FruitLoop wrote:
I'm no expert but I think the thread may have gotten a bit bogged down in minutiae. A bit of over analysis going on. A lot of things like foot position happen naturally when things are done correct and are indicators of good technique, but don't produce it themselves and trying to work on this will drive you insane. It seems like putting the cart before the horse. Get the basic overall principle correct and the small stuff falls into place over time. Focusing on micro aspects seems doomed to failure and frustration to me.
The problem with fast movers loop against backspin is that he didn't rotate into the ball with his body and instead to produce the lift required merely started low and finished high with his racquet. It was all arms and vertical extension with little forward component. The same vertical distance would be travelled in much less time with more body rotation but I think to him it would feel totally alien to go forward over the ball like that vs backspin. I'd be interested in seeing some multiball forehands vs backspin for fastmover where he consciously tries to rotate the body and move forward over the top of the ball. His brain will tell him this will never work, don't you know this ball needs to be lifted? But adjustments to the backswing would happen and soon he'd be amazed at the ball flying over the net countering the backspin with what feels like a totally forward motion. Looping backspin with a counter top spin technique. It will be like magic. This was my experience with my bachand vs backspin. I did a big exaggerated fold and lift motion but the timing wasn't right and it was wild and inconsistent. Someone got me to do a small forward backhand vs backspin almost like a flick but from behind the table. After a few shots to adjust it magically went over the net and completely changed my attitude to technique vs backspin. I thought it was a discrete, different technique that needed to be thought of totally separately. Totally distinct from vs no spin or topspin. Nah it's exactly the same with small adjustments that are almost not worth thinking about because conscious you sucks compared to subconscious you at those things.
Fastmover please try this. Get someone to feed you multiball backspin to your forehand. Rotate into the ball over the top of the ball, forward, forward, forward. Don't think about lift at all. Almost like it's a counter top spin. Let your subconscious adjust as you go. If you start the backswing low but then come forward like it's a counter top spin magical things will happen and your attitude to this shot will change. That's what I hope will happen anyway.
On a more serious note, given my initial response:
I actually agree with and said a lot of this in different words. And it is stuff I think a lot of us see what you see in fastmover's technique, but I am still not sure whether the main point I tried to convey was accepted by fastmover or not. He seemed to think he was folding over his knee and you are right, it might be possible to modify the stroke without that fold I am looking for (it will probably look a bit more back driven like mine does). We will see his next forehand topspin vs backspin video. But for me, the fold he displayed was limited. I have a limited fold myself but you can see I try to lean over the knee much more. But I have a really crappy right knee that influences all of this.
https://youtu.be/bSK-mjrvfFI?list=UUPt3 ... ddOA&t=153On whether it is better to get holistic or to get into "minutiae", I will say not as an expert, but as a amateur coach, if you are trying to push for someone to change something, both approaches have their place, you try to make it work by figuring out what makes the student get it right and keep it going. Small details can be what limit a person's technique, and fixing those small details can unleash improvements (look at the fix for mickd's serving and try to tell him to do it holistically). The foot pointing to the side either as part of hip rotation, or as a foundation to push off when folding the torso, is not a small detail. But it only came up in part because fastmover may have felt he could keep the same technique and finish without coming up but not fold the torso more (he felt it was folding sufficiently already). From personal experience, I cannot see how, because the way that stroke affects a knee when you don't point it outwards while backswinging can be interesting (I won't go into the gory details). The back doesn't like it either over time.
The problem is that fastmover seems to be focused on the foot positioning relative to the table, when the real point is to focus on it relative to the stroke. And this would probably be a fast conversation with a student in person. Or one would whip out a video of Ma Long as Brett did and point out the elements one wants you to embrace. And like I said, LTT93 spells all this foot positioning and spinning torso stuff out in excruciating detail.
And yes, if a holistic or goal oriented description works, great. But sometimes, you have to go into the details like TTEdge does to refine technique and without the details of what to fix, it is hard to just go forward, especially if you have technique that somewhat works. And it is not as if fastmover isn't a good adult player. He is an above average adult amateur player in the USA. What he does right now wins him points against players. So fixing what kinda works right now is rarely going to be simply about changing an approach and expecting the body to follow - some of it will require him to deal with the details and in general, the more advanced a player, the more you have to deal with some details, though you can sometimes make it a whole new stroke. He could change it and still end up using too much upper body when he could use more hip rotation as one example. Though maybe any change is progress?
I think if you coach, you will have your approach, but realize that not all students respond the same. And if you want to work with every case, while of course working best with some temperaments, you will modify your approach to fit the temperament of the student. And even for me, there are times when each approach works.
I try to explain to my students that if I or any player tells them to fix something, we are seeing something we think needs a fix. But we don't always use the best language. It is up to the student to try to make sense of it and see whether it works. Everyone sees something but very few people understand it well enough to describe it exactly the way it will make sense to you. Bring what they said to me and we can see whether it is really something or not. Doesn't mean I will be right but I am your coach.