Bounce with the Ball / Split-Step

[blahness]

Very in depth video describing the split step, recovery step, cross step, preparation step, etc. in easy to understand conceptual terms. It's generalized to all sports but table tennis is featured briefly. The concepts seem like it can be applied to a lot of table tennis footwork. Also really jives with a lot of biomechanical concepts I implicitly understood when training combat sports and weightlifting, but it's never been explained as clear as in this video.

To make things less confusing I'll just refer to all these steps as an "x step" (the video calls it the "batsuju step", borrowing from Japanese swordsmasnship lingo).

Turn on subtitles of course if you don't understand Japanese.

Few things that apply to this thread (though there are many more).

1. The x step is a falling to ready position. There's no need to jump up. It's just a loosening of your body so that gravity drops you into a ready position.
2. The x step activates muscle contraction and takes advantage of gravity, both of which increase acceleration by borrowing momentum. It would seem like adding an additional movement prior to moving to the ball would increase time to the ball. But the additional x step makes up for it by allowing you to go quicker by priming your muscles and directing weight towards the intended location.
3. The x step doesn't always have to be balanced towards a neutral stance, it can favor taking a first step with the side opposite of the direction of travel. Example of this was showing FZD taking an x step backwards to align his body for quicker forwards travel. But for most circumstances, a neutral stance x step allows for best position for traversing laterally with the table (so the split step is taught as an ideal position after serving, for example).

Anyway, the whole video is worth a watch (or multiple views in my opinion).

This video is really eye opening, thanks for sharing!

 

[turbozed]

This video is really eye opening, thanks for sharing!

I figured you would be the person most interested in material like this, since you seem as obssessive about biomechanics and footwork as I am!

 

[blahness]

I figured you would be the person most interested in material like this, since you seem as obssessive about biomechanics and footwork as I am!

There's a lot of important concepts in this. This also makes me understand why the wide stance crab style constant very low centre of gravity position adopted by Timo and Lily Zhang is a lot slower than the relatively higher starting positions adopted by players like Harimoto and Lin Yun Ju...

 

[turbozed]

After watching the "First step" video, I'm now starting to see a lot of instances of what the coach was talking about. Here are some examples:

In this video, Ma Long is caught out position reaching for wide FH. To get back quickly to the BH side of the table he makes an x step to push off with his right leg to go left.

In this one, LYJ makes an exaggerated x step, posting his left leg way out wide and then leaning his body to gain momentum from gravity in order to reach a ball to his BH.


This last clip made me think about a particular weakness I have on covering my wide BH....

As a right handed player when doing BH drills, I have a hard time getting to balls that go deep BH. It feels super unnatural going further to my left and getting a ball there. For one I don't cover the distance well so I'm likely not using the x step and pushing off properly with my right leg. Second, my right leg is usually somewhat behind my front leg since that was taught as an ideal stance. However, with my body angled that way, any step I take will send me in a diagonal *towards* the table and cutting down the time I have to react. With an x step that starts with my right leg more fowards I can redirect my momentum left and further away from the table creating more distance and time for me to make my shot.

I'll be shadowing that movement and then trying to implement that the next time I have BH practice.

 

[Joo Se Kev]

After watching the "First step" video, I'm now starting to see a lot of instances of what the coach was talking about. Here are some examples:

In this video, Ma Long is caught out position reaching for wide FH. To get back quickly to the BH side of the table he makes an x step to push off with his right leg to go left.

In this one, LYJ makes an exaggerated x step, posting his left leg way out wide and then leaning his body to gain momentum from gravity in order to reach a ball to his BH.


This last clip made me think about a particular weakness I have on covering my wide BH....

As a right handed player when doing BH drills, I have a hard time getting to balls that go deep BH. It feels super unnatural going further to my left and getting a ball there. For one I don't cover the distance well so I'm likely not using the x step and pushing off properly with my right leg. Second, my right leg is usually somewhat behind my front leg since that was taught as an ideal stance. However, with my body angled that way, any step I take will send me in a diagonal *towards* the table and cutting down the time I have to react. With an x step that starts with my right leg more fowards I can redirect my momentum left and further away from the table creating more distance and time for me to make my shot.

I'll be shadowing that movement and then trying to implement that the next time I have BH practice.

Thanks for sharing. This is good stuff and very much in line with some content I've been working on for PPTT lately! I may have to borrow that "Batsuju Step" terminology cause let's be real, it just sounds cooler when it's a Japanese word.

 

[doppelmoral]

Very in depth video describing the split step, recovery step, cross step, preparation step, etc. in easy to understand conceptual terms. It's generalized to all sports but table tennis is featured briefly. The concepts seem like it can be applied to a lot of table tennis footwork. Also really jives with a lot of biomechanical concepts I implicitly understood when training combat sports and weightlifting, but it's never been explained as clear as in this video.

To make things less confusing I'll just refer to all these steps as an "x step" (the video calls it the "batsuju step", borrowing from Japanese swordsmasnship lingo).

Turn on subtitles of course if you don't understand Japanese.

Few things that apply to this thread (though there are many more).

1. The x step is a falling to ready position. There's no need to jump up. It's just a loosening of your body so that gravity drops you into a ready position.
2. The x step activates muscle contraction and takes advantage of gravity, both of which increase acceleration by borrowing momentum. It would seem like adding an additional movement prior to moving to the ball would increase time to the ball. But the additional x step makes up for it by allowing you to go quicker by priming your muscles and directing weight towards the intended location.
3. The x step doesn't always have to be balanced towards a neutral stance, it can favor taking a first step with the side opposite of the direction of travel. Example of this was showing FZD taking an x step backwards to align his body for quicker forwards travel. But for most circumstances, a neutral stance x step allows for best position for traversing laterally with the table (so the split step is taught as an ideal position after serving, for example).

Anyway, the whole video is worth a watch (or multiple views in my opinion).

This video was really insightful, thanks for sharing. I watched all of it and it makes sense, but still I dont know when to use the x step in table tennis.

Lets say I do drills like 2 bh 2fh, or 1bh 1 fh 1 bh 1 fh.

See this video at 3:40

I thought when doing these, after your stroke you transition back into the „neutral stance“ doing a short hop with both legs. I guess in badminton / tennis they call this split step

The x step starts with lowering my gravity and doing a step with one leg in the opposite direction of where I want to move. When do I use the x step like that in table tennis?

 

[turbozed]

This video was really insightful, thanks for sharing. I watched all of it and it makes sense, but still I dont know when to use the x step in table tennis.

Lets say I do drills like 2 bh 2fh, or 1bh 1 fh 1 bh 1 fh.

See this video at 3:40

I thought when doing these, after your stroke you transition back into the „neutral stance“ doing a short hop with both legs. I guess in badminton / tennis they call this split step

The x step starts with lowering my gravity and doing a step with one leg in the opposite direction of where I want to move. When do I use the x step like that in table tennis?

From my understanding the coach is combining the x step with the initiation of the actual stroke. Because it's a regular drill where the ball is going to predictable points, there's no where to "go to" after the x step. It just puts you in position to make the next shot that you know is coming. So there's no x step to neutral at all when he's doing the FH step around.

Let's say instead of a ball going to that BH corner, the opponent sends a ball to your wide FH. If you had followed this drill and x stepped into a step around position, you pretty much lose the point. If you x stepped into neutral position, you now have a boost of speed to get to the FH side. If you haven't x stepped at all then you will be slower to the ball.

For big in-out or lateral movement, where you need to get to another spot quickly, the x step is easy to visualize. For many if not most other shots in TT we can pretty much stay in relatively the same spot and just make micro adjustments with our foot position. In these situations there's not a clear deliniation between the x step, a micro adjument, and the wind up of a shot (BH, FH, etc) since that's all happening at around the same time ideally.

 

[turbozed]

Reviving this thread to post a very helpful video I saw today on footwork after the recovery step in a rally.

In this video Fang Bo calls the recovery step a "skip step" but it's the same bounce at the end of each stroke to recovery to neutral.

1. The recovery step happens after each stroke and while determining where your opponent will hit to next
2. If it goes to the FH side, rotate the waist after the recovery step. The feet move to the right at the same time as the FH stroke itself. The amount you need to shuffle your feet to the right depends on how far the ball is.
3. When now further away from original BH position, if the ball goes to the BH where you originally vacated, you take one step to the left at the same time as the BH stroke (taking the step before hitting is too slow.
4. What Bo doesn't mention explicity but is obvious from the slow-mo video is that he slightly hops back towards the BH side on the recovery step after the FH. So in this case, the recovery step doesn't only get him to neutral but helps to recover his position. This is so that there is less lunging needed on the one-step BH shot described in #3.

For me, this is the clearest guide I've seen (and with slow-mo shots of the feet moving) on the footwork needed to cover the table in a rally. Any thoughts on this? Scenarios where this won't work? Disagreements? Would love to hear it!