Hi, I'm Alois Rosario from PingSkills. Today we're going to show you the forehand smash.
The forehand smash is a stroke that you utilise when the ball is up around shoulder high or
higher. If the ball is lower than that then the stroke you want to be playing is the forehand topspin.
Lets' firstly have a look at the start position for the forehand smash. As soon as you see
that ball up in the air you need to get your bat up into the start position which is around
shoulder height with your bat flat facing towards the other side of the table.
Your finish position is forward in front of your head and out towards the other person's end
of the table.
One common error that I often see is that players don't get their feet into position
when they have the time. So as that ball is up in the air it's really critical to get
side on. If you stand square on and wait for the ball to come to you, you're going to end
up with a really awkward smash and you're not going to be able to generate any power at all.
During the smash it's really important to transfer your weight from your back leg to
your forward leg. So as the ball's in the air you prepare yourself side on with your
weight on your back leg. As you're making the smash you transfer your weight on to your
forward leg. So from here, on to your forward leg and that helps you to generate more power
and speed with your smash.
The next thing you need to think about is the contact of the bat on the ball. So the
contact needs to be really flat. If you contact the ball in a brushing action you're going
to generate spin but you're not going to get as much speed so you want a nice flat contact.
Another thing I often find with players when they're trying to smash is they often try
to smash too hard. If you're not quite in good position you don't have to smash the
ball as hard as you possibly can. It's OK just to place that ball well and then wait
for a better opportunity to make a faster smash.
Another thing that I see players do quite often is start up too high and finish too
low so you're really dragging that bat down. What's going to happen is that you're going
to end up dragging that ball down into the net. So make sure that your smash starts at
around shoulder height and your momentum is forward rather than down.