looping balls on the rise

So the idea is that you "catch" the ball with your right leg if you're FH looping and your left leg if you're BH looping, then use the quick hip thrust to create the impact necessary, then a small arm movement to wrap the ball. You have to adjust the blade angles more precisely to suit the incoming ball but this is the price you pay. Borrowing the incoming spin and speed is key.

Played my training partner today again and was thoroughly impressed by his mastery of this technique. I usually loop at the highest point or even slightly lower. This is so destructive when it's done well. For me I feel like I haven't even recovered from my last stroke and the ball is already near my body 

Yes, it's an opening loop against underspin hit before the ball reaches its highest point. Absolutely insane haha.

Once the early timing, swing speed and feel is sorted with some good practice it's not over tricky. Adding a ton of power takes a bit of work to build up to  with such a short stroke that you mention mind. 

Lol you gotta be kidding me.... 

I was actually 😁 .... Read it again...😁😁 Sorry Blah, no harm meant honestly it might have been a bit dry.. . Happy New year my friend! 😊.  I just wanted to see how you would take such a bonkers comment!  Timing, swing speed, feel...basically as much as I could put in. 

But on the up side you should get in a couple of weeks.. tops. 

Cheers 

Yogi_Bear Above the table counter topspin ball do you mean something like Paul is doing in the video?

Or more of a much shorter stroke.. well drive/smash/slap almodt is the only way to discribe it. Little backswing and  driving straight into the ball?. 

Cheers 

Yeah that comment is bonkers. Many even professional players don't do it (loop the ball while it is rising)...

What I really meant was around 20:51 in the video below..

It was supposed to be a bit.. Got you on the video  Tricky shot yeilds high reward but very very few will be able to create that type of stroke consistently. 

Shorter strokes. 

I agree with the shorter stroke comment, if you have a big stroke there's no way you'll be able to loop balls on the rise. It just needs to be like a Bruce Lee style (for eg his famous short stroke punch) tight 1-2 movement with no unnecessary movements. But you can't sacrifice shot quality too significantly (otherwise it defeats the  entire purpose),so you still have to have the most important aspects of the movement ie the weight transfer + hip thrust, contraction of the forearm (or expansion for the BH), and the all important pronation on the FH (supination on the BH), all done within a split second. One very important aspect is not to go too low to loop underspin, but rather just bend more at the legs to provide the upwards "spring" effect later on which is key in overcoming whatever underspin is on the ball. And the contact can't be sloppy, it has to be focused and precise because there's just not much room for error at this hitting point. I actually found the issue in my BH loop which was a huge power leak, my contact often was done with the wrist still bent, if I contacted the ball with my wrist being straight and neutral, then a lot more power gets transferred to the ball. 

I did some experimentation and shortened my BH stroke significantly while playing tonight and was able to do some quality loop receives of long fast serves almost off the bounce even if it had heavy sideunderspin, haven't tried it on the FH loop, but I think it's probably more useful on the BH side because with this ability to loop whatever junk balls off the bounce on the BH cuts off a lot of angles and prevents opponents from being able to jam you on the BH to put you out of position, which then allows you room on the FH side to really load up on the powerloops. There's still a LOT of training required before this becomes a bread and butter shot for me, but it already looks very promising! 

The funny thing is that training this actually forced me to optimise my BH stroke even further, which was a really unexpected benefit!

Imo on the BH with certain BH mechanics you can transition smoothly from the chiquita to the full BH loop when you make them very similar, so you can cover the entire BH half of the table with quite a powerful attack without really caring about the length of the ball. 

The hardest is actually the long fast jamming pushes, those are the hardest to loop on the rise. But one has to start somewhere so for me it's just dealing with long fast serves first haha...