Using the waist when serving
Serving
eugene lu Asked 8 years ago
Hi alois,
Is it necessary to rotate the waist when serving or is it enough to just use the arm and wrist?
Alois Rosario Answered 8 years ago
Hi Eugene,
Most of your spin is coming from the wrist and forearm and then the waist movement helps you into position after contact.
If you watch the best players their contact on the ball happens before their waist moves around.
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Damon S Posted 8 years ago
Hi Alois,
My coach actually gave me the opposite advice. He told me that my serve should come from the waist and then add a little wrist snap at the end. I've found that this has helped with my serve timing, control, and spin. Maybe it depends on the person, though. When I mainly used wrist and forearm, I had a tendency to swing too fast and early and either tighten up or flat out miss. But focusing on the serve coming from the waist allows my arm to relax more because it hardly has to do any work.
Thanks Damon. Tale a look at our latest show where we discuss this question. Table Tennis at the Olympic Games #273 and show you some footage to explain it better.
Jean Balthazar Posted 8 years ago
I'm pretty sure that the rotation that necessarily happen when you transition from side on to facing the table can sometimes start before the contact point for some variations of the serve. Now is it a major component of it, I don't think so.
But only the forehand pendulum serve was discussed here. When it comes to the backhand serve, I think that the rotation of the trunk really helps adding some speed to the swing.