serves

besides them being the worlds best 2 players and having hours and hours of paractise every week but, how do wang hao and ma lin get such good serves with such little effort.

shij421 wrote: I think the key is that you must be able to produce spin without producing speed at the same time.. meaning you must brush the ball very thinly

I think the key is that they have spent thousands of hours practicing the serves alone...

Spin is directly related to bat speed.
To keep it a short serve with high spin requires you to brush the ball Real thin.
To see how they do these serves, you need Real slo motion vids. Also watch for the contact point. You can practice forever if you don't understand where the contact point is.
For example, REAL HARD chop serves are not done with the blade coming down at a 45 degree angle. The blade is almost flat to the table. Contact point is near the bottom of the ball.
I know,,,you can do a chop serve doing it this way. I'm telling you how to do the extreme chop serves.
More important than the amount of spin is disguising what spin is on the ball. You need Real slo motion vids to see this also.

Agree.  It's bat speed and contact point.

Regarding bat speed, a strong but relax wrist helps.  Penhold players have some advantage here because the wrist can move more freely.  A fast wrist action also help to disguide your spin.
Where the ball contact the bat surface is also relevant.  With the same serve movement, the ball will have less spin when its contact point is closer to the bad handle.  This is just physic, linear velocity = angular velocity * radius.   Shorter radius => slower velocity, assuming the pivot point is somere around your wrist.  This can be used to disguide the level of spin you put on your serve.
By the way, I see good handshake players change their grip during server,  However, I cannot produce any real spin holding the bat that way.  Any pointer?