Japanese Penhold Tactics + Advice

BlackCat510 · Jan 29, 2022

Hello forum 👋

I have recently changed from casual level shakehand to casual jpen. I love watching jpen players and wanted to keep the style alive. I currently just play with my friends, but I am planning to join a club and I would like to improve. My setup is the Xiom Power Hinoki + Nittaku Fastarc G1.

What sort of tactics should I pursue in a game situation?

1. Is there any way of accessing any good advice or drills on footwork? I play ping pong for fun and manage ok, but I will soon have a difficult time if I start playing club players. There are no jpen coaches where I live, so can anyone point me towards any videos or can give advice themself. I’m fairly fit and fast, but having good footwork will improve my movement stacks.

2. Should I pursue having short, spinny serves? I play with a fairly spin sensitive rubber and short game isn’t J-pens strength, so using short spinny serves is kind of a double edged sword. Should I use longer, faster serves to get into the rally quicker and play to Jpens topspin strength, or use spinny short serves to 3rd ball attack?

3. Is there any advice you can give for the short game technique? My short game isn’t terrible, but I’m forced into avoiding playing spinny pushes to avoid popping that ball up. Obviously my setup is fast, is there any way I can adapt to that and produce spinnier, safer pushes? I also have no idea how to forehand flick, so I’m at a bit of a weakness until I get into the rally.

Thanks for any advice you can provide. What tactics do you play as a Jpen player? No worries if you can’t help, it’s a really niche style, but any help will be greatly appreciated.

Dominikk85 · Jan 29, 2022

This channel has many good jpen videos, it is korean but many have English subtitles

passifid · Jan 29, 2022

At a casual level learn sidespin. Serve long and try to punish the predictable returns.

FOr the short game just practice. JPEN has an amazing short game but remember your only big weapon is forehand topspin so your whole game needs to be around thinking how to get them to let you hit a forehand topspin

Dominikk85 · Jan 29, 2022

From what I have seen in videos you don't want to get into a rally but open up first and ideally hit a winner or at least a strong shot that forces a weak return that you can attack again.

At the rec level you probably can get away with some tbp rallies

SFF_lib · Jan 30, 2022

RSM tutorial

I watched this tutorial in the past, quite valuable.

alas26 · Jul 10, 2023

So now, over a year into it, how has your Jpen game come along? Have you stuck with it? Any tactics that particularly work?

SFF_lib · Jul 10, 2023

alas26 said:
So now, over a year into it, how has your Jpen game come along? Have you stuck with it? Any tactics that particularly work?

I would love to see OP stick with it. It’s a pleasure to see any penholder play.

I used to play penhold too 😁

JJ Ng · Jul 11, 2023

SFF_lib said:
I would love to see OP stick with it. It’s a pleasure to see any penholder play.

I used to play penhold too 😁

The OP was last seen in Dec 2022 so most likely he is not on the forum anymore.

I used to play J penhold. Then my coach failed spectacularly to add backhand smash to my repertoire. The way he taught me backhand smash just never fit in with my body and my style. So we added long pips on the backside when I am too far away from the table and I cannot run fast enough, I just used the long pips to chop the ball back into play.

Then reverse penhold came out and I switched to chinese penhold with inverted rubbers on both sides.

I took 7-8 years away from the sport and I came back to play about 4 years ago. I immediatley switched to shakehand. I am older now. I cannot move that fast.

alas26 · Jul 11, 2023

JJ Ng said:
The OP was last seen in Dec 2022 so most likely he is not on the forum anymore.

I used to play J penhold. Then my coach failed spectacularly to add backhand smash to my repertoire. The way he taught me backhand smash just never fit in with my body and my style. So we added long pips on the backside when I am too far away from the table and I cannot run fast enough, I just used the long pips to chop the ball back into play.

Then reverse penhold came out and I switched to chinese penhold with inverted rubbers on both sides.

I took 7-8 years away from the sport and I came back to play about 4 years ago. I immediatley switched to shakehand. I am older now. I cannot move that fast.

How did you like playing with long pips in the backside of jpen? I am considering doing that just as an option to play with.

JJ Ng · Jul 12, 2023

alas26 said:
How did you like playing with long pips in the backside of jpen? I am considering doing that just as an option to play with.

Good! If you know how to use long pips properly, I highly recommend it.

First of all, the back of a Jpen blade is usually a little slippery. I recommend putting long pips on the back with no sponge (i.e. ox version). Once you put on the long pips securely, you can actually grip your paddle even better. I played with that set up for like 5-6 years in my youth.

Close to the table, I have used long pips to return some serves as well. In my youth, I had more trouble reading the spins on the serve coming at me so the long pips came in handy (not like I dont have any trouble today but that's another story).

If I sensed that my opponents know how to play against long pips, I would use traditional penhold backhand plus strong forehand loops. I would not use the pips at all. When someone knows how to play against long pips, they will really really pin you down. Long pips would become a liability.

But if I sensed my opponent did not know how to play against long pips, then I used that side more often.

Another situation. If I found the opponents to be conservative and we keep on pushing backspin to the backhand side for a couple times, when I got lazy to do a step around forehand on the backhand side, I would just turn my paddle over and use my long pips to "hit" the backspin ball. The ball would inevitably go back as topspin, fast to the opponent. Then I would turn my paddle back around and get ready to block on the backhand side and to loop on the forehand side. It was just another way to open up a rally.

I regret that I did not know how to chop block with long pips when I played with it before. I can see how that is very useful nowadays.

And when I was further away from the table, and my foot work sucked, I would just chop it back with the pips on the backhand side and I would regroup.

Finally, again if I knew that my opponent did not know how to handle long pips, I might serve long wobbly no spin serve with my pips side once in a while. Just turn the paddle over and serve long, fast, and deep. It was pretty easy and simple.

I really enjoyed that style. No complaint.

Then I switched to reverse penhold backhand so I left the long pips day behind..

Nowdays, I play mostly with shakehand (like 98% of the time) because I want to get better. Once in a while, I will take out a blade with long pips just for fun.

alas26 · Aug 12, 2023

JJ Ng said:
Good! If you know how to use long pips properly, I highly recommend it.

First of all, the back of a Jpen blade is usually a little slippery. I recommend putting long pips on the back with no sponge (i.e. ox version). Once you put on the long pips securely, you can actually grip your paddle even better. I played with that set up for like 5-6 years in my youth.

Close to the table, I have used long pips to return some serves as well. In my youth, I had more trouble reading the spins on the serve coming at me so the long pips came in handy (not like I dont have any trouble today but that's another story).

If I sensed that my opponents know how to play against long pips, I would use traditional penhold backhand plus strong forehand loops. I would not use the pips at all. When someone knows how to play against long pips, they will really really pin you down. Long pips would become a liability.

But if I sensed my opponent did not know how to play against long pips, then I used that side more often.

Another situation. If I found the opponents to be conservative and we keep on pushing backspin to the backhand side for a couple times, when I got lazy to do a step around forehand on the backhand side, I would just turn my paddle over and use my long pips to "hit" the backspin ball. The ball would inevitably go back as topspin, fast to the opponent. Then I would turn my paddle back around and get ready to block on the backhand side and to loop on the forehand side. It was just another way to open up a rally.

I regret that I did not know how to chop block with long pips when I played with it before. I can see how that is very useful nowadays.

And when I was further away from the table, and my foot work sucked, I would just chop it back with the pips on the backhand side and I would regroup.

Finally, again if I knew that my opponent did not know how to handle long pips, I might serve long wobbly no spin serve with my pips side once in a while. Just turn the paddle over and serve long, fast, and deep. It was pretty easy and simple.

I really enjoyed that style. No complaint.

Then I switched to reverse penhold backhand so I left the long pips day behind..

Nowdays, I play mostly with shakehand (like 98% of the time) because I want to get better. Once in a while, I will take out a blade with long pips just for fun.

Thanks for the insights! Very interesting to hear your tactics with jpen and long pips. One of the things I really enjoy right now is the simplicity of the game as the forehand is the main weapon. It feels pure and free compared to shakehand or cpen (how I learned -with rpb). I fear adding long pips would cloud my judgment in game and would require lots of practice to eventually work it in but I am open to it.

One thing that doesn't seem straight forward to me is glueing long pips with no sponge and also glueing anything on the back of a single ply hinoki blade... any tips there?

JJ Ng · Aug 13, 2023

alas26 said:
Thanks for the insights! Very interesting to hear your tactics with jpen and long pips. One of the things I really enjoy right now is the simplicity of the game as the forehand is the main weapon. It feels pure and free compared to shakehand or cpen (how I learned -with rpb). I fear adding long pips would cloud my judgment in game and would require lots of practice to eventually work it in but I am open to it.

One thing that doesn't seem straight forward to me is glueing long pips with no sponge and also glueing anything on the back of a single ply hinoki blade... any tips there?

A couple thoughts from me.

I actually think c-pen with RPB is very hard. When I switched to c-pen with RPB, I played ok. But since I grew up playing traditional J-pen, c-pen with RPB was only used sparingly. I imagine that someone grew up playing with c-pen with RPB and ONLY use RPB on the backhand side, it is a very good style. In other words, play like Wang Hao and not Ma Lin; surprisingly, Xu Xin, even though he came after Wang Hao, use the same side to push balls short over the table quite a bit. Wang Hao would just use RPB to flip those short pushes.

I did ask my current coach about switching from shakehand back to c-pen with RPB. I was joking with him. But his serious answer was, "Well, if you want to switch it back, then you need to use RPB only for about a year until you are proficient with it and not chicken out in the middle." I paraphrased him of course but I knew what he meant. To be good at RPB, it is a whole different level of committment.

Two big issues with me after switcing to c-pen with RPB were 1) the racket got a lot heavier. The whole point of penhold is to be nimble and use your wrist to take care of the ball over the table (otherwise you might as well be a shakehander). When you add a sufficient 1.8mm or 2.0mm inverted sponge on the backhand side, the whole set-up became heavier and it negates part of the over-the-table nimbleness of penhold and 2) I had trouble gripping the paddle, especially when I would sweat profusely. I mean, after all, the backside is a slippery inverted rubber. My fingers slipping would inevitably cost me a couple points each match.

I agree with you. There is something inherently simple about the j-pen one side style. But you must have very very good footwork. At my age, I want to enjoy table tennis. I don't want to do that much work so I switched to shakehand about 4-5 years ago.

On another side topic, I asked my coach, jokingly, that I would like to play with short pips in my backhand (AKA Mima Ito style). He looked at me and thought about it (as you can tell, I like to jokingly pick my coach's brain). He then said that I would enjoy playing with inverted on both sides more. I agree with him. I started playing when I was young. The fundamentals for both forehand and backhand are there. And once you are proficient with inverted on both sides, it is a more fun style to play and you are not boxed in to be close to the table.

As for ox-long pips (no sponge), my coach put it on for me when I was younger so I am not sure how he did it. I could clearly see that the black backside sheet was still there so my coach literally just took some glue and glued it right on. When you look at ITTF rule book, there is nothing illegal about it. I have thought about getting a custom made paddle from SDC and from what I read from his website, anything that is majority wood is fair game to use as a paddle.

If you want to sand down the black backside sheet and the apply the ox-long pips, I guess you can do so as well.

There are also a couple jpen blade that the backside is without the black sheet. Please see below for a couple links.

Finally, I really do think an ox-long pips on the backside, even if you do not use it, make it easier to grip the jpen anyway. So if you consider it to be an expensive "backside black sheet," then so be it. Just because you put it on, you don't have to use it necessarily. And it does not add much if any weight to the overall paddle.