Tips on Forehand

What kind of blade and rubber are you using? 

Lestat wrote: Looks to me he is just showing off. That's no way to practice, the tempo is too high for any sort of meaningful practice - especially that it's obvious you're out of your comfort zone. If the a**hole would slow down, maybe we could have a look at your real form.

NextLevel wrote: What kind of blade and rubber are you using?  ... 1.  Centralize weight by putting more weight on your right foot. 2.  Use the core to get rotation while weight is more centralized. 3.  Finish your stroke at forehead height (just look at the quality of your loops in the video when you do so) and go for spin over speed in your practice loops. 4.  Relax the wrist.

Well, he wasn't really teaching you anything. But if you want to have short strokes, you have to get into a blocking mentality to absorb and control his pace - if he gives you less pace, you add more and if you get more pace, you add less. So you start your backswing when the ball is coming at you and if it is fast, your stroke is short and you block, and if it is slow, the stroke is larger and you loop.

Counterhits are flat strokes. You aren't trying to impart topspin on the ball when counterhitting so just stay close to the table and hit the ball flat, adjusting for the spin on the ball with your racket angle.

I agree that your practise partner is an asshole for countering that fast to you. You need a bit more forearm snap. Try to contact the ball slightly further away from your body with an angle of maybe 120 degrees instead of your angle now which is much less than 90 degrees. The other thing is to bring your shoulder back a bit during the backswing, basically your elbow will be close to and slightly to the back of your waist. You should contact the ball with a more closed racket angle. Lean forward a bit more. Make your stroke a bit more backwards-forwards, and close your blade more. Focus more on spin and increasing dwell time. If it is too fast, borrow his speed and produce spinnier shots, it will automatically slowdown the rally for you. Another thing is you need to use your nonplaying arm a bit more for balance. It's hindering your movement now. Place your right arm in front of you and use your right arm to help initiate the backswing like a spinning ballet dancer. Ma Long and Samsonov both utilize it a bit more. Also keep your weight pretty evenly distributed not just on one leg all the time. Think of your legs reaching for the ball. If the ball comes to your right you reach with your right leg, and if the ball comes to your left reach with your left leg.

I watched this vid for about 20 seconds, so assuming the rest of the video is similar, I don't actually think your training partner is an asshole. I think he probably just thinks that's the way to counter spin. A bunch of players do that because they can't block well and resort to counter hitting the ball to get the ball back on the table (Your practice partner does miss a shitload of your loops). I think you need to loop with greater accuracy, ie. to your practice partner's backhand, to develop more ball feeling. Also your looping arm is too close to your body. You're also doing half the weight transfer. Putting your weight on your left foot is correct, but I can see that you're not really transferring the weight over to your right foot (possibly because the practice rhythm is too fast for you). This weight transfer is really important and should feel like your feet are hopping back and forth. 

rocketman222 wrote: I would disagree with MLfan on the short stroke, as long as your timing is good the stroke length shouldn't matter that much. Look at Mizutani or Boll, they can get enough power with a relatively short stroke.

NextLevel wrote: MLfan wrote: rocketman222 wrote: I would disagree with MLfan on the short stroke, as long as your timing is good the stroke length shouldn't matter that much. Look at Mizutani or Boll, they can get enough power with a relatively short stroke. I hate to break it to you, and I don't want to start any arguments, but Boll and Mizutani (especially mizutani!) are known for their lack of power on their forehands! The CCTV5 commentators repeat this a lot and urge people who are watching the game to not have their forehands like Mizutani's! Stroke length is absolutely crucial for power and spin. Just look at Xu Xin, Wang Liqin, Wang Hao, Zhang Jike, basically any modern player who can play with a lot of power.  While I generally agree with you, many of us would be happy to play anything close to Mizutani or Boll so let's keep some context. But  I definitely agree that the ability to straighten the arm more and play a larger stroke is better.  You can always retain a shorter stroke for specific situations.

 

Wrong thread..

Edited by NextLevel - 11/14/2015 at 8:17am

Weight transfer is one school of thought. But if you bend your knees and rotate your core and keep you weight evenly distributed, you will get 95% of the same effect. You will also struggle less to activate your movement because you have too much weight placed on one foot.

mickd wrote: The problem for me was the speed was too fast for me to control, especially when I had to move. This is a problem with me, and I'll try my best to slow it down next time to improve my accuracy.

lol I never said you were wrong. I only disagree, and respectfully so. 

Interesting conversation about  weight transfer versus rotation.  I once wrote Larry Hodges this same question and I thought his reply was excellent.  In my opinion, one problem with using lots of weight transfer in your FH loop is that many amateurs do not take a wide enough stance to really support it.

Edited by Ringer84 - 11/15/2015 at 11:43am

You are drilling too fast ! 

MLfan wrote: NextLevel wrote: Weight transfer is one school of thought. But if you bend your knees and rotate your core and keep you weight evenly distributed, you will get 95% of the same effect. You will also struggle less to activate your movement because you have too much weight placed on one foot. Sorry, but I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. Weight transfer isn't just one school of thought. You can get so much more power if you transfer the power from your legs. Rotating is only half the story and won't get you anywhere near 95% of the power you can get from weight transferring. If you keep your weight evenly distributed on both feet but rotate your core, that's just spinning on the ground. You need the forward momentum from weight transfer, aka pushing off of one leg to another, plus rotating your core to loop.