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!

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.

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.

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! 

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!

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.

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! :)

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. 

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. 

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.

Of course, haha. All this is just theoretical :)

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

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. 

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.

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. 

What do you think the coach is teaching this player from :30 to 1:30? Especially at 1:25.

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?).

+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.

It's funny to me that we can watch the exact same video clip and reach two completely opposite conclusions. I guess people just see whatever they want to see.  I interpreted the coachs' gestures to mean that the boy was using TOO MUCH weight transfer, and the coach wanted him to think of his swing as more hip-oriented. For me, The first minute and half had less to do about shifting your weight and more about keeping your weight on the balls of your feet. You can see where he shows the boy at :58 to not allow his back angle to get too vertical and fall back on his heels. Keeping the weight on the balls of your feet allows you to get a larger and easier to achieve rotation.

Since we can't hear the audio, it's hard to say.  You could be right.

As for your point about using weight shift to get a bigger hitting zone and more versatile timing, that could be true but I would just add that many people have a tendency to reach for the ball too much with that type of swing.  

I think if you watch any of the CNT doing their basic loop in warm-ups, you can see that they are taught to think of the swing as primarily based on rotation.  I'm not saying that there is no right-to-left transfer of weightin the FH loop, because obviously there is.  But I think many people tend to overexaggerate this part of their swing when they should be generating more power from the hips/shoulders.

Greg letts has one of the best videos on proper rotation in the FH loop that I've ever seen, but I'm a  little too lazy to find it right now.

My primary point, however, is that most amateur players tend to over-exaggerate the importance of this weight shift and under appreciate the importance of good rotation.  You can hit 50 or more solid loops in a row with virtually no weight shift at all, and that was my point about watching how the CNT (or any other top pro) warms up.  I agree with Larry Hodges that most amateur players are best off thinking of looping as "rotating around a pole from the ceiling to the ground".

NL (speaking for himself) is saying that it is easy to say all kinds of things without having tried to teach them to anyone.  Anyone who actually loops on bent knees and tries to get power will transfer weight.  Hence my 90/95% statement.   Many people who focus on transferring weight will be stuck on their dominant foot simply because their dominant foot is stronger.  Therefore, the advice is to focus on trying to keep the weight evenly between your feet because that is what supports movement/recovery, which I would argue is more important than the power difference that comes from this focus.

I don't pretend to have anything close to CNT-level athleticism/health so I don't pretend to play like them or try when it comes to issues obviously affected by such athleticism (it is easier to stress weight transfer if you have a CNT-level wide stance).  People who do and or ask others lacking such athleticism to do so are often doing the sport a disservice.

It is perfectly possible to "sway" even if the left foot is stable and rooted in the ground. I don't think I'm understanding your original post.

Regardless, I was not coached properly as a kid and I spent years thinking of the loop as a heavy right-to-left foot weight shift.  I could never hit more than about 4 or 5 loops in a row for a really, really long time.  It wasn't until I learned to properly "rotate around the pole" and use my hips/waist that I could loop with any kind of consistency.  

But if emphasizing the right-to-left weight shift is what's working for you guys and your students, then carry on.  The weight shift is obviously there on most FH loops to varying degrees. That type of focus just never worked for me.

The problem is the misapplication of weight transfer and rotation:

Enter Newton's 3rd law of motion: For every action there is a reaction. 

Since we're touching nothing but the ground when we're looping, if we want to rotate our core vigorously without losing balance after the shot, we need something to push against to stabilize ourselves, and that reaction force is actually friction with the ground. Try rotating your core without your legs touching the ground in a freely swiveling chair. Guess what, it works really poorly! Why? Because you have no "reaction force" to brace yourself against your core rotating! You can see from this simple experiment that proper core rotation requires stable contact with the ground, which requires a controlled centre of gravity. Rotating the feet is detrimental to this, and hence results in a loss of power from the core rotation, loss of stability and poor recovery time. If you watch Mike Yue's video, look at the stability in the centre of gravity of the coach coaches' demonstration, compared to the jumping around kid. This was what the coach was trying to tell him, not to sway but to keep a stable centre of gravity (it seems that the kid didn't learn it well enough to correct it instantly though...)

Many beginners rotate their feet when they do the weight transfer, which is incorrect. Weight transfer is actually a misnomer. The actual source of power to the ball from "weight transfer" actually comes directly from pushing off the ground with your foot (right foot for right-handers and left for left handers). If you have done barbell squats before, it is the same action, pushing off the ground with your legs (it is one of the most powerful mechanisms of producing power in the body!). It is so direct that if you look at professional players, their feet is slanted to the ground when doing a loop that emphasizes forward motion, and 90 degrees when they're doing a slow loop that emphasizes upwards motion. Their feet do not "rotate", it always stays perpendicular to the force being applied which is sideways most of the time. These are the tiny details that one needs to notice in order not to miscopy CNT FH's... The "weight transfer" simply results from the opposite foot receiving the momentum of the push off aforementioned. The opposite foot simply has to brace against this momentum to keep you from flying so that you can recover fast. To "feel" this way of producing power, do frog jumps (i.e. jump slightly from a squatting position). Actually this is probably why the frog jump is used widely by the CNT to train their players. If you're smart and following this, you will also find out why the forward lean stance is so important in CNT loops. 

The huge rotational torque which produces huge amounts of power for the loop is generated by the twisting and uncoiling of the waist, (it is like twisting a huge spring), and it is not produced by simply rotating the body, although that does help. However, unless you want to do Ma Lin/RSM/Xu Xin style all-in 3rd ball kills, you need to recover for the next shot which requires you to have a stable centre of gravity.

To get a feel of turning your waist, sit down in a nice stable chair with four legs. Lock your legs onto the ground. Now turn your body sideways without moving your feet. Congrats, you just found out how the waist rotation works!

TL;DR:

The two most powerful mechanisms of generating power from the loop are from

1) Pushing off the feet. "Feel" this by doing frog jumps.

2) Waist rotation. "Feel" this by turning your body sideways in a fixed stable chair with your legs locked onto the ground.

Any rotation of the foot (same side as the playing arm) during a FH loop is wrong and will result in instability of the centre of gravity which results in a huge loss of power as compared to a simple push off with waist rotation. 

Hope this helps!

A proper forehand loop requires both a weight transfer and a core rotation, coordinated together.  The weight transfer isn't merely stepping from rear foot to front foot, but is a push off from the rear foot. How big the transfer is and how much push off you use depends upon how much forward power your are trying to generate. It is important to coordinate the weight transfer with the rotation in one fluid motion in order to develop maximum forward momentum.

When I watch or work with beginners or lower-rated players, most of them don't have any weight transfer. At most, they just sort of step from one foot to the other.  I see a lot of people trying to generate power either just from rotating the core of from using a forward forearm snap.  The appeal to just using those two motions are that are they are easier to learn (simpler mechanics and less footwork involved) and also that they require less athletic effort.  Someone mentioned doing fifty loops in a row; if you're doing a powerful weight transfer with a big push off, then doing fifty of those in a row requires a high level of fitness.

High level coaches like to emphasize weight transfer because generating more power is an advantage.  When I work with lower-rated players, however, I like to emphasize the longer hitting zone that comes from more forward motion (core rotation circumscribes a circle, so there is less motion in the forward direction).  That longer hitting zone makes it easier to judge balls and make adjustments. It also allows you to keep the rubber on the ball longer, which helps to generate more spin.  The overall result is greater consistency.

Because a properly executed FH loop is a fairly complicated motion involving different parts of the body, and because doing it properly requires footwork and fitness, most amateurs are going to make compromises and mistakes. That's just part of the challenge of the game. The extent to which the OP wants to perfect his stroke is going to depend upon how well he's willing to work on that challenge.

Welcome to the club.  You've come to the right place.  Expect far more conflicting advice from many more different people you have and probably will never meet.

The issue of "swaying" vs. "uncoiling" or rotating your body through the stroke is very applicable to a golfer's swing.  In a golf swing too much swaying of your body backward-to-forwards robs you of potential power.  Instead, the rear leg drive should propel you into the more forceful rotation of your body, which adds to the shoulder/arm/wrist motion to maximize the club head speed at the point of contact.  It's pretty much the same in a TT forehand, where the paddle is like the golf club head.

IMO, ZJK's forehand is an excellent example of great leg drive and rotation.  His stroke is more compact than others, yet his power is excellent due to very efficient mechanics.

Those videos by Greg Letts have the right idea, but IMO his stroke doesn't really look that good.  He doesn't really use much leg drive at all in his stroke, and it seems a bit stiff and stunted.

+1.  I wish we could all put pictures/clips of our strokes next to our comments.

Actually, while it may seem that way, I've actually learnt more about the forehand loop in this last week than I've known in the last year. 

Having conflicting information can hinder improvement, but now that I understand it so much better, I can make a better decision myself as to what I'd like to do and achieve with my forehand loops.

Thank you all for the constructive criticism, and the interesting discussion. It has helped tremendously.

This time I was doing some 3rd ball attacks against underspin to my forehand.

TBH, in the last year I've only had the opportunity to do repeated practice like this less than a handful of times. Usually I just do specific drills which my training partners want, then play games.

Recently I've been trying hard to improve, so I've been asking people to help with specific things (thus this video and the previous one).

From the video you'll see that the first 3 balls I hit I wasn't really thinking. I was just getting the balls in. My partner stopped me to tell me that I should hit the ball cross court instead since it'll allow me to rotate my body more.

Balls 4, 5 and 6 felt pretty good. I felt like I had decent rotation and at least some weight transfer happening.

There are a few things I'm not sure about though.

1. I feel like I'm getting down too low? What do you think?

2. I think my backswing goes too far past my bottom instead of starting closer to my knee.

3. My arm might be finishing too high and slightly crossing my body?

4. I'm not moving as much as I should. You'll see on the 9th ball that I didn't move at all, and ended up leaning to the side to hit the ball.

I made the video a lot shorter this time. Any tips appreciated. Any advice helps more than you may think!

Have a look at 2:14, see how he gets out of the way and then lean towards the ball?

It seems based on your footwork that you are a backhand player trying to work on his forehand.  To fix your forehand in general, you have to change your default foot positioning to something more forehand biased with your right foot slightly in front.  This will improve your forehand significantly and reduce your backhand versatility somewhat, but I find in my experience it is easier to fix the loss of backhand versatility with this change than to fix the loss of power to the forehand by staying in your current stance.  Rotating the upper body to fix the backhand direction is not so hard and most backhand power is not coming from rotation so you can get away with it.  Rotating the upper body by itself won't get you more forehand power.  And if you want to move your feet to make small adjustments to play both forehands and backhands, that is good too.

You are also losing some power by not making good contact with the ball in the direction you want the ball to go in.  Push your contact through to where you want the ball to go a little longer on some of the loops to see whether you can do this and keep your error rate low.

1.  Not really too low - you might be sometimes dropping your shoulder more than you want to when you are not in the right position.  IF you position yourself properly relative to the ball, you can take your backswing with a straight arm and rotate your core and that will fix most of your problem.

2.  As long as the backswing is driven mostly by rotating the core and straightening the arm, it is fine.  You will naturally get lower if you rotate the core on bent knees.

3.  Yes, you sometimes finish too high but you can fix that by stroking more in the direction of the ball.

4.  The ball came to an awkward spot and you did a good job getting your shot in.  IF you are doing a random drill, where the opponent can push to any spot on the forehand side or on the table, you can be more concerned.

Otherwise your FH stroke itself looks quite good to me. Height looks OK, and your push off your left foot is much better than the topspin video you showed us previously. There's also plenty of waist rotation and the salute style finish was perfect. 

In general the movement and timing on your FH looks a bit sloppy. It looks like "constant" speed without much explosiveness, your movement doesn't have the "lock and pause" during the backswing which prevents you from exploding hard into the ball. I suggest you shadow this a bit with your bat off the table to help you imagine this. You have a lot of wasted movement especially on the legs. 

Hitting the ball is a 3 step action:

1) See where the ball is going. Reach with your leg (not your hand) to get into position. 

2) Lock into the backswing position with as minimal a movement as possible (imagine yourself being a ninja preparing to strike). For me it means a few things. Weight solidly on the playing arm foot, nonplaying arm prepared to aim, elbow to the back of my waist and eyes.

3) Wait till the right moment, then focus all your energy into hitting the ball at that particular moment. The focus is very important, it's like throwing a very fast punch, you need to concentrate all your energy from your legs, to your waist.

It's that simple. Everything else is wasted movement. For what you're doing you only need 3 steps. 1st step: Reach and place your weight to your left foot if you need to move to the left, and conversely if you need to move to the right. Use this hop to get into the backswing position. Then explode into the ball. No need for any extra movements.

@Lestat @NL I was actually consciously trying to move my feet such that my right foot was in front after the serve, but I didn't notice how square on I became when I 'moved' into position to hit the ball. Thank you!

@NL My backhand is actually much worse than my forehand, haha. Much work ahead of me!

@blahness I've also been told by other people where I play that my non-playing arm is in the way. I'll try much harder to use it more efficiently to help time my strokes and to improve balance. I also feel I lack the explosiveness that I see a lot of better players have with their arm swing. I think for me it's a timing issue. I feel like I'll miss the ball if I swing any faster. I'll do some shadow practice first and once I feel more comfortable with it, I'll up the speed of my swing before contact. I've wanted to do some exercises outside of table tennis to build some strength for awhile now, too, so I'll check those out.

--

I'll try to move once for every ball to try and get a better position. Looks like I need to move a little further from the ball to allow myself to stand a little more side on, and to have a straighter arm when I swing. I should also try to end my stroke a little further in front of my body, but usually that requires me to brush the ball better, and I don't think I have the right timing for it yet. When I've tried in the past, the ball often hit the net.

When you loop in general, your arm should feel like a whip, not like fist or a hammer.  And in general, you are making a common mistake that keeps people from improving rapidly - focusing on getting the ball on the table rather than focusing on the right technique.  This is where good coaching and/or multiball is helpful. 

What you really should do first is find a good stroke and shadow it.  Then use that stroke to hit as many balls as possible in a relaxed and powerful manner, progressively increasing from slow to fast etc. and then varying the amount of power to test and learn your stroke range and accuracy.  You can do this by yourself by dropping the ball on the table initially, then later go into multiball.  Or you can start with slow feed multiball.  Always start slow with both your stroke and pace and only go hard to test your range.  You will miss a lot at first, but over time, if the stroke is correct, your body will calibrate the power it produces and you will start landing it on the table.  IT might take 10-30 mins but if you generate the spin, it will happen.  And try to always get a relaxed stroke after all is said and done.  When you get better, learn to aim the stroke with different speeds and spins and trajectories to different points on the table.  Good players do not have tense strokes - too hard to improve with a tense stroke.  So always build relaxed technique by starting and finishing at a pace you can control and letting go of any muscular tension in your stroke.

One alternative, which holds many people back, is to try to keep the ball on the table and not to miss so much.  So they settle for a stroke they can control at the beginning of the process.  This leads to a substandard stroke, despite any of the attempts of the coach to fix their technique.  They are so focused on not missing that they hold on to the technique that puts weak balls on the table rather than freeing up themselves to miss and trusting their brains and bodies to learn from the error.  A bad or misinformed coach can fuel this process to by focusing too much on whether the student makes the ball on the table as opposed to focusing on whether the student is doing the stroke that the coach and the student agreed the student should shadow.   Sometimes, if I am practicing with someone and I miss the ball, I often hear comments based on the fact that I missed and not based on the stroke I selected and I ignore the comments if the person doesn't make them when I make a bad stroke that puts the ball on the table.

The other alternative, which is as dangerous, is to hit the ball powerfully in the beginning of the learning process rather than building up to it.  Timing is not easy and hitting the ball hard all the time makes it hard to develop good timing and touch.  For the level of play most of us want to get to, the determinant isn't going to be how hard you swing (in my experience at least).  If I see someone swinging hard, I always look for the players over USATT 2200 and point to them playing and ask people how many hard shots they see people taking.  And it's hilarious how every hard shot ends up being missed for the most part and how much spinning is going on.  It almost never fails.  And I then ask the player why he is trying to hit the ball so hard if the better players are not hitting the ball half as hard as he is hitting the ball.

So, don't focus on putting the ball on the table in the beginning - your body always wants to do that naturally. Focus on getting a powerful stroke first.  Be willing to miss the table while using it for a few minutes to an hour.  The result will be far better than if you focus on putting the ball on the table.

Since I started playing at some local clubs (about 15 months ago), I found myself playing way too passive. A lot of it was a mental thing, and it really impeded my ability to improve.

The last few months I've been trying very hard to have more of an aggressive mindset and game, and with it my confidence, consistency and ability to do various things has greatly improved.

Until that point, I was mainly playing against students with a similar amount of experience, so usually I could play a passive block heavy game and still win. I couldn't loop or drive a ball if my life depended on it.

The more I played with better players, the less effective a block-centric game became. I really wish I had the right mindset all those months ago.

Right now I'm much better than before, but I still need to let loose and be less afraid of missing the ball. So, thank you!