Simplify Your Serve Like Ma Lin
This is a brand-new, technique-focused column written in Q&A format. The mystery respondents are two former national team members — now seasoned coaches — who prefer to stay out of the spotlight. They just want a quiet life and a good night’s sleep. I feel that sharing their technical insights with everyone is genuinely valuable, so the “Peak Performance” column was born.
Q: Is practicing lobs actually useful? Can it build mental toughness — or does it just come down to quick footwork?
Q: Ding Ning always seems to retrieve the ball from farther away than anyone else. Does she just have faster footwork?
Playing a lob in a match is a last resort. But deliberately practicing lobs has two purposes: one is to train your mindset — nail the lob and your mental state will naturally improve; the other is to develop touch.
Ding Ning is actually not fast — she’s “resilient,” similar to Zhang Yining. She has excellent consistency and tactical patterns. “Resilient” means that even when pushed into a passive position, she clings on and keeps getting the ball over the net. Of course, her height and long legs are an advantage, and her mental fortitude is never in question.
Q: How do I simplify my serve? I have too many serve variations and decent deception, but the effect always feels underwhelming. What makes a truly great serve?
A great serve isn’t about speed, shortness, heavy topspin, deep push, or any single physical quality.
A great serve is one where the motion looks almost identical but the spin variation is huge — making it nearly impossible to read.
First, relax. Use your arm and fingers to sense the weight of the ball at the exact moment of contact and where it hits the rubber. Practice developing that “feel.” Once your sensitivity is sharp, accelerate with your fingers.
Once that’s dialed in, practice “wrist-driven finger acceleration.”
Once that’s solid, practice “using your body weight to drive the wrist and fingers.”
Take it step by step, no rush. Eventually your body controls the placement of the ball.
You need to learn how to graze the ball with your fingers and paddle. After the ball leaves, about one centimeter off the blade, your fingers accelerate instantly — that’s the fake-motion graze. Combine fake-motion grazes with genuine heavy spin, and the difference in spin becomes enormous, impossible for your opponent to read.
(Editor’s note: I’m editing this and thinking — this section is really only for players rated 2000 or above.)
A great serve has two key qualities. First, the acceleration at the moment of contact is extremely brief. Second, you change the ball’s spin rate by contacting different spots on the rubber surface.
Third, serves always use angular velocity. You can use the wrist’s angular velocity, or the torso’s angular velocity — the difference between them is massive.
Think about Ma Lin’s game: rallying ability, swing speed, consistency, raw power, outright speed — he wasn’t top-tier in any of those, and many provincial-team players outperformed him in several areas. So how did he win Olympic gold? Three things: brain, serve, and variation.
Q: For a five- or six-year-old learning technique, is one month enough to build a solid movement framework — if they practice every day?
For kids that young, locking in a technical framework isn’t actually the priority. What matters is: let them feel the ball through their body weight.
Just practice finding your center of gravity every day and bounce the ball on the paddle. Keep the feet grounded — that’s step one. Step two is finding center of gravity. Kids this age don’t need to rush to the table.
Whether a shot is clean, stable, or explosive — consistency, spin, angle, and rhythm all depend on center of gravity. That’s the absolute foundation. No matter how ugly or unorthodox the movement, as long as you find your center of gravity, over time that player’s game will never be truly bad.