Technique advice for me

[NDH]

Alright, here's a practice video of me against one of the better players at a club I frequent. He's a lot better than me and I have a ton of issues with his service receives, but he has troubles with my attacks, so the focus of this practice session was me serving and then attacking his receives (we had already done about an hour of very, very basic FH/BH practice beforehand, just the very basic warm-up like drills to work on fundamentals). You can see why I can't yet put anything I've practiced into real game yet. The main issue I can see is slow response time due to a combination of slow recognition, slow decision making, and slow recovery after both service and loops.

On services I need to work on accelerating at the right time. I've been accelerating way too early so contact is way too thin, not creating enough spin. He pointed that out to me and I find that to be very true.

I feel fairly good about my form on both sides now doing single-sided practice, so starting this week I'll try to put everything together with FH/BH combined random location practices. I think this will help with my recovery time. I'll start including a motion to ready position after services to help improve my readiness to respond to the opponent's service return. I'll probably devise more complications to my loop vs underspin drills to include service receives.

Slow decision making is just gonna take some time, I'll make it a point to start applying it into games and eventually I'll get used to responding to certain shots a certain way instead of having to think about it. Slow recognition will need to come from a lot more experience. Against penholders I especially have trouble with it because I feel that with a flick of the wrist they can send shots anywhere with varying spin. Maybe that'll get better too when I feel more comfortable with other aspects of my game.

Excellent!

Personally, I find watching that so much more valuable than seeing you hit balls at a million miles per hour!

A couple of pointers from me.

If you want to improve, you need to hit shots.

There were a huge amount of your serves that he couldn't get back (usually pushing them in the net) - You don't learn anything from this, so I would have changed my serve slightly so he could get them back.

I don't love how much you follow through with your FH - I feel like you'd get very stuck against anyone who could block, as you'd be very out of position.

You don't really want the bat to end up much past your eyeline when you've finished the stroke, but yours is ending up further than your left shoulder most of the time!

Try and bring it back a little - You'll save energy as well!

Also, on the FH, it looks like you are coming around the ball (on the right hand side) a little bit, rather than a true up and down loop.

It's not a massive problem in itself, but it'll stop you from being able to go inside out, or hitting the balls down the line with as much success.

I think if you fix the over rotation, this issue will also get fixed to a degree.

On the backhand, if you are wanting to loop it, you need to relax those wrist a little bit - It's the hardest shot in my opinion (at least, it's the one that people struggle with the most).

As Blahness said, balance is also key here.

Final point..... I don't know how much you play against Humans vs Robots, but I think you should try and play against Humans as much as you can.

There is a big difference between your Robot play and Human play, which I think is just down to experience of playing Humans.

Your game play will increase significantly if you can consistently put what you do in practice with a Robot, into a game with a Human.

 

[dingyibvs]

Excellent!

Personally, I find watching that so much more valuable than seeing you hit balls at a million miles per hour!

A couple of pointers from me.

If you want to improve, you need to hit shots.

There were a huge amount of your serves that he couldn't get back (usually pushing them in the net) - You don't learn anything from this, so I would have changed my serve slightly so he could get them back.

I don't love how much you follow through with your FH - I feel like you'd get very stuck against anyone who could block, as you'd be very out of position.

You don't really want the bat to end up much past your eyeline when you've finished the stroke, but yours is ending up further than your left shoulder most of the time!

Try and bring it back a little - You'll save energy as well!

Also, on the FH, it looks like you are coming around the ball (on the right hand side) a little bit, rather than a true up and down loop.

It's not a massive problem in itself, but it'll stop you from being able to go inside out, or hitting the balls down the line with as much success.

I think if you fix the over rotation, this issue will also get fixed to a degree.

On the backhand, if you are wanting to loop it, you need to relax those wrist a little bit - It's the hardest shot in my opinion (at least, it's the one that people struggle with the most).

As Blahness said, balance is also key here.

Final point..... I don't know how much you play against Humans vs Robots, but I think you should try and play against Humans as much as you can.

There is a big difference between your Robot play and Human play, which I think is just down to experience of playing Humans.

Your game play will increase significantly if you can consistently put what you do in practice with a Robot, into a game with a Human.

Thanks, I do try to concentrate on training with the robot right now. I was stagnant for 2 years before my hiatus playing against humans only, and I've seen countless players in the club stagnant at my level around my level while playing only against humans, so I thought I needed a change of tact.

My plan is to develop the fundamentals of FH and BH shots, then work on implement them against humans. I think I have a decent foundation now in my practice vs robots, so I'm now seeking ways to translate that into games. When I first got the robot I did a lot of fast BH/FH trainings at a fast pace, and that was very helpful for my BH/FH transitions. I've since stopped doing that as I focused on BH and FH individually, I think I'm gonna get back to that now that I'm more comfortable with each side's strokes.

I think relaxing is one of the toughest things for me right now. I feel like I'm still thinking way too much for each shot, and that's even during practice, so it's very hard for me to relax. That's true for both FH and BH but especially BH as that's by far my weaker side. I used to never attack with my BH, so just building that into my mindset is difficult.

In the same vein, while you can't really see it in the video, but my balance is always FH oriented as I'm always ready to pivot to use my FH. That makes it even harder for me to use my BH. I'm thinking that since I don't need to think as much to switch my balance to FH, I should just get into a more BH oriented balance as a default position for now during games while doing BH/FH training with the robot in a neutral stance.

 

[dingyibvs]

I watched a bit, and I used to have a lot of the same issues and had to fix them one by one. The fundamental issue is that the time you take to initiate a stroke is too much - and the only way you shorten it is by eliminating arm movement as much as possible and keeping elbow close to body, use weight transfer, hip rotation for all strokes.

For the recovery after serve - Recovery is not all about the arm, but also about the centre of gravity and balance. The fundamental issue is that you're still serving with mostly arm power instead of a focused weight transfer with the elbow close to the body. If you use arm movement - the arm goes out and you then have to spend time pulling it back to the ready position which wastes a lot of time. If you dont even use much arm, your elbow is already right where you need it for the ready position.

So for serve, you start with weight on the left foot, throw the ball using weight transfer to the right foot, and then when you serve transfer your weight to the left foot with the hip rotation, and then using that momentum you rotate and land in the ready position with both feet simultaneously before the second bounce of your serve - you can video yourself serving to make sure. Right now you're landing with two steps and one feet at one time which slows it down tremendously - and the receive surprises you because you were still busy recovering and didn't have time to observe the movement of the opponent. The other way to make recovery easier is not to serve with your right foot level with your left, but with it further back from the table (right foot behind left) and not so rotated, this reduces the rotation and makes recovery easier.

Yeah, my hip rotation is almost completely absent in game situations right now. That's something I'm looking to translate from practice into games this week. I think I can only focus on one or two things during games at a time, so it's difficult to implement so many of the things I've been working on in practice at the same time. I've been having hell of a time just to get into the mindset of attacking with my BH.

For the service I've been working on a new service motion. It's also a bit hard to put it all together right now, it'll involve a lot more weight transfer and accelerating at the right time, and I'll be adding recovery into it as well.

 

[dingyibvs]

With FH and BH loops - FH is significantly better than BH because you use weight transfer well so your feet automatically wants to find a good position, whereas with BH that action is largely missing especially the hip rotation and weight transfer, and the use of the centre of gravity to control the arc. With your BH, it also seems that you can't loop the ball stably at 10% power with just your arm and fingers - if you figure that out you'll not only get a lot more stability and spin in the BH loop but you'll have unlocked the chiquita too in all likelihood. It might be better if you opened the racket angle more and get the feeling of solidly lifting the ball first - closed racket angles require a lot of lifting support from the lower body and very refined/accurate timing which is much more demanding on the BH.

But FH also could use a bit of tightening of the stroke especially for the elbow position during the backswing could be much closer to the waist - one way to tackle it is to train such that your elbow physically touches the waist at the end of the backswing - that helped me a lot personally. The other thing is to spin the ball more - your success rates went up once you did that, your spin is already killer enough. But it's already a very good and threatening FH!

Yeah, I've been working on those things during practices. It's been stubbornly difficult to fix! My body just gets stuck at a position, and my elbow stubbornly refuses to get closer to my body during the backswing. I think I'll focus on hip usage for BH/FH loops for now, that'll be the next thing to implement during games, and I'll keep working on the elbow during practice.

I think another thing I can work on, and this one is fairly easy because once I start playing matches I do implement it, is to get lower. I practice vs the robot at a lower stance, but for whatever reason I didn't do it during this practice session. When I play matches in the league I do get lower, which matches up with my practice height better.

Also, I think I might need a new strategy or new camera to record practice sessions. Apparently my camera only records 15 minutes at a time, so I lost like half of the practice session. I usually only use it to record short videos and take pictures, so I totally forgot about it.

 

[NextLevel]

Alright, here's a practice video of me against one of the better players at a club I frequent. He's a lot better than me and I have a ton of issues with his service receives, but he has troubles with my attacks, so the focus of this practice session was me serving and then attacking his receives (we had already done about an hour of very, very basic FH/BH practice beforehand, just the very basic warm-up like drills to work on fundamentals). You can see why I can't yet put anything I've practiced into real game yet. The main issue I can see is slow response time due to a combination of slow recognition, slow decision making, and slow recovery after both service and loops.

On services I need to work on accelerating at the right time. I've been accelerating way too early so contact is way too thin, not creating enough spin. He pointed that out to me and I find that to be very true.

I feel fairly good about my form on both sides now doing single-sided practice, so starting this week I'll try to put everything together with FH/BH combined random location practices. I think this will help with my recovery time. I'll start including a motion to ready position after services to help improve my readiness to respond to the opponent's service return. I'll probably devise more complications to my loop vs underspin drills to include service receives.

Slow decision making is just gonna take some time, I'll make it a point to start applying it into games and eventually I'll get used to responding to certain shots a certain way instead of having to think about it. Slow recognition will need to come from a lot more experience. Against penholders I especially have trouble with it because I feel that with a flick of the wrist they can send shots anywhere with varying spin. Maybe that'll get better too when I feel more comfortable with other aspects of my game.

Thanks for this - my thoughts are that:

1. You need to hit with people more. Table tennis is as much a dance as it is a battle.
2. Your swinging hard in practice is not doing you favors because it is not letting you time the ball when it isn't in your sweet spot. It's not so much the swinging hard itself as that you haven't mastered taking your stroke to the ball when it doesn't have energy on it. If I were your coach, I would sentence you to one week of half-long serve looping with opening topspins. You can try this with the robot if you can get it to serve.
3. For what you do, you need to lean forward a bit more to give your backhand room. Try to maintain the same/similar elbow positioning for both sides.
4. There is nothing wrong with big strokes to kill the ball as long as you accept the consequences. But usually a level comes when the ball comes back but your power should bother anyone even up to 2200. But slow/medium spin will make your life much easier.
5. I have to end here - in these drills, try as much as possible to loop (Loop = spin, not necessarly drive) everything, even the uncomfortable ones, as long as they come long. Two things happen - the first is that you surprise yourself. The other is that you give yourself a better idea of what you need to do to adjust to the ball.

You are a very strong player, there is no reason IMHO you should be struggling with your generous practice partner if you try to loop and spin the ball a few times in a row. Since you already have good serves, you have the right foundation to make it work. Practice some reverse pendulum as well if you don't already, it will help your backhand a ton, even if you never use it in a match.

 

[NextLevel]

Yeah, my hip rotation is almost completely absent in game situations right now. That's something I'm looking to translate from practice into games this week. I think I can only focus on one or two things during games at a time, so it's difficult to implement so many of the things I've been working on in practice at the same time. I've been having hell of a time just to get into the mindset of attacking with my BH.

For the service I've been working on a new service motion. It's also a bit hard to put it all together right now, it'll involve a lot more weight transfer and accelerating at the right time, and I'll be adding recovery into it as well.

I think you are being a bit too kind to yourself. Part of the reason the hip rotation goes if that you aren't building up into it at a speed where it has to show up. How much pivot and cross and two step do you do at slower speeds or to cover smaller distances?

 

[SleepyMaster]

Your pendulum is pretty good but it used little bit wrong if your goal is to train something, footwork and opening loop are the weakest parts of the training that you upload.

It would be better for training purposes, if you and partner just trying to focus on one kind of a move for 4-5 mins, like third balls after he pushed your serve back, looping openups. When you will achieve opening with stability like at least 80%, try to add drill like: one loop opening + one loop drive for the next 4-5 min etc…

For now, you just randomly serve side and under with no proper feeling how to work those balls that are coming back. Many balls just goes off the table from you partner. Such things are lowering the quality of your training.

It’s okay to use random drill serving, when both, you and you partner, fully understanding how to play, and what exactly you training. But it’s better to start from something more simple to develop a feeling - it will works out your basics much better and gives you more benefits in the future

 

[dingyibvs]

Thanks for this - my thoughts are that:

1. You need to hit with people more. Table tennis is as much a dance as it is a battle.
2. Your swinging hard in practice is not doing you favors because it is not letting you time the ball when it isn't in your sweet spot. It's not so much the swinging hard itself as that you haven't mastered taking your stroke to the ball when it doesn't have energy on it. If I were your coach, I would sentence you to one week of half-long serve looping with opening topspins. You can try this with the robot if you can get it to serve.
3. For what you do, you need to lean forward a bit more to give your backhand room. Try to maintain the same/similar elbow positioning for both sides.
4. There is nothing wrong with big strokes to kill the ball as long as you accept the consequences. But usually a level comes when the ball comes back but your power should bother anyone even up to 2200. But slow/medium spin will make your life much easier.
5. I have to end here - in these drills, try as much as possible to loop (Loop = spin, not necessarly drive) everything, even the uncomfortable ones, as long as they come long. Two things happen - the first is that you surprise yourself. The other is that you give yourself a better idea of what you need to do to adjust to the ball.

You are a very strong player, there is no reason IMHO you should be struggling with your generous practice partner if you try to loop and spin the ball a few times in a row. Since you already have good serves, you have the right foundation to make it work. Practice some reverse pendulum as well if you don't already, it will help your backhand a ton, even if you never use it in a match.

1) Yes, I think I'm ready to do that now. I like to take a step-wise approach to learning, and I think that's the logical next step for me hence my posting the video now.

2) It's not half-long looping that's the issue per se, it's not adjusting to it when I don't know what's coming. If I know it's coming, it's not difficult to loop. When my attention is on looping a backspin to the BH, however, it becomes a lot harder. So some half-long focused training probably won't help much.

3) I'll give that a try, right now I feel like I don't even have time to do a backswing on the BH side due to being slow to react to it. Block and push is so ingrained to my BH side that I just don't have the habit to even backswing first on that side yet.

4) I'm definitely not gonna slow down lol. That's just the way I like to play, and I completely understand that it hurts my play level. I completely respect your opinion, but it's just something I'll have to work with.

5) I think I did try to loop everything that came long. The high balls aren't really good candidates for looping. My usual play has more drives and I would push a lot more.

 

[dingyibvs]

Your pendulum is pretty good but it used little bit wrong if your goal is to train something, footwork and opening loop are the weakest parts of the training that you upload.

It would be better for training purposes, if you and partner just trying to focus on one kind of a move for 4-5 mins, like third balls after he pushed your serve back, looping openups. When you will achieve opening with stability like at least 80%, try to add drill like: one loop opening + one loop drive for the next 4-5 min etc…

For now, you just randomly serve side and under with no proper feeling how to work those balls that are coming back. Many balls just goes off the table from you partner. Such things are lowering the quality of your training.

It’s okay to use random drill serving, when both, you and you partner, fully understanding how to play, and what exactly you training. But it’s better to start from something more simple to develop a feeling - it will works out your basics much better and gives you more benefits in the future

Those are good thoughts, though my partner is more interested in just hitting around rather than specific drills. I think he's getting a bit too old to be interested in drills lol. I wish I had a practice partner who'd like to train in a systematic manner with me, but I'll take what I can get!

My footwork is all messed up right now because of a lack of mental clarity. So many shots I don't know if I should use my FH or BH. Before I would just step around for everything, but now I'm often confused on what to do.

 

[dingyibvs]

Alright, thanks for the advice everyone! I think the consensus opinion is that I need to play more games and implement my training into real games. I tend to agree, so that's gonna be my focus. I'll tune my training toward more real game situations than fundamentals as well.

There's a guy at the other club I play at who has a killer RPB, but can't loop at all with his FH. I played him a couple days ago and beat him in deuces in the 5th set in a battle of contrasting styles. Afterwards he shared with me the difficulties he's had over the years trying to develop a FH. I don't want to end up like him, that's why I've sacrificed a few months of progress to develop my BH, which I can execute fairly competently in practice now.

I think my mistake in trying to implement by BH practices into games thus far is that whenever I made some progress, I started to move onto the next objective. Then I find myself giving up the progress I made earlier. There are so many holes in my game which you can all see, and I'm too impatient to fix them all. I think I need to settle down and work on a few things at a time.

My mission over the next month will be to utilize the BH and use my hips for every shot. I think I'll work on control of my power, footwork, and service receives later as two things is the max that I can keep my mind on at the same time during real games.

 

[SleepyMaster]

Those are good thoughts, though my partner is more interested in just hitting around rather than specific drills. I think he's getting a bit too old to be interested in drills lol. I wish I had a practice partner who'd like to train in a systematic manner with me, but I'll take what I can get!

My footwork is all messed up right now because of a lack of mental clarity. So many shots I don't know if I should use my FH or BH. Before I would just step around for everything, but now I'm often confused on what to do.

I know that struggle. Since my forehand evolution goes much quicker that backhand, i used to do the same thing - step around for anything that goes to my left.

When you training, try to cut the table in two parts: 40% and 60% from your left to right. Every ball that goes to the 40% you playing from backhand, everything else that goes for 60% - forehand. And keep practice it, till it became semiautomatic. It helps me a lot.

I understand that you don’t want to do a lot of drilling, many amateurs don’t. But if you won’t do them, you should compensate it, by playing a lot with people not a robots. Real matches experience helping a lot.
Robots are more useful than nothing, but they are much more useful when you have solid basics.

When my TT journey just began i did a few training session with robot at home, firstly coach think, that it should be useful, and after that i came to training with my coach at the club - he admitted that it influenced my strokes and balance in a bad way. So we get to the point, that robot should go to the garage, and i don’t touch him till i solidly learn all the basics. And i never touched him again, since then, there were no needs to, i started to playing 5-6 times a week

As a fighter, i can make a parallel with robot and a heavy bag. When you working on heavy bag it’s good for condition and punching power. But if you ONLY working on heavy bag and that’s it, in sparring you would find yourself often unbalanced, and tight, looking for power shots only. That’s not so good for overall boxing skills. But if your heavy bag it’s just a part of your overall and structural training, and you working clever on it - than it’s a good tool. The same with our robo friends 🙂

 

[dingyibvs]

I know that struggle. Since my forehand evolution goes much quicker that backhand, i used to do the same thing - step around for anything that goes to my left.

When you training, try to cut the table in two parts: 40% and 60% from your left to right. Every ball that goes to the 40% you playing from backhand, everything else that goes for 60% - forehand. And keep practice it, till it became semiautomatic. It helps me a lot.

I understand that you don’t want to do a lot of drilling, many amateurs don’t. But if you won’t do them, you should compensate it, by playing a lot with people not a robots. Real matches experience helping a lot.
Robots are more useful than nothing, but they are much more useful when you have solid basics.

When my TT journey just began i did a few training session with robot at home, firstly coach think, that it should be useful, and after that i came to training with my coach - he admitted that it influenced my strokes and balance in a bad way. So we get to the point, that robot should go to the garage, and i don’t touch him till i solidly learn all the basics. And i never touched him again, since then, there were no needs to, i started to playing 5-6 times a week

As a fighter, i can make a parallel with robot and a heavy bag. When you working on heavy bag it’s good for condition and punching power. But if you ONLY working on heavy bag and that’s it, in sparring you would find yourself often unbalanced, and tight, looking for power shots only. That’s not so good for overall boxing skills. But if you heavy bag it’s just a part of your overall and structural training, and you working clever on it - than it’s a good tool. The same with our robo friends 🙂

I actually love doing drills, it's just that nobody else seems like them. Can't do a drill by yourself!

Unfortunately I don't have a coach, so I compensate by recording my sessions with the robot, watch my videos, fix what I think needs fixing, rinse and repeat until I feel I'm close, then come here for some more advice.

My experience is very different from yours. Playing against people only results in stagnation. I don't think I've ever seen anyone consistently break through 2000 without training. Pretty much everyone stall out in the 1600-2000 range, which is where I stalled out.

When you don't have a coach or training partners, which is most people, then you need to find other ways to substitute for them, and a robot is the best alternative. IMO there's no substitute for training just like there's no substitute for playing real games.

 

[SleepyMaster]

I actually love doing drills, it's just that nobody else seems like them. Can't do a drill by yourself!

Unfortunately I don't have a coach, so I compensate by recording my sessions with the robot, watch my videos, fix what I think needs fixing, rinse and repeat until I feel I'm close, then come here for some more advice.

My experience is very different from yours. Playing against people only results in stagnation. I don't think I've ever seen anyone consistently break through 2000 without training. Pretty much everyone stall out in the 1600-2000 range, which is where I stalled out.

When you don't have a coach or training partners, which is most people, then you need to find other ways to substitute for them, and a robot is the best alternative.

I’m sure you will progress. Just because you strive for knowledge, and have a passion for TT. The way you analazyng things - it all will help with time. That’s sucks when you don’t have proper partner or a coach, sorry, i misunderstood you. When things are going that way - robot it’s almost one of a kind option. Good luck on your journey

I know a lot of guys, that almost don’t do drills, and playing for about 2000+ but they are just playing everyday with everyone for 20 years. And mostly, have some kind of weird of a looking style - but it works

 

[dingyibvs]

I’m sure you will progress. Just because you strive for knowledge, and have a passion for TT. The way you analazyng things - it all will help with time. That’s sucks when you don’t have proper partner or a coach, sorry, i misunderstood you. When things are going that way - robot it’s almost one of a kind option. Good luck on your journey

I know a lot of guys, that almost don’t do drills, and playing for about 2000+ but they are just playing everyday with everyone for 20 years. And mostly, have some kind of weird of a looking style - but it works

Hey, when life throws you lemons, you just gotta make lemonade, right? I started off practicing against a glass wall, it helped me develop a loop against all spins. With bad form that I'm trying hard to correct now, sure, but it took me to my current level in about a year which is faster than most even with coaches and more playing time!

Back then I could only wish for a robot, so I can't really complain now. I've invited a few people from the club to come train with me, but Bill is the only one interested. He may not like to run drills, but I have more trouble against his game than against anyone else's at the club so I'll take it.

 

[NextLevel]

I actually love doing drills, it's just that nobody else seems like them. Can't do a drill by yourself!

Unfortunately I don't have a coach, so I compensate by recording my sessions with the robot, watch my videos, fix what I think needs fixing, rinse and repeat until I feel I'm close, then come here for some more advice.

My experience is very different from yours. Playing against people only results in stagnation. I don't think I've ever seen anyone consistently break through 2000 without training. Pretty much everyone stall out in the 1600-2000 range, which is where I stalled out.

When you don't have a coach or training partners, which is most people, then you need to find other ways to substitute for them, and a robot is the best alternative. IMO there's no substitute for training just like there's no substitute for playing real games.

It's incredibly hard to get better without the right training environment. I find that travelling to the right environment for a brief period like a camp if you can find one your wife will enjoy or she lets you go alone can be extremely beneficial for your game. As others have said, after you have stayed in the right environment and picked up some good knowledge, you then know what to do on your own pretty easily.

 

[blahness]

Yeah, I've been working on those things during practices. It's been stubbornly difficult to fix! My body just gets stuck at a position, and my elbow stubbornly refuses to get closer to my body during the backswing. I think I'll focus on hip usage for BH/FH loops for now, that'll be the next thing to implement during games, and I'll keep working on the elbow during practice.

I think another thing I can work on, and this one is fairly easy because once I start playing matches I do implement it, is to get lower. I practice vs the robot at a lower stance, but for whatever reason I didn't do it during this practice session. When I play matches in the league I do get lower, which matches up with my practice height better.

Also, I think I might need a new strategy or new camera to record practice sessions. Apparently my camera only records 15 minutes at a time, so I lost like half of the practice session. I usually only use it to record short videos and take pictures, so I totally forgot about it.

You can do a lot of shadow training in front of a mirror to fix a lot of these issues - it's how I fix strokes most of the time.

Tbh the hip usage and weight transfer is also absent in the BH robot training, and the elbow issue is also present during the FH robot training - you have quite good hip usage on the FH loop in general (which shows up even in matches). The compact backswing allows you more room to adjust to weird balls a lot better.

Yeah, my hip rotation is almost completely absent in game situations right now. That's something I'm looking to translate from practice into games this week. I think I can only focus on one or two things during games at a time, so it's difficult to implement so many of the things I've been working on in practice at the same time. I've been having hell of a time just to get into the mindset of attacking with my BH.

For the service I've been working on a new service motion. It's also a bit hard to put it all together right now, it'll involve a lot more weight transfer and accelerating at the right time, and I'll be adding recovery into it as well.

Yes - weight transfer and body rotation, minimising arm movement - that is crucial for all strokes (even something as simple as FH/BH pushing!). I also worked on minimising arm movement in the serve and using weight transfer to recover to ready position recently - and it worked wonders because 1. The serves became a lot more spinny and controllable, 2. Arm no longer gets tired, I can serve for hours with the same quality, 3. It becomes much easier to get into ready position and finally 4. It became a lot more deceptive because my movement became much smaller and explosive - the difference between sidetop and sideunder is a lot more undetectable this way.

Basically if you don't recover your centre of gravity after serve before the 2nd bounce - you pretty much already lost the initiative and any 3rd ball opportunity unless your opponent gifts it to your ideal strike zones.

 

[blahness]

I think you would benefit a lot practising like this for the BH. Especially in game situations you need to learn how to loop with a 10% stroke similar to this, and then you can put in a lot of power once you have an opportunity.

 

[dingyibvs]

I think you would benefit a lot practising like this for the BH. Especially in game situations you need to learn how to loop with a 10% stroke similar to this, and then you can put in a lot of power once you have an opportunity.

You can do a lot of shadow training in front of a mirror to fix a lot of these issues - it's how I fix strokes most of the time.

Tbh the hip usage and weight transfer is also absent in the BH robot training, and the elbow issue is also present during the FH robot training - you have quite good hip usage on the FH loop in general (which shows up even in matches). The compact backswing allows you more room to adjust to weird balls a lot better.

Yes - weight transfer and body rotation, minimising arm movement - that is crucial for all strokes (even something as simple as FH/BH pushing!). I also worked on minimising arm movement in the serve and using weight transfer to recover to ready position recently - and it worked wonders because 1. The serves became a lot more spinny and controllable, 2. Arm no longer gets tired, I can serve for hours with the same quality, 3. It becomes much easier to get into ready position and finally 4. It became a lot more deceptive because my movement became much smaller and explosive - the difference between sidetop and sideunder is a lot more undetectable this way.

Basically if you don't recover your centre of gravity after serve before the 2nd bounce - you pretty much already lost the initiative and any 3rd ball opportunity unless your opponent gifts it to your ideal strike zones.

LOL don't tell me that! I'm pretty impatient so it's hard enough as it is to dedicate 4 months for training that's not only not gonna help me immediately but will hurt my play in the short term! But my OCD wants every stroke to be perfect before trying to put it into games.

Anyhow, I think a happy medium is to start focusing on applying what I've learned so far. The gap between practice and game is too great right now, I think I need to start implementing my learnings to get a better feel of what I need to do in practice. I'll spend the next month or two doing this, and then I'll go back to the drawing board.

Another high yield area IMO is service/receives. I haven't practiced that much, but if I can mix in some flicks and short pushes with backspin, no spin, and side spin along with my long pushes then I can take another step forward, but that's gonna be later on.

 

[blahness]

I somehow think that pure underspin/no spin serves (no sidespin) suits your game more as it simplifies the spin on the receive. It seems that the sidespin hurts you more than it helps you especially in the hands of a skilled receiver. Attacking with your strong FH loop off a no spin serve seems much more suited to your FH loopkill style. Ma Lin, Hugo Calderano uses this to great effect.

For me I love serving with heavy sidespin (be it side under or side top) because it feeds my chiquita and slow spinny loop very well. But I feel like if you drive a lot, incoming receives with lots of sidespin can cause a lot of errors.

Furthermore, you train on the robot off balls without sidespin - ie you're not looping sideunderspin or sidetopspin, but more pure underspin or pure topspin - so serving without sidespin is going to help you get balls more similar to what you train against on the robot.

 

[SleepyMaster]

I somehow think that pure underspin/no spin serves (no sidespin) suits your game more as it simplifies the spin on the receive. It seems that the sidespin hurts you more than it helps you especially in the hands of a skilled receiver. Attacking with your strong FH loop off a no spin serve seems much more suited to your FH loopkill style. Ma Lin, Hugo Calderano uses this to great effect.

For me I love serving with heavy sidespin because it feeds my chiquita and slow spinny loop very well. But I feel like if you drive a lot, incoming receives with lots of sidespin can cause a lot of errors.

Agree. Attacking after heavy side spin serves takes time and a practice, because balls that are coming back often kinda weird trajectory and for amateur it’s not so easy to execute them. But i was able to adapt with time, i bet @dingyibvs will do it to 🙂

Most of good level amateurs serves under spin mostly, rarely mixing it with no spin. Relying on stability of their third ball attack.
But as we see, @dingyibvs not trying to find a simple way - he is going his own way, and training the way he can, in those circumstances that he is. Let’s give him respect for that 💪🏼