to walk before you can run. Fang Yinchi's tutorial is meant for advanced players....