Of course lobbing is good for your game.

• It wins points that would otherwise be lost.
• It allows you to practice off-table footwork, which can improve your footwork for counterlooping, fishing, or chopping.
• It helps you develop topspin touch and control, which can help your counterlooping and fishing.
• It gives you practice reacting to a hard-hit ball.
• It gives great difficulties for some players, especially shorter players.
• It’s great for exhibitions and demos.
• It’s fun!

Of course lobbing is bad for your game.

• It can lead to the bad habit of lobbing when you could make a more effective, less defensive shot.
• It can lead to the bad habit of backing up from the table too easily rather than controlling play closer in.

So . . . there seem to be more reasons for lobbing then against. In general, read the reasons NOT to lob first, and make absolutely sure not to fall for these bad habits. Then learn to lob for the reasons given for why it is good for you. And yes, it’s fun!

In dodgeball, the goal is to avoid getting hit. When the ball is thrown at you, you use your footwork to get out of the way. Otherwise the ball will probably hit you in the torso, which is where a good dodgeball thrower aims as it’s the largest target.

In table tennis, when blocking on the backhand side, your goal is the reverse – you want to get hit. More specifically, you want to catch the ball with the center of your torso. Except, of course, you hold a racket out and block the ball so it never hits you, and instead rebounds back to the opponent’s side.

That, in essence, is a backhand block. Many players make the mistake of reaching for the ball, contorting their arm and body into various positions while trying to have a repeatable block. Instead, as the ball comes at you, you should focus on stepping in its way, blocking its path with your body. If you think of it this way, the footwork becomes more natural. And then, with the ball in front of you, you simply stick your racket out and block, this time using a repeatable stroke that doesn’t involve reaching except as an absolute last resort.

A similar way to look at it is to imagine you are a soccer goalie who has to block the ball with his body. However you imagine it, the key is to get the body into position so you can block the ball in front of the body with minimal reaching.

And now that you’ve learned all this on the backhand side, guess what? It’s the same on the forehand block, except that now you are basically “blocking” the ball with your right side, or rather the area just to the right of your right side, where you want to hold your racket for the perfect forehand block (assuming you’re a righty). Then apply the same principles above and you’ll learn to step to the ball rather than reach on the forehand block as well.

And now you are ready to rock with your block!!!

Once you have reached a certain level, it’s easy to rest on your laurels. That doesn’t mean you don’t work hard to improve your game. It means that you work hard only to improve the parts of your game that you have already developed.

Instead, be a learning player. You should experiment and learn something new every time you play. If you don’t, then you are stuck in a rut and will find it difficult to improve as fast as you could if you kept learning. Experiment! Try out new things. In particular, try out different serve variations, different receives, deceptive moves on a shot, changes of pace, and different placements. I played a much stronger player recently and got a game off him for one reason only – I discovered that if I occasionally dead-blocked to the middle of the table, he got soft, while if I did it to his forehand or backhand side, he was all over it. Guess what I did? But I wouldn’t have learned that if I hadn’t experimented, and now I have a new weapon against him – and probably against other, similar players.

Experimenting doesn’t mean you spend most your practice time trying out all sorts of shots. There’s a time and place for everything. In most drills, you need to focus more on repetition so you can perfect the shots. But mastering a shot doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also be experimenting, especially in game situations.

So, what are you experimenting on and what have you learned?

When you practice your spin serves – and you do, right? – after a few minutes, your arm and wrist are tired and you’re sweating right? No? Then you aren’t putting in full effort and therefore not getting full spin.

When I say “tired” and “sweating,” there’s some literary license, but the point is that serving with great spin is rather physical. If you want to maximize your spin, you have to maximize your racket’s acceleration and velocity, and the grazing motion.

Many players practice their serves with a focus on just control. Control is good, but it’s only one aspect of a spinny serve. You have to put in enough energy to really make that ball spin, and with all that racket acceleration and speed, still graze the ball. It’s not as hard as it sounds, but it takes practice.

And if you are practicing your spin serves with less than maximum spin, then you are practicing serves that aren’t that spinny, which is a bad habit (unless you are faking spin and serving no-spin). It’s practice, so go for maximum spin, and learn to control it. With practice, you will do so, and then your spin serves will be a major weapon. Turn your practice room into the spin room!

As a player, I’m old-school – my backhand flip against a short ball is light topspin, basically a standard backhand drive against most spins. Against short, heavy underspin, I just open the racket and drive up and forward, and focus on medium speed and spin, depth, and placement.

But these days top players almost all have modern banana backhand flips, where their backhand flips are basically mini-loops from over the table, with both topspin and usually sidespin. As a coach, I learned to do this, but nobody did this in my serious playing days, and so it’s not that natural for me to do it in a match, though I sometimes throw one in.

So . . . what type of backhand flip should you develop? (Note that it’s also often called a “flick,” especially in Europe.)

If you are an attacker and striving for a high level, then you should develop a banana backhand flip. It’s the norm at higher levels. You can find all sorts of demos of them on YouTube, or watch most top players on video.

But they take a lot of practice to develop properly. Unless you are going to put a lot of time into it, you might consider just a regular backhand flip, without the extreme spin. It’s not that hard to do, and the more you use it, the more consistent it becomes. Older players may also find the banana flip awkward as it can put some stress on the arm.

So, which type of backhand flip should you develop? You decide. But notice the question wasn’t whether you should develop a backhand flip . . . it’s which type. You need one. It’s a valuable tool for your game, especially on receive. If you don’t have one, then you flipping better get one!