hip-rotation
lem496 asked 4 years ago
Hi Guys,
I finally pulled the trigger and changed coaches. My new coach is from China and is quite the drill instructor. Because of the Covid outbreak I was fortunate enough to to be able to get 15 straight days of very affordable lessons. On day one she told me you will now learn the Chinese way. She is adamant that without proper footwork, hip rotation, shorter strokes and keeping my bat high I can be a ping pong player but never a Table Tennis Player. Here’s my dilemma, I seem to have a problem with coordinating my hip rotation and my weight transfer to produce forward upward motion. Any suggestions or drills I can do with my robot would be most helpful. I need to speed up my progress,I don’t think I can take hearing AiYa one more day.
Tom Academy Coach answered 4 years ago
Hey Lem! Thats good to hear and sometimes a new coaches perspective can be helpful. Yes Chinese coaches are usually very strict and regimented for sure! I gmdo agree that you need to have good footwork and short strokes to improve and progress. I would suggest doing lots of basic forehand drives on the robot but with movement into different positions, try not to do this at high speed to begin with and focus on the hip rotation. Try to focus on the footwork and beung stable to get into position quickly for each shot. I think the simple drills are the most effective here, nothing complicated just working on efficiency.
lem496It’s definitely a different experience. She does not hide her displeasure. Whenever I show frustration she quickly corrects me with “it’s not your fault you dont know any better. It is my job to criticize, not yours “ There definitely a lot of feed back, which I appreciate, I must rather have a tough task master than someone just paying me lip service. I’ve made great strides with looping back spin. My problem is with combining short serve (push) long push (loop) topspin return. I can’t seem to get my bat high enough and rotate my hips without hitting the ball late. Getting all the moves coordinated has been frustrating. I’m going to take your advice and slow everything down. Are there any videos on small steps?
Yes that’s definitely normal for a Chinese coach. It can be frustrating when these things don’t come together for sure. To me it does sound like concentrating on keeping compact strokes and being relaxed will be the most important things for you to progress. We will add some videos on coordinating shots and movements better as soon as we can!
Thanks, looking forward to the videos. I’ll be sending some videos your way soon.
As always, stay safe
