Review Technique On My Drills
Nikola Novakovic asked 4 weeks ago
Hey folks,
New to this forum but been on regular TT Daily forum for a bit. I’m an adult developing player that is trying to get better. For context I’m 6″5′, pretty athletic (been into other sports, lifting etc my whole life) and been playing table tennis for ~ 1 year (I played when I was a kid for a bit but I’m not counting that haha). My biggest weakness is footwork and getting my body in the right position to perform the shot. So I bought a robot to practice that (I can only go to a club 1-2x a week because of adult responsibilities haha). Been mainly focusing on transitioning between BH to FH and then FH footwork. I improved a lot since I started using the robot 3ish months ago (I feel like now I can take a game or two from ~1700-1800 USATT memebers), but still have lots of room for improvement.
Video I’m about to share is from last week where I try to do FH wide then FH middle and this one is actually not looking too bad. This is honestly one of the first times where me performing this exercises looks remotely good (when you compare it to players with very good footwork) and I’m super happy with the progress (again I know room to improve). The next exercises is 1BH 1FH random here the goal is to get my feet wher ethey need to be before performing the shot and I think I do that fairly well. My FH is looking rough on the first few shots (no follow through and no weight transfer) so need to polish that up.
Excited to be a part of this community and would love to hear your feedback!
https://youtu.be/0e7PeS1dWjk?si=xxeMSll9nrJOYCxC
Nikola Novakovic answered 4 weeks ago
Here is actually a video of me today doing the same drills + a few more. This time the loop on the 1 BH 1 FH exercise is looking a lot better I think (follow through is there + weight transfer). Second thing I was working on was getting in ready position after the serve (a lot of times in a match I just stand there staring at the ball after I serve as opposed to getting in the ready position lol) and last but not least is looping BH against underspin. My favorite serve is heavy underspin short to the BH and that usually results in a half long or long push to my BH (at least at my level), so being able to loop undersping with my BH is important. Been working on the timing and getting low. Here’s the video
https://youtu.be/SvSMISy7UJE?si=0T5cXTSKDysS82wu
Would love to hear what y’all think! Feedback welcome! 🙂
Dan Academy Coach answered 3 weeks ago
Hey Nikola, sorry in the delay getting back to you I’ve just had a chance to watch through the videos you sent in. I think for playing for around a year you’re doing really well! Your overall technique is looking really nice and it’s impressive.
For the footwork I don’t think it looks as bad as you say at all, you can see in the 2nd video I think you are a bit more springy and light on your feet. There’s not much in it but focusing on this I think will help you, just to feel light and able to switch quickly and being on the balls of your feet is something I have found really helps when I need to move better. The next step will be doing more irregular type footwork drills because it is much harder to get the movements right when you don’t know where the ball is going and it forces you to make those quick changes that you will need often in matches.
On the backhand open up shot, I would say when you are using the robot to slow down the amount of balls the robot is firing, this will give you more time to prepare and use your legs in the shot each time. Your technique looks good and but when the balls are coming this quickly it’s hard to fully use the legs and push into the shot and also curls back the wrist each time. I think these 2 things will really help you get this shot to the next level. Almost the feeling that you are coiling up like a spring with a slight pause right before the contact when you then release the energy.
But overall it’s looking very strong. Let me know if you have any questions on that. Dan 🙂
Nikola NovakovicHi Dan,
This is super helpful thank you for the write up, tips and compliments!
Quixk question on the bh loop and “coiling” motion: when you said there is a slight pause you mean that there is a pause before I start going into the ball (aka before the “spring” is released)?
