Finding the balance between spin and speed

Hi both,

Thanks for your help with my forehand technique recently. I'm delighted to say that after solid forehand training for the past few weeks I "played up" tonight, as a substitute in a Division 3 team (I play D4), and won all of my games. My opponents had a lot of difficulty dealing with the amount of topspin I was able to get on my forehand. I took particular delight in playing against a long pimples opponent as my own experience with the pimples made it much easier to pinpoint her weaknesses, and playing against the few backspin shots she managed to get off was bizarrely pleasurable.

One thing I've noticed is that my topspin doesn't have a great deal of speed. I get a very fine brushing contact and it my current rubber does appear to grip and really spin the ball, but I suspect against better players my forehand would be fairly ineffective.

I'm only playing with a 1.8mm sponge on a DEF blade. The rubber is a tensor and I chose it for its tabletennisdb.com high spin rating.

My question is this: should I be altering my technique a little to get more pace (i.e. less brush, more contact) or is it simply a case of the rubber/bat combination reaching its limits? I get more pace when I use my training bat (OFF- blade with 2.2mm sponge and tacky Chinese topsheets) but even that isn't particularly fast.

Thanks in advance,
Duncan

Hi Duncan,

You are most welcome.  It was a good process to go through and you have made some significant changes.

As far as increasing the speed, you can try to have less brush for more speed or you can try just moving your swing through faster, remembering to keep your technique correct.

The bat you are using will be quite slow so as you feel more comfortable with the stroke and speed you may think about dabbling with something a bit faster.

Do you train with a different bat to the one you play competitions with?  If you do, I would use the same bat.  Perhaps you can think about moving to the Off- blade for all your play.