today's comments

for backhand chiquita flips it is very important to raise your elbow very high up to create pretension. I almost forgot it.

For footwork I observed how Jacson played today and noticed he does not put all his weight on his feet. I tried to be lightfooted more and the results were quite good. Being lightfooted means you can jump to any location very quickly. It's like a predator preparing to pounce on a prey.
I still hate his tomahawk serve, using the back rubber, and his traditional backhand pendulum serve. Quite hard to determine down-side and top-side. But he's still unable to serve short, so I usually have the first attack. It's just that my attack is not really that strong, especially my backhand, which is useless in pulling down-spin. My forehand is now limited by my footwork.

For improving forehand, use your wrist to create more spin, so that you can hit harder without it going out. The percentage of hitting must be more, especially for european style rubber b'cos the sponge is softer. This also helps to kill some of the incoming spin, which makes it more consistent, and in fact helps to put spin on the ball, since the rubber is grippy(mechanical friction instead of chemical friction). But not using the wrist and using the wrist can be useful for some variation. Twisting the feet adds in more power, as well as pulling back the arm. I'm still learning from Wang Liqin's and Ma Long's forehand.

The backhand wiping block i described yesterday was used only 1 time in the video, oops. But I noticed it can actually produce blocks with spins ranging from top-side to down-side. Yes... a block with down-side spin. Imagine producing a backhand reverse tomahawk. I can now do the same thing with the forehand. Finally a block where you can change the spin! Currently, my blocks, along with my serves are the highlights of my game. My weaknesses are still my forehand/backhand which lacks power, footwork as well as service reading. Others are ok but not exceptionally good.

For dropping short, I can control it slightly better already. It's basically controlling the angle to suit different types of spin, then creating your own spin. Actually there is much room for deception here, since the ball is slow and you can afford to make some more elaborate movements, such as in services. I have thought of using sidespin to hide whether you are placing top-spin/down-spin could work, as well as the choice to jerk your wrist or not, producing down-spin/no-spin. To reduce energy from a top-spin service, you have to reduce energy by pushing to the side. I'm beginning to learn. The short game should be something that suits my style of deception, deception and more deception(starting from my service). Unfortunately not many people can serve short, so it's rather hard to practice it. But for no-spin to top-spin services I prefer to flip the ball. But my forehand flip is just useless now. I can't jump and flip from my ready position. I don't know how Ma Lin always gets in time for the highest point on the bounce. Crazy fast.