To win points right away I suggest you focus on blocking with the pips. Push long to the middle and bait people into turning to play a weak fh loop to your BH. Block it softly off the bounce and watch them play the next loop into the net over and over. Blocking is relatively quick to improve. It will also give you a head start in the timing you need to hit which is later than blocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKVxFbGLzdo

In terms of BH footwork, I think blocking practice helps. Especially if you train with someone who does not have a pinpoint-accurate BH (or FH step-around) loop and spreads the ball quite a bit. IMHO if you focus on getting right behind the ball when blocking, it should nicely translate into BH footwork for loop/hit. And even if you don't make it into the perfect position, you get a nice chance to practice BHs from weird and funky positions.

1 -- I used to hold it like this.
2 -- Sometimes, I tried holding it like this, but it seemed to be very similar to 1 for me.
3 -- The middle, ring and small finger are all placed slightly higher. This is the grip used by my coach. It's the same grip used by the coach of one of my friends (the guy feeding me multiball last Friday). When he showed me his grip, I couldn't replicate it at the time.

Do you use one of these grips or a different one?

Grip it so your thumb and index finger pinch the racket.

To win points right away I suggest you focus on blocking with the pips. Push long to the middle and bait people into turning to play a weak fh loop to your BH. Block it softly off the bounce and watch them play the next loop into the net over and over. Blocking is relatively quick to improve. It will also give you a head start in the timing you need to hit which is later than blocks.

In terms of BH footwork, I think blocking practice helps. Especially if you train with someone who does not have a pinpoint-accurate BH (or FH step-around) loop and spreads the ball quite a bit. IMHO if you focus on getting right behind the ball when blocking, it should nicely translate into BH footwork for loop/hit. And even if you don't make it into the perfect position, you get a nice chance to practice BHs from weird and funky positions.

Getting a better feeling for the soft block. Again, I wish I could keep the racquet higher when preparing for the next shot, but the footwork was ok for the most part imo.

https://youtu.be/X0giwPEzsM0

Footwork is really nice in both vids. You hardly move your elbow and that is the goal. Put your body behind the ball. It's noticeable from the first vid to the second how you got more comfortable just letting the ball rebound off your pips. In the first one you are pretty much hitting it back, the second you kind of help it a little when the incoming ball is weak. Sometimes you do have to add something or the ball just dies. Judging how much to add is a key skill.

The quicker off the bounce you take the ball the nastier the block will be. This is without you doing anything else differently. But that puts a ton of pressure on your bat angle to be correct. It's a trade-off between quality and safety, like most TT shots are. It depends on your body position and the pressure the opponent puts on you whether you can do that.

One suggestion for the drill -- make your push with the inverted. Giving your partner more backspin should get you more topspin to block. It's also useful to go from a spinnier 3rd ball to a more powerful 5th ball attack as the blocker bc that is frequently how points go. If he serves to your fh that also puts some transition pressure on you both to switch sides (keeping the bat high and in front) and also to get back to your bh side with your weight still forward. It's harder but more realistic. And much of the time you only need to make one block anyway. Either he misses the 5th or you get an opportunity to attack on the 6th ball. That's another thing you can practice -- if you make a nasty block and get a weak ball back, to attack it. Don't get locked into blocking because "I am training blocking now." Practice playing each ball the way you should play it in a game. Making the first loop more challenging will make it more productive to do this.

All in all you look great. I am impressed and also jealous for your progress.

Thanks. All paths (or at least many of them) lead to Rome.

Shao's stroke is longer than the ones in the videos posted by BRS, but it obviously works for him. While I would like to copy the stroke of CHJ, it's unrealistic and I won't be able to get there even in practice. My goal is to find something functional that works reasonably well.



That's a good point. Fortunately, most people are happy to practice looping, so I will add this to the training list.

I hadn’t been to my table tennis school for a long time. Over the weekend I noticed that one of the coaches who uses short pips on the BH had returned from maternity leave, so I booked a lesson. Although I understood only around 70% of her instructions she gave me useful tips.

Among other things, we did BH to BH. To my relief my movement is not as bad as I had feared after watching the multiball drill from last Friday where my feet seemed to be glued to the floor (although I didn't have to move too much thanks to the precision of the coach).

In terms of stroke length it's closer to Shao's and I would be happy if I can hit it like this in matches.

https://youtu.be/KPpipoSZ-mg

My coach uses a different grip than me for the BH -- will post some pictures later. Curious how people here are holding their racquets.

Your stroke looks good now since you are now hitting through the ball. I find that for hitting strokes I get more stability if I use my elbow on part to guide the path of the stroke. I can use the wrist to hit a bit harder but it is a bit harder to control so I am a bit more careful with it.

I was an inverted hitter when I started TT so a lot of this resonates with me. Some of the subtle differences are in quality of pips but overall you are on the right path.

I hate the internet.