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Dangers of waist rotation |
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blahness
Premier Member Joined: 10/18/2009 Location: Melbourne Status: Offline Points: 5443 |
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Posted: 03/18/2019 at 5:27pm |
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I didn't get any response from any medical professionals in the other thread so I'm gonna share what I read here:
The medical term for waist rotation (i.e. rotating the shoulders beyond the hips) is trunk axial rotation or trunk twisting and seems to be well known as a major risk factor for chronic lower back pain in most papers. Many table tennis players have chronic lower back pain and I suspect it's due to the overuse of waist rotation as a power source in our sport. Maybe it's time to reevaluate our techniques to eliminate the reliance of waist rotation (on the FH it's a pure leg driven hip rotation with the shoulders, hips and knees always in line with one another; BH it's squatting/unsquatting, bowing/unbowing similar to a deadlift)? As I know the CNT has already done a 180 degree on its views on waist rotation, now they think it is no longer reasonable (evidence by prominent members like Li Sun, Guo Yan in tutorial videos, Ma Long changing his strokes significantly). I have put some medical papers I've read here (not a full list): I know this is a very controversial topic, but let's get it out and discuss this!
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blahness
Premier Member Joined: 10/18/2009 Location: Melbourne Status: Offline Points: 5443 |
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Tbh, zeio was the first one in this forum to explain it, but all of us ignored him including me... Guess if the truth was too hard to take, us human beings will tend to just close our ears and ignore it. Credit to zeio for bringing up the issue.
I'll be the second believer, and I'm gonna take a week or two hiatus to focus on shadow practice to unlearn the waist rotation from my techniques. Thanks zeio and sorry for ignoring your posts the first time around! Zeio's posts are here:
Edited by stiltt - 12/24/2020 at 5:45am |
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lineup32
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Yawn !!!
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stiltt
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did you mean that?
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blahness
Premier Member Joined: 10/18/2009 Location: Melbourne Status: Offline Points: 5443 |
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Yes fatt that is the more correct link... Tbh zeio was really understating its importance, given that chronic lower back pain is a condition that is really terrible, I know a few people around me who have it and honestly it's a life of pain. There was a necroed thread, it was hard to read personally...
Edited by blahness - 03/19/2019 at 12:53am |
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Lula
Super Member Joined: 07/18/2017 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 183 |
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i think players are more fit today and Do more weigth liftning due to the new ball so it is proably less likely that they get injuried. But i can see that many get problem later in life.
I also think it is because of todays tabletennis. Almost more backhand today than forehand and the game goes faster, more players play closer to the table. So i think this also can be a reason for less torsorotation. We Do not have the time and space anymore.
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blahness
Premier Member Joined: 10/18/2009 Location: Melbourne Status: Offline Points: 5443 |
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Isn't it suspicious so many table tennis players get lower back issues, from the pros down to amateurs? There's also quite a few in my club who are suffering from similar issues. Looking at these medical journals scared me to be honest. It seems that the human lower back is indeed not meant to do all the bending and twisting we require it to do in table tennis. There was one study which mentioned that there was even a creep effect for lower back axial twisting (meaning the movement is permanent!). I'm saying something potentially extremely controversial here, i.e. it is very likely that the prevalence of lower back pain in the table tennis community can be directly traced to the technique of relying on trunk rotation (aka waist rotation) to generate power. |
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obesechopper
Silver Member Joined: 04/20/2011 Status: Offline Points: 839 |
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Though to be honest, it doesn't really matter what technique you use. If you play for years doing the same repetitive motion... something is bound to pay the price! Goes that way in every sport
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blahness
Premier Member Joined: 10/18/2009 Location: Melbourne Status: Offline Points: 5443 |
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Just saw an article summarising the effect:
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vanjr
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Chronic lower back pain is INCREDIBLY common with age and a quick search of reliable medical sites can give you a lot of information. Disc disease is related to age, weight and other factors. It would be very, very hard to prove that table tennis waist rotation for backhands!!
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cole_ely
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I feel like letting the ball drop low and looping it up is the worst part. Players who take the ball at the top of the bounce off the table probably aren't going to have problems due to rotation.
Edited by cole_ely - 03/19/2019 at 10:56am |
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NextLevel
Forum Moderator Joined: 12/15/2011 Location: Somewhere Good Status: Offline Points: 14847 |
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Hmmm.... this is interesting. I have been trying this recently and wondering why my back is unusually sore. Just being aware is helpful. |
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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Lula
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Do you guys think developing faster equipment can counteract that it is harder for the body with the plastic ball?
I do not think the body is made for this kind of ratiation, and repeteive motions. And the plastic ball proably made it worse.
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heavyspin
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I often get a mild annoying pain above my left hip and always felt it was in part due to my forehand loop. I'm experimenting now with a more backhand dominant style.
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NextLevel
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They need to do more work on the ball.
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I like putting heavy topspin on the ball...
Cybershape Carbon FH/BH: H3P 41D. Lumberjack TT, not for lovers of beautiful strokes. No time to train... |
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ggreco
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I think it can be normally for our sport if practiced thru years, but i think it's not to attribute only to trunk rotation: power in table tennis is the result of the action of the sum of trunk rotation, legs, forearm, elbow, wrist and i believe that the action is more sustainable if the work is reparted on all body segments interested.
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blahness
Premier Member Joined: 10/18/2009 Location: Melbourne Status: Offline Points: 5443 |
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I can sort of visualise that... if you drop your shoulder when looping (ie if your shoulders are not on the same height), you bend your trunk which results in a significant compressive force on your lumbar on the right side in addition to twisting, pretty much the worst combination. The site I linked pretty much identifies compression and twisting as the major aggravating factors for lower back pain.
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blahness
Premier Member Joined: 10/18/2009 Location: Melbourne Status: Offline Points: 5443 |
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It is common, but there's plenty of old people without lower back pain who don't play table tennis, and a lot of younger adults who play table tennis frequently who developed chronic lower back pain at a younger age. I think a careful scientific study is required to assess this, but that is solely my hypothesis, seeing how common lower back pain is in our sport, and the mechanisms do match (trunk rotation and bending). Table tennis involves lots of repetitive actions especially those who train over a lifetime, and one of the primary mechanisms for producing power is trunk rotation and bending which has already been proven and identified as harmful in medical literature. I would say that the trunk rotation and bending in forehands being a lot more damaging than that in the backhand because we tend to produce more power in the FH compared to the BH.
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blahness
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The Chinese table tennis literature is to blame too in my opinion. For many years majority of coaches and coaching videos and literature have recommended 沉肩转腰 ie drop the shoulder and turn at the waist.
If you drop the shoulder without dropping your hips, you induce bending (if you ever studied structural engineering that produces compression on one side and tension on the other side, which can be quite significant depending on how much you bend). It is no wonder that Timo Boll had so many issues with the lower back. If you rotate your waist without rotating your hips, you induce torsion in your lower back. From the website directly, a good analogy is if you have a dishrag, you can twist/wring the rag (the discs) which causes the water (the nucleus) to seek a way out. Of course if you bend you directly compress the liquid on one side which also causes it to seek a way out. Now the discs are actually quite strong, but aggravating it for a few million cycles, and it may start to break down. It's basically fatigue failure which also happens in many structures (road pavements being the most common)
Edited by blahness - 03/19/2019 at 6:54pm |
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blahness
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Yes, players who rely less on the waist would protect their waist better. If you don't rely on power from the waist you have to compensate elsewhere, and it's normally the legs. That or get faster equipment lol...
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blahness
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Just found this article which may be of interest:
It's a very short article, but has some scary statistics. 145 table tennis players were randomly selected from the Hellenic Table Tennis Union and answered in questionnaire that included 32 questions concerning general health, work history, education and physical exercise. The questionnaire was validated with intraclass correlation coeffiecient (k=0,644 -1.00, p<0.05, <0.001 respectively). There was no statistical differences in quantitate data among personal factors (age, height, BW and years in sport participation), between the tennis players with and without LBP. Concerning the prevalence of LBP among participants. 74 players (51.2%) had LBP some times in their lives before the survey. 34 tennis players had mild pain, 65 had moderate pain, needing no rest and 23 had severe pain. As to the associative problems to the limps, 23 players had no symptoms, and 54 had radiating pain to the lower leg. 52 tennis players reported that taking physiotherapy, 22 resting or taking a bath, and 55 using TENS improved their LBP. Correlation between qualitative data of personal factors and LBP was significant higher among tennis players that answered yes to the item hard training, than the players that did not. There is no correlation to the other qualitative data of personal factors for the prevalence of LBP.
Edited by blahness - 03/20/2019 at 3:21am |
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blahness
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I just did my first session trying to overhaul my strokes.... BH was surprisingly quite straightforward to apply the squat/unsquatting/bowing/unbowing plus the Harimoto/Ma Long style hip rotation. FH was a nightmare....I only dared to do basic countering with only hip rotation, and any attempts to increase power led to waist rotation which I could feel and it was impossible to switch off... Later on after some shadow practice I found that actually, core bracing is very important! Without core bracing, you can't actually transfer the power from the hip rotation effectively to the upper body, and you're bound to get some waist rotation and/or lag between the hip and shoulders. Bracing/tensing up the core will almost force the shoulders to follow the hips which is what we want.
Edit: after more tries with core bracing, I found something magical! If you brace your core well, you can activate thoracic rotation (rotation at the chest) without lumbar rotation (rotation at the lower back). This is much safer than lumbar rotation as you can see from the video below: Perhaps Harimoto is using something similar and is in fact not rotating at the waist but at the chest?! If that is the case, I suspect he indeed has the most advanced biomechanics of any TT player indeed! Edited by blahness - 03/20/2019 at 6:31pm |
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blahness
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Reposting the Harimoto torso rotation screenshot and I'm starting to believe that Harimoto is indeed using thoracic rotation not lumbar (waist rotation), notice how straight the waist is in relation to the hips in the screenshot, you can see a straight line from the hips upwards for some distance which suggests that he is bracing his core really well.
Edit: This also explains why Harimoto is able to rotate more than all the other players, it is a medical fact that the range of motion for thoracic rotation well exceeds that of lumbar rotation. Edited by blahness - 03/21/2019 at 4:52am |
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smackman
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No more sport then
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obesechopper
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Doing some shadow training here, and I really felt a difference in the lumbar area. If I brace the core and only twist more at the mid/upper back (technical jargon be damned), I noticed a lot less torquing on the lower spine, naturally. It seems like it would take a lot of mental concentration at this point to do so every point during a game but perhaps would result in less damage to the body... interesting point I'll have to toy with here.
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blahness
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Despite the disdain for technical jargon, I think you've got it (disabling waist/lumbar rotation and replacing it with the healthier thoracic rotation)! I feel like with all habits, it's gonna take some time before it sinks into our subconscious which we can then integrate into our game. But, we've only got one body to work with, and for me at least the pain of having to retrain my technique definitely would be less than chronic lower back pain later on in life!
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shaks
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Thoracic rotation will surely cause rib problems.
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blahness
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It's very obvious that in the screenshot above, Harimoto's shoulder axis is rotated about 30-45 degrees more than his hip rotation, however it is still healthy because he is bracing his core (no waist rotation) very well (as seen by how straight his waist is), the rotation is at the chest (thoracic rotation) which is much healthier than waist rotation. I think given these, Harimoto, in fact has one of the healthiest and most effective techniques out of the current pros! I completely take back my previous criticisms of Harimoto's FH technique.
Edited by blahness - 03/21/2019 at 2:04am |
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blahness
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I understand that change could potentially be very hard (given that waist rotation, dropping shoulders has been in coaching literature for decades!), but sometimes we do have to change our minds when the facts change!
Btw where's your proof on thoracic rotation causing rib problems? That goes completely against all the medical literature I've seen (despite myself not being a medical professional). Go watch the video I posted above if you want to. There's more links here if you're interested in reading: https://www.noregretspt.com.au/index.php/resources/blog/43-2014/258-is-twisting-rotational-exercise-bad-for-your-back |
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obesechopper
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Oh I've no doubt something will have to give... doesnt matter what technique you use, but probably depends on your body and which area is strongest for each person
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