Hi I'm Alois Rosario from PingSkills. Samad has asked a question about how to position
yourself when you are trying to return a smash. Now firstly Samad it is really important to
remember that back there is not where you are going to win a lot of points. It's really a
position that you are forced into if you make a weak shot. So ideally you want to be close
to the table, and this is where you should be practising most of the time. But let's show
you what to do if you do happen to get back there. So where you position yourself depends
on where the ball lands and where they are hitting the ball from. If I hit the ball into the
middle of the table I'm going to position myself in the centre of the table because
that covers the angles that the ball is likely to go. There's no need for me to be all the
way over here because I'm leaving all of that backhand area open. So now if I've played
it wide over to the right handers forehand area I need to position myself over to this
side a bit because now that's the possible angles that the player is going to play the
ball. Again it's no point being all the way over here because that is leaving my backhand
area really open. And conversely if the ball is wide over on the other side again I need
to position myself over into here to cut off the angles. So I need to position myself in
the middle of the possibility of where the ball is going. So from the middle I can then
move slightly this way or slightly this way and cover the ball a little bit easier. So
the last thing is you need to watch the ball really carefully. The better you watch the
ball the quicker you're going to pick up information of where the ball is and that will give you
just that split second difference of being able to move and react to the ball.
So if the balls is in the middle I need to position myself in the middle and that way I can cover
the angles that Jeff can go to. So now if the ball is over on the forehand area I'm going
to position myself in the middle of this area to be able to cover the angles. So now I'm going to move across
and cover the angle. If you want to see more ask the coach video responses sign up as a
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