Which part of body use is more important when doing forehand topspin?

[Rodin]

When performing a forehand topspin, I ultimately want to utilize my body to its full potential, as shown in the video below.
Except for arm swings, use of the lower back, pelvis, and legs is visible.
Trying to do all of this at once makes it more difficult and doesn't seem to work for me.
So, I'm trying to practice them one by one in order of importance, so please give me some advice.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Legs >>> core / waist >> arm > wrist

 

[Caracas]

The hips

 

[NetProphet]

When performing a forehand topspin, I ultimately want to utilize my body to its full potential, as shown in the video below.
Except for arm swings, use of the lower back, pelvis, and legs is visible.
Trying to do all of this at once makes it more difficult and doesn't seem to work for me.
So, I'm trying to practice them one by one in order of importance, so please give me some advice.

The legs.
Unless you have bad knees, start by rotating and feeing your body weight on your right leg, assuming right handed player.
You're best to start with this.
Also, just by rotating that weight onto the right leg and using that push to initiate your stroke you:
- automatically initiate a swing of the arm.
- shift the body weight to the left leg
- adapt your timing to work with this legs first approach.
which are fundamental parts of a proper forehead technique.

Starting with focus on the hips or shoulders or something else will only make it more difficult to incorporate this at later stage.
Trust me and many of my training partners on this, trying to unlearn the bad habits later is a massive PITA!

 

[latej]

So, I'm trying to practice them one by one in order of importance, so please give me some advice.

It is done by all those parts, and thus all those parts are important... Imho, what is important is the "feeling of induced movement". Let me explain. Stand straight and relaxed, and rotate the body say to the left a bit - now notice that the arm somehow moves, without muscles. This is what I call "induced movement". You didn't use muscles on your arm, yet the arm was moved. Imho, the whole form can be derived from this principle. Of course, during real looping, you will also use the arm muscles a bit, but the point I want to make is that you focus on feeling that "induced movement", feeling that at least partially your arm moves not because of arm muscles, but because the body rotation made it move... Again, why the body rotates and what everything participates is complex and we could speak for a long time, and imho it is not as important, as clearly feeling that your arm movement is "induced" ;-) Cheers... You're making good progress, practise, practise, and feel the "inducing", it will save some time ;-)

 

[blahness]

You can use addition, where you learn and master one part first, then slowly add components to the stroke. I dont think the order matters that much.

 

[TTFrenzy]

When performing a forehand topspin, I ultimately want to utilize my body to its full potential, as shown in the video below.
Except for arm swings, use of the lower back, pelvis, and legs is visible.
Trying to do all of this at once makes it more difficult and doesn't seem to work for me.
So, I'm trying to practice them one by one in order of importance, so please give me some advice.

you have the understanding of the movement , but your coordination could be so much better, just relax and dont think too much about it, I can tell you are stiff and trying too hard to execute the shot perfectly

Just relax and let your weight "fall" on your right leg, let the hips follow the "fall" naturally and just let go forward without thinking anything.

Your arm/forearm is also stiff, press the tip of the index finger not too hard but also not too soft. Just enough to make the paddle an extension of your hand, same thing goes for the rest of the fingers, try to feel the movement and the ball sinking in your paddle, don't overthink it and if you do anything wrong the answer will present itself


p.s. watch again your motion at second 0:10 of the video, your left foot is in the air (right before you hit the ball and during the stroke) which causes you to lose stability, this will cause you to either a poorly and inaccurate executed shot and definitely there is a loss of power. It is obvious you did it on purpose because you wanted to kill the ball and stop the exercise, but it is a bad habit overall, just transfer your weight from right to left no matter how hard you want to strike

 

[NetProphet]

you have the understanding of the movement , but your coordination could be so much better, just relax and dont think too much about it, I can tell you are stiff and trying too hard to execute the shot perfectly

Just relax and let your weight "fall" on your right leg, let the hips follow the "fall" naturally and just let go forward without thinking anything.

Your arm/forearm is also stiff, press the tip of the index finger not too hard but also not too soft. Just enough to make the paddle an extension of your hand, same thing goes for the rest of the fingers, try to feel the movement and the ball sinking in your paddle, don't overthink it and if you do anything wrong the answer will present itself


p.s. watch again your motion at second 0:10 of the video, your left foot is in the air (right before you hit the ball and during the stroke) which causes you to lose stability, this will cause you to either a poorly and inaccurate executed shot and definitely there is a loss of power. It is obvious you did it on purpose because you wanted to kill the ball and stop the exercise, but it is a bad habit overall, just transfer your weight from right to left no matter how hard you want to strike

That's not him in the video.
That a video of how it's done from 'all about tabletennis'.
If that was him he wouldn't be posting such a basic question 😉

 

[TTFrenzy]

That's not him in the video.
That a video of how it's done from 'all about tabletennis'.
If that was him he wouldn't be posting such a basic question 😉

oh I was too happy I guess to finally see someone post himself playing, anyway

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

you have the understanding of the movement , but your coordination could be so much better, just relax and dont think too much about it, I can tell you are stiff and trying too hard to execute the shot perfectly

Just relax and let your weight "fall" on your right leg, let the hips follow the "fall" naturally and just let go forward without thinking anything.

Your arm/forearm is also stiff, press the tip of the index finger not too hard but also not too soft. Just enough to make the paddle an extension of your hand, same thing goes for the rest of the fingers, try to feel the movement and the ball sinking in your paddle, don't overthink it and if you do anything wrong the answer will present itself


p.s. watch again your motion at second 0:10 of the video, your left foot is in the air (right before you hit the ball and during the stroke) which causes you to lose stability, this will cause you to either a poorly and inaccurate executed shot and definitely there is a loss of power. It is obvious you did it on purpose because you wanted to kill the ball and stop the exercise, but it is a bad habit overall, just transfer your weight from right to left no matter how hard you want to strike

@TTFrenzy: I could be wrong. But I think that video is one he pulled off the internet to show "good" form and use of whole body rather than what he is doing. That video is from the YouTube Channel "AllAboutTableTennis". They are a YouTube TT channel.

@Rodin: Is that YOU or is that a video you are using to show what you would like to do?

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

That's not him in the video.
That a video of how it's done from 'all about tabletennis'.
If that was him he wouldn't be posting such a basic question 😉

You beat me to it. hahahaha.

 

[NetProphet]

oh I was too happy I guess to finally see someone post himself playing, anyway

Cool.
Nice answer from you with some good tips anyway 👍

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

@Rodin: If you understand kinetic chains and movement, the stroke is a movement pattern. All the parts are coordinated, synchronized, and connected. If you lose one part of the kinetic chain, what happens is, other parts of the chain will work too hard and you will end up with strain, inefficiency, and bad mechanics from overworking the parts that are compensating for the parts that are not working. Over time with repetitive movement patterns, this causes strain and repetitive stress injuries.

You can practice the whole kinetic chain with shadow strokes in front of a mirror and it will help you pull the full movement pattern into practice when you are hitting a ball and make it so you undo some of those bad habits that cause you to not use everything at once. Practicing the shadow stroke in front of a mirror lets you see what you are doing and automatically correct to help improve your movement mechanics more quickly.

Years ago I had a coach who was getting ready to give me coaching sessions, watch me play and he told me that, before I did my first session with him, I had to stand in front of a mirror and practice shadow strokes, 5,000 BH and 5,000 FH every day (with shadow strokes each side would take about 5-10 min), from that day till the day in the following week where he would give me a coaching session. He then stood me in front of a mirror where I could see my whole body and worked with me until I had decent mechanics for both strokes.

It was pretty impressive how much that helped, how much less effort I was using while creating way more power.

It might be worth trying. If you could have a coach show you good shadow stroke form in front of a mirror, it would help.

But here: here are the mechanics of an FH stroke for you: Silly shadow stroke video of me I did in one take with no editing years ago for someone else on the forum. But it explains things in decent enough detail. A higher level player or a good coach could do a better job. But....it is what it is:

 

[TTFrenzy]

Cool.
Nice answer from you with some good tips anyway 👍

speaking of forehands, ryu's technique is so fluid and with such a stable footwork. I also like the mindset about training explained @ 0:38 and afterwards

 

[NetProphet]

Years ago I had a coach who was getting ready to give me coaching sessions, watch me play and he told me that, before I did my first session with him, I had to stand in front of a mirror and practice shadow strokes, 5,000 BH and 5,000 FH every day (with shadow strokes each side would take about 5-10 min), from that day till the day in the following week where he would give me a coaching session.

Surely not!
5,000 strokes. Even at 1 second a stroke that's 83 minutes per side, almost 3 hrs for FH and BH together.
How were you doing these in just 5-10 minutes?

 

[Jslick89]

It's kind of a weird question as to which is "most important", as I would argue they are all important for their own reason. You're not going to generate any real power without the use of your legs or hips, and you're not going to land the ball where you want without the proper arm and wrist movement.

However, I would say that your legs are your foundation to your forehand loop, but i'm not sure if that is the "easiest" first step to master. For example, you could load up your legs and get a full torque, but if you can't make good contact on the ball, you're just wasting your energy lol.

I know in my personal journey, I already had a decent arm stroke motion from when i was a beginner. but i had a bad habit of standing too tall, which essentially meant I was not utilizing the power of my legs. I had to spend a decent amount of time learning to stay low on all my shots.

So if I was a beginner and I already knew how to make contact with the ball, i would focus on staying as low on my shots. When you are "low" this means your knees are bent, and you have power built up into your feet and legs. you can use that power to rotate your body and swing through the ball with a good contact. Again, its hard to say what is the most important, because the full mechanic is : load power into your feet, calves and quads by bending and twisting (to the right if you are a right handed player), start to unload that power by pushing off your back right foot, then twisting your hip and torso in a clockwise motion (if you're right handed), while also keeping your arm mostly relaxed until its time to snap at the elbow before the contact on the ball, and then squeeze your hand and the moment right before the contact of the ball, completing your follow through forward or up to your head.

But if you can't make consistent contact on the ball, you need to spend some time just "driving" over the table before you can effectively add in the mechanics of the full body power unleashing.

 

[Rodin]

@TTFrenzy: I could be wrong. But I think that video is one he pulled off the internet to show "good" form and use of whole body rather than what he is doing. That video is from the YouTube Channel "AllAboutTableTennis". They are a YouTube TT channel.

@Rodin: Is that YOU or is that a video you are using to show what you would like to do?

It's not me.😅
I would like to do.....

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Surely not!
5,000 strokes. Even at 1 second a stroke that's 83 minutes per side, almost 3 hrs for FH and BH together.
How were you doing these in just 5-10 minutes?

Yeah, maybe my top line numbers are off and maybe he didn't say 5000. He may have said 1000. It was ages ago. But also, my FH was really broken at the time. I don't know what is going on with Rodin's strokes. And I wasn't telling him he had to do what I had to do to fix my strokes since I have not seen his strokes.

5-10 minutes would be an acceptable amount. 15-20 min on each side would be more than enough. And with shadow strokes, if you try them, one stroke per second seems about right.

I doubt you would need to do more than that 15-20 min on each side in any given day. The important part is to get the kinetic chain into your muscle memory. And then you want to see what happens when you go back to the table and are actually hitting a ball that you also have to track and intercept.

So, if you did the 5-20 min on each side and then got on a table and see how it impacted your stroke on the table. And over the course of months, if you are doing a certain amount of shadow stroke exercises, it will add up.

When the issue is how you move, adding shadow stroke/footwork drills can get you the upper body lower body coordination that you need since that coordination is complicated for your body to learn while also tracking the ball to make contact.

 

[NetProphet]

Yeah, maybe my top line numbers are off and maybe he didn't say 5000. He may have said 1000. It was ages ago.

5-10 minutes would be an acceptable amount. 15-20 min on each side would be more than enough. And with shadow strokes, if you try them, one stroke per second seems about right.

I doubt you would need to do more than that 15-20 min on each side in any given day. The important part is to get the kinetic chain into your muscle memory. And then you want to see what happens when you go back to the table and are actually hitting a ball that you also have to track and intercept.

So, if you did the 5-20 min on each side and then got on a table and see how it impacted your stroke on the table. And over the course of months, if you are doing a certain amount of shadow stroke exercises, it will add up.

When the issue is how you move, adding shadow stroke/footwork drills can get you the upper body lower body coordination that you need since that coordination is complicated for your body to learn while also tracking the ball to make contact.

I'm going to do it, even if for just 5 mins a day each side. I'll add it in with my footwork drills. It can't do any harm to help eradicate the old habits that still creep back in during each match

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

I'm going to do it, even if for just 5 mins a day each side. I'll add it in with my footwork drills. It can't do any harm to help eradicate the old habits that still creep back in during each match

For me, the first thing that was interesting was how much better my contact was when I got back on the table.

And, when I first started doing it, I was doing at least 30 min in front of a mirror. I feel like it also improved my reset and recovery (to be ready for the next shot).