Biomechanics: Can Table Tennis Skills Be Transferred to Other Racket Sports activities?
Can ping pong assistance me study tennis? Will racquetball harm my tennis game? Can badminton support me participate in better table tennis? These kinds of issues about the transference of techniques involving racket sporting activities come up all the time. The creator has some exclusive qualifications to help remedy these concerns. We will study some of the mechanical similarities and variances between racket sports activities to assist response some of these concerns.
To finest review the mechanics of tennis, table tennis, or other racket sporting activities needs a little bit of essential kinesiology. If you are standing relaxed with your arms at your sides, palms dealing with forward, you are in what is termed the “Anatomic Situation”. If you angle your fingertips absent from your thighs, the max being about 45 levels, that motion is known as “Wrist Abduction”. Reversing that compact motion is known as “Wrist ADDuction”. Kinesiology learners recall the distinction by visualizing that this system aspect is getting “Added” towards the midline, or very long axis of the body and like to capitalize the initial a few letters for clarity.
Wrist posture is one particular really vital change between table tennis, tennis, racquetball, squash, badminton, and even fencing. Photograph a fencer with a sabre or foil in their hand thrusting toward the opponent. In get to make the foil suggestion get to as much as achievable, the wrist have to be fully adducted. The wrist posture for table tennis is virtually the identical but made use of for yet another objective, not just for extending the achieve.
In desk tennis, the wrist is adducted to make it possible for it to express whip through ahead motion at call. The legs, torso, shoulder, and arm begin the motion and transmit momentum in what is referred to as a “Kinetic Chain”. That chain of motion snaps the table tennis racket like a bullwhip at the ball. This kinetic chain of momentum from the floor, up as a result of the overall body, then culminating at speak to is basically prevalent to most, if not all, make contact with/collision sports these kinds of as football and baseball. In contrast to desk tennis, the wrist in tennis is usually “Kidnapped”.
With the short exceptions of achieving defensively to get to a ball or reaching upward for a serve or smash, the wrist posture in tennis is much more like holding a hammer, substantially extra “Kidnapped”. This posture does various issues for a tennis player. First, it would make bearing the further pounds and length of a tennis racket simpler by it remaining earlier mentioned the hand vertically.
Second, an “Kidnapped” wrist is a more robust, more controllable wrist posture. It is a lot more equipped to resist the substantial impact forces of a tennis ball and also much more equipped to resist the large twisting forces of off heart impacts. Certainly, these forms of impression forces do not exist in table tennis and finding out this posture necessitates a terrific offer of exercise and discipline. Regretably, as the creator has observed, that exact same “Kidnapped” wrist self-control painstakingly acquired to engage in far better tennis is hard to established apart when 1 tries to participate in ping pong with its “ADDucted” wrist.
This is THE most important grievance of desk tennis coaches, when training those people who have come from tennis, that they need to continually remind them to “fall” or “ADDuct” the wrist. The author’s have ping pong coaches just smile and issue now! In the authors theoretical and useful opinion, It seems that among the racket athletics, tennis needs the most willpower in phrases of wrist “ABDuction”. Tennis, and most likely ping pong, may also demand more willpower in its strokes in common. Once again, some additional essential kinesiology is valuable.
From the “Anatomic Placement” explained earlier mentioned, if you bend your wrists so that your palms confront upward, you are FLEXING your wrists. When you return your palms to the posture in which your fingers place towards the flooring, you are EXTENDING your wrists. When you rotate your forearms so that your thumbs are up coming to your thighs and your palms deal with powering you, you are PRONATING your forearms. The reverse motion is known as SUPINATION. Each PRONATION and SUPINATION are described by the two bones in the forearm rotating around each and every other, movements which are distinctive but normally baffled with flexing the wrist.
Because the goal for badminton, squash, and racquetball is so big, acceleration of the racket and get hold of speed is usually top rated priority. To do that, equally flexion and pronation is utilised in the forearm to acquire the maximum velocity. The goal in tennis and table tennis is more compact than the other athletics and utmost racket velocity is a lot less normally sought after. The noteworthy exceptions are the tennis provide and smash, but even those people strokes crank out racket velocity by almost exclusively employing PRONATION, not FLEXION of the wrist. Pronation is also the dominant forearm motion in throwing a rapidly baseball.
What does this inform us about transferring competencies from 1 sport to one more? Does this make a person racket sport a lot easier to study if you are presently common with a further? These are certainly complicated and complex concerns even for a biomechanical professional in racket sporting activities, but if we isolate just the variances mentioned in this article, 1 route to the solutions can be discovered.
When it will come to the wrist and forearm willpower described previously mentioned, we can believe that it is additional tricky to obtain discipline than to suspend it. For that reason it follows that it is less difficult to study racquetball, badminton, and squash Right after mastering tennis or desk tennis. Conversely, it is additional challenging to obtain the forearm self-control needed in tennis and table tennis, Soon after finding out the other sports which emphasize laxity of both of those forearm motions explained right here.
Further than its biomechanical logic, this principle is born out in the author’s individual knowledge in racket athletics and above 30 years of coaching. His event expertise in racquetball adopted that of tennis and it generally seemed uncomplicated to unwind the discipline of tennis to “snap” at most velocity at a racquetball. In excess of these decades numerous college students struggled to master the further self-discipline of tennis immediately after the other sports activities. In quick, the writer recommends discovering tennis and/or table tennis Ahead of branching out into the other sports that are dominated by whipping arm swings.
