Learning New serves

[blizzardz]

I am a penholder and i find some of the serves by TACHSHOW to be REALLY good.

How do you learn new serves? By "continuous rigorous practice" or is there some other magic charm?

 

[Giangt]

What I do is that, every time before my training starts I use 15-30 min service training. I try to vary spin, placement and "hiding" with different movements so the opponent have trouble reading the spin. I do whatever that works for me so I recommend you to play around with some different services. Keyword here is to loosen your wrist. I have attached a video exercise to help strengthen your shoulder and wrist called "the pizzaslice". Good effort training

 

[ducksick]

Thanks for sharing

 

[blizzardz]

What I do is that, every time before my training starts I use 15-30 min service training. I try to vary spin, placement and "hiding" with different movements so the opponent have trouble reading the spin. I do whatever that works for me so I recommend you to play around with some different services. Keyword here is to loosen your wrist. I have attached a video exercise to help strengthen your shoulder and wrist called "the pizzaslice". Good effort training

Thanks. I was planning to start another thread asking for other off-table exercises. This one was good.

 

[azlan]

Yeah Giangt, I do the same too. I come in early and practice my serves.

 

[Giangt]

Thanks. I was planning to start another thread asking for other off-table exercises. This one was good.

No worries mate And how convenient ;-)

 

[Giangt]

Yeah Giangt, I do the same too. I come in early and practice my serves.

you should learn Ding Ning's Hooke service It's so awesome, I confused just even looking at it on video ....haha

 

[azlan]

you should learn Ding Ning's Hooke service It's so awesome, I confused just even looking at it on video ....haha

Funny you mentioned it buddy..I did try ages ago, but I can never really pull it off! Really is a good serve, isn't it?

 

[Giangt]

Funny you mentioned it buddy..I did try ages ago, but I can never really pull it off! Really is a good serve, isn't it?

Are you kidding!? You should definitely try it again then! Yeah, is awesome where she makes an ace and the ball pick up speed on the bounce away from the table

 

[olvarox]

If you want to serve short, where would the first bounce of your ball be? Close to your own edge of the table, or close to the net?

 

[Bollforte94]

close to the net

 

[Scorpnox]

In the middle of your own part of the table...

 

[blizzardz]

I have been learning the tomahawk serve and today when i was using it in a game, i find that its one of the easiest of the serves to return(read 'hit back' in the return).
Only if there is really amazing control and you control the bounce so that it pitches close to the net, then it kind of serves the purpose, but again, the time taken to recover from the 'crouch' does not seem to be worth it. Any other comments/thoughts?

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

I have been learning the tomahawk serve and today when i was using it in a game, i find that its one of the easiest of the serves to return(read 'hit back' in the return).
Only if there is really amazing control and you control the bounce so that it pitches close to the net, then it kind of serves the purpose, but again, the time taken to recover from the 'crouch' does not seem to be worth it. Any other comments/thoughts?

The first thing I think is that, if you work on one serve and you work on it a lot, and you are trying to get the right contact and the right timing on snapping the wrist and you can get really good spin on the ball, then you get better at any number of other serves, because the thing that gets you a high level of spin in one serve will get you a high level of spin in any serve. For example, when you are doing a pendulum serve and you work on a pendulum underspin serve and you start getting a high level of spin, then you can get that with a pendulum sidespin and a pendulum topspin. But, you can also get that level of spin with a reverse pendulum underspin, sidespin or topspin and you should be able to get it with different variations of a hook serve or a tomahawk serve.

The second thing I would say is that, once you have heavy spin, then you mix in no-spin serves and you have one more weapon.

The third thing I will say is that the Tomahawk serve works well against some players and not so well against other players. But if you are only doing one version you are going to be in trouble because, over time, anyone will figure the one that you are doing out. But, if you are varying from topspin to sidespin to underspin with the Tomahawk serve, it is as good as any serve with that sidespin. I do agree that getting set from that awkward position is a little silly though.

The fourth thing I will say is that, no matter how good your serves are, a good player will get them back, so it is worth having a few simple serves that set you up for an attack, rather than worrying about serves that are fancy and supposed to win points outright for you. Knowing what to expect back from particular serves and getting set for that, and then adjusting if something different comes back, is more of what a player needs to do to get to improve his/her serves. The coolest serve in the world is not worth that much if you are not set for what might come back and you are not ready to take command of the point.

A good no-spin serve has won more points for Ma Lin over the years by setting up his third ball attack than you could imagine. If you learn cool serve variations, you just need to be prepared for what will come back, because a good player will get them back.

That being said, I love practicing serves and working on placement and increasing spin and improving the acceleration of my wrist after the ball sinks into the topsheet and I can feel the topsheet grab the ball. When I practice serves, the spin on my loops also ends up increasing because the contact for looping and the acceleration to get the heavy spin, is very similar to the contact and acceleration of the blade face for serves to have heavy spin.

 

[Der_Echte]

I am a penholder and i find some of the serves by TACHSHOW to be REALLY good.

How do you learn new serves? By "continuous rigorous practice" or is there some other magic charm?

Well Blizzardz, you are doing one of them right now by talking about it on forums. We can discover stuff on our own simply by going at it with a bucket of balls, but there is little direction and inspiration in doing that. Seeing a serve you like, whether live or on a vid is an excellent inspiration and you get to ask about it from someone who has likely done it when you talk about it on the forums.

BTW, good choice of Aurus dude.

 

[Michal_Z]

Hmm.. For me - since someone here explained me what the reverse serve is, I decided to try them..
Without any training I just decided to try them in some matches and. . guess what???
I scored pretty much with it! Suddenly it is my best serve, I mean - wtf ???
I never trained those serves and .. maybe I am talented or what
But those serves are short, spiny and obviously pretty hard to read..
First games I just made them and had no idea what spin is on that
I usually won the points..
Following games I was trying to put that spin what I wanted into it and it worked even better!
Well.. thanks, its my favorite serve now!

 

[blahness]

Hmm.. For me - since someone here explained me what the reverse serve is, I decided to try them..
Without any training I just decided to try them in some matches and. . guess what???
I scored pretty much with it! Suddenly it is my best serve, I mean - wtf ???
I never trained those serves and .. maybe I am talented or what
But those serves are short, spiny and obviously pretty hard to read..
First games I just made them and had no idea what spin is on that
I usually won the points..
Following games I was trying to put that spin what I wanted into it and it worked even better!
Well.. thanks, its my favorite serve now!

Yeah, I always learn new serves via impromptu... In fact, my problem is that I really like to experiment with new serves rather than making the ones I have really good...
But it's good in the sense that serving helps you feel the mechanism of spin generation. I can officially serve the pendulum, reverse pendulum, heavy underspin/no-spin serves, hook serves and tomahawk serves with pretty good results...

Now, if the rest of my game caught up with my serving skills I would really jump up in my position in the club...