Technique advice for me

[dingyibvs]

I don't want to limit the repliers and I don't want to derail the W968 thread so I'm starting a new thread for people to give me some advice on techniques. I posted some loop vs. backspin videos from yesterday's practice session. Feel free to comment on either the FH or BH technique. I'm linking a second vid, but it basically shows the same thing and was done just a couple mins before the first video.

On the FH side I'm mostly going for what these pros execute many times in the below video (e.g. ML 50s, Mizutani at 4:00, FZD at 10:18, etc.) As mentioned in the W968 thread I'm a bit limited in hip flexibility, but working on improving it. On the BH side I'm just trying to land the shot with some spin.

 

[Tommy16]

It’s quite clear that you have a strong legs and core. With you back hand you could try to use your upper body a bit more to get some extra power and control.
You have a really strong fh but it could be stronger. To my eyes it seems that your contact point is to too back or late (hard to describe). Becouse of this your weight trasfer goes from right to left in stead of going towards. You can see this by looking your shoulders. Your left shoulder bends down which makes your arm doing kind of a hook motion instead of going in a straight line. I think you should try to change your contact point 20cm to 40cm towards to net and this should make your fh even more powerfull and easier to excecute. This should also help with weight transfer.

All and all your technique looks solid. Keep up the good work!

 

[OldUser]

Hi your FH technique is nice to me, everyone with a dominant FH game has the fundamentals, and then the stroke seems to finish in a different way, but yeah the BH one is perfectible, not with the upper body though: you KNOW you're strong at the upper, strong shoulders, arms and core/abs, and that's probably why you think you don't have to use your legs and indeed hips, but VS backspins it's important to bend the left knee and start "swinging" hips and not to rely on the upper body only.

Different than the backhand flick of course where you don't have the space enough over the table to bend the L knee and swing the hips, that why the wrist motion compensate A LOT for that matter. And you don't need that much power withhips and legs or the ball would fly away.

 

[OldUser]

 

[OldUser]

 

[NextLevel]

HI Dingvibvs, thanks for sharing video and it is nice to see you play. It takes a courageous soul to post practice for others to criticize.

I think your leg work on bit strokes could be significantly improved, your upper body work on the forehand fine but you are not spinning the legs into a deep enough lunge. Maybe the ball is not low or challenging enough. For the backhand your squat should be deeper but again maybe the ball is just not challenging enough.

With backspin, you generally want to think circular, so if you can spin your legs to get a deeper lunge on the forehand side, and squat a little deeper on the backhand side, I think it will improve your stroke preperation and ball quality. If you have crappy knees like me, ignore my suggestions.

 

[latej]

Hi dingyibvs, I'd like to say something about the FH. The preparatory phase looks good to me, you rotate right, go down, put weight on the right foot. But in the forward phase, you push the ground and only (almost only) go upwards with the body and arm, and later on, almost after the hit, you rotate the body and move the arm sort of forward. (Arm is not so important, secondary here.) So the push is translated to the movement upwards (and later on rotation). Try to make it so, that the push will instead directly translate to the hip rotation, hip and body rotation to the left. And then the arm follows. You can also go upwards a bit. Basically try to experiment with this, how much of the push energy is translated directly to the hit/body rotation movement and how much of it is translated into the upwards movement. As you experiment, you'll find the right balance.

You don't need hip flexibility for this. You need hip flexibility to stand really wide, but for usual wide and usual rotation you don't need extra flexibility.

You like to hit hard, me too. But remember, the driver for evolution is laziness. Be more relaxed, I need to say this to me too. People like you and me must be forced to do million of reps until we understand that we should conserve energy. The arm can move practically energy-less, only driven by the body rotation. If you get more of this into your stroke, I'm sure it will feel better. And then also the 100% power will feel better.

Cheers, and thanks for posting for everybody.

 

[Der_Echte]

Hi Dingyibvs,I really like the VIOLENCE in which you are attempting your shots. You appear to be not as relaxed on BH as you would need to be. It is way too easy for me to say that not being on the table in that moment with you, but it is what I see.

 

[dingyibvs]

Thanks for all the advice! I'll reply all in this post.

@Tommy16: My contact point is more determined by the ball, with a drive I aim to contact the ball at the highest point of the bounce, which based on where I'm standing relative to the table is a bit behind me. On shorter pushes that pop up I would drive them in front of my body. It's difficult for me to step back to get the ball in front of me because this is an opening-loop practice so I need to be ready for a short push as well.

@Olduser: Thanks! I think I'll try to fit in my core a bit more into my BH shot. I think it can help improve both consistency and power as it does for my FH. Ti Long's video covers both the brush loop and the loop drive, so I think I'll try to incorporate those 2 in my game.

@NextLevel: I'm not brave at all lol, but I had a good experience many years ago posting my videos on MyTT, you've commented on a few in the past. As for my legs, I get low as needed, and those backspins are a bit high so I don't squat as low.

@latej: I think I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you here. At least on the FH side, I'm doing a loop drive. The focus should be going forward and not upward. I'll use my legs to lift when brush looping. When I watch videos of pros doing loop drives and pay attention to where their pants' waistline is relative to the table, I see that they remain level throughout the stroke.

@Der_Echte: Yeah my BH is pretty unnatural right now, I'm thinking a lot about timing, arm, wrist, etc. Let me see if it'll look a bit more natural after I incorporate the body and legs a bit more.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

To Thread-starter,

Your BH looks good. No further comment needed.

Your FH looks too forced aka hitting too hard = recovery is too slow. A robot will not return your ball, however a live opponent may and can block / counter-loop your shot. Something you need to be aware of. Perhaps if you could say use 70% of what you use now, and reserve the 30% energy for positional recovery. How does that sound to you?

 

[latej]

@latej: I think I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you here. At least on the FH side, I'm doing a loop drive. The focus should be going forward and not upward. I'll use my legs to lift when brush looping. When I watch videos of pros doing loop drives and pay attention to where their pants' waistline is relative to the table, I see that they remain level throughout the stroke.

You're right. But that is not what I tried to say. The focus should not be on thinking now I go forward or now I go upward, the focus should be on making sure that your arm movement is driven by the body/hip rotation, imo.

We do agree that pros do push to the ground when they start the forward-phase of the stroke. If they remain level and don't go upwards - just as you say - then where does the energy go? It goes to the body/hip rotation. And the arm only follows afterwards.

And it all starts with the push. I tried to make you experiment with it, that's all. Good luck.

 

[jk1980]

Having a robot myself i wonder a few things.
Does this robot really create proper backspin ? The arc of the ball seems pretty even for backspin, but perhaps you only set it to -1 backspin which is Ok, i guess.

I think the high ball arc that you setup your robot to produce will not help you with your topspin technique, because if you hit the ball 10 cm above net level you might as well just smash the ball.

The difficult technique is looping the ball from below net level not above. If you hit the ball between net height and table height you have to brush it properly and can't do this "uncontrollable" spin/smashes. At least to me (and as others mentioned to others as well) it looks more like a smash with a hint of top spin movement than a topspin loop

 

[Draycott old man]

Hi dingyibvs,you seem to be a powerful man,who gives it everything when you hit the ball,my advice would be to relax more and think more how you contact the ball.only strike the at a maximum of 75 % loosen your grip,you will find you will hit stronger shots with more spin and control, plus you will have a lot more stamina.trust me if you relax more,your whole game will improve massively!!! I've been playing for over 20 years and still learning everyday!!! It's a marathon not a sprint!! Keep up the good work!!!

 

[dingyibvs]

To Thread-starter,

Your BH looks good. No further comment needed.

Your FH looks too forced aka hitting too hard = recovery is too slow. A robot will not return your ball, however a live opponent may and can block / counter-loop your shot. Something you need to be aware of. Perhaps if you could say use 70% of what you use now, and reserve the 30% energy for positional recovery. How does that sound to you?

That depends on what I'm going for. In those drills for the FH loops I'm already using ~70% power for most of my shots, all but 2 of them in fact. In game situations though I would go for 100% power most of the time. When I do so I'm going for winners. If the opponent returns it with quality, then I'll probably lose the point, but I'm betting that they won't. I mean, those are some pretty high and floaty backspins, you're supposed to kill those, right?

You're right. But that is not what I tried to say. The focus should not be on thinking now I go forward or now I go upward, the focus should be on making sure that your arm movement is driven by the body/hip rotation, imo.

We do agree that pros do push to the ground when they start the forward-phase of the stroke. If they remain level and don't go upwards - just as you say - then where does the energy go? It goes to the body/hip rotation. And the arm only follows afterwards.

And it all starts with the push. I tried to make you experiment with it, that's all. Good luck.

I see, so you're seeing some disconnect between my legs/hip and my body/arm, is that right? I made a slow motion version of the two full powered FH loops. Could you point out the parts you're talking about?

Having a robot myself i wonder a few things.
Does this robot really create proper backspin ? The arc of the ball seems pretty even for backspin, but perhaps you only set it to -1 backspin which is Ok, i guess.

I think the high ball arc that you setup your robot to produce will not help you with your topspin technique, because if you hit the ball 10 cm above net level you might as well just smash the ball.

The difficult technique is looping the ball from below net level not above. If you hit the ball between net height and table height you have to brush it properly and can't do this "uncontrollable" spin/smashes. At least to me (and as others mentioned to others as well) it looks more like a smash with a hint of top spin movement than a topspin loop

I set it to -2, which is similar to a typical push. At -3 it's more like a chop from an inverted rubber or a LP return of a loop. At -4 it's superhuman and is a completely unnecessary setting. The arc is a bit high, as the purpose of the drill is for basic BH training. I'd still want it lower though, but this machine can drastically change its angle based on temperature, humidity, and how warmed up it is. It can shift its angle as much as 15 degrees through a practice session, which is kind of annoying as I'd have to keep adjusting the angle. With basic training like this, I'm satisfied with most of the balls landing on my side of the table.

I notice that there seem to be far more comments about my FH, but this drill is designed for the BH. My BH is very weak, I'm starting from very easy shots and moving on up. Just today I added a few faster shots (that's one way to make the trajectory lower as well). The FH backspins are just a couple mirrored shots from the BH side, it's meant to keep me from focusing entirely on the BH side. Those shots are not for FH practice, as that takes a lot of energy and I'm usually conserving it so I can get more BH reps in. As may be expected, easy backspins designed for a weak BH would get killed easily by a stronger FH.

As for your other comments. It's absolutely still a loop, just look at the slow motion video. I adjust the hitting vs. brushing ratio based on the height of the ball. You also absolutely can still use this technique for balls between net and table height, but yes, you do need to add some "proper brush" to it. The overall technique is still the same. This video shows some loops against roughly net height balls, some a bit above, some a bit below. The limiting factors I've found are that you need to catch it relatively early, latest in the early falling phase, and that the incoming ball can't be too fast. If either of those things happen then I switch to a brush loop.

 

[v100ev]

Hi dingyibvs,
I'm not an expert at all, so take my words with a grain of salt please
1. Your FH is fine as I see it (great, I would say)
2.1. Your BH seems not very effective to me. To me it seems like your body is going upwards in the moment of the shot and your hand is doing all the motion. Somehow it seems like there's almost no rotation in the body - it only gets power from the ground and gives the hand a vertical lift, but the hand needs to do everything else by herself. So I think you lack a little body rotation on the BH side (use your core a little not only for vertical movement, but also for "circular" movement) (yep - my English is poor and I pray that it's understandable)
2.2. Seems like on your BH shots your leaning backwards after the shot.. Try to establish your position so you can make a shot with forward body momentum..
2.3. BH rephrased conclusion from me: it just seems that there's no glue between your hand and everything else. Seems like the legs + body do one thing and the hand does the other and as a result we have a BH shot, but it's not effective. You need to somehow connect the two things I think (for me 2.1 (adding some rotation in the body) is the way to do this)

 

[latej]

I see, so you're seeing some disconnect between my legs/hip and my body/arm, is that right? I made a slow motion version of the two full powered FH loops. Could you point out the parts you're talking about?

Watch this toy. It has no muscles, yet the arm is moving. It is moving because the body rotates. More precisely, the body has already been rotated and only after that the arm starts moving.

Imho, you need more of this to your stroke. So I am trying to make you feel that your push to the ground translates directly first immedidately now to the body/hip rotation, and only after that the arm starts to accelerate (with a small delay afterwards).

At the moment your arm moves very in lock-step with the body. It may look like a small change, but it really matters.

As I said already, it starts with the push. Try it, feel it. Feel how the hips/body rotate first. Forget the arm for the moment. That's why I said earlier to experiment with it.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Would be interesting to see you playing a match vs someone at your level so the match is close.....how you play tactically and respond to what your opponent gives you.

 

[NextLevel]

Watch this toy. It has no muscles, yet the arm is moving. It is moving because the body rotates. More precisely, the body has already been rotated and only after that the arm starts moving.

Imho, you need more of this to your stroke. So I am trying to make you feel that your push to the ground translates directly first immedidately now to the body/hip rotation, and only after that the arm starts to accelerate (with a small delay afterwards).

At the moment your arm moves very in lock-step with the body. It may look like a small change, but it really matters.

As I said already, it starts with the push. Try it, feel it. Feel how the hips/body rotate first. Forget the arm for the moment. That's why I said earlier to experiment with it.

It is interesting to see someone still focused on whip mechanics. Great stuff.

 

[Der_Echte]

Tightening the shoulder or arm or hand really stops the whip from developing.

Many players who do this stop the energy they created, then try to quickly recreate it with mostly the shoulders. There is simply not enough meat on that bone for that task.

A player figuring out how to stay loose is right up there with reading impact, discovering what is the strike zone, and how to control the depth of strike zone for different shots. maybe up there with how to control grip pressure.

 

[Der_Echte]

...As for your other comments. It's absolutely still a loop, just look at the slow motion video. I adjust the hitting vs. brushing ratio based on the height of the ball...

Hi Dingyibvs,

I would agree in principle about different ball height can have differing swing planes and impacts.

I can also add about whether it is soon after the bounce (when the ball has a lot of vertical energy) or much later. The swing and impact will be different from those.

When you impact the underspin ball on the rise soon after the bounce (say the ball is 1/2 net height to net height and rising still) you do not need to lift the ball as much, so your stroke can be more forward... To power loop this ball, you can open the blade and swing more forward and hit ball a little below center and swing a little upwards... not a lot. That will give you a really powerful shot vs that underspin ball.

When you impact that underspin at top of bounce, there is zero vertical energy and you have to adjust for that. You can still powerloop as the spin will bring ball down and it doesn't have to go down a lot... so you can still open bat, swing forward and a little off center to bang that sucker in dropping late.

When you impact the ball on the decline, you now have underspin AND downward vertical energy to overcome... and you are likely impacting the ball below table height, so you will not be able to swing as forward like on the powerloop, you either do a lifting stroke to make it really heavy and slow, or you make it medium to light fast pace and loaded with spin to get it to drop in.

All of this applies to both FH and BH, but the techniques are way different. On BH, it doesn't take as much long backswing and swing as many people think to make a spinny or powerful ball.

On BH, the strike zone is much smaller, so moving to position and setting the position/strike zone becomes much more critical. Once you can learn where your BH hitting zone is... and how to move and set it (because you read the opponent's ball good enough) then you will be able to strike in zone and see your shots land a lot more when you sort out how to be loose.