This user has no status.
Well-Known Member
Most people play 60% to 70% of the level they can show in practice. see if David can give you some feedback if he is around , he is a penhold guy and has
much more insight into all things penhold than us ....
See if this helps :
1. I think you are gripping your paddle too hard, so check on that .
2. Practice a lot of serves at home when you have time, not new serves or spinnier serves, just your regular serves. And I would say create a routine where you take 2-3 deep breaths before serving or receiving, don't worry if the opponent is waiting , you are supposed to play at the pace that is optimal for you and there is no rudeness in that.
3. Don't let your opponent dictate the pace of play. Take your time before you serve, think about what you are going to serve and why and what you are going to do next ...
4. When receiving serves, especially against somebody who serves illegal serves of the kind we are seeing here, I would have my left hand permanently raised, so that I get into ready position comfortably before he lets his cannon lose.
5. The above two has nothing to do with technique , so you should be able to incorporate in your game play if you stick it into your mind . The next ones are about technique so you can ignore them and not read them since you are going to your tournament , mainly, don't "ball watch" after you hit your first loop, get back to ready position , thats the reason you lost some of the points even though you initiated attack.
6. This one is to ponder over later , don't worry about this right now because it my interpretation of why you are making mistakes in your loop and you should really work on that with somebody in real life. I think on the loops you are missing ( not on all of them ) , you are going too much "up" with your arm , with a slightly late timing on the ball, with not enough forward motion, not enough brush contact and not enough waist rotation timed with the arm. To fix the timing you can ask somebody to block down the line while you loop slowly , same on the backhand side. I suspect because of the robot you use to train your strokes feeds the ball is a little higher than usual its giving you too much time to prepare your loop compared to actually real life balls. Again, I am not a coach but this is what I perceive, if you have a coach get it vetted from him after showing him the game play video. But I would not bother about that now , and just focus on holding the paddle not too tightly .
Hey Monster, thanks for the advice! I think I agree with all of them. I practiced serving today as well as usual forehands and backhands at home. And when I did the serving, I started to have a pre-serve routine. I can't comment on how well it is working for me yet as I have not tried it against opponents continuously.
But I totally agree with the holding the bat too tightly, I did not even think of that when playing. And the timing of the loop being off, I will practice that with a real person tomorrow at training.
I think my forehand loop feeling came back to me tonight when I played at home, I am uploading the video as I type this, and will edit my post with the video when it is finished
Does holding my left hand up signify I am not ready so if the opponent serves, they have to re-serve? I don't see this happen much at all at my club, so I just wonder how well it will work. I see it happen in professionals, especially with Lee SangSu in his doubles, but just wondering at amateur level, whether people still respect that or not.
Last edited: