Had a 2.5-3.5 hr playing session yesterday. Got a lot of tips from better players around me and I did some intense drilling for one hour. Mainly movement and correcting a lot of my FH and BH strokes. Getting coaching really helps. Being tall and trying to stay low for practice was exhausting and my back and arm are incredibly sore.
My wrist seems to bend backwards when attempting my strokes, like my wrist automatically became a windshield wiper. I later figured out that I was gripping the paddle way too tightly and loosening it definitely helped the power I was getting. Explains why my forearm is insanely sore.
My stroke and focus on training close to the table made me realize how ill-equipped I am from mid to long range as I miss like over 30% of shots from that range. Going to drill this a lot tonight. Probably another 2 hour session and I'll completely pass out tonight haha.
I'm also extremely jealous of those that can squat down low and attempt a spinny forehand loop. I misread it and keep my paddle a little higher and the ball just bites down. I'll get used to this.
While it has limitations as a tool, try to use your swing trajectory as a guide for the ball. In broad terms, the shape of your stroke should guide the ball and also be used to adjust to the incoming spin.
As an upright player, I can speak about the value of being upright vs getting lower. The main value is being able to start below the ball for most strokes in order to get decent topspin. Because I have long arms, I can get away with being a bit more upright than I should be. However, nothing in life is free - when you are lower, your swing trajectories can have a more natural forward component than they would when you are upright, where more of your momentum will be upwards. That said, you can compensate for the swing planes. But you have to be aware of the tradeoffs because even as upright as I usually play, I sometimes have to get lower for service return and third balls against a certain kind/level of player as I can't generate the quality I need to against their ball trajectories or spin quality without it.
The benefits of being low noted, I point this out because I see many players beating themselves up over playing upright, but not realizing that a lot of it can be compensated by adjusting your swing trajectory if you have the right mindset. And to me, many people who start learning later, especially with some of the issues you can get trying to stay low, should just learn to compensate with reasonable swing trajectories so that they don't find playing table tennis too painful. But to each his own, just need to help people be aware that you can play decent table tennis without being low all the time, though there are limits on what you can do with low balls when you are not low relative to the table.
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