My name is Tahl Leibovitz and I'm here at SPiN, New York.
I am a professional table tennis player who has been competing internationally since 1995.
I am here today to speak to you about the intermediate and beginner aspects of the Olympic
sport of table tennis.
I am now going to demonstrate the forehand loop.
What's really important is, in table tennis, we have three types of balls that we go up
against.
Three or four really.
One is when the person gives us really heavy under-spin.
When they give us really heavy under-spin we need to use our legs, our hips, and our
arm, and our forearm, and our wrist.
So we basically get all the power in the loop from our legs.
It's really important to know in table tennis when we use the forehand loop that all the
power comes from the legs, the hips, the forearm, and the wrist.
So everything gets transferred together.
We're trying to use a lot of the legs, the hips and the forearm and we're trying to transfer
it into our hand so that we get enough speed so that we can spin the ball.
The forehand is a very important stroke in table tennis.
It's used so that we can impart a lot of topspin on the ball.
For two reasons, one so that we can cause the opponent to block the ball outside of
the table, and the other is so that we can loop the ball away from the opponent, like
really fast.
And that's why the forehand loop is a stroke used which got developed in the late 1980's
when they introduced speed glue to the sport of table tennis.
Now what happens here is again, we need to pass the racket to the ball very quickly and
we also need to know what part of the ball to hit.
If somebody gives us a heavy under-spin like this where it has a lot of chop on it we need
to hit under the ball so that we can make it.
If they give us topspin like this we need to be able to try to hit the top of the ball.
So that's really important with the forehand loop and transferring the weight.
If you transfer the weight from one leg to the other leg.
And this is the forehand stroke just like this