Pen Grips in Ping Pong

Video Transcript

"There's also another style of grip that people use mostly in the orient and that is called the pen grip. You're taking your paddle and you're basically holding it like a ball point pen. With your index finger and your thumb on this side and the rest of your fingers backing up the paddle on the other side. The idea is with this type of a grip is that you're using one side of the hitting surface for your forehand or your back hand. It's a simpler shot, it's probably more difficult for a beginner to try to pick something up like this but a lot of kids over in the orient that's how they learn and they're pretty good ping pong players. So like I said it basically cuts out the fact that you have to use the other half of the paddle you're only using one side of the paddle. You can try that, experiment with it probably a little bit see if you like it. I find it its more difficult for me just because I guess I've learned it traditional style and grown accustomed to that over the years. I can play this way but it's pretty tough, you got to get used to really flipping your back hand around and if you're wrist isn't used to twisting that way you're not going to feel comfortable at it at all. So I would suggest staying just with he old hand shake grip and go from there"