OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I am a adult learner and no expert but here is my take on this.

I am sure you can change this incorrect pattern of starting the stroke with your arm then the body. My current focus is a good rotation using the knees then fire the right hip first then the arm straightens a bit then comes forward from body rotation. Your video showed good rotation I think. Maybe the key is to fire the right hip forward first. As I slowly get better my awareness or feel of the correct stroke improves. You feel the slight lag. I watched Bretts forehand video again and he stressed the arm straightens a bit (due to the lag.)

I did 10 hours of coaching with Brett last week and one thing I took home is that I can start to feel when the stroke is correct and when I stuff it up. I try to focus on the awareness of what it FEELS like when the stroke is good. Even counter hitting on the backhand and timing the bow down and up correctly has a feel when correct. I am trying to develop this feel more by shadow swinging.

If you get this right my take on this is that you can then start to focus on a more relaxed swing (my current focus) and the potential for a much better forehand. Brett mentioned that swing speed will come with time and relaxation.

Good luck.

Alas, in my experience nothing gets fixed. NL told me that years ago and I didn't want it to be true, but it is, alas.

With luck and 7 - 10 hours a week of serious practice, I get better at doing my wrong stuff. To actually make stuff right I need to train 5 - 7 hours a day, six days a week. Which I would love to do, but, you know, life, alas.

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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

I feel that is a bit negative. If you think you can't make changes you never will. I have changed finishing across my body in my forehand in 6 months. The key for me was getting the mechanics of a full rotation correct first. Once I got this then the rest of the stroke was correct in terms of the finish position. I am 63 and have made big changes without 7 hour a day practice and have only played serious for 5 years. Brett told me at my age coaches do not usually teach the loop. Get the feeling what it is like to start the right hip forward first then a more relaxed arm follows. The feeling will be very different to your shot in the video. Bretts video on the swinging model is apt.The arm comes forward for the ride rather than from muscle contraction. Shadow swing this feeling every day. Then single multi ball with correct technique. Then 2 multi balls in a row with correct technique. This is what Brett did with me on the table to start to make changes on my backhand. Of course it will take years to fully incorporate these changes in all game situations.
I am reading the inner game of tennis again and I feel this approach could make learning TT easier and more fun.

It would be interesting to know what drove you into this mood this time but for the record, I never said that nothing gets fixed. One thing I said was that "fixing" is related to level - things that are sufficient for a certain level can often be exploited at a higher level. So right now, you are looking at many things you have "fixed" and getting frustrated for reasons I can only guess at - that aspects of them are not good enough for playing at a certain level. I know many players who would give any coach a significant amount of money to play half as well as you do. It's all about context I guess.

Another thing I said was that it is rare to completely transform technique. More often, it's just subtle changes rather than a wholesale rebuild, but the subtle changes are often meaningful. I mean, William Henzell still talks about being taught to hit a forehand with just his arm and not his body. How much that influences his current technique is a matter of debate but I think we never completely lose touch with our past identities.

You need to develop shorter forehand technique for some situations. Just develop it. Don't try to link it to your old technique in the start. In my experience, I struggled when I tried to fix an old serve. I just decided to treat the fix as learning a completely new serve and hoping over time I would select the new serve. But I also know I forgive myself for TT mistakes much more than others do.

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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

The pendulum service revisited.

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Tactics Enthusiast

It appears you are getting some good whip on the ball and creating a good amount of spin. Can you do pure side, or side under or top side with it yet? I started getting creative serves when working on all of those. The side-top with 2 bounces is my go to serve against better players than me or are able to return my other serves aggressively.

I also have one that goes really wide, so out of the table on the backhand to a rightie. This is my change up serve and it tests players movement. Penholders dislike the ball going really wide to the backhand too. Probably a garbage serve at 2000+ rating or so but variation of service seems to help in my matches.

I think the last few serves are side with a bit of the topspin, at least that was my intention. The first ones are side-back. I can do a serve that has more sidespin than backspin, I use it as a contrast with side-back which is the default option. I can't do heavy top-side yet. The main issue is that under pressure everything bounces too high.

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Tactics Enthusiast

Yeah. I've been really trying to relax myself before serves and really focus on the brush. I get into this intense match mentality and it's very hard to relax and do a good quality low serve.

For me on the pendulum serve I felt like if I could keep the backspin ball low then the rest of the serves followed suit. Your backspin ones looked pretty good there but of course that's practice

Sometimes in practice matches I feel like I can control the height of my serves with incredible precision. But it is rare and I don't know how to get into this condition. My light-top serves usually bounce way too high, which often leads to me being under strong attack. I also feel like in match situation for the top-side serve my backswing is somehow inhibited, which is not the case for backspin. I start to thing that top-side is actually a very different serve from back-side, even though the motions are incredibly similar. Mostly the timing of the toss and contact are different due to the different contact points, and it leads to very different feeling. I thought once I have a reasonable back-side, I will automatically will have a reasonable top-side. No way, top-side requires a massive amount of practice to get it right, even if the back-side is OK.

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Tactics Enthusiast

[offtopic] A cool interview, the matches are on the same channel. [/offtopic]

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Tactics Enthusiast

For me, I find getting my side topspin serves lower to the net comes from visualization just before the serve and focusing on the contact placement area on my rubber.
Like you, I can’t often get a lot of topspin but my side top serves are very often misread and gives me a slight pop up that I can usually loop for a winner.

I’ve been working on the elbow lift and upward body movement that Brett demonstrates in one of his videos, I can’t find which one.
I’ve had some success with it, but I’m also concerned it will be a tell and even though I’ll probably gain quantity of topspin, I’ll lose deception.

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Viscaria
FH: H3 Provincial Blue sponge
BH: Omega VII Pro

Where can I get the shirt Brett is wearing? I'm lately into collecting various TT jerseys/shirts etc., the more obscure the better .

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

Some people are just bad at handling super heavy topspin serve, even when they know it is topspin. It is actually quite hard to do a lot with it when it is low and short, I experienced it myself. I once played a penholder, and all I could do is to block his serve back as soft as possible so that it does not bounce into the ceiling. Quite a weird feeling.

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Tactics Enthusiast

I have a Penhold friend who has a similar topspin serve and yes, it’s very difficult to return.

It’s funny you mention the difficulty in returning heavy topspin even if it’s known, because I have a topspin BH serve that I’ve pretty much stopped trying for deception and I’m more concerned with it kicking on contact on my opponents side.
I’ve noticed lately that I get a lot of errors based on that kick.

Kind of contradicts my mindset on my pendulum serve. Lol

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Viscaria
FH: H3 Provincial Blue sponge
BH: Omega VII Pro

Looks like an AIS (aus institute of sport) shirt so you would probably have to find a selected AIS player and get one off them. AIS probably sells generic shirts but not ones with sponsor logos all over it...

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Chasse Patate