OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Then practice a first defense. You could do that with a partner by saying you have to serve long to a side, so he will attack every ball. You are practicing a long fast serve, making a well-placed and solid block when he atracks the serve, and working into a positiin where you can switch to the attack, probably by counterlooping.

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I agree with this. I think that fastmover is imbalanced in the right way, if there is such a thing.

Fastmover, look at the guys around you. If you were going to coach them, what would you work on? I bet your answer is serve and forehand topspin.

Add some rally stuff. Lean to 2 step backhand after making a forehand topspin, for example. But don't panic... you are on a good path.

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I'd teach them the two-step process first. So many people can't even hit a basic backhand properly.

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Tactics Enthusiast

LTT111 is now available on ttEDGE.com

If you are NextLevel or a defensive chopper, then this video is for you.

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Sensei has mastered procrastination!

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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

Xu Xin VS Jan Zibrat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsXy2OhBGbM

What's so deceptive about Jan's reverse pendulum serves? Xu Xin hardly returned single one in the first set!
Too bad Jan was standing his back to the camera so it isn't easy to see what he's doing with the serve.

Xu Xin was seeing topspin and the actually serve was backspin. Jan's serve was borderline illegal because he tosses the ball back in a lot. It all helps him to keep his racket fairly vertical whilst still getting backspin.

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I played a guy yesterday that had a pretty vertical racket angle on serve. I found it difficult to read the serve spin well and lost a lot of points. Is a vertical racket angle something we should focus on when serving some types of serves?

Lately I've been pretty lights out against long/loose/half long serves to my forehand...but my backhand return eludes me.

If someone serves deep to my backhand eventually they will realize long is bad and start making the serve shorter. I'm in no way even close to as good on the backhand side and as a match progresses I slowly find myself doing sub-optimal tactics like pushing.

I guess this means my backhand just isn't very good. Or i'm weaker at reading serve depth on my backhand. Suggestions on drills to work on this? My thought is to have someone serve varying lengths to my backhand and making me adjust.

Playing lots of matches vs players at your level and higher is probably the best (only?) way to really drill bh receive. Having someone serve at your bh is okay, but you know it's coming there, and you will adapt to their serves pretty fast. You really need a variety of serves and an element of surprise that you only get playing matches.

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

Yoko Ono

Pivot!

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This one guy kept serving to my backhand and I did a few times, won the point outright. However I stopped doing it because it's worth working on backhands.

I had a chance to practice my counterspin (in half-multiball mode) with a guy who can actually spin the ball decently. What I notice is that against a real spin it is not enough to just fold the body, as per LTT95. To keep the ball down, it is necessary to squat down really low with the legs at the same time. Then I rewatched LTT95 and noticed an interesting thing: at 01:53 Brett turns his hips not just forward, but forward and downward to bring the body low. His right (ok, left) knee almost touches the ground.

So I guess that the key for bringing the spin down is actually rotating hips down, and not just torso fold. Does it make sense?

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As someone who had to invent his own strokes to some degree, I will tell you that as long as it doesn't hurt recovery, cause injury and it helps create and control a quality ball, do it. I just try to feel my elbow and shoulder going over the ball and coming down.

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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

If you can keep your racket more vertical, and still get variation, the serve will be harder to read.

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