An advanced colleague of mine said there are 2 kinds of full forehand smashes. 1. Power smash (Hard, flat, ideally to the body) 2. Steep smash (less power, steeper angle) And these are done with 2 different techniques. Is he right? I always thought there's just 1 technique and we adjust the direction, angle and power ourselves. What do you think?
Haha... I'd say no, because I define a full smash as but you can still vary the placement. The second one is often called stick smash and the power comes mainly from forearm pronation, it doesn't utilize the entire body as efficiently, but allows for very early and high strokes, thus steeper angles are possible. This is the motion of a stick smash. There also is the jump smash as a variation of the power smash which does not give extra power, but the higher jump with both legs (and that typical kick) allow for a better angle again, but you need a lot more time to do that compared to a stick smash, so it's only possible after a very high lift or when you're already in position. Hope this helps.
You can also increase the steepness by playing a cut smash, it's like a slice smash - very effective when playing cross court smashes because a full smash cross court might get blocked to the opposite corner easily (if it's not placed well enough or not powerful enough) whereas if your opponent has to scramble to defend you have more time to recover from the smash.
