How did I play last night?

Working on:
-Reverse Pendulum Forehand
-pushing
-Forehand Service Return
-Backhand Service Return

I played very few singles again last night, only one against Jeff and my league match against Patrick. I lost to Jeff as usual, but we had a pretty good warm up. I was working on warming up my serve and third ball loop. I won fairly easily against Patrick. Against him on my serve I can out-spin him and his service is pretty weak. I played the service return pretty conservatively, mostly pushing, but with placement so that he couldn't forehand loop. My backhand loop was working pretty well in the match, which got me winners most of the time or led to winners.

The reverse pendulum is slowly coming along. The new improved motion I'm trying to use will take many more times before it feels natural. I also can't seem to put the backspin variation long. Sometimes I go back to the old motion and this isn't good. I need to remember to always use the new motion to get good at it.

Pushing is coming along. It's mostly been about remembering what I already know and practicing it. Something new is that I can read the spin better now, when I'm focused, so I need to learn to apply that knowledge to pushing. The forehand is a little trickier as my technique is just not as good as my backhand. I should look into figuring out the ideal forehand push technique.

Forehand service return: I still can't deal with heavy short backspin. My forehand flip needs a lot of work as I'm still starting my swing way too late and it ends up somewhere between a push and a flip with the ball launching past the table. Looping is ok, but I still have trouble doing a strong loop when the ball is curving away from me.

Backhand service return: In doubles this is much better than my forehand. I'm fairly comfortable pushing, flipping, and looping. With looping I found that I could loop the no spin balls by slowing my swing down. The most important part was to remember to read the amount of spin on the ball as it came over the net.

Other things to note: I need to work on smashing/looping the mid height balls that are over the table. I've been trying to loop them at the top of the bounce, which leads to the ball being lifted up and going past the end of the table. I also don't read balls moving away from my forehand very well. I probably need to focus more on these, especially when looping. Maybe I need to get closer to the bounce on these too.