OOAK Table Tennis Forum

http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Table-Tennis ... our-Serves

A great article by Richard McAfee which is going to send me to the ITTF manual. It gives you an idea of what footwork patterns you need to master on in-and-out service return or even lateral movements at the table. I am often guilty of looping serves but being unable to recover for the block on my serve returns.

I have learned that you can win quite a few free points by serving a ball short to the forehand of a player about/U2000 and then either pushing or attacking the next ball to their backhand, even if their backhand is unusually strong. Just bringing them out of position makes them susceptible to that pattern in the worst way. Most people get the attack part but underestimate the push part.

Something similar applies when serving to the backhand if a push can be made to the very wide forehand. This is usually more meaningful in a lefty vs. righty matchup though some opponents will make that sidespin loop and you have to be ready to block it back to the backhand.

I am learning to use my Amicus and will soon start drilling service return (probably in a week and a half or so given family commitments).

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

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

With your excellent push I can see that pattern working vs a lot of good players. Interesting McAfee post. I try to vary locations just to be less predictable, but never thought about it as testing opponent's footwork. It would be cool to see the likely return and third ball options for each serve 1-8, the way you did for the short to the forehand.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

To derive the likely return pattern (without consideration of spin), just draw

1) the longest possible line from the point where you served to to a point on the table on the wide forehand side.
2) the longest possible line from the point where you served to to a point on the table on the wide backhand side.
3) then bisect the angle formed by both lines and that should be ideally where you want to recover to after you serve if you have strong two wing preferences unless some other recovery point feels more comfortable for personal reasons.

For example, when I as a righty serve to the short forehand of a righty, I know they can come down the line to my backhand or go to my wide forehand. So I should recover to the middle of the table. I should also favor the wide forehand slightly because the longer distance makes it easier to go there with pace - the shots to my backhand down the line have less table so require more control and touch so even if I cheat slightly in my mind in anticipating a shot to the forehand, I should be able to recover to the backhand.

If the short forehand strategy is working to well, a smart opponent will reduce the distance to that point so that they can make more effective shots. That is why you need a fast serve to their long backhand out of a similar position from the serve to the short forehand to keep them honest.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

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

I found these post excerpts on tabletennisdaily fascinating and will come back to it as I want to (Everyone to) discuss a few related points - what do we really mean by "touch"? Is there a physics or science to it that we can use to systematically improve it or is it purely trial and error? Or are some just gifted and the rest of us ham-handed?





Part of another post:

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

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

Can anyone explain the mechanics of the backspin catcher?

I honestly, even if wrongly, believe that things like this will help a lot with manipulating spin on service return.

Even an explanation of how Schlager manages to get so much spin while using far less racket head speed than most of us apparently do will be helpful.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

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

Is touch even reducible to mechanics? Fantastic video which I had never seen. Thanks for posting.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

I've always assumed that Schlager can get more spin on his serve than I can (despite slower racket speed) because his acceleration is smoother and he has a better swing tempo. You are a far better player than me and are already aware of all this, though.

http://www.tabletenniscoaching.com/node/1976 Larry's article on smooth acceleration

http://www.golfwrx.com/forums/topic/368586-forget-club-head-speed/ Some golfers debating the importance of swing tempo versus maximum club speed.

This is of course not the more in depth explanation you're probably searching for.

Thanks for starting these blogs, NL. I'll be following your progress.

Ringer84,

I may obviously be wrong but I am still not convinced that smooth acceleration is anything other than the tick-whip being described by people who don't know how to teach it. I have heard various coaches preach relaxation and I even thought I was doing short strokes at one time but once you see the concept of backswing and forward acceleration without stopping, it opens your eyes to any analysis of pro strokes in slow motion. The issue is timing and controlling the whip. Ttlondon posted a video of Ma Long forehand flicking double bounced short serves and what was cool was that he got to the point of the serve early but then after arriving there, did a quick short backswing which allowed him to place the ball with spin/speed at will.

What I am thinking about is what is the physics of increasing and decreasing dwell time? Obviously, for some strokes, you want to have as much time to impart spin and for other strokes, you want as little time as possible to let the spin react. Hopefully, I will have some time next week to hit Tue robot and theorize about this a little.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

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

Wow, that video from Freitas is amazing!

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I have been trying for a long time to get the viciousness of my forehand over the table attack closer to my backhand over the table attack. I think I have found the key (thanks in part to Larry Hodges), but I am not sure about the practical application yet.

I will film some video and post more tonight. But the major thing is to realize that your backswing does not have to be downwards when looping anything, including backspin. You can gain similar momentum with an equally large backswing in the straigbt backwards or sideways direction and then come forward and open up your paddle into the ball. That's the big thing for the really aggressive banana flicks. BTW, What moat people consider a banana flick to me is sometimes just a soft flip that I find unimpressive. You can do some real damage with a real banana stroke that makes it more like an over the table backhand loop drive.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

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

You are saying the swing doesn't have to be upwards, so it can work over the table. Some slow motion video of that opening up your paddle into the ball part would be helpful. Not sure what that means exactly.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

The backswing doesn't have to be downwards to loop backspin. When you approach contact, you revert to your usual swing trajectory as if you had a downward backswing. This way, you avoid dropping your racket below the table to return serves for the most part. If you watch Fan Zhendong do is banana flick, or even William Henzell, you see this more clearly.



The thing is that the backhand loop makes the loading up of the whip much easier because of the way the elbow and shoulder are hinged. On the forehand, you don't have that so you can't get as much whip. That said, I will try to film a few attempts because I have never seen what I do on camera to see if I should just give up or not.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

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

It's hard to see on the match video, but it doesn't look like they do any whip motion at all. They just cock their wrist back and then muscle it through the range of motion with ridiculous power and timing. Maybe the whip is there and I'm not seeing it, but they definitely set up very early for the backhand receive.

Looking forward to seeing your video.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

The forehand stroke is not quite what I wanted but I will continue to work on it - will post the videos without comment, let you guys be the judge. The first is a bit long and has a lot of backhand and then forehand flicking. Forehands in the first video begin at 12:20 or so.

The second video contains the coming over the table forehand stroke - my first attempt.
The third video contains the coming over the table forehand stroke - my second attempt. I see that I am getting more upward motion in both strokes than I initially thought while performing them - thank God cameras keep you honest, But I will continue to investigate and think about my original need (a way of attacking short serves powerfully with the forehand).

Comments welcome.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

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

So I wanted to work on my serve return extensively this past weekend but unfortunately, my robot acted up on Friday. I diagnosed the cause on Monday morning in a calmer reflective moment (it was literally the issue I saw on Friday, but which I didn't accept because I hadn't seen the problem despite using the same balls earlier) - some of my balls were bigger than others (possibly because of expansion in hot weather, possibly because of bad manufacturing) so I had to filter my practice balls that I had put into the robot.

I made the robot do a lot of short serving to the middle of the table and to the forehand and tried to push short. It was an interesting lesson from experience on how tight/relaxed your grip should be. It was almost as if any tension in my grip made it impossible to keep the ball short. I could also see even more clearly why the reverse sidespin serves gave me so many issues and it helped me appreciate William Henzell's point that the fact that the ball is moving away from you causes more pains returning the ball. Need to figure out what the right footwork here is but for the ones I received, one step just to place one foot under the table will not get it done. Probably have to get closer for those specific balls. I tried flicking short serves as well, especially the notorious no-spin ones that I see but never quite respond appropriately to.

Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, but I am going to get footage when I next go to the club - probably tomorrow night.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

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