OOAK Table Tennis Forum

NL and BRS,

Thanks to you both. I'll be experimenting with all this over the next couple practice sessions. I must say that swinging too hard is a deeply ingrained habit at this point and it could be one of the hardest parts of my game to fix. I have played other sports which involve hitting a ball, and in all of these sports I was taught to generate as much racket head speed as possible on all of my swings. The idea that I may need to swing slower and easier to spin the ball more seems pretty wild to me given my background in other sports.

I'll try to post some other footage from this training session if I can find the time.

Easier doesn't always equal slower. I am working on the identical problem so will look forward to more video from you.

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

Yoko Ono

In TT, the ball is always moving so relaxed swings allow you to choose when to accelerate your effort and improve your timing and average power. Starting the acceleration early can lead to bad ball contact or whiffing the ball entirely. Against an easy block, this is not a big deal. But against balls with spin, things get hairy, especially as you get more spin as that makes the ball you get back even spinnier.

I hit with a friend yesterday who is an amazing kick blocker. His kick blocking was so good that it actually revealed to me that I had a bad glue job on one side of my paddle. I couldn't swing hard into the ball every time or I would whiff it, so my slower swings resulted in my picking up the paddle inconsistency on my red side while using my backhand, where I have more feel. My forehand swings are hard and tend to compensate for bad contact and I don't trust my feel there either.

Sounds crazy but this happens.

_________________
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

BRS had requested that I post a FH/BH transition. The closest I could find from my last session was a 1Fh (backspin), 1Fh(topspin), 1BH (topspin) pattern. But now that I look at this, the feed is done at a slow enough pace that any problems with switching my grip would be irrelevant. I'll try to post something at a faster pace next time:



Consistency is pretty darn low here. Still wiping out a low of balls on the BH side.

Edit: I've been watching the tick whip video trying to understand why I get so much speed but so little spin. It appears that Henzell drives more upwards into the ball than I do, while my stroke is much more flat.

I am a bit disappointed watching this video after all I tried to tell you prior about speed being a waste of time. For any given stroke, with all things constant, the more that goes into speed, the less that goes into spin.

The answer to your question is: Because you keep trying to minimize dwell time while most pros including Henzell are trying to maximize it relative to the speed of their swing. You want the ball to leave your paddle fast, while you should be trying to hold it long enough with a stroke path to impart spin no matter how fast your stroke is. It's one of the many things which together I call the illusions of table tennis. You should be trying to wrap the ball to impart spin or let it bite the rubber, no matter how fast you are trying to hit it with the possible exception being when you have line of sight to your target. It has less to do about driving upwards than this general point.

The closest shot to what you should be doing was one shot around 8 seconds in or so but in general, all the backhands were poor from a dwell maximization perspective. You aren't doing this on your forehand where you could get away with it more, so why you are doing it on your backhand beats me, though there is the possibility that you just have worse feel there in general.

Here are a couple of videos from the other forum that you may have seen - is this guy trying to hit the ball fast or is he spinning the ball extremely fast on his hardest shots which were above the net kills? Is the lack of dwell time on his hardest shots the primary intent or just a consequence of the stroke speed?

_________________
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

NL,

I know this might sound crazy but I am trying to maximize dwell time in this video, not minimize it. I just don't know how to do it yet. It sounds ridiculous but I just do not know how to generate spin (instead of speed) with this technique. Keep in mind that I spent basically my whole life hitting on the BH against topspin, and that the whole idea of spinning on the Bh side is still relatively new to me.

The funny part is that all the local players have been complimenting me on my improved backhand lately. Of course when they do this, they are refering to the speed of the shot and my ability to put away weak balls in a way they've never seen me do before. My backhans was always quite soft. But believe me that I am very aware of how my inability to generate spin on the BH kills me in actual match play when I'm faced with a wide variety of spins. I had absolutely zero chance against tiffany kee in my last tournament because I couldn't backhand loop any of her deep serves on the table.

The thing about maximizing dwell time is that, in my opinion, it is contingent upon the player doing a LOT of things correctly: proper coordination between backswing and forward swing, where the ball is contacted, relaxation, the right swing speed, the correct swing plane, correct point of contact, etc. You do so many of these things correctly and for me it's not so easy to just get more dwell time by just asking myself to do it.

Here's what I am going to do. Tomorrow I am going to get on the robot and try to produce a slow, spinny BH and i"ll post a video and see what you think.

I will post something that will hopefully help you see the tick whip in a different light. I suggest you watch the Fan Zhendong Backhand Flick video with subtitles that I posted on my blog. You will see a key thing he does to get torque om his stroke by leading with the elbow while turning the wrist backwards. That wrisf turn and leading with the elbow is part of what you are missing. It let's you generate a larger spin motion on the ball.

_________________
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

Just an observation, your form looks kinda tense, like you're trying too hard. Doing that in a game makes following the ball much harder than it should be. If you try to relax and flow a bit you'll get easier & flexible power.

_________________
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

Also, forgot to add for the bh flick over the table the hard part to taking the ball off the bounce isn't the physical form but reading the shot, especially the trajectory. Anybody can practice a bit and whip at the ball, but FZD puts the power return on the table because he's a master at visualizing the trajectory before the ball gets there.

Tiffany Ke is a stone-cold killer. I won a practice match against her at MDTTC camp last summer when she was maybe nine. She shook my hand, said I only won because she had been away at Disney and hadn't hit for a week, and that she would never lose to me again. All of which was true. I fell for her right then.

Anyway, your multiball feeder is really good. But he's kind of watching your shots and giving you a little extra time more than you would have vs block. He can either speed the feed up slightly, or just have you loop to his BH and he alternates blocking to your FH and BH.

As far as the dwell time and wrapping around and all that, I don't know about any of that. To me you aren't getting as much spin as you want because your contact is too fat. I still hear a loud crack sound on every hit. Try to make contact thinly enough that you can't hear anything on the camcorder audio. you will still be able to hear it, but from 10 - 12 feet away it's inaudible. That's not the contact you want in the long-term, it's just a practice experiment. Don't really think about anything, just try to adjust for the sound.

I think the BH ball drops are a really useful exercise for that. No robot or partner required, you can do 100s in a few minutes, and it's awesome tick-whip practice. And you have to get it spinny because you are hitting from over the table. It isn't vs. backspin, but you can get that later.

I'll start putting this standard disclaimer on my advice: This advice is only the opinion of a 1700 player who makes so many common mistakes that there is a 30-part video series about all of them. So take it for what it is worth.

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

Yoko Ono

BRS, I agree his contact is flat, but my impression is that Ringer is not going to slow down. I am showing him how to spin the ball when you don't slow down - you need to lead with the elbow and turn over the wrist to give yourself sufficient torque and lead time into the contact. And I spent a lot of time a few months back modifying my base technique to look more like yours and William Henzell's so just about anything you say on this topic is as informed as what I say. Anyone who learned their technique as an adult brings a lot to these conversations.

When you do the backswing that I showed in that video, what you will see is how loaded it is with energy and you will find a way to transport it into all your backhand strokes (which is what I show in the other shadows away from the table). You do exactly the same thing - you just don't realize it.

And making contact more silent is pretty much the same thing as increasing dwell time. You want the ball to stay on your racket longer and to glide along a larger surface area of the rubber. Flat hitting means you are in a rush to get the ball off your rubber. So maybe the practical advice to Ringer is to make more silent contact - the crack off your bat is the end of the process not the beginning and is relative to the noise you would make with a flatter contact, which is always louder by a significant margin.

FWIW, I haven't beaten Tiffany since the first time I played her and I last played her about 2 years ago I think - I lost to her at her home club when I had no forehand. On the other hand, my backhand topspin was a much inferior version of what it is now and I couldn't loop her pushes with my then inferior technique. She flat hits so I would still have to play her hard today, and she is about my rating or slightly higher, but with my backhand technique, she is quite beatable because you can attack her serves so I know where Ringer is coming from.

_________________
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 sent Tiffany crying to her father after I defeated her 3-0 in a tournament about 1.5 years ago. She was rated in the 1700's and I was in the 1500's. At the time, her major weakness was no backhand. Not only that, if you played topspin games with her (or a lot of the juniors, for that matter), you would get crushed. That's how they train and you'd be playing into their strengths. I haven't played against her since but I suspect her backhand is no longer a problem since she's now close to 2000.

She will always be susceptible to a good slow topspin and sidespin looper from midsitance given that she needs to hit everything off the bounce - that's the kind of player who beat her at Westchester this past month. Will also struggle with advanced and consistent pips play too - her game reminds me a lot of Amy Wang's.

And as you know, weaknesses usually don't disappear - they just require a higher level player with the same problem-posing style to exploit them.

_________________
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

Duplicate.

_________________
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