Hi, I'm Alois Rosario from PingSkills.
Today we are going to look at the advanced backhand topspin.
When we're looking to advance our backhand topspin we need to start with the legs.
So making sure we are in a good low balanced leg position to start to utilise the muscles
in our legs to generate more speed.
When you are close to the table you haven't got time to turn your feet so we want to keep
our feet nice and square to the table and again down in that nice low leg position.
If you are further away from the table then you might have a little bit more time to turn
your feet slightly but make sure that when you're close to the table you stay really
square on to the table with your backhand.
Most of our power from the backhand comes from our wrist and forearm.
It isn't really a big body stroke where you're turning your body too much.
A lot of it is coming just from here.
So when we're doing this advanced stroke we need to think about relaxing this wrist so
that it can come through smoothly and fast.
Let's look at the start and finish positions here with our bat.
We need to start with our bat further back allowing the wrist to come back at the start.
Our finish position then is right through and this time allowing your wrist to go all
the way through.
As a good guide think about your bat handle pointing to the side wall at the finish of
your backhand advanced stroke.
The next thing is to think about your hip rotation.
You haven't got much time to rotate your hips backwards and forwards, you can use them a
little.
So just turning slightly and turning them forward.
It isn't much more than that when you're close to the table, you're going to just throw your
timing out and make it harder for yourself.
So think about small rotations of the hip but mainly utilising your wrist backwards
and forwards to generate the speed.
The further away from the table you get the more time you've got.
So your stroke now can become a little bit bigger.
You can extend your starting position back further, so to next to your hip and follow
through further as well.
Still utilising that wrist effectively from back to forward.
Remember that's still where you are going to get most of your power from.
But from back from the table your swing can get bigger, your hip rotation can get a little
bit bigger as well so your stroke can become more from here all the way through.
But remember the most important thing is make sure your wrist is going back and forward
through the stroke.
The principles of the advanced backhand topspin are similar against the backspin and the topspin
ball.
The difference is that off the backspin ball you do need to start lower and finish higher
so the stroke becomes slightly more vertical.
Against the topspin stroke you can come through almost horizontally because you don't need
to lift the ball at all.
The principles are the same though, making sure you're using your wrist, using a little
bit of hip rotation, and really whipping that wrist and forearm through off the backspin
ball, or off the topspin ball.