OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Thanks Brett, good to know I'm on the right track. I think I can see what you mean about the left knee, it sort of turns inward, is that what you meant ?

Pendulum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sKJkKGB3IE

-in the last 30 seconds or so I try to engage my hips a bit
-I keep smacking myself into the body with the left edge of the blade, is that a sign of faulty swing path meaning that i am swinging too much from the outside toward my body instead of completely side on and parallel to it?


Reverse pendulum:
https://youtu.be/cJ4saCBwjX8

That's it, overview of my current serving, I also play a bit with punch serve but it is still in infancy with many fundamental mistakes.

What do you think is the serve with greatest potential and you would make it your primary one?

Right now, backspin and no spin is my default and is the easiest for me to play behind, followed by reverse which gives me a lot of free points since many people refuse to believe there is any backspin on the ball and keep jamming it into net.

Pendulum is my last resort if nothing works and I, despite it being the spinniest, haven't yet found a way to use it to my advantage properly. When people return it it is still loaded with spin and the ball lands deep to my backhand so I struggle to attack it.
But I was thinking that maybe my mistake is that I mostly serve it deep into opponents backhands where they have the best control with their pushes and maybe if I served into their body, elbow or even forehand I would get much better results?

Also, my pendulum serves are mostly backspin and I haven't still developed real topspin variants which would probably increase their efficiency a lot, will post my topspin attempts at some point.

Again, thanks for all the comments and help

The Pendulum serve motion looks excellent. The reverse I suspect is still a new serve for you and I think the higher ball toss would again help with giving you a bit more time for the backswing.



If you could bring the elbow out a bit like your pendulum then it might be more deceptive. Deep pendulum to the backhand, short backspin to the forehand (against rightie): that could be something you could use in matches today.

Keep working on the serves, see if you can get the ball to dance around the table a bit with 2-3+ bounces while keeping the spin. You'll be able to serve many players off the table once you get some topspin editions going.

Every change to the serve will ruin your timing and feel like a new serve. Ask anyone who has tried to fix their serve. It is better to aim for the best pattern now IMO. But others may have other views. Fixing a serve you have spent months practicing is too painful.

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Fixing strokes is all this thread is about - pain is table tennis, table tennis is pain, fix it

...back to forehand hip thrusting...

Also I find that if I can do a pendulum short backspin serve well then I can do the rest of the pendulum serves fairly easily.

Short side-top is the hardest for me. Done right it stays low and kicks to the end line on the second bounce. Done wrong and I'm walking to the barriers to pick up the ball.

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Yeah, I hear ya. Not one that I can control when pressure is on. That's why I have to get those back spin balls really going well before even attempting. Some days I just don't have good serves. Would love to know why.

Your Pendulum serve is good. You actually engaged your hips on every serve, btw. You just exaggerated it later on. When someone has a "bad" serve, they don't engage their hips/core. Your first serves weren't bad, so you were already doing the right thing. Good shot = Good hips. Good shot can never = No hips.

More bad news too....good servers hit themselves in the chest when serving Pendulum and it hurts a lot. The Chinese sometimes wear padding to protect themselves from the impact. Or they did 20 years ago but I'm not sure what they do now.

Your Reverse looks pretty good too. I'd like to see it from a few angles though. I'm better at seeing Backspin and Pendulum. My initial thought is that you'd benefit from quickly crunching your right hip into the ball, just before you finish the backswing.

You have good technique on all 3 of your serves, so you need to think about which ones you like. Your level of serving, which shouldn't never be confused with technique, needs to improve. You have lot of hours to do to make your serves elite. You are on the right track, but you haven't gone far on the journey.

When a player says they don't like long returns to their backhand, my first thought is to improve your recovery and get an awesome backhand topspin. Or get an awesome pivot.

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Yes, it turns inward as a result of the rotation.

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Experiment with more extreme contact points on the left side of the ball towards the front so to speak. You can make the ball turn more and stay shorter.

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

Ok, great, will keep working on all 3 serves and practice implementing advanced serving pattern and faster hip crunching as you mentioned and hopefully keep improving, I am actually glad that I am far from optimal serving,lots of progress to look forward to



Yep, my biggest current hole in the game, people simply close me to my backhand and thrive of my misses and weak loops, out of the two options I have committed to developing great backhand loop despite pivot being mentioned as superior option in ETTS31 as I really enjoy practicing backhand looping plus its super rare at low levels and looks cool so I get extra style points

Thank you for all the feedback guys once again

This might be one of the keys I am missing in getting some real topspin on my pendulum serves, I haven't focused much on where I contact the ball and just try to hit with the upper part of the rubber but think that mostly just gives me reduced backspin so limited pop ups.

Is that the reason why in Reverse Topspin Pendulum guide it is recommended to go around the ball slightly, so we can get to the front right part of the ball more?

Btw, I often get some privacy error lately when browsing the videos, not sure if that has something to do with chrome,my computer settings or the site, anyone else experience something similar?

I get access errors sometimes and just switch to a different browser or device.

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

Yoko Ono

What you are doing is fine. Just try to work with minor adjustments. Making topspin looks like backspin makes it harder to use the certain things to get topspin, so you don't try to get extreme topspin, you are basically trying to make the topspin look like backspin. At least that is my serving approach. What I mean in my original statement is to try to get more sidespin to keep the ball short by using a contact point more on the side of the ball that doesn't push the ball forward.

_________________
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