OOAK Table Tennis Forum

That grip in your photo is so close to Seemiller it seems crazy not to just go that way. There were two Seemiller grip players in the last tournament I played. One is 1670s with LP BH (and about 70 years old), and the other is ~1950 with anti BH. So you can get to he >1500 level you are shooting for with that relatively minor grip change, and a boatload of practice.

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A lot of this stuff depends on strategy and specific opponents. Would have to see you play to be honest but being unable to use your forehand exposes you to too many things as you get better, and the biggest one is the transition game as you need to move to use your stroke if the ball is not put in your strike zone. Most people who play this way use pips or something like it to keep the ball short and cause the opponents some trouble.



I am a BH dominant player and was in some ways extremely so up to even my first crack at 1900 over 2 yrs ago, but I always had a powerful forehand (even if technically flawed and inconsistent) and the ability to put away high balls and block topspin shots. I am tall so I can get to many balls and using my forehand expands my options as the backhand has a limited zone. The FH you would get from using your grip like a PH or Seemiller will be terrible for controlled smashing or hitting the ball hard.

My guess is that right now you are getting away with a lot of sidespin and topspin serves and your grip leaves some opponents struggling to read them. You probably swipe the ball a lot with true sidespin and that confuses pure topspin players in rallies and would explain your upsets. At the lower levels, players put a lot of balls in the middle of the table and crosscourt and few will intentionally give you a high ball and make you use your forehand. I would just transition you (short/long forehand, long backhand) to death and not be scared to give you high balls to the FH. Rallying repeatedly crosscourt or to the middle of the table would feed your game and is what the players you beat do.

If you can establish your game, you will do as well as the levels of spin you can block and control with your swiping strokes and the degree your opponents don't figure you out. If you are lucky with dead inverted (spinny will make it harder to block), 1400. With pips/anti, probably 1700 as keeping the ball short and forcing reloops to your block will be easier. But this is all with practice and training and a lot of strategy. That said, you will be stuck with a very niche game and will eternally struggle against things once your opponents figure you out. Lobbing/fishing would kill you. Transition against a smart looper as well. Pips and anti if you use them will take away the sidespin play but improve your blocking.

My point here is that you need a forehand. Even if you continue to play with this grip, you need a way to hit and smash on the forehand. The player with the picture I posed on the last post struggled whenever I popped up the ball without spin.

IMO, 1100 is not the kind of rating that should be insulated from experimentation. Fear of losing is the hugest impediment to improvement, whether one trains or not. Yo aren't going to get much better playing 3 hours a weak and doing what you have always done. Practicing and learning shakehand even if you lose for a few months or only play much weaker players that way will expand your game. FZD can flip just about any serve but he was forced to learn to push a few. Such things expand your game.

Consider learning to serve shakehand at least. Grips are about racket angles more than anything else and being able to see this expands your brain.

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"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

I've heard the term "pronation" applied to the ankle, not to the elbow, though perhaps it does exist. I don't see why he'd get injured, Seemiller doesn't.

Iskandar

It's not. Try holding the paddle that way. He would need to rotate his grip quite a bit to get to even the backhand Seemiller. It's like saying the Shakehand grip with the finger up the back of the paddle is the same as the Shakehand grip with the finger pulled down.

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"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Seemiller uses a forehand grip. Different animal.

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"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

A former state champ started to train me on the shake grip once. I never felt comfortable with it, but I could tell that I could do a lot of things with it that I couldn't with the thumb grip.

I know that I would have to completely reboot my game. All my hits, muscle memory, reflex patterns, and strategy for my grip is the opposite of shake. When I try to apply techniques and strategies of the shake hand style, it messes up my game! Even the stance and footwork are different. My grip requires me to stand in the middle (or towards it). When I play guys around 1900 or so, they blast me on my backhand side after I've hit a forehand.

When I reflect on it, I do see where I could jump considerably with a shake hands grip. But I would drop big time initially. I know I would be stronger on the forehand than the backhand (ironic, huh?). I just tried it a little bit ago. The backhand feels really awkward when I try shake.

Also, it is really difficult for anyone to help "coach" me with my grip in my surrounding area. Coaches always advocate the change. I do feel like I could convert over to shake better than Seemiller---although either would be difficult. I thought this morning about playing shake hands for six months to see how I did...what do you guys think? I think the big issue is that I dread a lot of the work, and learning spin counters etc. would require a lot more training (playing the traditional shake hands style). That's the thing about my style: I've played it forever, and its relatively simple, and I've practiced it a lot. However, my ceiling is really low at this point. I've only improved by 28 USATT points over four years!

The key is to do things with the grip. Practice with any grip improves one's game using it.

The reason the BH feels awkward is that the use of the elbow is changed. The use of the wrist is too. But those are things that you can fix either by switching grips between FH and BH and practicing in the Shakehand grip. For an example, I do a mild wrist change between FH and BH that sometimes forces me to hit my forehand in the position have used to develop my BH. But I accept it and practice it so that it gets better, and then I still practice my preferred FH position so that I have alternatives.

All good players switch grips - some players try to keep the switches as small as possible in order to make the time to switch and anticipate smaller and easier. But think of it as you learning new grips to switch into to play more shots. Everyone does it, whether on serves, pushes etc.

Losing is part of all learning and honestly, if I coached you, I could get you to 1100 shake hand easily. But learning is physical as well as mental. Right now, you have built patterns and ideas that are hard to build upon. Lose and rebuild.

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"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Listen, you can always switch back to your old grip ANYTIME you want to. I would even say that you should learn how to play penhold as well. Have fun with learning new grips. I have two penhold paddles. I played someone who uses a grip that looks like a pistol and play short pips forehand - he was murdering people and wanted to murder me too. Stop thinking of grip switching as the mark of death. Stop thinking of winning and losing as the mark of death. Play to have fun and improve.

Coaches can tell pretty quickly if you can create all the necessary racket angles with your grip or not. IT should tell you something that I can tell aspects of your game without having ever seen you play just by looking at your grip. You don't have to tell me you use only one side of the paddle - I can tell from your grip. Same with having no forehand. Same with having no forehand smash. Same with struggling with high balls. Same with sidespin strokes.

My coach is an awesome coach but he refuses to coach penholders. He says he doesn't understand the grip. That tells you something about why someone may struggle to coach you.

Just learn a new grip to expand your game. It might even help you see how you can combine the new grip with your old grip to get a new game over all. Find new serves to do with another grip etc. I have grips I use for different serves. Grips are about racket angles, contact points and stroke trajectories.

FREE YOUR MIND!

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"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

http://www.experttabletennis.com/table-tennis-grip/

http://www.experttabletennis.com/grip-experimentation/

For good players, grip is always evolving because grips expand and limit options. You of course want to play your best shots with as few or slight changes as possible.

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"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

So this is a backhand grip? I don't think that's true. It's halfway between a shakehands grip and a Seemiller grip.

Iskandar

The grip is not that different from the picture you posted. It gives easier wrist alignment and elbow usage with traditional shakehand backhand strokes because the thumb is on the face of one side the blade. Therefore, it is hard to use the side of the blade that has the thumb on it. The usable side is easier to use for BH strokes.

The Seemiller as used by Danny Seemiller (there are other variants) is easier to use for forehand strokes. Danny is also able to play pure shakehand so that influences his grip a little. He often uses two different kinds of backhands, like a TPB and RPB penholder.




It is hard to play a powerful FH topspin stroke with pushsmasher's grip. Try it sometime. It's easier to try these things than to debate them ad infinitum on the internet.

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"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

The more I think about it, the more I see that pushsmasher probably finds the shakehand BH weird because he finds the elbow motion for playing topspin weird in general. If pushsmasher learned to loop on his backhand, then maybe he would appreciate what the fuss is all about.

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"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

With the grip I posted, the thumb is jammed up behind the blade, the blade itself sticks out at right angles to the arm. With his grip, the blade sits in the hand, straight out from the arm. Quite a bit of difference. With the grip I posted, it's impossible to get any sort of forehand. With his, you can achieve all blade angles, from open to closed, on the forehand side. I don't see any impediment to shoulder or elbow movement, either, though perhaps the wrist may be a little cramped.

I will certainly try his grip to see how much power I can get out of it on the forehand next time I play, which is probably next weekend. In the meantime - have YOU tried it? You seem pretty sure he can't get any sort of forehand stroke, so you must have I suppose.

Iskandar

Actually, with some adjustment to the fingers it could become modified seemiller quite easily. I hadn't read this thread in a few days, but I've just caught up with it. NextLevel all your advice and help you've written here is spot on...and along the lines of things I've suggested to pushsmasher (not pushmaster ) already. I've just grabbed my blade and tried his grip (and damn I think I'd get injured - and frustrated - real quick with it). But with the index finger moved to the blade side and the thumb just over to the other side, it does become modified seemiller (just ask Hookshot). In fact Hookshot is about the perfect person to chat with on this pushsmasher, as he went to China and had coaches there change him from modified seemiller to shakehands and his game came on in leaps and bounds AT THE AGE OF ABOUT 70!! He went from about 1700-1800 to about 2100 if I recall correctly.

As it stands at the moment everything Nextlevel has said is what you are facing. The only way you could improve performance and keep the grip unchanged is to go with pips and start using clever tactics with angles and drop shots. But as NL has said, don't make the grip the be all and end all of it. Play around with changes to everything that you can muster. And think about this....the FH is a BIG weapon you are missing out on with your current grip. Therefore, you are GIFTING your opponents just as if you had cut off a part of your body for them (if you think of a "whole" game as being the body including both BH and FH shots).

My own game is very BH oriented with the pips, and I use them with a lot of angles, blocks, chops, drives and drops. I have a very active chicken-wing too.....and I will often return a ball sent to my wide FH with my pips simply because there is no crossover and the ball I return is loaded with reversal. Yet, my biggest weapon is still my deadly FH. Many opponents will pin me to the BH side and avoid my FH like the plague simply because they know that weapon is there waiting for its opportunity to strike. I've just come home from the night's TT where I won the deciding match for the team to win 6-5. It was against a young gun who had beaten my 2 teammates. I frustrated the hell out of him with the pips, but at 10-9 my way in the 3rd set (when I lead him 2-0), he sent a fast loop out to my FH looking for his chance to get deuce and and work his way back into the match. I smashed his loop straight back through him off my Rasant and took victory for my team (we had all worked really hard to get back to 5 all from 5-2 down, so losing would have been devistating). Why am I telling you this story? Because without that FH kill I might have been too devistated to even write a reply here. Instead I'm feeling great and happy, all because I have a big killer FH....YOU should want that too! and with your current grip, you just can't have it!

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