Table Tennis Serves Heavy Backspin

Hi,

I am a Chinese Penhold player and I have been having difficulties in serving "heavy backspin" forehand serves, both short serves and long servers.

I have been doing some research and reading lots of table tennis articles as well as watching lots of Youtube videos but still can't get this right.

I know that to impart lots of spin, you need speed, need to brush more and heavy upon contact. In one of your articles, it says to impact more backspin, you need to contact from the tip of the racket so that you can get the ball to stay longer in your bat and at the same time brushing the ball faster using your forearm and wrist.

Also in  one of your articles, it says that your racket needs to be vertical as horizontal will produce more sidetop side under.

Please explain and clarify further and help me to get this right. I would like to be able to produce very very heavy backspin serves both short and long so that the ball really sinks down and one has to lift the chop up in order to get this over the net. How do I do this ?

Please help.

Thanks.
DavidPen

Very impressive IIISonny!

For pure backspin, you can strike the ball anywhere from the 00:15 to 00:45 clock dial position. Experiment with all of them and see the difference. Then think of when you'd use any of those strike points.

Edited by Tinykin - 02/21/2014 at 10:38am

Thanks Cranestyle. I will try this out. Yes, I agree just
serving forward doesn't produce much spin.

The Ma Lin style seems to work too. Going forward and scooping
upwards.

Cheers
DavidPen

@y0da - Surely there are many tips and techniques and Davidpe
will ultimately find what works for him.

I find considering the return stroke ensures that the bat isn't left on
the ball putting drag on it and reducing the desired backspin; just
sharing a version of the stoke.

As far as dwell time is concerned, it is relevant (not related to parts
of the bat) and is also related to the height of the ball toss. The feel of
this dwell and spin proportion to ball toss can be experimented with when spinning the ball into your hand. ...

Edited by CraneStyle - 02/24/2014 at 3:13am

Go Ma Lin....

It might be helpful to others if you document your current status and then make another movie clip once you think you improved to a certain extend.

y0da wrote: Hi DavidPen, I'm not a CP player myself but I guess the physics of a spinning ball remain true across all blade holding styles.  First you need to know what kind of a short backspin serve you want to achieve. Slow or fast in terms of speed and how much spin you want to impart. Additionally you might want to think of the desired behaviour for the second bounce. Do you want the ball to slighty pop up into the server, bounce in the same angle or let it return to the net? The behaviour of the ball during the second bounce (grip,slip,trajectory)  is determined by the spin to speed ratio of your ball. Simply put, a fast and spinny  (backspin!) serve will bounce into the enemy with nearly the same angle it hit the table. A fast and not so spinny serve will slightly pop up. A slow and spinny serve will slightly pop up. A slow and not so spinny serve (speed to spin ratio = 1) will bounce back into the net. Please note that the spin and speed ratio where the ball returns to the net can be determined exactly but I didn't mentioned it because it dont helps you practising it if you know the exact values. Regarding the technical suggestions: Use the area near the tip of your blade because it possesses the highest velocity of all points of your blade and has a good control compared to the bouncy region in the blade middle (sweet spot). In my opinion it's false that a fast forward and backward motion like CraneStyle mentioned gives you more spin. Most people think they serve with more spin this way but they actually don't impart as much spin as they usually do. Since the motion has to be reversed shortly after the ball contact, they can't and won't swing as fast as they are used to and get close to the point where the spin speed ratio is equal to one. This leads balls to pop up more and dont let them jump into the receiver, maybe even let it bounce back to the net and tricks people into believing they created more spin. To give an actual advice, start with less spin and speed. Try to hit the lower hemisphere of the ball  and at the region near the blade tip. Try to let the ball bounce back on it's first bounce on your table half. Once you can do this, slightly increase the speed. If you can keep the contact point and brushing motion, the velocity increase of your blade will increase the imparted spin in the same ratio. The idea that certain spots on the racket increase the ball contact time is false aswell, explanation left out because it's already a wall of text. I hope that helped you more than it confused you.

Try bending your knees and getting lower.