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Tips on Forehand |
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mickd
Forum Moderator Joined: 04/27/2014 Location: Japan Status: Offline Points: 1231 |
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Posted: 11/13/2015 at 7:50am |
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I had a practice session the other day with someone from one of the clubs I play at. He's much better than I am. We were doing some forehand to backhand topspin rallies. He hits the ball much faster than I'm used to, so it was quite difficult for me to continue the rally (I'm the guy wearing white).
I've been trying to fix my forehand recently and no matter what I do, something seems off. I've been getting conflicting advice from different people, which makes it harder to settle on something I'm comfortable with. One thing I've been wondering about is my left knee (I'm left handed). I find that as I move around, my left foot begins to point outwards as opposed to towards the table. What this does is it makes it so that when I rotate my body, my left knee moves left and right as opposed to just forwards and backwards. I'm not sure if this is a bad habit, but I've been trying to break out of it. I also feel as if the relationship between my body and arm swing is all off. Should I be getting lower? Leaning more forward? Maybe I'm overthinking things? I've been playing for about 2 years now. One year casually and one year a little more seriously (without a coach). I'd appreciate any advice. Feel free to be as critical as you can :) Most the rallies are really short, but here are the slightly longer ones (only slightly longer). 1:04 1:25 2:06 2:25 3:00 4:14 4:50 Thank you! |
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14845 |
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What kind of blade and rubber are you using?
You are clearly putting too much weight on your left leg. Put your weight more on your right foot - you should actually centralize your weight, but my guess is that you probably feel balanced right now so you need to put more weight on your right foot to compensate. Transfer weight less and get more balanced and do more of the looping work with your core. Keep your legs bent while doing this and everything will fall into place. I would say that a lot of this depends on what you are trying to do. In many ways, your current stroke, whatever its issues, looks fine for where you are. Btu what I don't get is the impression you are trying to impart spin on the ball. Yes you are imparting spin and when you actually do a full loop, your opponent blocks the ball off the table. But very often. you are just hitting the ball and rallying fast and finishing with your racket far too low to impart topspin. Your wrist also looks too tense. The whole drill seems too fast and you don't seem to be holding on to the ball long enough to impart spin. The ball seems to be flying over to your practice partner who is hitting the ball back at you fast. Finish your stroke higher higher and brush the ball consistently and focus more on spin over speed. Finish consistently at head height. Relax your wrist so that it gives you more whip and racket head speed. After you get this right and slow the ball down, the quality of your loop will improve. The problem IMO is mostly what you are doing with your hand. So in short: 1. Centralize weight by putting more weight on your right foot. 2. Use the core to get rotation while weight is more centralized. 3. Finish your stroke at forehead height (just look at the quality of your loops in the video when you do so) and go for spin over speed in your practice loops. 4. Relax the wrist.
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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Lestat
Super Member Joined: 01/16/2012 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 421 |
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Looks to me he is just showing off. That's no way to practice, the tempo is too high for any sort of meaningful practice - especially that it's obvious you're out of your comfort zone. If the a**hole would slow down, maybe we could have a look at your real form.
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14845 |
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I agree, though in some ways, it goes both ways. There should have been an agreement as to who was hitting and who was blocking before the exercise.
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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AcudaDave
Gold Member Joined: 11/02/2010 Location: Indiana Status: Offline Points: 1859 |
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I agree with the things NextLevel said, but I can tell you now that I would get so annoyed if my practice partner kept countering the ball that fast. He needs to block for you, not counter hit. It doesn't give you time to really work on your FH. The other thing is that he can't keep more than 2 or 3 balls on the table going at that rate.
This is something I see many intermediate players at our club do. They try warming up with each other but when one person is supposed to be blocking while the other is looping, he ends up counter hitting to the looper and they can't keep it going. I just told a couple of 1700 players the other day to slow it down, especially the guy blocking. That way the looper has more time to develop his technique. Overall your FH loops pretty good, especially for the short time you've been playing. So the main thing is to tell that guy to freaking slow down and just block the ball for you!
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Joola Zhou Qihao 90 blade
Joola Dynaryz Inferno max - BH Nittaku Moristo SP 2.0 - FH |
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mickd
Forum Moderator Joined: 04/27/2014 Location: Japan Status: Offline Points: 1231 |
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Thanks NL! I'm using an Innerforce ZLC blade with Hurricane Neo 3 on the FH, and Nittaku Fastarc P1 on the backhand. Yeah, I called it a topspin rally, but it really wasn't. I didn't know what to call it. My intention was to just do counterhits, but the ball came so fast I couldn't maintain my counterhit form and return the ball. So it was kind of in between. I mentioned a few times to him that the ball was really fast, and he said I should use a shorter stroke to help with recovery time. I actually never thought about putting weight on my right foot to try and centralize my balance. One thing I've been struggling to understand is how people get the correct weight transfer. To me it feels like what I'm doing is just rotating my body which causes my legs to rotate. Thanks, it'll be something to try out tomorrow night! I'll try to consciously fix the rest, too!
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mickd
Forum Moderator Joined: 04/27/2014 Location: Japan Status: Offline Points: 1231 |
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This particular guy I played with is actually kind of strange like that. I know when he plays with some other people, he's extremely helpful at feeding consistent balls. He does come up to me every now and then and give me some advice though.
I don't think his intention is to make it extremely difficult for me, but it does come out that way. Maybe he was trying to teach me a lesson since he always says my strokes are too long. He advocates extremely short but fast strokes. Actually shortly after the footage I took, he stood quite far from the table and started to return all the balls low, fast with quite a lot of sidespin. It took awhile before I could return any of the balls hehe. I usually don't play with him, but it just so happened on that day, his regular partners were running late, and my regular partners were already playing. So I asked him to hit some balls with me. He usually plays against people who are A LOT higher level than me.
Edited by mickd - 11/13/2015 at 9:17am |
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14845 |
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Well, he wasn't really teaching you anything. But if you want to have short strokes, you have to get into a blocking mentality to absorb and control his pace - if he gives you less pace, you add more and if you get more pace, you add less. So you start your backswing when the ball is coming at you and if it is fast, your stroke is short and you block, and if it is slow, the stroke is larger and you loop.
Counterhits are flat strokes. You aren't trying to impart topspin on the ball when counterhitting so just stay close to the table and hit the ball flat, adjusting for the spin on the ball with your racket angle. |
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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mickd
Forum Moderator Joined: 04/27/2014 Location: Japan Status: Offline Points: 1231 |
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I didn't have it on video, but we actually played for about 30 minutes. Probably every 10 minutes he stopped me to show me how to move my body and arm. The reason why I started to record it is because I wanted to see what I looked. The main points he mentioned was that I needed to get lower, I needed a shorter stroke with a closed racket, I needed to shift my body to the side if the ball was too close to my body so that I don't end up leaning backwards, and I needed to rotate my knees (I think this was him trying to get me to improve my weight transfer, which is probably non-existent).
Actually, now that you mention the blocking mentality, maybe that's what he wants me to do. I remember awhile back he made a comment about my backhand. He said that I should stop trying to topspin the ball and focus more on blocking the ball low over the net. He said I needed a lot more control before I started to topspin. Looks like I have a lot to think about! :)
Edited by mickd - 11/13/2015 at 9:49am |
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blahness
Premier Member Joined: 10/18/2009 Location: Melbourne Status: Offline Points: 5443 |
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I agree that your practise partner is an asshole for countering that fast to you. You need a bit more forearm snap. Try to contact the ball slightly further away from your body with an angle of maybe 120 degrees instead of your angle now which is much less than 90 degrees. The other thing is to bring your shoulder back a bit during the backswing, basically your elbow will be close to and slightly to the back of your waist. You should contact the ball with a more closed racket angle. Lean forward a bit more. Make your stroke a bit more backwards-forwards, and close your blade more. Focus more on spin and increasing dwell time. If it is too fast, borrow his speed and produce spinnier shots, it will automatically slowdown the rally for you. Another thing is you need to use your nonplaying arm a bit more for balance. It's hindering your movement now. Place your right arm in front of you and use your right arm to help initiate the backswing like a spinning ballet dancer. Ma Long and Samsonov both utilize it a bit more. Also keep your weight pretty evenly distributed not just on one leg all the time. Think of your legs reaching for the ball. If the ball comes to your right you reach with your right leg, and if the ball comes to your left reach with your left leg.
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Viscaria FH: Hurricane 8-80 BH: D05 Back to normal shape bats :( |
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14845 |
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Your form in the video is largely fine for the amount of time you have played and he had a problem blocking your true topspins. Just find someone to practice your true topspins at a slower pace with and learn to adjust the size of the stroke to the incoming ball by starting the backswing only when the ball is hit. That way, your stroke will naturally be smaller for faster balls and larger for slower balls.
But even if you just kept what you had in this video with all its issues, you would be largely fine as long as you put more spin on the ball to give your time and to give your opponent timing issues. |
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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MLfan
Super Member Joined: 04/23/2015 Location: China Status: Offline Points: 486 |
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I watched this vid for about 20 seconds, so assuming the rest of the video is similar, I don't actually think your training partner is an asshole. I think he probably just thinks that's the way to counter spin. A bunch of players do that because they can't block well and resort to counter hitting the ball to get the ball back on the table (Your practice partner does miss a shitload of your loops). I think you need to loop with greater accuracy, ie. to your practice partner's backhand, to develop more ball feeling. Also your looping arm is too close to your body. You're also doing half the weight transfer. Putting your weight on your left foot is correct, but I can see that you're not really transferring the weight over to your right foot (possibly because the practice rhythm is too fast for you). This weight transfer is really important and should feel like your feet are hopping back and forth.
The idea to make short strokes is really old school. like REALLY old school. Please don't do that. Nobody does that nowadays, because you can't generate enough spin and power from doing so.
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rocketman222
Gold Member Joined: 01/06/2007 Location: Walnut Creek,CA Status: Offline Points: 1152 |
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I would disagree with MLfan on the short stroke, as long as your timing is good the stroke length shouldn't matter that much. Look at Mizutani or Boll, they can get enough power with a relatively short stroke.
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MLfan
Super Member Joined: 04/23/2015 Location: China Status: Offline Points: 486 |
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I hate to break it to you, and I don't want to start any arguments, but Boll and Mizutani (especially mizutani!) are known for their lack of power on their forehands! The CCTV5 commentators repeat this a lot and urge people who are watching the game to not have their forehands like Mizutani's! Stroke length is absolutely crucial for power and spin. Just look at Xu Xin, Wang Liqin, Wang Hao, Zhang Jike, basically any modern player who can play with a lot of power.
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14845 |
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While I generally agree with you, many of us would be happy to play anything close to Mizutani or Boll so let's keep some context. But I definitely agree that the ability to straighten the arm more and play a larger stroke is better. You can always retain a shorter stroke for specific situations.
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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MLfan
Super Member Joined: 04/23/2015 Location: China Status: Offline Points: 486 |
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Of course, haha. All this is just theoretical :)
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14845 |
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Wrong thread...
Edited by NextLevel - 11/14/2015 at 8:17am |
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14845 |
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Wrong thread..
Edited by NextLevel - 11/14/2015 at 8:17am |
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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mickd
Forum Moderator Joined: 04/27/2014 Location: Japan Status: Offline Points: 1231 |
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Thanks MLfan. I was actually really conscious about my accuracy. I know a lot of times in a rally, especially when the ball is moving fast, if one person hits the ball slightly off, the rally usually ends there. You'll see me raise my hand a number of times in that video after a point where i felt the rally ended because I did an inconsistent shot. Sometimes I said "sorry" though, which might not have been caught by the camera. The problem for me was the speed was too fast for me to control, especially when I had to move. This is a problem with me, and I'll try my best to slow it down next time to improve my accuracy. Weight transfer is definitely something I don't fully understand yet. I know how it works and why it's beneficial (I think), but whenever I try it, my body feels like it's moving in an awkward manner. I'll need to do a lot more shadow practice I think. I actually know a few players here who largely advocate using short strokes all the time. I've never really liked it, but practicing it has helped me when I'm playing close to the table and the balls are coming fast. But I definitely have longer strokes in mind still. I really wanted to practice my weight transfer and to do some controlled top spins today during practice, but I ended up helping a new middle school girl who had zero table tennis experience (but recently joined the table tennis club at school). Actually I think about half my practice time is usually spent helping people improve. I don't mind though :) Thanks for all the advice everyone.
Edited by mickd - 11/14/2015 at 12:00pm |
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14845 |
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Weight transfer is one school of thought. But if you bend your knees and rotate your core and keep you weight evenly distributed, you will get 95% of the same effect. You will also struggle less to activate your movement because you have too much weight placed on one foot.
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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MLfan
Super Member Joined: 04/23/2015 Location: China Status: Offline Points: 486 |
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Sorry, but I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. Weight transfer isn't just one school of thought. You can get so much more power if you transfer the power from your legs. Rotating is only half the story and won't get you anywhere near 95% of the power you can get from weight transferring. If you keep your weight evenly distributed on both feet but rotate your core, that's just spinning on the ground. You need the forward momentum from weight transfer, aka pushing off of one leg to another, plus rotating your core to loop.
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MLfan
Super Member Joined: 04/23/2015 Location: China Status: Offline Points: 486 |
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Sure, the person who blocked the ball may have blocked it too quickly for you, but next time, try rotating your core more. That's how you can achieve the fastest recovery. Also, I think you may be standing a little too close to the table. Hard to tell.
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14845 |
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Many people who focus on transferring weight end up with precisely the problem OP has because they lack the time to transfer weight then recover and move. And your solution is not a solution. If you actually try what I proposed, you might be surprised by it. But again, this is one of many things that TT technicians can disagree upon. Just because you haven't heard it before doesn't make it wrong. Edited by NextLevel - 11/14/2015 at 9:21pm |
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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MLfan
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lol I never said you were wrong. I only disagree, and respectfully so.
I think the OP should keep practicing weight transfer. If it's so easy to get, then everybody would be blasting loops left and right.
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mickd
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Thank you. I'll work on balancing myself with better weight transfer, and hopefully I can get another video up in the near future.
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Ringer84
Silver Member Joined: 04/12/2014 Location: West Virginia Status: Offline Points: 584 |
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Interesting conversation about weight transfer versus rotation. I once wrote Larry Hodges this same question and I thought his reply was excellent. In my opinion, one problem with using lots of weight transfer in your FH loop is that many amateurs do not take a wide enough stance to really support it.
Edited by Ringer84 - 11/15/2015 at 11:43am |
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USATT Rating: 1785
Timo Boll Spirit FH: Andro Rasant BH: Baracuda |
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Ringer84
Silver Member Joined: 04/12/2014 Location: West Virginia Status: Offline Points: 584 |
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MLFan,
What do you think the coach is teaching this player from :30 to 1:30? Especially at 1:25. Edited by Ringer84 - 11/15/2015 at 11:58am |
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USATT Rating: 1785
Timo Boll Spirit FH: Andro Rasant BH: Baracuda |
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APW46
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You are drilling too fast !
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The Older I get, The better I was.
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benfb
Platinum Member Joined: 10/10/2008 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2709 |
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That first minute and a half is all about using your weight shift to generate power. At first he shows how to use the shift from the rear foot to the front foot and also how to keep the center of balance in front of the body. Then, at about 1:20 he points out the the boy isn't really shift his weight, he's just pivoting on his feet (doing the Twist?).
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benfb
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+1, in my opinion. However, I would add another point. Rotating has a shorter hitting zone than weight transfer. A long hitting zone is useful because it allows you to adjust your timing for striking the ball.
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