Backhand block issue

Hi Alois,

I have a problem with my backhand block:

It seems that everytime my opponent makes a powerful shot, I instinctively close the angle of my bat too much while blocking with the backhand, so that quite often the ball goes into the net.

How do I get past this instinctive over-closing the angle of my bat while blocking with the backhand? It's like I'm always expecting a huge amount of top spin from my opponent's shots, but when the ball goes that fast, I have no time to find out how much top spin the ball actually has..

Thanks,
Arnaud

Hi Arnaud,

It sounds like you are tightening up as soon as the ball goes fast.  The first thing is to get used to the feeling of the ball coming fast at you.  You can do this with multi-ball.  Get someone to feed the ball to you faster than normal pace.  While you are doing this actively focus on relaxing.

This will help you to adjust to the speed.  This will keep your hand and mind relaxed and allow you to adjust to the speed an spin on the ball.