How do you guys perform a backhand topspin?

[Yxoons]

What's helped me is to take it even a step further. Don't even start with the BH drive, just start with the BH lob. I just try to lob the ball as low above the net as possible, make sure I can do that with good timing, kinetic chain, etc. first. Then I start adding some spin.

Another thing that helped me a lot is to not drop the head of the racket. That's because if you do that, then you'd have to bring the racket head up then over the ball, and that's just too much curving around the ball to be consistent during a match. My coach kept telling me "don't curve around the ball, just go through it!" If I just keep my racket head up high, pointing to the left and a bit up, then I can directly hit the ball and brush over/through it at contact.

Of course, everyone is different. We all have different problems in our motion, which require different fixes. Those are some of the fixes that worked for me.

Definitely hit through the ball while brushing over it. You need to find your own balance in this. Hitting through the ball will give it the speed/power to go over to the other side of the table, while your brushing will give it the arch to land. The quicker you can do this motion the lower the arch will be and the ball will have more quality. I believe this is also what they use to teach a lot of young players first in China, to hit into the ball first (it will go long), to generate enough speed/power, then add spin to get it on the table. This is not so much an issue for older players though, as they're able to add power more easily, but need to focus on spin more.

This is also why many who close their racket angle more without correct timing/technique will have shots going into the net or maybe even onto their own table, because they don't hit through the ball enough

 

[NextLevel]

While this isn't exactly how the Chinese do it, this technique held up pretty well for me for many years, even with the ball change.

The modern technique I try to emulate this one - TTD actually has a tutorial from Pitchford himself in the Coaching link:

I like this coach a lot but I can't find the best videos anymore. But @victormanriquey the equipment expert has a good site with links to good tutorials, hopefully he will post it or you can go to his site:

Table Tennis Equipment Help

The wrong gear can quietly slow your progress. Get a personalised equipment analysis that matches your level and playing style — so you can focus on improving.

www.tabletennisequipmenthelp.com

 

[TTstarter]

While forehand topspin has a large snapping movement, backhand topspin is relatively shorter, but try to achieve the same snapping/whipping on the contact.

A good practice is to loop backspin balls to your backhand, to get the feeling of grapping the ball and getting a prominent arch on the ball. You can also do this to normal topspin balls, however the arch would be higher.

Once you get the timing/feeling for putting high spin into the ball, you can close your racket more aggressively, and shorten the movement to more of a whipping motion. If you flatten the racket and curve it inwards on the withdrawal it can help you shorten the forwarding motion as well as be more powerful on the shot, as you want the shot to come from inside to outside, rather than having the racket in front of you far and push further forward.

The more you close the racket, the more you need to quickly whip your racket to get enough spin on the ball, otherwise you'll keep putting it into the net. Often enough this is what I see with people struggling with backhand, is that they don't release enough energy into the ball while having the closed racket angle

My issue is that even if I seem to have something going on, it often goes off the rails, like sometimes the arc is to big and the ball is slower, sometimes it feels like im just wacking the ball like kreanga without reallly using much power and have aiming issues, other times it doesnt feel like a topspin (that kind of grippy sensation) at all but it flies ok and lands ok with some kind of an arc, the mayor issue with that is that I cant really replicate a shot that I have no feeling for

 

[Yxoons]

My issue is that even if I seem to have something going on, it often goes off the rails, like sometimes the arc is to big and the ball is slower, sometimes it feels like im just wacking the ball like kreanga without reallly using much power and have aiming issues, other times it doesnt feel like a topspin (that kind of grippy sensation) at all but it flies ok and lands ok with some kind of an arc, the mayor issue with that is that I cant really replicate a shot that I have no feeling for

I'm not saying it is for certain, but as you said you play with a relatively stiff outer carbon blade right now that is sealed which only makes the feeling less, but at least for my sake it's easy to tell with feedback from the racket when you hit the ball with high quality (good speed but also high spin). You can try just looping backspin balls to see if you can get the feeling of gripping the ball there, keeping the speed relatively slow to get a good arch, then go from there.

I will also say, the feedback when gripping the ball is higher on hybrid rubbers than tensioned, I would assume from your profile that the Loki is your BH rubber

 

[TTstarter]

I'm not saying it is for certain, but as you said you play with a relatively stiff outer carbon blade right now that is sealed which only makes the feeling less, but at least for my sake it's easy to tell with feedback from the racket when you hit the ball with high quality (good speed but also high spin). You can try just looping backspin balls to see if you can get the feeling of gripping the ball there, keeping the speed relatively slow to get a good arch, then go from there.

I will also say, the feedback when gripping the ball is higher on hybrid rubbers than tensioned, I would assume from your profile that the Loki is your BH rubber

Ive tried looping backspin balls, but without proper body foundation my accuracy is really bad, and the way that I feel most feedback is by using the body left to right wich isnt the best because the timing is a bitch and the accuracy is even lower, I was working on another way to use the body that seems to work better but the feeling isnt really clear (in any case, ill change my blade this week and hopefully ill get the feedback im needing)

 

[Yxoons]

Ive tried looping backspin balls, but without proper body foundation my accuracy is really bad, and the way that I feel most feedback is by using the body left to right wich isnt the best because the timing is a bitch and the accuracy is even lower, I was working on another way to use the body that seems to work better but the feeling isnt really clear (in any case, ill change my blade this week and hopefully ill get the feedback im needing)

To get the best feeling for the movement you want to simplify it as much as possible, so only brush with your hand/wrist, get the feeling for the grip on the ball. Adding body and energy transfer only removes feedback and adds more point of failures with the technique. I think you should try to just stand and do the movement as basic as you can with a brushing/fanning motion upwards, limiting as many factors as you can, and then work from there by adding more forward motion and then implementing the energy transfer from the body.