Hi, I'm Alois Rosario from PingSkills. Today we're going to talk to you about the advanced
forehand topspin.
In our lesson on the forehand topspin we've already shown you the start and finish positions.
These are still crucial when you're trying to play an advanced forehand topspin.
So let's first focus on the legs. To generate more speed or have the potential to generate
more speed we need to have our legs really bent and our feet wide.
The second important part is the rotation of your trunk. This will start to increase
the potential of the speed of our racket. So on our backswing we're rotating back, and
on our follow through we're rotating forward.
There's a transfer of your weight from your back leg to your front leg but your legs aren't
moving during the stroke. Your stroke at the start puts your weight on your back leg and
as you rotate through then your weight goes onto your front leg.
The other thing you can start to do is just vary the finish position of your racket. When
we're doing the basic forehand topspin we're finishing right up here near your eyebrow.
As you start to advance your stroke and perhaps try and hit the ball a little bit faster,
you can get the bat finishing more forward. The important thing though is that you're
still finishing up nice and high and not swinging down too low.
The other important part is where your bat finishes. It's important that the bat doesn't
finish past the centre line of your body. So here's the centre line, I don't want the
bat going anywhere past that line so this is a good position. Now it can be up here
right near my eyebrow or it can be more forward but wherever it is it's not crossing that
centre line of my body. If you do go across that centre line you're starting to compromise
your coordination and your recovery.
If you do want a bigger stroke you can twist your body through and as you can see now the
bat still hasn't gone past the centre line of my body so I'm still coordinated, I'm still
balanced and ready to recover for the next ball.
The other aspect of a more advanced forehand is that their not going to be playing the
ball straight to you all the time so now we need to incorporate some movement. Thinking
about what you can see on our basic footwork lessons, we move across the table. Now the
important part then though is to make sure that you're stopped and ready and balanced
to make that advanced forehand. So if we're in this position, the next ball is coming
over to the middle, what I need to do is make sure I move across, get a nice balanced position,
and then start to engage my legs, my twisting, and my arm, to execute a really effective
forehand topspin.
To advance your forehand topspin you can use your wrist. Now on the basic forehand topspin
we keep the wrist fairly firm and move your arm through in this sort of action.
What you can do now is just relax the wrist. On the backswing it will flow backwards, and
then on the follow through it will flow forward. You're just adding a little bit of extra movement
of your racket which will increase the racket head speed which will increase the speed and
the spin of the ball.
The next thing we are going to think about is the angle of our racket. Do you have your
angle at 90 degrees to the floor? 80, 70, 60, 45? It becomes really complicated if you
start to worry about the small degrees of your racket. A more important thing to think
about is the result of what's happening with the ball. If the ball is going to far it means
you need to close your angle over a little bit. If it's going into the net you can open
your angle. Some other principles to think about are, if your bat is moving slowly with
a very closed face the ball will drop off but if you start to get a much faster swing
with your bat then the ball is going to grip the rubber and be projected forward. So there
are a lot of little things to think about. That's why it's important that you don't make
it too complicated. Have a look at where the ball is going and then make some minor adjustments
each time. That's the way to get a really good advanced forehand topspin.