Side by Side movement and your position with respect to the table

[KM1976]

Hi Friends,

I have an another question with regards to position/movement. Since I feel that this question is also equally important I thought of creating a seperate request for it.

When we stand in a neutral receive position, our one leg is slightly behind the other leg, which one, well, it depends on from which hand you play. For me, being a left-hander, my left leg stays behind the right leg.

Now here is the issue, when I do drills which involve alternate forehand and backhand, I have noticed that I tend to move in too much to the table when I return from my forehand to my backhand. Due to this, my backhand stroke becomes cramped and I just try to put the ball on the other side. Once this happens during the drill or the rally, I just can't readjust my position and after that all balls which I play from either side are out of position strokes.

Have you guys also experienced something similar while doing footwork drills? If yes, then please share your experiences on how you resolved this problem.

Thank you for taking your time to go through my post and for sharing your experience.

 

[Persistence TT]

I think this is a common issue in transition FH to BH and opposite. I suppose you execute your FH with ease so what you need to do is keep the same distance from the table when you execute your BH. Since your body momentum is going forward after the FH execution, u need to have a small hop back wit your feet in your ready position for BH.

To recognize the mistake, tell a friend to sit parallel to the table (like a referee) and to your side, in order to check your feet and body position after the FH. This way he will see exactly what goes wrong, because sometimes its not so easy to understand for ourselves the mistakes we are doing subconsciously

 

[Der_Echte]

If it is the situation where you move in to flick a ball that is to your short FH, then you step under the table, flick, and as you impact, you are pushing off with the same foot backwards, so that you end up in neutral stance or FH ready stance. If you do not immediately push off, opponent will have an easy time jamming you with any soft ball he hits deep on the table away from your FH.

If you are a step away from the table and do a FH loop, then somehow end up too close to the table, it is time to look at your stroke mechanics, how you transfer weight, your positioning, movement to ball, whether you impact ball in effective strike zone, how you keep weight low on toes after shot, how effective your wide low stance and crouch are and how you stay balanced.

 

[Der_Echte]

If you are doing a multiball or single ball drill with partner or coach that feeds you one ball to BH which you drive or loop, then use two step, hop, or slide footwork to FH, then bounce back to BH to repeat forever... then everything I said above comes into play even moar. Especially on BH wing, your positioning must be good or you impact ball out of effective strike zone and your quality and consistency go way south. If you are not in position for the FH, you might be able to cheat once on position or stance or strike zone and still land the shot, but you will be hopelessly out of balance and unable to move effectively to BH.

Many players who are unable to keep up such a drill are usually doing one of the following wrong...

- play too upright
- impact ball out of effective strike zone
- not in good position
- not moving well enough
- are off balance
- flaw in stroke mechanics and use wrong muscles wrong way
- hit the ball when it is too low in flight path
- do not have weight on balls of feet
- do not have effective weight transfer with legs/hips
- have ineffective grip or too tight death grip on bat
- have poor shoes
- poor crouch (not low, not wide, not neutral or a little FH open)