OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Cheers for the compliment and the tip Brett, I'll give it a go next time at practice. I will be at the Stockholm Open from friday to sunday so I'll see if I can spot it for real as well as many other LTT concepts in top players. Nothing is more inspirational to me than watching them play.

I sometimes revert back to old habits from before I started fixing my technique and it's frustrating.. as most will know. I want to focus on stabilizing my technique and I'd like to get LTT47 into my game as I often struggle against higher balls. Even high balls close to the net, I don't take them seriously and do something strange, either missing or giving a weak ball instead of just ending the point.

At least I am somewhat better off than in this league game 5-6 years ago.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hp5I_aiiQA&t=
I was using a 5 star bat that had ZERO grip, I didn't know you could change rubbers at this point. I played with it for 2 years before switching. Where was ttedge back then?

Fastmover, I had a lesson with Brett the other day. Receiving his short kick serve was interesting as it would kick out sideways a lot and take u by surprise. I showed him my version and he told me the up motion is quite voilent. My shoulder and elbow needs to rise much more to get the kick. Hope this helps.

Yeah, mine certainly does not hove enough topspin. I find it quite difficult to coordinate the upward motion with the contact.

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I'm kinda shocked! That is a serious amount of improvement over a 5-6 year period.

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Not exactly. I've just put it on the list for DTTS.

I personally don't think about hitting the ball from chest height. I think about just being low with bent knees and I do mention this a lot in the early stages of LTT.

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If you aren't finishing with your elbow over your head, you don't have enough upward movement. Unfold the body / lift the right hip and get your elbow up and over your head. Once you can consistently make the ball kick, then you can tighten it up and make it more subtle. Don't worry so much about torso rotation and think more about lift for now.

This isn't an easy serve. I struggle to do it with my non-playing hand. I teach it a lot and I've seen how hard it is for adults to make the ball jump. You need to train and get past a certain threshold before you are going to get some real kick.

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I think the main problem (as with all serves) is that I have no idea how the "kick" should look like I also have no idea how a proper heavy backspin, or a backspin-sidespin serve looks. I wish I could run around the table and receive my own spin... Hopefully soon I will make a trip to LYTTC and play with some smart coaches there.

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It is an important observation.

A few moments after playing a big match, try playing your forehand topspin against a static block. You'll be able to loop 10 in a row, as long as you know where the ball is coming. If you can normally only make 2-5 loops in a row in the warm up, you'll now be able to make 10 or more immediately after the match. Or try using the Table Tennis Edge app immediately after a game you played well in. You'll be able to kill levels you normally struggle on.

Everything being discussed here is short term neuroplastic brain change. Your brain rearranges itself to deal with the current environment. Some call it concentration. You can notice the phenomenon when you drive at 160 mph on the German Autobahns. Once you come off and drive at 20mph, you feel like you can crawl fast than your car is going.

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Practice a lot of floor serves. Or spinning the ball in your hand a LOT. That's for the spin.

For the serve in the video: the biggest problem with your serve, IMO, is that you aren't going through through a circular/ U path and pulling the racket upwards at contact. The point of the circle is to give the illusion that the racket is coming down but to pull up at the last second to get some good topspin. You are just coming forward into the ball. The U path also gives the racket momentum from the shoulder before you get to the ball. You need to feel that at least your racket and more likely your body is moving in a circle at the ball. When I used to do that serve, I would push my knees down a little to give me more room to come up into the ball very subtly but I would probably yank my elbow much more now after seeing William's serve still work with that follow through.

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I strongly agree with all of NL's post. I have been thinking about the best way to explain how I think of the serve and it magically appeared in NL's post.

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This is why I play my very best right after driving through rush hour traffic. Play anything. Table tennis, video games, darts, basketball...

I feel like I've only mastered a TT skill if I can do it when I'm on the opposite side of that state.

Following on from the bounce discussion on the latest TTEdge video, I was thinking about something in regard to this.

In a power clean movement in weightlifting, the moment the bar passes the knees is followed by a 'stomp'. This is to ensure the person is essentially jumping with the barbell at that point in order to maximise the transferral of force from the hips extending to the bar and also that the feet are in position for the catch phase where the barbell weight is absorbed on the delts. Here is a perfect example: http://youtu.be/O32-Ae8SNIc

I was thinking about this in relation to the backhand which involves quite a similar hip movement and for a similar purpose. I have then watched a lot of highlights of top players and notice that this stomp is frequently there, sometimes obviously with both feet leaving the ground although this is very rare, other times only on a micro scale where the feet don't actually leave the ground and it's more a rising and falling of weight in their feet. I don't think this is merely a bounce afterwards. It all happens so quick and on a small scale its very hard to analyse. It also depends on exactly the type of shot they are going for, backhand counter hits typically don't involve this much at all, but looping against backspin and hitting full power backhands generally do. I can notice this on a small scale in the latest Henzell video. Here is another example I found where you can see it at the start here: http://youtu.be/pYMY-1KQrbo

So I have taken this to the table and practiced it and I think this might actually have finally got me to use the hips more effectively in my backhand. Before I was using all arm on backhand. I was thinking of really snapping with my feet as I come out of the 'bow' phase and it seems to extend the hips really fast. Am I on the right track here? Or is this a descent into madness?

I believe this film is relevant to the Learning Table Tennis series, and table tennis in general (as well as many other things in life).

https://vimeo.com/pricefilms/pencils

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FruitLoop it seems to me the faster you can incorporate a more explosive body movements into your stroke will naturally lead to faster racket head speeds. I notice this in my forehand. If I explode my right hip into the forehand topspin it results in faster racket head speeds and quality of stroke goes up heaps and it zips of the table. I think to explode faster in the backhand you really need to push off the ground quickly with your feet leading to what you are observing. I sort of think the short sharp strokes the Chinese Pros do depends on these fast body movements. I also think the weight going upwards enables you to recover and bounce into the next stroke. Brett can shoot me down if required!

Okay, they may be fast strokes, but they aren't short. It's the speed that gives the illusion of them being short.

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