Effortlessly Looping Underspin

Loop40mm wrote: My level is way below AcudaDave and Baal so I have no chance against 2200 choppers  However I am lucky to have three 2100-2200 choppers to practice with occasionally.  I've found that it is harder to loop against inverted as they can disguise the underspin and no spin very well.  The underspin from LP is relative from my topspin and the underspin is predictable.  I actually find looping against LP underspin easier.

The last >2200 chopper I played made me look pretty bad.  In general the problem I have is not so much in looping.  The mistake I still tend to make against the LP side is on a ball I am pretty sure I can't loop* to overestimate the amount of spin and then I push a little too high and long.  Good choppers these days punish that mistake--especially the 2380 lady--but even people quite a bit lower than that.  Unfortunately, I have not had a 2000-2200 chopper to play against for several years now, but one guy I used to play with a lot who maxed out at about 2135 had a huge whirly-bird forehand that he would use when someone pushed one of his very low LP chops a little too high and long.  He could hit that forehand harder than any forehand I ever hit, and I am allegedly the offensive player.  If I could keep him from doing that, then I usually won, which was not all the time.  Really good defenders it seems to me often use their hard-to-read defensive shots to set up a good forehand, at least that's often what happens to me.  Really high level attackers negate that by being able to attack a much higher percentage of the balls that come to them, and thereby keep that from happening.

*  either because the ball looks too low and spinny, or because I know I am losing balance after having just looped several balls in a row, or because I'm just not sure what the spin is on the ball.   Sometimes you know that if you try to attack a certain ball you are going to miss, and a really good defender can expose all of your footwork problems. 


Edited by Baal - 02/25/2013 at 8:16am

Speedplay wrote: I've watched the video a couple of times now, and I think that part of the secret for this effortless looping is more about which ball he attacks, especially in the beginning of the match. The attacker don't get involved in many loop-chop rallies. He attacks weak pushes, if they come back as heavy chops, he starts over with the pushes and waits for the next weak push before he attacks. The weak pushes are forced by moving the defender in and out, which the attacker does very well.

What impresses me most is how he's able to brush loop the underspin so effortlessly compared to most other pro players. Contrast his stroke with that of ZJK, which looks laborious in comparison. Perhaps it's something about the swing unique to penholders that allows them to do that? Then again, I do see Wang Hao and Ma Lin doing that.

racquetsforsale wrote: It's typically taught that looping underspin requires a lot of effort from the legs and the forearm snap. One time, I witnessed a demo in which a coach and his accomplished pupil was showing others how to loop against LPs. I can describe the pupil's swing only as a violent spasm of leg thrusting and forearm snapping. The coach insisted that's the level of effort that's required and also that's what he wanted to see. Yet in light of seeing how Xu Xin and Masato Watanabe do it, I can't help but feel that there's another way, a better way.

Xu Xin bends his legs to get low, but when he's just brush looping, he doesn't explode off his back leg the way ZJK does, launching himself upwards off the ground.

Does he also tell you to level out your swing a bit and swing less upwards?

Watanabe doesn't seem to be very tall. 5'-10" at most judging by his height relative to the table, so I'll assume he doesn't have freakishly long arms. He doesn't have very deep knee bends. What I'm getting at is there is an alternative to the common wisdom that you must explode off of the back leg and/or snap the forearm violently. More often than not, people doing so focus so much on exerting effort and pushing off and swinging hard that they wind up tensing their bodies and arms and actually generate lower racket head speed than if they swung in a more relaxed manner, with a looser arm, with a whip-like motion, like Watanabe and Xu Xin.

racquetsforsale wrote: Watanabe doesn't seem to be very tall. 5'-10" at most judging by his height relative to the table, so I'll assume he doesn't have freakishly long arms. He doesn't have very deep knee bends. What I'm getting at is there is an alternative to the common wisdom that you must explode off of the back leg and/or snap the forearm violently. More often than not, people doing so focus so much on exerting effort and pushing off and swinging hard that they wind up tensing their bodies and arms and actually generate lower racket head speed than if they swung in a more relaxed manner, with a looser arm, with a whip-like motion, like Watanabe and Xu Xin.

^^^This. Very well said.

While I know that using the legs, torso, etc. to generate racquet speed is ideal, I think a lot of people get lost in the details if they don't have proper guidance. Generating racquet speed relies more on relaxation than on extreme exertion. No matter how good of shape I'm in or how explosive the foundation of my kinetic chain is, if there is tension along the chain then it results in slower racquet speed. Period.

Not too long ago I made a notable leap in my forehand technique simply by listening to what my old coach had been telling me for a long time prior. Relax my grip. He wanted me to grip the racquet just tight enough to keep the racquet from falling out of my hand... and no tighter. Tension in my grip was attenuating the transfer of energy from my torso to my arm, slowing my swing and mitigating my power. Fixing that small but significant bad habit made a lot of things come together. Better power and faster recovery.

When we do a power stroke from mid distance we have more time to be ready and it is easier to be in position (especially on those cross court counter looping rallies when the ball's trajectory is predictable), swing and unload it all in a relaxed manner before snapping a tense forearm.

There is no such thing. 

RR,

Indeed, I'm able to swing faster using PH. I also find it very natural to swing with a much more extended arm. Must have something to do with how the PH grip places the forearm in a pronated position. Also with PH, the wrist can flex and extend with ease in the plane of the racket face. This provides a lot of additional leverage. If only RPB felt more natural to me, I would convert to PH just for the FH perks.

Whenever I have the opportunity, I loop underspin from a Newgy at 4-5 speed setting, one bounce. There's actually a player at the club whose pushes feel like that.

I usually set the Newgy's speed  to 10-12 and shoot the ball directly to my side when practicing looping chopped balls.   I don't see how a speed of 4-5 will even get the ball over the net.   It take real effort to loop these balls.