penhold-grip
lem496 asked 3 years ago
Hey Guys,
I was playing around with pen hold grip and noticed I get an incredible amount of spin and speed with very little effort. I’ve even had a club coach comment that the quality of my shots were a lot better with pen hold. It was very, very noticeable . It was like a hot knife going through butter. I’m not considering making a change to pen hold, but my goodness, the spin and speed were really impressive.
My question is: how do I translate the quality I get from pen hold to shake hand?
As a side note, I received my second dose of vaccine and I am back at the tables full force. I hoping you receive this gift soon as well.
Stay safe,
Lem
Tom Academy Coach answered 3 years ago
Hey Lem, great news about the vaccine that’s brilliant to hear and so good to be back at the table I imagine! Fingers crossed myself and Dan will get ours fairly soon too!
I understand exactly what you mean with the penhold grip, I would say you can translate this into your normal grip by really trying to focus on having a more loose and relaxed grip and trying to be softer with the touch in the ball. That’s usually the feeling people experience when playing penhold.
It makes you a bit softer with the grip and this has lots of benefits like the increased spin feeling you mentioned.
All the best, Tom
lem496Through unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances I had to change coaches again. I decided to go all in, my current coach uses a pen hold grip and is a 3 time Olympian and 2 x gold medalist at the Pan American Games. He saw me fooling around with the pen hold grip and immediately yelled at me “don’t even think about it “ I have to admit the feeling of the ball leaving my bat so effortlessly, the thought crossed my mind.
