Wrist Stiffness During a Shot

 I watched a YouTube video on dinking and how specifically to do the backhand dink.  I'm aways open to another view on technique and took a look.

The recipe was to lock the wrist joint and then move your arm in a horizontal motion with the paddle going toward the target.

If you want to produce top spin, then you move the arm more vertically.

They didn't mention back spin, we can assume that that motion will be more vertically, but starting from a high point and swinging downward.

I have no problem with the advise in this video and agree with all of it.  What I found useful was the idea of locking the wrist.  This is not news per se, but these things are always useful to think about because as recreational players, a bit of reminders of good practice are useful.  It's easy to fall into bad habits.  And things that work at one skill level may not work at another.

As some of you know, I fighting a lot of wrist and arm pain.  I thought that locking my wrist a bit more might help.  So today I warmed up dinking with a firm wrist and found it fundamentally useful with nice solid, controlled strikes.

Then as I was moving back from the kitchen line, I kept the stiff wrist as an experiment.  I found that worked pretty well too.  

Rackquet ballers like to flick the wrist for most shots.  There are times when this is perfect for PB, but other times when it's wrong or makes a short more difficult, for example dinks.

Where to Hit the Ball

Hi all,

Sorry for the long time period between posts.  I've not stumbled across any new thoughts and old thoughts, already written, are boring!  So here are a couple of things that popped up recently.  Maybe they will provide succor!

Rich

 While I've been trying to play with a very sore forearm, I've realized that there are a couple of swing changes that create no additional arm pain.

If I keep my right elbow close to my body and then use a torso motion to hit the ball I can take any strain off of my arm and hit the ball very solidly.

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When I noticed this, I realized that a lot of ground strokes and serves were solid and consistent if I got close to the ball and then did more arm than body.  The key being that the arm is not extended far from the torso.

Another note about serves...  I like to see a small step with the left leg, then a motion to hit the ball (assumes right handed serve).  When I teach the classes, I suggest this.  Now, where should the ball physically be when you are hitting it?  I would suggest that it is inside the left knee and fairly close to the body.  The error is to have it too much in front of you (towards your target).  You don't want to be reaching for it.  It also needs to be fairly low, as the service stroke is upward in motion, so if the ball is low, it's easy to hit it upwards.   It's basically in the way of the swing path.

I think a lot of service errors come from dropping the ball too far in front of your swing path, stretching to hit it and then hitting a serve higher than it needs to be.  Also it's difficult to get reasonable spin on the ball if it's too far in front of you, because spin is created by brushing against the ball with a bent wrist.  An arm reach with a bent wrist is shorter than a straight wrist...

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This works well with ground strokes and dinks too.  The problem is that it requires a lot of foot movement to get your body close to the ball.  When you can, there are a lot of advantages to it.  Emulate the pros, who always move their feet except when hitting a shot!

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Dinking...  I've been testing a dink where I don't move the paddle towards the net, but only vertically.  The face must be open.  I think this has been written in the blog before.  I was watching the mixed doubles match with Johns, Waters, Bright and Ignatawitz.  This stroke was in evidence there too.  It creates a soft shot with a modest amount of top spin.  It also keeps your arm close to your body.  That's useful for quickly getting back into the ready position.

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Played a few games last week with some new (to me) players from Pleasanton.  They were good players, but didn't dink.  If you dinked, they would hit.  This is not my favorite style of play and with a sore arm, I really do not enjoy backhand blocks.  What is a good answer to this?  Call the PB Police and have them escorted off the court, or don't play with them, or get ready to block after every dink.  I'm still thinking these choices over.