Best short push tutorial bar none

[blahness]

Saw this posted on YouTube. This video made my short push 100x more reliable (before the switch to D05). You can use similar movement for the long push.

Key points: Don't use the wrist but the elbow to guide the ball. You shouldn't use the hand actively, and also there should be no arm backswing. Less movement is better. Find the ball with your legs diligently not the hand, never stretch your hand out. You have to be fast in order to catch the ball very early on. Think about taking away momentum not putting in force. Use the body (not wrist or fingers) to control the ball to place it accurately like if you were balancing a heavy water bottle on the cap. With these concepts you can short push everything (yes including sidetopspin serves!).

Against reverse pendulum your body should be rotated to face right in order to get the correct angle without compromising on the hand. You have to go with the spin not against it.

Against standard FH pendulum your wrist should be a little hooked.

With BH short push don't solely rely on the racket angle but by your own brushing

To create heavy backspin, you have to brush the ball downwards to the side (my understanding is that it comes from the arm straightening slightly at the elbow).

 

[Lazer]

Didn't You say that Your push looked like it was a topspin stroke?

Cheers
L-zr

 

[blahness]

Didn't You say that Your push looked like it was a topspin stroke?

Cheers
L-zr

No, I meant I can produce topspin with a similar looking short/long push.

The secret to producing topspin also lies in some of the "incorrect" demonstrations. It's also a much more advanced technique.

 

[Lazer]

Id like to see that one.
As long as Your racket is moving downward it should not be possible.
If its only moving sideward it depends on where You hit the ball and the angle of Your bat. But it can not be that much topspin.

Cheers
L-zr

 

[blahness]

Id like to see that one.
As long as Your racket is moving downward it should not be possible.
If its only moving sideward it depends on where You hit the ball and the angle of Your bat. But it can not be that much topspin.

Cheers
L-zr

It can be quite a bit of sidetopspin. It's also not a downward movement - the sidewards movement disguises it. There are some complex secrets in disguising it.

 

[Wrighty67]

Looks great but I really wish I could get the gist of what FB is saying!

 

[vossi39]

Looks great but I really wish I could get the gist of what FB is saying!

I think it was summarized in first post. Under the video -> Keypoints

 

[Wrighty67]

I think it was summarized in first post. Under the video -> Keypoints

Yes, but there's a lot of detail and nuance in that video as is clear from his commentary!

 

[Tinykin]

Id like to see that one.
As long as Your racket is moving downward it should not be possible.
If its only moving sideward it depends on where You hit the ball and the angle of Your bat. But it can not be that much topspin.

Cheers
L-zr

Think of how you disguise a hook serve topspin. Remember that the incoming ball has lots of spin so you, the receiver, have lots to play with on your return. I think that's what Blahness is saying.

 

[IB66]

Saw this posted on YouTube. This video made my short push 100x more reliable (before the switch to D05). You can use similar movement for the long push.

Key points: Don't use the wrist but the elbow to guide the ball. You shouldn't use the hand actively, and also there should be no arm backswing. Find the ball with your legs diligently not the hand. You have to be fast in order to catch the ball very early on. Think about taking away momentum not putting in force. Use the body to control the ball to place it accurately like if you were balancing a heavy water bottle on the cap. With these concepts you can short push everything (yes including sidetopspin serves!)

You can‘t see the serve action, judging from the bat angle any reasonable amount of backspin and the ball would be dumped into the net. To me it doesn’t look like there’s much back spin, but hey, I’m crap at reading serves!!!

 

[IB66]

If it’s light top spin, god dam push blockers!!!

 

[Tinykin]

The Fang Bo tutorials are really interesting. But the thing that he inadvertently displays is the difference in technique/stroke-smoothness, between extremely good players like his sidekicks and a top 10 player like himself.

 

[Tinykin]

You can‘t see the serve action, judging from the bat angle any reasonable amount of backspin and the ball would be dumped into the net. To me it doesn’t look like there’s much back spin, but hey, I’m crap at reading serves!!!

Nope. It's very similar to Timo style return.
What he's basically demonstrating is to be very active in your returns as compared to simply neutalising the spin when putting back the ball.

 

[LHDuy]

Full of Chinese, no subscript lmao, I just can be able to guess it look like timo's video

 

[IB66]

The Fang Bo tutorials are really interesting. But the thing that he inadvertently displays is the difference in technique/stroke-smoothness, between extremely good players like his sidekicks and a top 10 player like himself.

Nope. It's very similar to Timo style return.
What he's basically demonstrating is to be very active in your returns as compared to simply neutalising the spin when putting back the ball.

So, if it’s a block type return, more vertical bat face, add sideways movement, slightly down, if it’s push type return face slightly open and again sideways movement, etc

 

[Tinykin]

So, if it’s a block type return, more vertical bat face, add sideways movement, slightly down, if it’s push type return face slightly open and again sideways movement, etc

It depends on your style.
Some players start with a completely flat bat then close the bat to a vertical position. This gives them the option of flicking or keeping the ball short.
Master of this is Paul Drinkhall. If you ever get the chance to see him play live, get as close to the action as you can.

 

[blahness]

So, if it’s a block type return, more vertical bat face, add sideways movement, slightly down, if it’s push type return face slightly open and again sideways movement, etc

It's all heavy sidetopspin which is the hardest to short push. Sideunderspin or underspin is easy to push short.

The video teaches the essential mechanics of how to short push everything. Racket angles and force direction can be easily managed once the basics are there.

Also it's a bit different to Timo Boll's video, Timo takes it late which is even harder.

I would also add that it is not a block, you still have to go down and to the side to produce the sideunderspin. The video specifically advises against mere touching of the ball - every single ball is brushed for consistency and to maintain control of the ball.

 

[JJ Ng]

Key points: Don't use the wrist but the elbow to guide the ball. You shouldn't use the hand actively, and also there should be no arm backswing. Less movement is better. Find the ball with your legs diligently not the hand, never stretch your hand out. You have to be fast in order to catch the ball very early on. Think about taking away momentum not putting in force. Use the body (not wrist or fingers) to control the ball to place it accurately like if you were balancing a heavy water bottle on the cap. With these concepts you can short push everything (yes including sidetopspin serves!).

I grew up playing Jpen. My Chinese coach taught me those points back in the 1990's. He asked me to put my leg below the table and get my whole body as close to the ball as possible. Unlike backhand push, forehand push the wrist is locked. If you take it off the bounce, the ball will go back short.

Do I use it a lot? Not really. At my level people don't tend to serve short to forehand with a lot of backspins.

I have not watched Timo Boll's video. But I assume if you take the ball later, then you have to use a bigger movement to impart your own spin on the ball.

 

[blahness]

I grew up playing Jpen. My Chinese coach taught me those points back in the 1990's. He asked me to put my leg below the table and get my whole body as close to the ball as possible. Unlike backhand push, forehand push the wrist is locked. If you take it off the bounce, the ball will go back short.

Do I use it a lot? Not really. At my level people don't tend to serve short to forehand with a lot of backspins.

I have not watched Timo Boll's video. But I assume if you take the ball later, then you have to use a bigger movement to impart your own spin on the ball.

Once you can attack all long serves and even short serves with BH chiquita, ppl will start to serve short to the FH, and usually its not backspin (backspin is too easy to push) but some kind of sidetopspin or no spin, designed to induce you to pop it up high for them to attack. Or force you to weak flick it so that they can loop it. Very hard to get out of this if you can't push short. Unless you have some very good topspin defence.

If you can short push these nonbackspin serves safely it provides you with an important variation that they need to consider in their gameplan and anticipation.

For eg you can vary between short push to their wide FH and a FH sideswipe to their wide BH, or a no spin flick to their middle for max damage.

 

[brokenball]

Id like to see that one.
As long as Your racket is moving downward it should not be possible.
If its only moving sideward it depends on where You hit the ball and the angle of Your bat. But it can not be that much topspin.

Yes! The paddle applies torque to the ball and that determines the direction of the spin. The torque is determine by the force/impules the paddle applies relative to the center of mass on the ball. Where the on the ball the paddle hits it isn't important. There was another recent thread about the same topic.