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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dingyibvs Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/08/2023 at 1:53am
I've come to a similar conclusion after studying the stroke a bit more closely, with one important difference.  At the point of contact the stroke is essentially the same.  The difference is simply the backswing.  For the "concave" shot my backswing has the blade tip pointing down a bit, so the FH side faces me, and my wrist has a supination and extension.  This closes the racket angle at the point of impact, brushing over the ball.

The "convex" shot, OTOH, has the backswing with the FH side facing up, and during the stroke there's pronation and extension.

Calling it "concave" and "convex" is really a misnomer, because when driving the ball the primary action of the wrist is extension, with pronation as a secondary action.  The pronation part is the big difference between our understanding of the shot.  If you look at it that way, then the reason the "concave" shot doesn't work well here is then obvious--you need to change from a supination, sometimes a strong one, to a pronation.  This is also why the "convex" shot doesn't work well against top spins, because you're tryin to do the exact opposite.

Here's a video of me attempting loop drives with both forms.  Excuse the poor consistency right now as I just started practicing this.  I start off by doing the "convex" shot, then around the 28 second mark flip to the "concave" shot.  You can tell which shot has good contact based on the sound, and as you can see, basically the only time I land a shot with the "concave" shot is when I brush the ball more, which makes it more of a loop than a drive.  I can land the "concave" shot with pretty good consistency now, even in match play, so I was really hoping I could co-opt it into the loop drive, but that doesn't appear to be possible.



Edited by dingyibvs - 03/08/2023 at 1:56am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/08/2023 at 2:42am
Originally posted by dingyibvs dingyibvs wrote:

I've come to a similar conclusion after studying the stroke a bit more closely, with one important difference.  At the point of contact the stroke is essentially the same.  The difference is simply the backswing.  For the "concave" shot my backswing has the blade tip pointing down a bit, so the FH side faces me, and my wrist has a supination and extension.  This closes the racket angle at the point of impact, brushing over the ball.

The "convex" shot, OTOH, has the backswing with the FH side facing up, and during the stroke there's pronation and extension.

Calling it "concave" and "convex" is really a misnomer, because when driving the ball the primary action of the wrist is extension, with pronation as a secondary action.  The pronation part is the big difference between our understanding of the shot.  If you look at it that way, then the reason the "concave" shot doesn't work well here is then obvious--you need to change from a supination, sometimes a strong one, to a pronation.  This is also why the "convex" shot doesn't work well against top spins, because you're tryin to do the exact opposite.

Here's a video of me attempting loop drives with both forms.  Excuse the poor consistency right now as I just started practicing this.  I start off by doing the "convex" shot, then around the 28 second mark flip to the "concave" shot.  You can tell which shot has good contact based on the sound, and as you can see, basically the only time I land a shot with the "concave" shot is when I brush the ball more, which makes it more of a loop than a drive.  I can land the "concave" shot with pretty good consistency now, even in match play, so I was really hoping I could co-opt it into the loop drive, but that doesn't appear to be possible.


I see what you mean now. I guess what I'm trying to show is that the way I'm achieving the "convex" backswing is entirely with my body action - not the wrist or arm. I too have my bat pointing up during the backswing - not down. I too found that the method with the bat pointing down during the backswing is weaker - my hypothesis is because the wrist is dropped too much and is in a weak position to transfer force. 

But because I haven't really activated pronation/supination etc during the "convex" backswing - I can freely supinate once I make hard solid contact with the ball with my backswing. It's not like I went from supination to pronation or whatever, I just have one "wrist" action which is thumb driven supination (in actual fact that comes from the forearm but whatever). So basically I have a "convex" looking backswing (initiated solely by the body) and when I contact the ball i still wrap over the ball with supination, thus I would "classify" my stroke as a "concave" stroke fundamentally - because the ball doesn't feel what happened during the backswing. It's my experience that if you don't supinate and use other wrist mechanisms (for eg extension/flexion), you can still get a strong shot in if you use the body well but the degree of topspin will be less. If you use pronation it's gonna be worse because you're opening the bat angle and lifting the ball - it's easier to lift backspin this way but it'll become very hard to produce real hard dipping topspin like for eg Wang Manyu or Miwa Harimoto style. 

From a body use perspective - I feel like you are doing the hip bending + squatting action but not really the hip rotation (achieved by bringing the right knee forward which rotates the left hip backwards relative to the right during the backswing). The other mechanism that you can add is the pulling of the elbow with the lats (rotating the right elbow clockwise and the left elbow anticlockwise, like ripping apart a piece of paper). Using this means that your hand can move even less than what it's doing now and you can have an even more compact and powerful stroke. 


Edited by blahness - 03/08/2023 at 2:46am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/09/2023 at 6:34pm
Didn't do a lot of training except goofing around with the stupid sideunderspin loop... but had some long technique discussions with a very good coach. He showed me how to use body rotation on the BH push which is a bit eye opening....it will be very interesting to implement in my game.

The other discussion we had was how to change direction with the BH. I realised I've always kinda tried to go down the line by slightly delaying the contact point which works really well if the opponent hits a very strong shot, but against slower balls it's better to go about it purposefully with the body going forward.


Edited by blahness - 03/09/2023 at 8:23pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/11/2023 at 10:03pm
Played a lot of matches today. 

My game against BH pendulum servers is usually quite a bit weaker than my game against FH pendulum servers so I asked one of my partners to serve much more BH during the games - he actually came quite close in a few games and I was struggling. The issue is that even if I manage to loop the fast long BH serve it's like a 50-50 rally situation unless I can loop down the line - but that's really hard to do against wildly varying serves. And the BH serve to the FH short corner is not so easy to attack either. 

I actually experimented with the Truls Moregardh style of BH sidespin chopblock against these long BH serves and surprisingly it worked wonders because it didn't require much preparation and poses a few questions for the server because instead of a loop where he's ready to counter - it's a junk ball with weird sidespin on it with accompanying topspin or underspin - it's very hard to attack, and if he pushes it it's just gonna be a simple underspin which I can just loop very spinny off and he's gonna be in trouble. I could use this receive against FH pendulum serves too if I'm lazy to use my BH loop. 

Against the FH short balls I have to rely on a lot of variations to win the point - it's not as simple as just chiquita on the BH short balls to win. Everything from short pushes, fast long hook pushes and fade pushes, to FH flicks with varying placement/spin. 


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/13/2023 at 9:55pm
Not TT related but I finally worked up to a 50kg Bulgarian split squat and am closing in on a standing ab wheel. It's surprising because I haven't worked out in a week plus and I've had some gains which I thought was weird...
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/16/2023 at 6:00pm
Played with an old friend who hasn't played a lot recently. I was expecting it to be easy because I've improved leaps and bounds but boy was I wrong! 

Already from the warmup he wasn't missing loops at all when we were training loop vs block, I should have suspected something.... 

When it came to the matches it was bizarre, he was attacking and chiquitaing my spinniest hook serves with confidence and I had no idea what he was serving and quickly found myself 10-4 down. Miraculously I made 8 points straight to close it out 10-12, it was partly luck and partly me not giving up. 

With him it was more of a cat and mouse game like playing against myself because he loops hard on both wings and also has good serves. His hook and reverse pendulum serves are really hard to receive now - the difference between sidetop and sideunder is so subtle that I was guessing a lot - the fake movements are just so good. Somehow his pushing has improved a lot too, there's no easy mistakes to get points from. He was also positioning himself very well in general and there wasn't any gaping holes I could exploit in general. 

In the end I still won most games thanks to my better serve/receive game but many of them were very close and I had to dig deep. In the end what worked well was the sidespin chopblock receive on the BH (which he hated) to deal with long balls and FH looping anything drifting long, and then I can focus my attention on the FH short ball receive.

Many, many brilliant points - I made 2 around the net BH loops and 2 very strong FH counterloops lol, he made a few chopblocks, a few ridiculous short blocks which left me hanging out to dry, and a ton of FH powerloops to my middle (damn those are hard af to block) and wide angles. His BH down the line loop was also landing surprisingly high percentages yikes. 


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/17/2023 at 2:53am
Few things to add from the prev session that I wanted to keep note for personal improvement. 

I finally discovered how to block loops to my middle - the windshield wiper FH stroke is the key here - with it I can finally do FH counters even when the ball is at my left chest area. No BH-FH transition needed lol. 

The other thing to remind myself of is that no spin serves are really good, I should use them a lot more often!

The other golden stroke is the BH sidespin chopblock serve receive, to use anticlockwise body rotation to power it (which is my main improvement to it which allowed me to use it against everything). 

I want to incorporate clockwise body rotation to power the strawberry, tried it for a few shots but the error rate was a little high still, will want to train that a bit more as it's quite the disgusting shot on itself similar to the sidespin chopblock.

On other techniques, I think on my BH I need to learn to straighten the arm a bit to get more power when needed, and to also use the left hip to pull everything back to ready position after hitting - same with the FH stroke


Edited by blahness - 03/18/2023 at 1:07am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/18/2023 at 11:50pm
Did a shit ton of continuous looping/countering practice against a blocker who randomly adds and takes away momentum from the ball, and does all sorts of dead blocks, sidespin, sideunderspin, topspin blocks and everything in between. Was really good practice for consistency and finding the ball well. 

Also played games against quite a good tall lefty shakehand two winged looper who had very good serves, pushes and powerful af loops. He seemed to be quite well trained. Unfortunately for him I was in the form of my life and he only managed to get 1 set out of 10+ sets. I was just attacking all his half long serves with a lot of spin and also in general received his serves quite well, while he got bamboozled by my serves quite a bit gifting me many attacking opportunities. Even did a few FH counterloops which I was quite proud of lol. 

One thing I did differently today was wearing compression Tshirt. It worked incredibly well because it helped to stabilise my core without my abs having to do too much work - this really increased my speed of movement I reckon. Will look to buy a few more.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/24/2023 at 8:02am
Did few hundred balls of loop vs chop training... I haven't practiced this in a few months and was pleasantly surprised how much I improved. I was recovering well and continuously looping many, many balls (5+) against the chopper and often overcoming his defences. Still it was tiring af... 

The more fun part was training serve receive against BH serves. So my partner for the day, just kept serving BH to me random spin and random placements (long, short, etc...). I focused on using the body to power all the receives. On the FH I was doing the FH equivalent of the strawberry stroke, and it's actually quite disgusting how much spin variations can be done with it. The other cool thing I tried was the windshield wiper variant of flick - you could use this to flick both topspin as well as sideunderspin. The others were the tomahawk push and the sideways short push. 

On the BH I was trying to refine the BH strawberry receive to add to my existing chopblock receive and of course the chiquita. I figured out an easy way to loop BH serves reliably just with the fingers - this provided a much more stable base to add power from the body. And it became much easier to loop BH pendulum long serves. 

After that I played a few games which I used all these new variations. My partner was so used to them and was flat hitting all my loops like Mima Ito lol... It was the most disorienting thing ever. I think the serve/receive practice benefited him more than me ugh. But these skills are very useful in other matchups. I really hated the fade BH punch block to my FH - that shot is the nastiest crap I've seen - he kills most of the spin on the ball and it becomes a sideunderspin curving away from me - this forces me to FH loop it upwards and then he just blocks it back to my BH and I'm in big trouble. Basically I couldn't decipher this pattern if he manages to make all these shots against my opening loops. 

All in all it was a very productive and fun session after a very busy week at work!


Edited by blahness - 03/24/2023 at 8:35am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote cole_ely Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/24/2023 at 12:55pm
Originally posted by blahness blahness wrote:

Not TT related but I finally worked up to a 50kg Bulgarian split squat and am closing in on a standing ab wheel. It's surprising because I haven't worked out in a week plus and I've had some gains which I thought was weird...

Maybe your body was needed a couple of extra days to fully recover?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/24/2023 at 8:03pm
Originally posted by cole_ely cole_ely wrote:

Originally posted by blahness blahness wrote:

Not TT related but I finally worked up to a 50kg Bulgarian split squat and am closing in on a standing ab wheel. It's surprising because I haven't worked out in a week plus and I've had some gains which I thought was weird...

Maybe your body was needed a couple of extra days to fully recover?

Yeah I think so too...
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2023 at 11:16pm
Wasn't in my best condition physically, so I was doing mostly tweaking the BH strawberry - it's easier with the elbow pull with the lats muscles. It ties in incredibly well with the hook serve. So the idea is hook serve to the wide BH, they receive to BH or middle, then I do this strawberry suddenly giving them a nasty sidespin to their wide FH. It even works against long serves to just give them a nasty sidespin ball which can even be short ish.  

Now I guess I need to kinda integrate all the different over the table strokes including chiquita, chopblock, strawberry, fake/real loops. For FH I have the tomahawk push, hook receive, fade, windshield wiper flick and of course my trusty FH loop. I guess that's probably more than necessary and I can focus more on solidifying them now.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/31/2023 at 9:53pm
Trying out PechPong's method of recovering after a receive of a short ball, by using both feet rather than just 1. It definitely seems to be more effective than using 1 feet. 

The other thing I'm working on is a faster recovery after the FH pendulum serve.

Lastly, will also be trying to integrate the bent arm FH loop backswing. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/07/2023 at 3:50am
Played some matches and lost quite a few games yesterday due to just playing bad. 

I noticed that counterlooping is really too much of an advanced stroke that is prone to failure especially against very high quality opening loops. And topspin blocking is basically useless because it does nothing to prevent the next powerloop.

Will be looking to incorporate some disgusting block variations especially sidespin blocking. 

On reflection, I've been abusing the down the line BH a bit too much and people are adjusting to it. I'll need to get working on the diagonal BH with extra hip rotation (such that the starting position between the down the line opening and the diagonal opening is almost the same)


Edited by blahness - 04/07/2023 at 8:20am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/16/2023 at 11:41pm
Finally discovered a way to generate some bomb speed on high balls to my BH (it's weird but I make a lot more mistakes and weak ass shots against high balls than I do against medium height balls or even low balls lol - it actually cost me a match in an arena where I couldn't FH pivot due to lack of space, and couldn't deal with high balls to my BH which sounds so stupid). The key is still hip rotation and timing of the weight transfer from back foot (left) to front foot (right). 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/21/2023 at 9:44am
Was super humid today and the conditions were downright unplayable because the ball kept on slipping on the rubber. I had to go open angle lift for most loops Dead, but at least that worked lol. That was actually quite cool because I now know what to do against really heavy deep underspin during humid conditions, just lift it over with an open angle, the ball will surely not slip, then add in the turning of the fingers and I can get confident in doing the opening loop. 

I also worked a lot on incorporating the intermediate step after pushing, I think it's still a foreign concept to me, I was still pretty frozen after the push and didn't recover properly. I did some drills to drill it in but during matches I only did it maybe twice. Will need to do a lot more shadow training for that. 

I also worked on defending loops with the hook sidespin wrap on the FH (I'm already quite decent at it on the BH) - worked really well.

After that I worked on smashing short high balls with me just tossing the balls. With BH now I can do the bomb smash and it's actually getting easier to do it. On the FH I actually discovered the easiest way to generate good easy power on the ball, having high dwell time and generate weird disgusting spin for the opponent to deal with, and that's the fade flick-kill which is an extension of the fade FH flick. It produces a pure sidespin ball with some small amounts of underspin or topspin depending on contact, the ball goes out like a C shape with speed and is a nightmare to counterloop against. I think it's now the strongest version of the FH flick in my opinion. When combined with the tomahawk chopsmash and the wiper flick it's enough variation to punish opportunity balls to the short FH for me imo.





Edited by blahness - 04/21/2023 at 10:13pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/24/2023 at 12:47am
I accidentally discovered an easier way to generate a lot of BH power after my last session training on smashing short high balls with the BH. Played a long training session where I was focused on BH continuous powerlooping against a good blocker, combining everything that I've learnt so far. It worked quite well and I was generating very heavy powerloops with my BH which shocked the blocker (he helped me a lot on my BH progression). The main thing that helped is the timing of the weight transfer/hip rotation at precisely the moment of ball contact - which is a tip I got from TTD's interview with Darko Jorgic (wrist - legs synchronisation). 

I also focused on training the FH sidespin fade flick against actual serves which imo is probably the most disgusting FH flick variation for an opponent to face (no topspin to borrow for a counter, hard to push as it's reasonably fast with sidespin), and it is coincidentally also the FH flick variation I feel is easiest to generate power with personally. Need to remember to use a horizontal bat orientation (3 O clock) for max power. I feel like this has even more direct point winning potential compared to the other FH flick variations (windshield wiper style, pancake flip style)

The hardest part was the recovery footwork (I've been trying to incorporate the intermediate step back but my muscle memory is stubborn af, I only managed to overwrite it a few times, maybe 40% across the entire session). I was annoyingly not moving back immediately after the receive despite me internally shouting at my body to do so. 

Other thing I was toying around is the timing of the weight transfer on the FH which is similar to the idea for the BH. I also saw online on how to use the right knee movement to control the direction of the power output from the legs. So on counterloops, the knee goes downwards to press the ball downwards, but on opening against backspin the knee goes upwards propelled by the calves. It's a super interesting concept for sure.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote maur1010 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05/15/2023 at 2:02am
The Chinese style of a bent arm tack-back and letting the arm go straighter in the forward swing is very powerful. If you are really relaxed it just happens naturally. I see a 20% improvement if I do it in my forehand.

Another thing I am working on is the wrist flick and at the end a shake of the bat. I feel this principle can be used in most strokes to increase bat speed and to allow a shorter swing. Interested in your thoughts?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05/15/2023 at 2:51am
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

The Chinese style of a bent arm tack-back and letting the arm go straighter in the forward swing is very powerful. If you are really relaxed it just happens naturally. I see a 20% improvement if I do it in my forehand.

Another thing I am working on is the wrist flick and at the end a shake of the bat. I feel this principle can be used in most strokes to increase bat speed and to allow a shorter swing. Interested in your thoughts?

Yes I see similar power improvements when I do that too on the FH. 
 
I try not to use the wrist too much - too much wrist reduces the quality of the impact itself - you always want to have a good solid contact with the ball. Also, the wrist is a weak mechanism prone to injury - much better is forearm pronation/supination which is a major racket speed multiplier and also helps to wrap around the ball to lengthen dwell time. There is probably some residual wrist movement but I no longer focus/rely on it compared to other mechanisms. 
 
I think the shake of the bat is caused by the inertia of the racket moving at high speed coupled with the braking of the stroke by the body. Just like there's an acceleration phase there is also a braking phase. If you manage to generate very high racket head speeds and stop the stroke you should be able to produce the bat shaking effect. Often there is a racket closing component to the bat shaking. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote maur1010 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05/15/2023 at 3:43am
I see hiromoto get a hand shake on his backhand punch at times with a good wrist flick.
It has great contact on the ball but he adds topspin by use of the wrist.
 I feel the modern pro game is so fast you need short strokes close to the table and the wrist flick is needed to generate topspin on the backhand, flick etc
Set your robot for 0.5 second  intervals and try your backhand. Rotating left to right takes too much time.
The Hiromoto style backhand can give full power with spin even for this fast interval.
I agree on the forehand its a different story.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05/15/2023 at 4:21am
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

I see hiromoto get a hand shake on his backhand punch at times with a good wrist flick.
It has great contact on the ball but he adds topspin by use of the wrist.
 I feel the modern pro game is so fast you need short strokes close to the table and the wrist flick is needed to generate topspin on the backhand, flick etc
Set your robot for 0.5 second  intervals and try your backhand. Rotating left to right takes too much time.
The Hiromoto style backhand can give full power with spin even for this fast interval.
I agree on the forehand its a different story.

Forearm supination and pronation looks exactly like wrist movement, but it's actually forearm driven. A lot of ppl who played me also told me I have a lot of wrist movement - but I told them that I actually have quite the relatively fixed wrist - it is mostly forearm pronation/supination. Visual information can be extremely deceiving.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote maur1010 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05/15/2023 at 6:36am
Yes maybe I should have used the term hand flick or hand rotation. I agree with your comments.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05/28/2023 at 8:37pm
Played again after almost 2-3 weeks break. However, I haven't been truly relaxing - I've been drilling the recovery steps (after serve, after short receive, after loops) whenever i had some spare time. 

Surprisingly when I hit the table, it didn't take me too long to actually implement it. I was doing serve/receive training with some of the older guys in the club. I realised with the new recovery steps I'm significantly more accurate with my positioning and was rarely caught out of position despite him trying to trick me with his receives all the time. I was also looping/attacking a lot more confidently because I'm in better positions rather than having to compromise my stroke. 

What I found out was that it's actually quite tiring because you're literally bouncing all the time at a pretty high frequency. 

I still need a lot more work to incorporate it into my loop/countering game. Especially with FH powerlooping it's not so easy to have the mindset of recovering immediately. So I started off with a lot of just short stroke countering - reset weight to middle - then move again to prepare for the next stroke. So basically 3 steps per stroke. It's actually a lot of foot activity but even during countering I found that with this I'm almost never not in position. 

My theory is that with more time watching the ball we gain more information and having the intermediate step helps us benefit from this additional information by more precise positioning, and even reversing momentum if the initial guess is completely wrong.

The other thing I tried out is using the Waldner service grip (half grip?!) for FH pendulum serves. It is still significantly spinnier than what I can produce using the full grip, and also easier to control to boot. The funny thing is that somehow when I was practicing with the full grip - it also improved my serve with the half grip even when I didn't practice it at all. The reason why I went to full grip for my pendulum serve was because hook serves are way better with the full grip, and I didn't want opponents to know beforehand whether I'm going to serve pendulum or hook. But I found out that if you block the racket view with your left hand (legal - it's only illegal to block the ball), and you only show the FH face of the racket - no one would be able to tell if you're using the half grip or the full grip. This could even be a very useful serve variation (switching between half and full grips) - even when the spin type is the same, the ball that's produced is very different. 


Edited by blahness - 05/28/2023 at 8:48pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06/07/2023 at 8:21pm
Finally learnt the pure topspin or sidetopspin with the "opposite sidespin" variant of the hook serve - it can be incredibly nasty if the opponent is not prepared for it. 

The other adjustment I made is to keep the right leg near middle line, but move the left leg more to the left beyond the left edge of the table. This allows me to cover the wide BH serves better and also see the serve from a better angle. 

Still recovering from a cold so I was losing my concentration and strength by the 8th game or so and couldn't keep up in the rallies unfortunately.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06/11/2023 at 11:21pm
Got a comment from a very high level player that when moving to the right I'm not lunging and am just relying on the left leg to cover the distance. This results in much slower and less explosive movement, and also because the left leg moved to the right too much my base is narrower which results in less stability in the stroke.

Edit: I think lunging is indeed way faster. After making some adjustments I pretty much won all my games against my friends tonight. Will continue to shadow this portion of footwork (lunging to the right and then recovering back to middle). Had some problems reading the reverse pendulum serve and had to resort to BH sidespin pushing everything (including long serve) and then try to rescue a bad position, but strangely it worked enough for me to win lol




Edited by blahness - 06/12/2023 at 8:49am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08/13/2023 at 9:53am
Long time haven't posted. The main changes in my game so far recently:

1) settled on 3 most effective serve types - FH hook, FH pendulum and FH heavy underspin/no spin. Added quite a few variations to the hook serve to make it more effective. One is the opposite sidespin hook serve, the other is the pure topspin and backspin version with no sidespin, and the other is having two sets of followthroughs, one down and one up.

2) figured out a way to reliably and easily chiquita reverse serves, and also heavy underspin serves - there's a wrist movement trick to this which ZJK uses heavily and I think I figured out how he does it. Also works really well for looping these serves if they're long and fast.

3) a lot of footwork training especially on recovery reset. 

4) settling down on a FH loop structure and just training it without any more changes. It's a loop where my racket head always rotates fully to 9oclock regardless of what kind of loop I'm doing (normal, hook, fade)

5) BH down the line using the left leg straightening method - to be tested. 

6) figured out to make the FH topspin flick kill really easy to execute - the key is the snapping of the forearm inwards (like a hug). This is also to be distinguished between the no spin FH flick, the weak topspin FH short flick, and the faded flick, and the long fast push disguised as a flick (aka the pushflick). 

7) possibility of treat FH push like a hook serve of sorts - with both sidetopspin and sideunderspin versions. 


Edited by blahness - 08/13/2023 at 10:44pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08/19/2023 at 8:05am
There's a lot of new developments recently. 

1) BH pendulum serve using the BH strawberry - good practice for the strawberry anyway

2) Varying strawberry spin with the wrist and fingers. Pronate and use wrist when doing the sideunderspin version, use thumb to push

3) concept of pushing to create sidetopspin, and to disguise it with the version that produces sideunderspin. Need to train that for both FH and BH pushes

4) Down the line hook sideunderspin serve - easier just to use FH tomahawk movement

5) cleaned up my FH sideswipe movement - no arm backswing. Racket head pointed upwards against topspin and horizontal vs underspin

6) when receiving short FH serves, lunge to FH for the first step, then follow up with two small steps to final position. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08/21/2023 at 4:45am
After a kinda bad defeat, I am devising a few more strats. 

First is to actually serve short pure heavy backspin / no spin. Now that my FH short is no longer a weakness I should start to tempt them into short pushing to get into my newly acquired strengths.

Secondly is to actually fade loop FH pendulum serves. Besides the left leg straightening method, I figured out a comfortable way to use the arm movement to fade loop by rotating so that my arm is straightened with the palm facing upwards and BH bat face pointing to the left. I cannot afford to be so predictable in my first BH opening loop. I must be able to go down the line and diagonal with plenty of sidespin to bring the ball wide af. Otherwise even though I looped first I would be at a disadvantage unless I really blasted the ball with high risk. 

I also saw a very interesting Chinese video which combined the hook serve and the "up down" reverse pendulum serve. It looked very promising that I'm gonna learn it. Probably will produce even heavier sidetopspin from the hook serve due to its reverse pendulum like movement where I can use the wrist freely. 
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