How Can a Shakehand Player Achieve the Agility of a Penhold Grip?
About This Column
This is a brand-new, technique-focused column in Q&A format. The experts answering your questions are two former national team players — veteran coaches who prefer to stay anonymous. They just want a quiet life and a good night’s sleep, with no interest in fame.
Where Does the Penhold Agility Come From, and Can a Shakehand Player Replicate It?
First and most literally: a penhold blade is genuinely lighter than a shakehand blade.
A lighter blade accelerates faster. Second, the wrist is freer — it rotates more quickly — so contact time is shorter, and you can ambiguously handle backspin balls during the rising phase. There used to be a penhold-only technique called the “close-to-table backspin attack” that shakehand simply couldn’t replicate.
With a shakehand grip, all five fingers close around the handle, which naturally tightens the wrist.
Many players ask me: if I don’t know how to banana flick or flick-attack, my short game suffers — what do I do? My answer: during the receive, loosen the back three fingers into a “soft hold,” keeping only the index finger, thumb, and web of the hand engaged. This adds wrist freedom, and your banana-flick and flick-attack success rate will improve noticeably. Just make sure your weight is fully inside the table — generate force through the thumb, index finger, and the web of the hand. This keeps the wrist flexible while still allowing a wrist-powered swing.
Is Harimoto’s Forehand Loop Not Fundamentally Sound? It Seems More Drive Than Brush.
Table tennis generally demands that you get the ball back — first you need enough force to send it over; second, you need some friction to create arc so it clears the net. But every incoming ball arrives at a different height, so you constantly adjust your drive-to-brush ratio.
High-level players with fast footwork can consistently reach the same contact point, which makes it look like they can drive hard on every ball. Lower-level players hit a different contact point every time, so they look like they alternate between high lobs and fast drives — that’s exactly why.
Players like Harimoto Tomokazu and Lin Gaoyuan are relatively lean; power is not their main weapon. If they retreat from the table, their speed drops and their damage output falls significantly. This is tied to genetics and musculoskeletal structure — some people are lean but extremely strong; others look muscular but have limited actual power.
Take Wang Liqin, nicknamed “the world’s greatest forehand.” In technical terms, what made his forehand legendary wasn’t the sheer force he applied, but rather the perfect combination of body momentum, incoming ball energy, and drive-to-brush ratio.
Why does Harimoto’s forehand loop lean toward more drive than brush? Because his strength is not his primary asset. If he simply rallies with consistent loops, he’s playing a power-reduced game — he can’t finish the point. He has to increase the drive component to get through opponents in one or two balls. Why did this style develop? Not because his forehand fundamentals are lacking — his parents were both professional players, and they knew exactly what they were doing. The target was always a world title. Beating the Chinese team through consistency alone is impossible, so you have to sacrifice some consistency to generate more power.
Is Harimoto’s Style Prone to Injury?
Harimoto’s close-table, high-tempo style has specific requirements: you have to be the one controlling the pace, you have to be fired up, and the ball needs to be flowing in your direction. If any of those three conditions is missing, the mutual fast exchange becomes error-prone.
Objectively speaking, beyond the choppers, almost all elite players are at risk of injury.
Harimoto and Ryu Seung-min belong to the same category of player — aggressive and uncompromising, what people call the “unreasonable” style. This type of player doesn’t emerge from the Chinese national system, because they would be screened out at the provincial level. The style is too streaky and the success rate too low.
The Chinese national team selects players based on philosophy: they value the balance between aggression and consistency. So truly all-out aggressive players are rare in the national team.
That said, players with this all-in style don’t tend to struggle mentally. Their game plan is simple and direct — it’s all-or-nothing on every point. They never lose a point second-guessing themselves or changing tactics.
