L>Forehand Loop critique

 

My former coach in Korea was a former K-League Pro chopper. Her opening FH topspin, you look at it and you would think it is too tame.  Yet, she rarely missed and the shot did what she wanted it to do, change from defense to attack. So, she had an effective FH.

 

Having said all that, I think you are losing a LOT of possible power, spin and some landing percentage by doing your opening topspin the way you are.

 

What I say below is focused on letting you know what is happening that is preventing you from making more effective power without all the effort.

 

The LOSS of your potential power is your body is totally locked up from knees on up to shoulders to wrist in your stroke. Look at your vid a few times and you'll see. This is stopping you from generating a whipping action that will result in a transfer of weight and energy through your core and you use arm and wrist snap to finish all that explosion off. You are losing acceleration since you keep your hips and core and shoulders and arm locked together moving at the same time all locked and joined up. If you got a strong core, you can get away with this and still land that shot a decent percentage, but the ball will be weak. You keep hitting like this, it might get really ingrained and difficult to correct later.

 

Your stance is somewhat BH oriented and you could use your hips a lot easier if you open up your stance by moving your right leg behind you at least 8-12 inches than what you do now. When you have a stance that is not open, the FH becomes cramped and it is difficult to get the legs and hips to generate the full potential of power than you can by a slightly more open stance.

 

There is a certain efficient "Timing" of the use of the muscles and how to get them to work together to accelerate the bat by impact. I use the word "Explosion" a lot and it is a useful term. You are making an explosion of power. You are "Exploding" through the ball in your strike zone. Right now, you are "Gliding" and "Guiding" through the zone.

 

The legs and wide stance provide a base for you to start with legs and use hip rotation to transfer the energy through your core up to your shoulder, the shoulders carry it more with some turning, then a tiny bit of upper arm, your lower arm moves forward for the "Arm Snap" and finally the wrist adds the final "Wrist Snap" to the equation resulting in a very fast bat speed proportionate to what it is looking like you are doing.

 

There has to be sequence of movement and timing of all the muscles or it will not result in a whipping action that gives you the effortless power and control.

 

Now that I said all that, it isn't like you are gunna correct all that right now in one session trying to get it right at combat speed. There is some progression involved. No one develops a great FH topspin form over night.

 

I go back to the mirror thing to get you to be aware of what you are doing. Go super slow motion in front of the mirror thinking about how you start your power. You are starting it OK enough (but your stance could use some opening up) but instead of letting the upper body and shoulder rotate after starting with your legs and waist, you are still trying to add momentum with the waist and by that time, the upper body should be moving more than the waist to add to the power. Then the lower arm should be receiving this power and adding it to the stroke and right at impact the wrist is adding its final say.

 

Take your time and see yourself in the mirror and see yourself different by adding each component in slow mo. When you got the sequence right, do it ever so slightly faster. Keep upping the pace in small increments until you are doing a 60-70% power shot. This is your basic opening FH topspin power. You will not get there in one day so don't get all bent out of shape if it takes time to get the timing of it. It took me a very long time to correct anything I did (and still do) wrong in TT. 

-Elbow is tucked in too tight to your hip/torso, I would let it float out away from your torso a little more.

-Biggest issue that I can see is your balance. This is also affecting your ability to generate more power as your CG is too far back when executing your stroke. Basically you are almost leaning backward at the end of your take back. Your torso is twisted a little to much to the right to the degree that your left shoulder goes past your right knee during your back swing. If someone were to lightly push you backward at that point it would take very little force to cause you to fall backward. This is mostly due to what others have said about your stance being to square or parallel to the table. The solution is what others have said, move your right foot back such that your torso is facing diagonally to the right or roughly 45 degrees to the back line. Your CG shift should generally be from the back right foot towards the slightly forward left foot along a diagonal. Others refer to this a weight shift. The above issue with your elbow may be resolved with this correction.

-I think you should concentrate on getting a good quality spin on your shot first before adding power. To me that means waiting for the ball to fall a little more and swinging slower initially. The ball should "jump" when it hits the other side of the table. 

Forehand sample- ML FH is similar to the way you are stroking the ball. If you are actively trying to copy his mechanic then be careful not to over rotate the upper torso/shoulders. Note that from the side it looks very similar to yours and he does not have his right foot back but that is because hes reaching forward to get the ball but it is a good example of a good quality spin loop. Also note that he does not rotate his upper torso as far as you do. 

Here is a more normal shot where you can see his right foot is back.