How do i resolve some of my critical errors

[Attitude]

Since last week i reached my all time high TTR but started struggling against players that are around 50-100 TTR points above me. Naturally that is not a big thing, but these games against those presumably better players were mostly really close. Many times i lost 2:3.
Ofcourse you can just tell me to train more, become better and you will win those but besides that i found several critical errors in my techniques that would have given me an edge over several opponents.

To give a little more insight, here is how my game plan usually works and how i force my opponents to play my game and not theirs:
Around a year ago i managed to learn to flick almost everything with my bh. Therefore i mostly serve short and flick those returns in 90% of the time. The same goes with almost every serve my opponents give me. If they serve short there is usually not enough backspin to prevent my attack. Long underspin serves are getting looped too depending on where they land.
The main issues usually start right afterwards. The better opponents (and i have a lot of those in my current league) can easily block those flicks or even counter them lightly. While the block itself is not the problem, the follow up attack that is crucially NEEDED is. Often times i try to do the FZD or Lin Shidong and clap those block but the successrate of those shots are too low, so i lose self-confidence and stop my followups. Not mentioning that they are quite risky in themselves.
Therefore i want to get better in my 2- wing loops and attacks overall so i can steparound too and use the safer forehand attack.
So i am back into more fh-training and seeing several issues that make me struggle, attacking blocks and weaker attacks (especially those):

- My wrist often times move down in mid-movement, which gives the ball much sidespin and it curves too much to the left side.
- My followup topspins has the tendency to go wide and nowadays feel somewhat off, not sure if my racketangle is the issue here or the angle of my movement overall
- My stroke could be too hard as well, but changing that would be the biggest pain imo, because if i currently try to play more cautious i tend to hit edges reeeeeeeeeeally often.

Maybe you find some more errors i werent aware of, so feel free to comment to your hearts content.
If you have any ideas and oppinions on how i might be able to fix the mentioned issues asap i would be greatfull too.

So here is some footage of the shitshow^^:

 

[Jslick89]

I don't have the skill yet to comment on your technique but i wanted to say nice training room! is that a regular gym floor? or is that gerflex (i think thats how its spelled?) flooring?

 

[Attitude]

I don't have the skill yet to comment on your technique but i wanted to say nice training room! is that a regular gym floor? or is that gerflex (i think thats how its spelled?) flooring?

That is our usual traininghall and a regular gym floor, nothing fancy because we have several other departments in our club than just TT.

 

[Zwill]

Hey, awesome video! Good to see fellow players break a sweat

I recommend you take some advice from RSM, I mean he's FH GOD and what he's saying applies to shakehand as much as to pen.

I'm no coach but I can give my view. In my opinion, you make waaaaay too much arc on your drives. You don't even drive the ball just try to spin everything. Look at RSM, he attacks the ball properly you kind of just licking it.
You have the physicality to also attack it, need to hit it much more and stop licking it.
Also your balls barely go over the net, I mean you have the height to clear the net, but they almost fall short into the net. You should aim to hit at the end of the table to force your opponent out and for that you need to actually hit the ball more.

You should practice something like what Morizono is doing here at 7:40. No spin just flat-out hitting the ball.

I do this kind of warm-up almost every time and it helped me improve the speed of my drives so much. You can do this against pips too, it will improve your feeling not just your speed.
It might actually help you with your "seagull" wrist not to mention with higher balls and the bloody edges 😿

Wish you all the best!

 

[Attitude]

Hey, awesome video! Good to see fellow players break a sweat

I recommend you take some advice from RSM, I mean he's FH GOD and what he's saying applies to shakehand as much as to pen.

I'm no coach but I can give my view. In my opinion, you make waaaaay too much arc on your drives. You don't even drive the ball just try to spin everything. Look at RSM, he attacks the ball properly you kind of just licking it.
You have the physicality to also attack it, need to hit it much more and stop licking it.
Also your balls barely go over the net, I mean you have the height to clear the net, but they almost fall short into the net. You should aim to hit at the end of the table to force your opponent out and for that you need to actually hit the ball more.

You should practice something like what Morizono is doing here at 7:40. No spin just flat-out hitting the ball.

I do this kind of warm-up almost every time and it helped me improve the speed of my drives so much. You can do this against pips too, it will improve your feeling not just your speed.
It might actually help you with your "seagull" wrist not to mention with higher balls and the bloody edges 😿

Wish you all the best!

I see what you mean.
At 06:15 i committed better to the stroke, moved harder forward and hit the ball way clearer.
I am usually spinning more than "hitting" because flat hitting doesnt work that well with harder rubber imo, so i am not really used to it. On top i never needed to use those. I started restraining my movement because i had and slightly still have issues with consistency and especially with other balls and tables i struggle to play at my level.
Maybe i should focus again more to find the middle between restraining myself and still move and hit with the same quality i was used to.

Maybe i should limit-test more of how hard i can hit, still land on the table with loops and focus more on moving forward if i want to topspin. And i just saw again that i am still closing the racket angle too much on many strokes -.-
Man that is frustrating.

 

[dingyibvs]

I see what you mean.
At 06:15 i committed better to the stroke, moved harder forward and hit the ball way clearer.
I am usually spinning more than "hitting" because flat hitting doesnt work that well with harder rubber imo, so i am not really used to it. On top i never needed to use those. I started restraining my movement because i had and slightly still have issues with consistency and especially with other balls and tables i struggle to play at my level.
Maybe i should focus again more to find the middle between restraining myself and still move and hit with the same quality i was used to.

Maybe i should limit-test more of how hard i can hit, still land on the table with loops and focus more on moving forward if i want to topspin. And i just saw again that i am still closing the racket angle too much on many strokes -.-
Man that is frustrating.

It's not really a flat hit, it's "hit then brush". Need to really engage the blade. It's especially important for harder rubbers, as you need to have really solid contact to hit through a harder rubber to engage the blade. If you prefer a thinner contact, best to use a softer rubber IMO.

Also your issue with consistency is not slight, it's pretty big. You're averaging around 2 loops before failure during FH practice, not counting the ones your practice partner failed thr block. That doesn't translate well to real games. In real games you'd probably average less than 2 before failure, meaning one block and you're toast.
IMO while there are some minor issues with your stroke, your biggest need is to engage the blade more and adjust your body better to adapt to each shot. You can improve a lot within just weeks as you start facing players who can block your opening loop.

 

[Attitude]

It's not really a flat hit, it's "hit then brush". Need to really engage the blade. It's especially important for harder rubbers, as you need to have really solid contact to hit through a harder rubber to engage the blade. If you prefer a thinner contact, best to use a softer rubber IMO.

Tested and couldnt get used to it. That is probably not an option.

Also your issue with consistency is not slight, it's pretty big. You're averaging around 2 loops before failure during FH practice, not counting the ones your practice partner failed thr block. That doesn't translate well to real games. In real games you'd probably average less than 2 before failure, meaning one block and you're toast.

That is the thing, my fh does get blocked rarely. And in case i can start off with my fh i hit those 80-90% of the time.
I dont really wanna argue about consistency but if you point out the block errors the average is way higher^^

IMO while there are some minor issues with your stroke, your biggest need is to engage the blade more and adjust your body better to adapt to each shot. You can improve a lot within just weeks as you start facing players who can block your opening loop.

So true. Maybe i should do some robot training again from time to time.
The only question remains how to engage more. Should i focus on changing the racket angle, should i put more effort again into my strokes, should i move more forward for topspins? Or all at once?😅

 

[Zwill]

I see what you mean.
At 06:15 i committed better to the stroke, moved harder forward and hit the ball way clearer.
I am usually spinning more than "hitting" because flat hitting doesnt work that well with harder rubber imo, so i am not really used to it. On top i never needed to use those. I started restraining my movement because i had and slightly still have issues with consistency and especially with other balls and tables i struggle to play at my level.
Maybe i should focus again more to find the middle between restraining myself and still move and hit with the same quality i was used to.

Maybe i should limit-test more of how hard i can hit, still land on the table with loops and focus more on moving forward if i want to topspin. And i just saw again that i am still closing the racket angle too much on many strokes -.-
Man that is frustrating.

Hmm, I think LAC is very suitable for it. It's pretty hard. I also do it with H3N now Mantra Pro XH which is like a 40deg H3 hard, for sure it's easier to do with a bit of a bouncier rubber but LAC is very good already.
Like I didn't make this video for this purpose but when I do my FH warmup you can kind of see I'm doing what Morozono is doing tho much more subtle. My FH shots are also hitting the end of the table.
I'm pretty sure at one point I felt similar how you feel now about racket angle, lack of consistency and I then usually I go back to the basics. Like really really beginner stuff since most likely my faults are super fundamental.

I forgot about this below video and I know TT webcoaches have a bad rep but honestly this helped me with the speed of my shot but also enhancing my feeling of the ball. And this is one of the reason I linked how Morizono is doing it as well. I really recommend you to try it, it's good since you can do it with weaker partners too and it's good for them as well.

One more thing this could be a camera related issue, but I think not. Your racket is very silent. At contact you should hear the wood. If you compare the sound to your normal drive with the one at 6:15... Do you hear?
When you drive with power it should always sound like your 2nd hit at 6:15.
I find this in many players around here that they were taught that during topspin their racket should be silent. This is some old school coaching fetish and I think it's really bad. Maybe during an open up loop this is good advice but only then. Every other time when you hit with power the racket should sound like it is going to break.

 

[Der_Echte]

One thing I can see is you STOP your shot after your follow through and HOLD for a time. You are not resetting until the ball is almost to or at the net on its way back. It appears like you are waiting and watching for the ball to fall and see the opponent hit before you do anything next. You are giving away a lot of time and putting yourself under too much pressure doing that.

This robs you of a lot of time to get your next position and set the strike zone and leverage. Getting to position on time with leverage with a prepared strike zone makes a world of difference in the consistency and quality of your shot.

This is what is really killing you right now. Not the only thing, but the biggest issue. We are talking about your opening attack vs a light top spin ball and your follow up fast loop attack.

The way to fix that is to do a tiny bounce after you finish the stroke and begin your reset. The bounce step will help you get that recovery part of the stroke going well and on time.

The second thing that is killing you is your distance from table on the follow up. You are often 10 to 30 cm positioned too far back to take the ball in an effective part of the return arc. Often, you are letting the ball fall down. This OK if you want to make continuous attacks with spin and not too much tempo, but you are trying to fast loop the block.

Deciding to fast loop the block is a good choice, since the ball does not have a ton of energy and you have a little time... but your chances of landing the ball decrease when you let the ball fall down for this shot... not impossible to land it, but it is much easier to land it if you swing forward at impact and hit the ball top of bounce.

If you were to reset right after you finish your stroke (like a continuation of your stroke actually) and bounce step forward a bit, you would be able to better catch top of bounce or above net on rise... this gives you an increased amount of horizontal angles to work with and much more vertical room for forgiveness on you hard struck topspin. You get better angles and give opponent less time to see your shot and react. That is many times a plus in anyone's book.

I could comment on how huge your backswing is... but it isn't what is killing you. Of course, you would benefit from a more compact stroke close to the table, but your first shot a meter off the table such a backswing will not kill you too bad.

****** ------ *******

Now for your opening topspin vs long underspin... you have a few things really killing you.
Number one... you are too far off the table. You are trying to impact the ball maybe 5-10 cm pact endline, but you are positioned too far back to properly set your strike zone... this is making you reach and you have less leverage, quality, and spin... which really affects your landing percentage too.

The next thing you are doing wrong is vs the block... you are positioned WAY too far back... you often properly have your bat level on back swin at hip height... but the ball is now falling below effective part of your strike zone... so if you do not get waist down, it it difficult to have the leverage and control you need. SOMETIMES you manage to get the hips low enough and make a strong shot... but you would MAKE IT WAY EASIER ON YOURSELF... IF... YOU WOULD POSITION YOURSELF CLOSER TO THE TABLE after your first attack.

It would be immensely easier to finish those blocks if you were closer to the table.

You are also doing the same thing with your stroke after first attack... stopping stroke and waiting/watching, instead of recovering. This is compounding your other errors with positioning. (and setting strike zone/leverage)

I will stop the comments on just those two areas.

Still, you have reported a historic increase in your match level... that indicates the best improvement you have ever made, so you are obviously get some processes right.

 

[Attitude]

Hmm, I think LAC is very suitable for it. It's pretty hard. I also do it with H3N now Mantra Pro XH which is like a 40deg H3 hard, for sure it's easier to do with a bit of a bouncier rubber but LAC is very good already.

I switched to Rxton 9 but their differences shouldnt matter for my particular issues^^

Like I didn't make this video for this purpose but when I do my FH warmup you can kind of see I'm doing what Morozono is doing tho much more subtle. My FH shots are also hitting the end of the table.
I'm pretty sure at one point I felt similar how you feel now about racket angle, lack of consistency and I then usually I go back to the basics. Like really really beginner stuff since most likely my faults are super fundamental.

I forgot about this below video and I know TT webcoaches have a bad rep but honestly this helped me with the speed of my shot but also enhancing my feeling of the ball. And this is one of the reason I linked how Morizono is doing it as well. I really recommend you to try it, it's good since you can do it with weaker partners too and it's good for them as well.

Ok, now i get that and understand what you meant before. I should definitly try that out. Not just for the seagull handposition (awesome name for that) but for the racketangle too. I am quite sure that my edgehitting problem i mentioned in another thread could be resolved or at least reduced by that too.

One more thing this could be a camera related issue, but I think not. Your racket is very silent. At contact you should hear the wood. If you compare the sound to your normal drive with the one at 6:15... Do you hear?
When you drive with power it should always sound like your 2nd hit at 6:15.
I find this in many players around here that they were taught that during topspin their racket should be silent. This is some old school coaching fetish and I think it's really bad. Maybe during an open up loop this is good advice but only then. Every other time when you hit with power the racket should sound like it is going to break.

Exactly. Although this is not a teaching result but just a logic habit that i included after time. When i started playing again i relearned topspinning by closing the racket that much. That is the main reason why many hits become so silent. Well at least on of the reason.
I just compared my stroke with Ma Longs (not ideal but the best slow motion videos i could find in the meantime, that showed me the difference). He never ever closes the racket as hard as i do. At least not as long as the ball doest go that far up.
Overall i totally agree.
Now besides training i need to think for a solution that i stop closing the racket that hard. Only idea i have so far, would be to pinch the bh rubber more with my index finger.

 

[Attitude]

One thing I can see is you STOP your shot after your follow through and HOLD for a time. You are not resetting until the ball is almost to or at the net on its way back. It appears like you are waiting and watching for the ball to fall and see the opponent hit before you do anything next. You are giving away a lot of time and putting yourself under too much pressure doing that.

Yeah i am working on that quite hard at the moment. Currently it requires way too much focus, because im still not used to, to immediatly reset myself for the next shots. Breaking that habit of stopping to play takes so much time but is up high at my training agenda^^

This is what is really killing you right now. Not the only thing, but the biggest issue. We are talking about your opening attack vs a light top spin ball and your follow up fast loop attack.

The way to fix that is to do a tiny bounce after you finish the stroke and begin your reset. The bounce step will help you get that recovery part of the stroke going well and on time.

I started doing that from time to time, but as ive mentioned above that requires much focus currently and is far from a fluent motion. Im working on it.
In a different thread i already got scolded for that (maybe by you too xD) and it got better, at least im faster now but still a long way from ideal.

The second thing that is killing you

Too much killing 😅

is your distance from table on the follow up. You are often 10 to 30 cm positioned too far back to take the ball in an effective part of the return arc. Often, you are letting the ball fall down. This OK if you want to make continuous attacks with spin and not too much tempo, but you are trying to fast loop the block.

Deciding to fast loop the block is a good choice, since the ball does not have a ton of energy and you have a little time... but your chances of landing the ball decrease when you let the ball fall down for this shot... not impossible to land it, but it is much easier to land it if you swing forward at impact and hit the ball top of bounce.

If you were to reset right after you finish your stroke (like a continuation of your stroke actually) and bounce step forward a bit, you would be able to better catch top of bounce or above net on rise... this gives you an increased amount of horizontal angles to work with and much more vertical room for forgiveness on you hard struck topspin. You get better angles and give opponent less time to see your shot and react. That is many times a plus in anyone's book.

I could comment on how huge your backswing is... but it isn't what is killing you. Of course, you would benefit from a more compact stroke close to the table, but your first shot a meter off the table such a backswing will not kill you too bad.

Yeah i get that. But id say i should focus on becoming faster first. Because if i am slow and stand even closer to the table (i already stand close to the table compared to earlier this year) i miss even more shots. And i am not "pro enough" to train so much at the same time.

****** ------ *******

Now for your opening topspin vs long underspin... you have a few things really killing you.
Number one... you are too far off the table. You are trying to impact the ball maybe 5-10 cm pact endline, but you are positioned too far back to properly set your strike zone... this is making you reach and you have less leverage, quality, and spin... which really affects your landing percentage too.

The next thing you are doing wrong is vs the block... you are positioned WAY too far back... you often properly have your bat level on back swin at hip height... but the ball is now falling below effective part of your strike zone... so if you do not get waist down, it it difficult to have the leverage and control you need. SOMETIMES you manage to get the hips low enough and make a strong shot... but you would MAKE IT WAY EASIER ON YOURSELF... IF... YOU WOULD POSITION YOURSELF CLOSER TO THE TABLE after your first attack.

It would be immensely easier to finish those blocks if you were closer to the table.

You are also doing the same thing with your stroke after first attack... stopping stroke and waiting/watching, instead of recovering. This is compounding your other errors with positioning. (and setting strike zone/leverage)

I will stop the comments on just those two areas.

Still, you have reported a historic increase in your match level... that indicates the best improvement you have ever made, so you are obviously get some processes right.

I might have to doublecheck on the positioning because in my memory i was serve-receiving close to the table for the underspin serve. In several cases i am definitly too late to the ball but i would argue that this is not the case in general. I mean in the other loops and shots i mostly hit the ball around the highest point (especially at the beginning of the video) if im not mistaken. And i do hit them quite okish imo, as long as im not too late to the changing direction of the next ball as you've pointed out.

Highly appreciated input i got so far. Hopefully i can make us of them propperly in the next training sessions.

 

[gordonluvsu]

First off, I find there is a lot to say and I might return later, but for now I will keep it short and focus on 1 thing.

As a general rule, you dont always need to do a full swing with so much movement.
Especially close to the table against a long/half-long ball without much spin.
"Borrow" the balls spin and speed and give it whats necessary to put pressure on the other side.
In this case, excessive spin is not necessary, rather hit harder with lower trajectory and there will be enough spin,
Dont need to to a big upward movement, more to the front with enough acceleration from body and forearm.


About your technique for the follow up/finish on forehand.
- Dont start so far back and low with your arm and hand.
- use your body weight and low center of gravity to "push" and "swing" yourself forwards
- Take the ball when its rising or at its peak
- racket angle closed, but not too much, about 15 degrees ish
- Turn your body rather than making a semicircle around your body with your arm
- hit hard with confidence
- keep your wrist and forearm loose, tighten and tension about half way through the movement

Its almost like a counterloop, whilst being more cautious, closer to the table against a ball with less spin and speed.


About practice:
When you hit an edge ball, its probably because your focus is not on the ball, but rather internal and on adjusting technique or body movement.
Ideally your eyes are on the ball all the time, while you make a decision on what to do and you perform it intuitively and mostly automatically.
If you try adjusting your technique while the ball is coming and it has a tricky trajectory with more spin or speed, you wont find a good hitting timing and spot, leading to an edge ball or sometimes even completely missing the ball.
Its a lack of focus on the objective.

I would suggest:
First practice the movement without a ball and just by yourself.
Visualize the ball coming at you and you hitting the ball from 1st POV, then from a 3rd POV.
Shadow practice while vividly imagining yourself playing and hitting it succesfully.
Recording yourself obviously helps .
Repeated robot practice ( or as I do it with return boards) is very effective for technique learning, enhancing and habituating.
Hitting from different positions in different situations.
Intensity is important.
Once you go over to that practice with your partner, I would suggest him feeding the ball like multiball, where he bounces it on his side once and then pushes or drives it over, rather than serving with underspin or no spin.
Looping serves is different and multiball is generally better.

Once you get used to performing the movement and you dont need to put too much mental effort into actively adjusting your stroke, you will stop hitting so many edges and your overall feel will improve.

Hope it helps, once I have more time I can write more.

 

[blahness]

The biggest issue I can see is footwork. You're kinda walking around which is way too slow.

During the FH serve you need to step on your left foot explosively (to use the weight transfer), and using this momentum to set the right foot way more to the middle of the table and further back, and then the left foot again dragging it back. You must do all of these before opponent hits the ball. It's not easy but you have to do this otherwise you'll be caught unable to 3rd ball in position.

The other problem is you pre commit to a position before you're sure where the opponent is hitting it. After a loop for eg your main priority is resetting back to neutral for the split step and a mini bounce on your knees. You need a reset step before going to the next loop. What this does is that you're not prematurely committing to a position and can still adjust to whatever placement the opponent is giving you (to follow up with either BH or FH loop). It's like doing a half guess (during the split step) and then lunge to the position only once you're sure of the placement.

If you're interested you can check out how the Lebruns do it especially Felix - you can see a lot of this bouncing on the knees. He doesn't just go to the position in 1 step.

I just realised that Der_Echte actually made the same observations - so I guess this is just a reinforcement lol.

You can fix this with a shit ton of shadow training and making sure you reset after your stroke.

This reset step made the most impact on my level for the past year. I play similar to you (except with a lot shorter strokes because I use Viscaria and D05 which helps tremendously for it) in that I aim to chiquita or FH sideswipe/flick short serves and loop long serves and then aim to apply a lot of 2 wing topspin pressure after it. I'm also working on becoming a 2 wing topspin machine. I'm at the averaging 5-7 consecutive high quality loops stage but still there's a lot of times where I use BH for balls to my FH and vice versa which I'm trying to fix - these bad decisions destroy my positioning.

The good thing I can see from you is that you have very good shot quality from both wings when you're in position. This is not that easy to achieve btw. This is why I think the lowest hanging fruit on the tree now for you is to get you in better positions during your play and this is where reset steps are extremely important.

 

[Nima Abadi]

Sorry if I'm repeating what has been said before (haven't read the comments yet) but have to say, you have a wonderful stroke but I think there are some areas that are easier to improve and there are some areas that will be harder to improve (a bit out of your hand so to speak).

Let's start with the obvious one, you seem to hold your pose after each shot and watch the ball, at least in the training video. It may not be the same in a match but that's something that's worth paying attention to.

It's also the reason that you find the need to clap back some balls because you're not recovering fast enough. This could be a big problem since recovery is the biggest issue with flicks and if your recovery is weak during your loops, it might be even weaker after your flicks (but can't say anything for sure since it wasn't in your vid).

Also, if I'm not mistaken your consistency drops drastically when you move around. When you're holding your position or moving to your FH, you still have good consistency although when you move to your FH, your weight transfer is a bit too drastic causing you to misposition the ball (unless you intentionally wanted to kill all those shots) but when you move to your BH, your consistency drops noticeably.

In your loops against backspin, everything looks good but you could relax your shoulder a bit more, but again, you were relax during the last exercise. The only thing is that it seems you find it difficult to go through the ball and when you do, you do it quite aggressively which I'd assume could mean that it's not something that you practice on a regular basis.

Now, here comes the hard part which is out of your hand. Finding a practice partner that can challenge you. I remember it was in one of PechPong's videos where he said that he simply is not used to people returning his loops and it's only during the high level matches that he realizes that he needs to be more consistent with his shots.

Overall, I'd say work on your recovery, stop watching the ball and holding your pose and move a bit more to your right and left while practicing your FH loops (footwork) and you should start kicking some more asses in no time.

 

[blahness]

One more comment I had was that the FH swing looks a bit too big because you're completely straightening your arm during the backswing. One thing I learnt from Coach Meng to keep the backswing compact is to keep it bent and elbow close to the body. You straighten the arm before hitting by having the forearm lagging behind your body when you start your forward swing. So it's more bent - straighten - bent. This actually makes your stroke even more explosive and compact while still retaining most of the huge benefits of the straight arm FH (the snapping of the forearm from straight to bent provides a huge boost in acceleration). But these structural changes can be quite hard to implement too so I wouldn't stress too much on it.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Big swinger eh my friend? You'll need 09C to give those big swing its proper due.

There is no other way. This is the only way.

 

[kingkimchi]

Since last week i reached my all time high TTR but started struggling against players that are around 50-100 TTR points above me. Naturally that is not a big thing, but these games against those presumably better players were mostly really close. Many times i lost 2:3.
Ofcourse you can just tell me to train more, become better and you will win those but besides that i found several critical errors in my techniques that would have given me an edge over several opponents.

To give a little more insight, here is how my game plan usually works and how i force my opponents to play my game and not theirs:
Around a year ago i managed to learn to flick almost everything with my bh. Therefore i mostly serve short and flick those returns in 90% of the time. The same goes with almost every serve my opponents give me. If they serve short there is usually not enough backspin to prevent my attack. Long underspin serves are getting looped too depending on where they land.
The main issues usually start right afterwards. The better opponents (and i have a lot of those in my current league) can easily block those flicks or even counter them lightly. While the block itself is not the problem, the follow up attack that is crucially NEEDED is. Often times i try to do the FZD or Lin Shidong and clap those block but the successrate of those shots are too low, so i lose self-confidence and stop my followups. Not mentioning that they are quite risky in themselves.
Therefore i want to get better in my 2- wing loops and attacks overall so i can steparound too and use the safer forehand attack.
So i am back into more fh-training and seeing several issues that make me struggle, attacking blocks and weaker attacks (especially those):

- My wrist often times move down in mid-movement, which gives the ball much sidespin and it curves too much to the left side.
- My followup topspins has the tendency to go wide and nowadays feel somewhat off, not sure if my racketangle is the issue here or the angle of my movement overall
- My stroke could be too hard as well, but changing that would be the biggest pain imo, because if i currently try to play more cautious i tend to hit edges reeeeeeeeeeally often.

Maybe you find some more errors i werent aware of, so feel free to comment to your hearts content.
If you have any ideas and oppinions on how i might be able to fix the mentioned issues asap i would be greatfull too.

So here is some footage of the shitshow^^:

I used to have this problem too... but I met a good coach (he used to coach slovakia internationally and was previously coaching the cnt, he also coached Thomas kainath, you can see him in the video titled "Rare Footage of FZD at 11 years old, he is sitting in the back)

Now back to ur fh. Use your waist more, I can see some subtle waist movement, but your core powers your body. Loosen your arm and forearm, only tighten your wrist and forearm slightly after the stroke has been done, then return your arm to the orginal position and be ready for the next ball (don't leave your hand under the table as you will have trouble adjusting). To avoid hooking your arm, extend your arm in a straight line, then adjust your arm so that your fist is snug under your armpit, that is the golden ratio, you have to do all this to get it right. Good Luck. takes ome time adjusting but you'll get there.

 

[ben1229]

Power swing, from 30%,45%,65%,75% 20 balls each power level will help. And maybe a better partner?

 

[blahness]

Power swing, from 30%,45%,65%,75% 20 balls each power level will help. And maybe a better partner?

Yeah his partner doesn't really block properly, sometimes he adds energy to the block by moving forward and sometimes he goes back and even down with the block which is gonna kill all the topspin on the ball and even add some weird underspin. But it's good practice in terms of adjustments. It forces you to actually react and adjust to each ball on its own merit, not just assume that it's a topspin block to your FH.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Yeah his partner doesn't really block properly, sometimes he adds energy to the block by moving forward and sometimes he goes back and even down with the block which is gonna kill all the topspin on the ball and even add some weird underspin. But it's good practice in terms of adjustments. It forces you to actually react and adjust to each ball on its own merit, not just assume that it's a topspin block to your FH.

OK this is a pet peeves of mine. Rant coming up...
1. This is why sometimes we are "forced" to pay a certain professional fee to REAL coaches to practice multi-ball.
2. Not all sparring / ball feeding partner are created equal.
3. There are those ignoramus who will scorn and snigger at others, stating, " You are a fool to pay people to feed you balls when you can do it for free with your club mates "
4. There are those ignoramus who block back with all funny angles and weird spin because of their poor / untrained techniques and when you are unable to topspin back, they will say you have poor topspin technique not understanding that they themselves give poor inconsistent blocks.
5. When one points out that their block is poor, they will say, in competition aka real world, the opponent will not make it easy for one to topspin back. They cannot tell the difference between practice and real game play... sigh.
6. That is why sometimes, when we play with low level players we will get surprised by all these weird placement because of their erratic ball return that they themselves had no idea what happen too. I mean, they too have no idea what spin that comes to them nor what spin they impart on the ball. To them, as long as the ball lands on the other side it is good.
7. I could go on and on with my rant but I'll stop at 6.