Tagged “tabletennis”

That was a productive and fun weekend.

On Friday, Clair was meeting her mum and cousin in town so this was my quiet night in. I settled down to watch episode 4 of the The Penguin and ordered fish tikka from Kebabish – banging).

I started Saturday with a short Rudy-walk then it was off to Pete’s for some table-tennis practice. I’ve been playing crap recently and wanted to fix things. Pete was as generous as ever with his tips, and his advice on “the triangle” and "dialling up/down power" was really effective! By the end I was playing both forehand and backhand much better. After this I drove out to Kirky and collected my brother Martin to go for a chat over lunch at Nonna’s Kitchen. On the way home we popped into my niece Chloe’s new house and I enjoyed chasing wee Leo around his garden. At night Clair and I stayed in and watched Where the Crawdads Sing which was enjoyable enough.

On Sunday I had a really lovely autumnal walk around Pollokshields with Rudy and bumped into Mark M, then Dawn A, in the hood. In the evening I caught up with Mick M and, after a beer at Shilling and food at Rosa’s Thai we went to see Skinshape performing at Room Two. The music was great and the bassist was particularly impressive. I just think Will could do with belting the vocals out a tad louder. My favourite moment was hearing The Longest Shadow live.

In this tutorial video Seth Pech shares what he’s learned about that most foundational (and important) of table-tennis shots – the block.

Fundamentals:

1. keep the racket in front rather than blocking on the side of your body. You can see it better and transition faster
2. for the basic block just use the opponent’s energy – don’t add anything
3. for backhand, block in your normal backhand posture (rather than a lollipop, or poking) to aid transitioning to attack
4. don’t bend your wrist back lots – it’s painful. Bend it back just a little.
5. timing: catch it on rise or at top of the bounce, rather than just off the bounce
6. against a heavy-spin loop, let the ball come to you and push down on it. Don’t move into it

Backhand punch block:

1. have a relaxed wrist
2. small backswing – imagine your hand hitting a sheet of paper and getting a nice “smack” on it for a “pop” sound
3. catch ball at the top of the bounce. Going early makes it hard to get over the net.
4. ascend very slightly through shot for a tiny bit of topspin (but tiny, as it’s still a punch)

Nice video here from Tom Lodziak in which coach Emma Harradine demonstrates a forehand loop (against backspin) that just looks so spinny, safe and reliable.

I’ve always liked the idea of this shot – the archetypal third ball in the rally – being like a well-oiled machine, but have never quite nailed it. So I’m gonna study this!

The key points are:

1. Drop the right knee and put weight on right foot
2. Rotate hips and upper body so that non-playing shoulder, elbow face table and non-playing upper-arm is horizontal like table surface
3. Drop bat below height of the ball
4. Brush the ball
5. Contact ball at top of its bounce – don’t let it drop
6. Rotate hips, upper-body
7. The key is consistency and spin. This shot is a set-up not a winner
8. Next shot can be more direct and faster, but don’t blast it either – there’s no need. Going for position is really effective.

Here’s a lovely slow-mo comparison of Liam Pitchford’s backhand technique versus that of an amateur.

The main things I take from it are:

• his posture – really low with weight forward
• how far in front of his body he strikes the ball – it’s way in front of his head and even in front of his non-playing hand, with impact at the back edge of the table
• the bat angle at the start (forehand side facing ceiling like you’re holding a frying pan)
• as he prepares, the bat’s left edge tilts up a bit and he gets slightly lower
• elbow moves forward (helping him rotate wrist back) but only as far as to create a virtual parallel horizontal line with the table’s back edge. This is the perfect stopping point for wrist pivoting (whereas I’ve let the elbow go further forward which is unnatural)
• uses wrist to bring bat tip way back to point back at his belly button – I think this greater “travel distance” might be crucial versus an amateur’s version of a wristy backhand
• then there’s a little forearm forward movement and a lot of wrist rotation to get the bat to the impact point
• stays low and on follow-through the bat only gets as high as his chin

In this video we go over the 3 pro tips from Liam Pitchford that helped transform Dan’s backhand!

My backhand is kinda shaky at the moment and I struggle with correct elbow and wrist position so this tutorial video is timely and helpful.

Great video (in German with subtitles) which shows and tells the most important elements of this serve, namely:

1. Brush the ball sideways extremely fast;
2. Swing your wrist about 90° extremely fast when touching the ball; and
3. The third bounce should be close to the side-edge of the table so that the opponent cannot easily attack and your spin has the strongest effect.