Hi Sorin, this is great it’s definitely given us a good look at your technique and shots. I’ll give you some feedback and pointers on the different shots you’ve sent here.
Firstly overall your forehand topspin looks very solid and the technique is strong, your finish position and swing are very nice and I’d say this for sure looks like your strongest side. I would say one small thing is trying to open out and straighten your arm just slightly more on your back swing. You rotate back well but I feel if you can visualise the elbow opening out to make your arm straight on the back swing and then closing to about 90 degrees when you finish the shot it will help your arm to stay relaxed. The elbow is a really useful natural hinge that you should feel working during the forehand.
Now the backhand, one thing that will help straight away is your feet position, right now you are quite square to the table, if you can bring your right foot back and line up your left hip with the corner of the table so you are facing more directly towards the opponents backhand corner. Also if you can try not to extend your arm too far out in front of you after the contact point, keeping your arm relaxed and trying to focus on the action of the shot being smooth and not jerky.
These points are the same when you are doing the backhand against backspin, which you actually do well looking at this, you have good use of the wrist and drop the bat well before the contact. Only small thing that will help when playing against backspin is using your knees to sink down slightly lower as you drop the bat and then you get some more help from the legs as you come back up and means you can be more relaxed in the arm.
Backhand flick to forehand, this one you can see is more difficult because of the speed of recovery and movement needed. I think what’s key to improve in this area is the transition from flick to forehand rather than too many technical points. Make sure your wrist releases forwards on the flick and then after try to keep your bat higher and don’t let it drop before you play the forehand, focus on the end of the flick almost flowing back straight away in to the forehand back swing, you can see here because you don’t have much time your back swing gets a bit stunted and shot and the forehand isn’t as fluid as when you do it on it’s own.
Forehand flick then backhand drill, on this one I’ll focus mainly on the forehand flick. So the main thing with this shot is the bat angle and keeping it closed and consistent throughout the shot, sometimes as you hit the flick your bat angle is opening up or closing which makes it inconsistent at the moment, try to shorten the shot down and think of it as almost like a very small topspin but mainly using the forearm and wrist.
Both the movement drills you do next are looking pretty good, although I would say make sure you are keeping your bat angle close and not changing it as you hit the ball on your forehand. You could even slow the robot down slightly and try to stay more relaxed and smooth on these drills to as I think long term it will develop solid technique.
Lastly on your reverse serve and pendulum serves, they both look good. On the reverse try to get your wrist to finish more towards the opponents side, yours tends to finish out to the side slightly. Also slow down the contact slightly and really think about the ball staying longer on the bat and having a light contact on the ball, but the overall technique is good and with these changes I think it will improve a lot more still!
On the pendulum serve try to keep your elbow tucked in closer to your body and imagine you are using a bit less wrist and more hinge from the elbow. Again get your bat to finish more towards the opponents side and downwards towards the table.
Now I’ve probably given you a bit of an information overload there, but these are all small changes that you can do with practice for sure. There’s definitely lot’s of positives too I’m obviously mainly highlighting the areas to work on. I hope that all makes sense Sorin and anything your unsure on or any other questions just reply to me on here and I’ll get back to you! 🙂
Cheers, Tom
