One of the shot most of you struggle with a lot is the backhand opening against backspin. So, in this video, I will start out with going through some of the basics of the backhand topspin. Then, I will also show you or I will show you actually now. And then, after that, I will go through the most common mistakes people do and how to fix them because if you do only one of these mistakes, it could ruin your control or quality completely. So, to make a backhand topspin, you go with your racket from your body towards your opponent. And you can do it in two ways. Either you can hit behind the ball or over the ball. But if you hit over the ball, you need to accelerate a lot and get an extremely thin hit to get to the ball over the net. And honestly, you need to already master the backhand topspin against backspin to be able to do this or even be able to practice it. And the people who can actually do that is professional. So, if you're not a professional, I would recommend you to hit behind the ball. Here, it's also important to have a thin ball contact because if you have longer contact with the ball when you hit something like this instead of this, you will feel your opponent's backspin and will go straight down to the net. But okay, so you go from your body towards your opponent by swinging your under arm. You can be relaxed in your wrist or you should be relaxed in your wrist. Uh so, it works, too. But your focus should be to accelerate your arm. Let's move on to mistake number one people do. And that is to have your elbow too close to the body. And the consequence of this is that you lose control because you need to use so much power to succeed. While if you put the elbow out from your body, you will automatically get a lot more power and a lot more spin in your topspin, which makes it more effortless to make your backhand opening. One reason why having your elbow in front of your body gives you so much more power and quality is that when you have the elbow close to your body, the racket gets disconnected from your legs, uh core, and hip, which is creating a lot of power. Well, if you have it a bit longer in front of you, it gets more connected automatically. The second mistake people are doing sounds so simple, and honestly, it might be, but it can still be very tricky to implement to your game. And that is to be too stiff. A stiff arm is almost impossible to create spin with or Of course, there will be spin on the ball, but the amount will be so much less than if you relax. And the other thing is that a stiff arm is a slow arm. You will not be able to accelerate nearly fast enough to be safe on creating enough speed, power, spin to get the ball over the net against backspin. So, please relax a lot more, and the quality on the ball will come automatically, and you will not be needing to use nearly as much power as you do before if you are stiff to get the ball over the net and to dive down on your opponent's side. Because more spin makes the ball dive down faster. So, if you are stiff and use a lot of power, it's very likely that the ball will go out. While if you are more relaxed, you can get it down easier. Mistake number three people are doing is to not accelerate when they are really close to the ball. And what do I really mean with this? Yeah, for example, the ball is maybe around here when I start to make my fast movement. And when you do that, it's very, very difficult to time it perfectly. So, you will hit a lot of edges on your racket and you will hit it too early sometimes, too late sometimes, and you will not get consistent. And of course, you can do this mistake and get the perfect hits, but it's just lucky. Okay, you I can use a lot of power and you can time it early and hit it perfectly, but you will not do it 10 times in a row and you will most likely not do it in an important part of a match when you need it the most. Don't make this mistake because now I tried to hit the table, but with this mistake and I don't succeed. Well, if I just wait, this happens. So, make sure to really, really wait for the ball until it's really close to your racket before you accelerate. And this leads us into mistake number three and I don't really know if it's a difference between mistake number two or three, they are very, very related, but that is to hit the ball too far in front of your body. If you hit the ball far from your body, you will once again lose the connection to the rest of the muscles you have and you will only use your wrist and in best case your underarm with your very weak muscles and you will not be able to get the power and the spin you need to make a good backhand topspin. So, make sure to, like I said, wait until the ball is close to the racket before you accelerate, but also make sure to have the racket quite close to your body until you accelerate. My tips will be to have it something around here, maybe 5 to 15 cm from your body when you're accelerating and hitting the ball. And to help us practice this important details, we got today's sponsor, Pongbot. They sell table tennis robots where where can either use a remote or their amazing app to control the exercises. Pongbot gives you the opportunity to practice basically anything you want. For example, it can shoot every ball on the exactly same placement with the same spin, but it can also combine different kind of placement, it can combine different kind of spins, and you can decide if you want to know where every ball comes or if it will shoot it randomly. And the coolest of all, with the app, you can customize any exercise you want. So, check out the robot at store.pongbotsports.com. I will put the link in the description, and use my coupon code my sensors for 5% discount. Mistake number five is to hit the ball at the side of your body, just to the right side and to the left side. It's as bad. Make sure to hit the ball almost straight in front of your stomach. I would say you can move it a little bit too. If I'm right-handed, to the left I will hit the ball around here. And if you're left-handed, I will hit it a little bit to the right around here. And this is extremely important because if you hit it at the side of your body and not moving well, it's basically a different shot every time because you don't use the exactly same technique from here as from here. So, make sure to always be on your toes and make small small steps depending on where the ball comes. Because if it's here and I want to attack backhand, make sure to stand here. If it's could be just a small movement. If it's here, don't play it from the side of your body. Make sure to hit it in front of you in the same way every time you attack. Mistake number six is to be too straight in your legs. And this is extremely bad for two reasons. One, when you're making your backhand attack against backspin, you want to come under the ball to make it possible to spin it up. And when you're straight, you are coming from a higher point and it's very difficult to get under the ball. And the second reason is that to get help to lift the ball over the net and if you want to create power, I mean, even more, but to start with, just to lift it up, you want some help from your legs. And if it's straight, it's impossible, while if you're bending them, you get it almost automatically. Mistake number seven is to have a too big swing. And with this, I mean, both if you have a too big swing before the ball and if you have it after the ball. If you swing too much before you hit the ball, it will make it very difficult to time the ball. You will hit the edge a lot. You will mistime the ball a lot, maybe even miss the ball, and it will be almost impossible to be consistent. While if you have too much swing after you hit the ball, could actually be so that it doesn't affect your control or quality badly, but it will affect how you play the next shot a lot. Because if I have a short swing, I will stand perfectly for the next ball very, very fast after I did my stroke. While if I have a big, long hit, it will be almost impossible to recover to the next shot. And the final advice for this video, if you struggle with the control or technique of your backhand topspin, I really, really recommend you to practice multiball or with a robot, because it's so important to get repetition after repetition after repetition. And if you just try to attack your backhand opening like in an exercise or something, it doesn't get you to do so many repetitions. It takes time between every backhand topspin you make. While if you practice with the robot or do multiball, you get to do it all of the time.