Harimoto Sibling's Backhand Instructionals

Sadly, it's in Japanese. But I'll give you guys a rough translation.

It's really fast... and full of power... plus has lots of spin. I think it's really amazing.

She doesn't miss much... that's my main impression. Without missing much, when she gets the chance, she has the power, too. It's a well balanced backhand.

Simply put, the backhand is moving your wrist. For me especially, moving it forward. With that you'll get a stable, fast shot. Swinging your wrist forward. Just that. I don't really think about the fingers, just overall rotating the wrist forward. It's really just matching the hand to the incoming ball, then swinging the wrist forward.

Since the beginning I've felt my backhand was good, but there was a time when I felt like nothing would go in. At that time, I was using too much shoulders and stiffening up too much. From there, I worked on just using the wrist, and it got better. So now, I only really think about using the wrist. Even if it comes to the middle or the wide backhand, I match my hand up to the incoming ball and use my wrist. I'm not really thinking about using my body. The complete opposite to my forehand, which uses the whole body. Doesn't matter if it's a short push, banana flick, loop or drive, I think about using my wrist.

For me, I'm thinking staying in balance to keep the ball on the table. I'm trying to add spin, having my racket face the direction I want to hit the ball.

I'm not really thinking about hitting the ball deep, but if I spin the ball well, it'll jump forward. So just spinning the ball will naturally make it go deep.

The fingers and wrist, plus adding spin is what I think about. Doesn't matter where I'm aiming to hit the ball, getting the right timing, and hitting the ball while relaxed is important.

You guys can see them demonstrate their backhands at various angles through the video. Feel free to skip forward to those bits :)

Thanks for all this, I think google captions with autotranslate reasonably handles some of the things they say that get subtitled, but the issue is that when they put text on the screen with no audio voice, there is no translation.  More than anything else, your summary of tips and things they don't actually say out loud but highlight in Japanese text is the most valuable.

NL

NextLevel wrote: mickd, Thanks for all this, I think google captions with autotranslate reasonably handles some of the things they say that get subtitled, but the issue is that when they put text on the screen with no audio voice, there is no translation.  More than anything else, your summary of tips and things they don't actually say out loud but highlight in Japanese text is the most valuable. NL

Hey blahness. Been missing reading your improvement/update posts! I noticed HT use that a lot in his matches to great effect. I always felt it looked a bit unique, too. Glad to see it's conscious on his part here. During his demonstration, you can clearly see it happen. Matches often have the camera angle from another view, so you can see his body do the twist but not what the legs are doing. Maybe if we give it a try, it might work for us too haha.