Technique advice for me

[BobFL]

Engage your wrist more.
Relax at the point of contact. Be loose,
like hitting with a lasso.
You look really stiff at times and that kills the pace and quality of your shots.

 

[dingyibvs]

Engage your wrist more.
Relax at the point of contact. Be loose,
like hitting with a lasso.
You look really stiff at times and that kills the pace and quality of your shots.

Absolutely, especially on the BH side. I get nervous when a ball comes to my BH side and really tighten up.

 

[BobFL]

Take a look at Liam Pitchford bh. Now that is a super loose wrist that creates tons of action and pace on the ball.
I like to watch his backhand execution on youtube at 0.25 speed. You can see much better what is going on and learn.
His bh really is a thing of beauty.
I also recommend Liang Jingkun and Lin Shidong for bh purposes.

 

[blahness]

I'm trying to add a bit more body movement to all my BH shots now in practice. Due to me being in a FH stance rather often, I think full weight transfer is not realistic, the pros don't do that either. But certainly they do use the whole body, so I need to do that more starting from warm-ups.

You can actually still do BH weight transfer with FH stance (left foot front and right foot back), the key is to stick your right knee forward to enable the inwards hip rotation. It's very subtle but pretty much all the pros use some degree of hip rotation in their strokes. Imo once you learn this and the use of the fingers to create spin on the BH, your BH will level up very significantly.

 

[NextLevel]

OK, based on what @Der_Echte was saying earlier, I'm gonna guess that I shouldn't back off the table so easily. With that said, I think all 3 skills are things I should possess, so I'm gonna modify my random FH/BH drill. Instead of 50/50 FH/BH, I'll change it to 30/70, with the two extra BH balls being variable location low speed (speed 10, instead of 25) balls. I'm pretty comfortable with short balls to the FH side, so unless I find it to be an issue later on I'll keep that the same, except making the 3 remaining balls variable location. This way even though I get FH balls less frequently, they'll still cover the whole FH side. I plan to BH loop the shallow balls to my deep BH side, then pivot and use my FH when it comes closer to the middle.

This should approximate real game scenarios better.

With some important exceptions (and no, Kreanga is not one of them), the backhand is rarely as powerful as the forehand for any individual. Most good backhands are good because of the spin or speed element, not because of the absolute power element. Focus exclusively on getting extremely heavy spin and consistency on the backhand - it will help you more because your forehand is overwhelming. I would argue that you aren't helping yourself by putting D09c on your backhand for what you do, whether it is power or spin, since you are building out the stroke. D05 would probably give you more of the quality you want. You can get a forehand any time you really want one if you have a consistent backhand, all you have to do is loop down the line with a fade and then give more of the table to your forehand.

For the technique, you just need yo get into starting the stroke with the hips and the back, and that is easier when you practice it as part of footwork in my experience. It might also need a mild forehand elbow technical adjustment, but that is not really necessary unless you want to transition fast,

 

[dingyibvs]

Take a look at Liam Pitchford bh. Now that is a super loose wrist that creates tons of action and pace on the ball.
I like to watch his backhand execution on youtube at 0.25 speed. You can see much better what is going on and learn.
His bh really is a thing of beauty.
I also recommend Liang Jingkun and Lin Shidong for bh purposes.

Oh yeah, I watch those guys' BH a lot for sure. I watch entire matches of FZD, WCQ, and LSD in 1/4 speed!

You can actually still do BH weight transfer with FH stance (left foot front and right foot back), the key is to stick your right knee forward to enable the inwards hip rotation. It's very subtle but pretty much all the pros use some degree of hip rotation in their strokes. Imo once you learn this and the use of the fingers to create spin on the BH, your BH will level up very significantly.

I think I do that in practice, but in real games I tighten up and everything becomes really stiff. I'm just so worried and timings, angles, etc. and it's not very natural to me.

With some important exceptions (and no, Kreanga is not one of them), the backhand is rarely as powerful as the forehand for any individual. Most good backhands are good because of the spin or speed element, not because of the absolute power element. Focus exclusively on getting extremely heavy spin and consistency on the backhand - it will help you more because your forehand is overwhelming. I would argue that you aren't helping yourself by putting D09c on your backhand for what you do, whether it is power or spin, since you are building out the stroke. D05 would probably give you more of the quality you want. You can get a forehand any time you really want one if you have a consistent backhand, all you have to do is loop down the line with a fade and then give more of the table to your forehand.

For the technique, you just need yo get into starting the stroke with the hips and the back, and that is easier when you practice it as part of footwork in my experience. It might also need a mild forehand elbow technical adjustment, but that is not really necessary unless you want to transition fast,

I played with D05 for a couple months, I felt it was too fast and doesn't provide enough dwell. D09c offered me a lot more safety, I felt like I could really grab hold of the ball. I'm definitively gonna follow your advice and try to spin more on my BH side, I'm starting to work it into my practices. I think I need to learn that before I can learn how to kill with power. I need better spin and placement first and foremost. Yesterday a guy was doing weak flicks of a lot of my services. On the FH side I was able to loop it back, but I was just blocking it back on the BH side and then he would just kill it. One time I tried to just spin thr ball down the line, he couldn't get in position to even make an attempt on the ball. He also served primarily long no spin balls to my BH side, which I felt that I should kill, but couldn't. I think I should've just spinned it back instead.

This is gonna be priority #1 for me in the next matches I play. Spin on the BH side, then stay close to the table. I'll figure out the rest from there on.

 

[Der_Echte]

Absolutely, especially on the BH side. I get nervous when a ball comes to my BH side and really tighten up.

The big problem is tightening too early, many adults tighten arm and or shoulder, it kills whip and power transfer, plus adds a bunch of errors or lost quality.

When you learn to time the firming on BH, you can surely hit with power very quickly with very little space in a flash.. it is a matter of knowing how to be ready and accelerate quickly. Fortunately, this is not so difficult to develop if you see/learn how and practice.

 

[NextLevel]

Oh yeah, I watch those guys' BH a lot for sure. I watch entire matches of FZD, WCQ, and LSD in 1/4 speed!


I think I do that in practice, but in real games I tighten up and everything becomes really stiff. I'm just so worried and timings, angles, etc. and it's not very natural to me.


I played with D05 for a couple months, I felt it was too fast and doesn't provide enough dwell. D09c offered me a lot more safety, I felt like I could really grab hold of the ball. I'm definitively gonna follow your advice and try to spin more on my BH side, I'm starting to work it into my practices. I think I need to learn that before I can learn how to kill with power. I need better spin and placement first and foremost. Yesterday a guy was doing weak flicks of a lot of my services. On the FH side I was able to loop it back, but I was just blocking it back on the BH side and then he would just kill it. One time I tried to just spin thr ball down the line, he couldn't get in position to even make an attempt on the ball. He also served primarily long no spin balls to my BH side, which I felt that I should kill, but couldn't. I think I should've just spinned it back instead.

This is gonna be priority #1 for me in the next matches I play. Spin on the BH side, then stay close to the table. I'll figure out the rest from there on.

Well maybe Dignics 05 is the wrong idea, but if you use D09c to spin, you will get suboptimal results for a while and a lot of fairly important backhand strokes which will help you a lot will not get rewarded (aggressive punching and blocking off the bounce is the biggest one). But I fully support the idea of using the same rubber on both sides and I think two sided looping is the way to go, D09c is just a hard rubber to get good effect with quicker or smaller strokes (the backhand is always smaller even if is big) - if there was something softer like it, that would be perfect. But maybe you just like hard rubber like I do. But I feel that unless you push a lot on the backhand (which I do), there is a strong case to be made for something softer with quicker ball release until you are clearly bottoming it out. And to be honest, since many of the best backhands for Pros I admired used T05fx even with the plastic ball, I am not entirely confident I know what that means. The thing is that you can go back to D09c once the wrist setup action and other strokes have been setup and rewarded and you might even decide then that D09c doesn't do enough for you. In any case just give it some thought, it is always most important to play with stuff you enjoy playing with.

 

[NextLevel]

Obviously this guy is cheating a little bit with the speed of racket and the rubbers but he has one of the best backhands of all time (and he clearly has updated it to keep his game modern) as a coach. The main thing you should watch is how he leans forward to prepare the stroke and give racket room to swing into the ball.

 

[Wrighty67]

Obviously this guy is cheating a little bit with the speed of racket and the rubbers but he has one of the best backhands of all time (and he clearly has updated it to keep his game modern) as a coach. The main thing you should watch is how he leans forward to prepare the stroke and give racket room to swing into the ball.

What a backhand - absolutely insane!