BACKHAND TOPSPIN Mid-Rally | eBaTT - TUTORIAL #37

It's just me and our cameraman Terry today. Ellie's away coaching in Goa, so I hope you enjoy today's tutorial. So today we're going to be working on a backhand topspin from open play. Now backhand topspin, we get a lot of complaints from people, I keep missing my backhand topspin, I'm not confident to use it in a game, it's not very consistent, I'm not getting enough spin, I'm not getting enough power. So today we're going to give you three tips on how to improve consistency and how to overall improve your backhand topspin from open play. So tip number one is technique. A lot of people ask what is the actual technique, how do I strike the ball, how does my arm move, how does my wrist move. So I'm going to show you how this works. So a lot of people they use their wrist and their wrist only. Now the problem with that is your wrist is a very very small muscle so the ball doesn't travel that far, it's either going to go in the net or it's going to go short, you haven't got much control. Now some other people they like to use their arm and their shoulder and therefore they're not generating the spin that they want to generate on the ball. Now when I was getting coached when I was younger I was taught to use both my wrist and my forearm. Now I'm going to show you how to practice this in a minute off the table as well. So you bring your wrist in, you sort of conk your wrist in so your bat is facing your chest and you flick both. You can see it's a very bent angle. Now once I contact the ball that's when the wrist flicks out. So up to the point of contact of the ball it's mainly arm, arm, arm. Once you contact the ball here, arm and wrist. So if you see I'm waiting, ready in the position, wrist in, elbow bent, below my shoulder. You can see I flick my wrist right at the last second when I'm contacting the ball. Okay so a nice way that you can practice the technique on your own is get a credit card, debit card. I'm not going to worry too much about covering the numbers because I haven't got much in here anyway. So I know it's good to practice the technique, have your legs shoulder width apart, bring your wrist in sort of like and then you're going to throw the credit card or debit card like you're throwing a Frisbee. So you're just working on doing this movement, this technique. Yeah you can do that on your own. Once you practice that then you can go on the table and you can practice with the ball. That's the beauty of the backhand topspin, you can practice it on your own to start with. Okay so you can also practice on your own on the table. Get a ball, bat in your hand. Don't throw the ball high but drop it nice and low and again just practicing the technique for now. Dropping the ball, flicking the wrist out, flicking the wrist out. Body nice and low, in, out. So tip number two, another question that gets asked a lot is how should the angle of my bat be? Now it's a really good question but it also depends on a lot of factors. So generally you want to be one arm one bat away from the table, 45 degrees down from the shoulder. Now if your timing is good, meaning top of the bounce when the ball's at the highest point, you want to have your angle quite close. Pretty much here, almost at 180 degrees. Now if your timing is good it's the perfect backhand but the one issue here is that if you're slightly late you can either hit the wood of the bat or you lean back which can affect the next shot. So you have to take into consideration the height of the ball, what spin is on the ball, how deep it is and how much time you have. So if you get a low ball below the net you need to have a more open angle so that you can generate enough spin to make the ball go over the net. If you have an open angle on a higher ball the ball's just going to go off the end of the table. Okay so tip number three is contact with the ball. Now this is one of the most important things when considering a backhand topspin from open play. You need to be able to generate a lot of spin on the ball so therefore you really need a light contact on the ball. It's like a very very soft brushing action. If you go through the ball you're not going to get any spin and it's going to be virtually impossible for you to get the ball on the table especially when the ball is below net height. So the perfect combination that I've found especially if you want to get power on a backhand is to have a really light touch on the ball but accelerate at the point of contact. So as you're contacting the ball speed up and therefore you get loads and loads of spin and you also get loads and loads of power but in a controlled manner. So when we get a lower ball and we need to open the angle a little bit more where do we contact the ball? So we contact the ball at the back of the ball so therefore we're generating spin for it to go up and over the net because the ball is coming below net height so you need to get it up and over. If we're talking about a higher ball where you have a more closed angle you need to be coming on top of the ball here so you're brushing and then the topspin is being generated from over the net to go straight down and drop onto your opponent's side and hopefully skid up at them and make it more difficult for them to either attack or give you a weaker block so then therefore you can come in and try and finish the point. Listen to the sound this is how it should sound this is a nice topspin. As you can see you need to adjust depending on the height of the ball when it was higher or when it was lower had a more open angle and the key was the brush on the ball when you're topspinning you have to brush the ball and accelerate at the point of contact. So I'm going to give you guys a nice little exercise that you can use to help you with your backhand topspin and it's going to help you differentiate between a backhand topspin and a drive so you can really feel the difference. So grab a partner have them blocking from their backhand or their forehand up to you where you want to go and you're going to do one topspin then a drive then back into a topspin then a drive so let's have a look at it in action. So first one brush brush through the ball and this really helps you differentiate between the two spins and it actually helps you gain more spin on the ball because there's a big difference between the flat shot and the topspin shot so it's a really nice exercise give it a go and let us know how you get on. Okay guys so they've got a nice bonus tip for you here as well now this is really really important as well and it's your body position and how your feet should be so for any backhand topspin drive or push if I want to go to that corner I need to be facing that corner my feet shoulder width apart parallel facing there now when I play the backhand I point the bat where I want the ball to go so if I want to go over there I finish over there now if I want to go down the line my whole body moves otherwise I end up playing like that I'm off balance my next shots no good so if I want to go down the line same principle my feet shoulder width apart again or slightly wider knees bent leaning forward head down facing that direction and again when I finish my bat points to where the ball wants to go so I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial on a backhand topspin from open play there will be further videos more advanced this is just a generic basic backhand topspin video one thing I will say as well is please use it in practice as much as you can but one thing I've noticed is that people use it in practice but then when it comes to get to games especially with a lot of pressure they tend to go back to old habits and just use their forehand because they're nervous or they're not confident enough to use the backhand but the best way to overcome this is of course use it in practice but use it in a game as well even if it's not a serious game maybe use it in a game against your friend where you can afford to make mistakes but the best way to overcome this is to just keep using it keep improving it and gain confidence this way I hope you enjoyed the video thank you thank you for Terry as well like subscribe and we'll see you on the next video