Table Tennis Grips: Shakehand, Penhold, and Seemiller Explained

One thing worth clearing up first: “grip” in table tennis almost always means how you hold the paddle — shakehand, penhold, and a few less common variants. That’s a completely different topic from the physical rubber or foam sleeve wrapped around some paddle handles, which is a wear item you can replace separately and has nothing to do with which hand-hold style you use. This guide focuses on grip style, since that’s what actually shapes your game.

Shakehand Grip

The shakehand grip gets its name from holding the paddle handle the way you’d shake someone’s hand, palm and fingers wrapped naturally around the handle with the thumb and index finger resting lightly on either side of the blade. It’s the most widely used grip in the world and the standard recommendation for new players, since it naturally supports both forehand and backhand shots without requiring an advanced technique to compensate for a weak side.

Traditional Penhold Grip

The penhold grip involves pinching the handle between the thumb and index finger, similar to holding a pen, with the remaining fingers curled against the back of the blade. It’s especially common among players from East Asia and delivers a very strong, precise forehand, since the wrist has a shorter, more direct path to generate spin and power on that side.

The tradeoff is the backhand: traditional penhold technique struggles to generate power on the backhand side, historically pushing penhold players toward an all-forehand style that covers as much of the table as possible with their stronger side.

Reverse Penhold Backhand (RPB)

Reverse penhold backhand is a modern technique that solves penhold’s traditional backhand weakness, developed and popularized by top Chinese players over the past few decades. Instead of using the same side of the blade for both forehand and backhand the traditional way, RPB players flip the paddle to use the reverse side specifically for backhand strokes, generating real topspin and power that traditional penhold technique can’t match on that side.

RPB is genuinely advanced technique, not a beginner adjustment — it demands significant additional coordination and practice on top of already-solid traditional penhold fundamentals. Most players who use it have spent years developing traditional penhold first before adding RPB to their game.

Seemiller Grip

The Seemiller grip, named after five-time U.S. National Champion Danny Seemiller, is a shakehand variant where the index finger extends across the top of the blade rather than resting along the handle. This positioning allows for a distinctive quick-blocking and counter-attacking style, particularly effective against fast, close-to-the-table exchanges, though it restricts wrist movement enough to limit spin generation compared to a standard shakehand grip.

How to Hold a Shakehand Grip Correctly

Place the handle in your palm as though shaking hands, letting your fingers wrap naturally around it. Rest your index finger along the back of the blade for stability and control, and let your thumb sit lightly on the front side. The grip should feel secure but not tense — a death grip on the handle restricts the wrist movement that generates spin, which defeats the purpose of the grip in the first place.

How Long It Takes to Feel Natural

A new grip, or even refining an existing one, typically takes a few weeks of regular play before it stops feeling like a conscious effort and becomes genuine muscle memory. Don’t judge a grip adjustment by how it feels in the first session — nearly any change to something as fundamental as grip feels awkward at first, and that discomfort alone isn’t a signal you’ve chosen wrong.

Common Grip Mistakes

Gripping too tightly is the most common mistake across every grip style, restricting the wrist flexibility that generates spin and power. Holding too close to the blade limits reach and control; holding too far down the handle reduces stability and accuracy. The right balance point is specific to your hand size and playing style, which is exactly why trying a few grip variations early on is worth the time investment before settling into habits that are harder to unlearn later.

Table Tennis Grips and Blade Handle Shape

Blade handle shape interacts with grip style in a way worth knowing before you buy a blade. Shakehand players typically choose between FL (flared), ST (straight), or CS (concave straight) handles, purely a comfort preference that doesn’t change performance. Penhold blades use entirely different handle shapes designed around the pinch grip specifically, which is why a shakehand blade and a penhold blade aren’t interchangeable even though both are technically “table tennis blades.”

A Quick Recap

Shakehand is the standard starting point for the large majority of players. Traditional penhold trades backhand strength for forehand precision, and reverse penhold backhand solves that tradeoff at the cost of significant added technique. Seemiller offers a distinctive blocking-and-counter style at the cost of spin generation. None of these are objectively “best” — the right grip is the one that matches your playing style and the coaching resources actually available to you.

Grip Strength and Finger Positioning

Building genuine control with any grip style comes down to finger positioning more than raw hand strength. A relaxed, well-positioned grip generates more usable power through wrist snap than a tense, overly strong grip ever will, since a tight grip locks up exactly the wrist flexibility that produces spin. Players sometimes assume they need to grip harder to hit harder, when the opposite is usually true — loosening up produces faster racket head speed, not less control.

Switching Grips: Is It Ever Worth It?

Switching from shakehand to penhold, or the reverse, is a genuinely significant technical reset — essentially rebuilding your stroke mechanics from the ground up rather than a minor adjustment. It’s occasionally worth it for a player who’s hit a real ceiling with their current grip and has a specific, well-considered reason to switch, but it’s not a decision to make casually partway through developing solid fundamentals. Most players are better served refining their current grip’s technique than switching entirely.

Table Tennis Grips: Which Should You Actually Choose?

For the large majority of new players, shakehand is the right starting point — it’s the most widely taught, has the most available coaching resources, and builds a genuinely balanced game without requiring an advanced technique like RPB to compensate for a weak side. Penhold is worth considering specifically if you’ve already played enough to know you prefer an aggressive, forehand-dominant style, or if you’re training under a coach experienced in penhold technique specifically.

The Physical Handle Grip: A Different Topic

Separate from grip style entirely, some paddle handles are wrapped in a rubber, foam, or cork sleeve for comfort and sweat absorption — this is genuinely a different topic from shakehand versus penhold, even though both get called “grip.” That handle wrap is a wear item: it can get slippery with sweat over time and eventually needs cleaning or replacement, but swapping it doesn’t change which hand-hold style you’re using at all. If your specific paddle’s handle wrap is worn out, that’s a maintenance issue, not a decision about shakehand versus penhold.

Grip Style and Rubber Choice: Do They Interact?

Grip style and rubber choice are independent decisions, but they interact in practice. A shakehand player running different rubber on forehand and backhand gets to fully exploit that split, since both sides see regular, balanced use. A traditional penhold player relying heavily on forehand often gets more value concentrating budget on that one side’s rubber rather than splitting spend evenly across both, since the backhand simply sees less action in their typical style of play.

Caring for Your Handle Wrap

If your paddle’s handle does use a replaceable wrap material, wipe it down with a damp cloth after sweaty sessions and let it air dry fully before storing the paddle away. A handle that’s gone visibly slick or is cracking is worth replacing, since a slipping grip during a fast rally is a genuine safety and performance issue, regardless of which hand-hold style you use on top of it.

Every Grip Type, Including the Rare Ones

Most guides cover two grips and stop. There are more than two, and knowing the full set makes it much clearer why the common ones are common.

• Shakehand. The bat held as though shaking hands, index finger along the back of the blade, thumb on the front. The dominant grip worldwide and the default recommendation for anyone starting out.
• Chinese penhold. Held like a pen with the blade pointing down, fingers curled on the reverse. Exceptional forehand reach and wrist freedom.
• Japanese/Korean penhold. Similar from the front but with the fingers extended flat on the back rather than curled, producing a different balance and a stronger forehand drive.
• Seemiller (American) grip. A shakehand variant with the index finger wrapped over the edge, allowing the bat to be twiddled rapidly to change surface mid-rally.
• V-grip. The blade held between index and middle finger in a V. Genuinely rare, with a distinctive reach advantage and significant limitations.

If you are starting and want the short answer: use shakehand. It is the most balanced across forehand and backhand, the easiest to find coaching for, and the grip almost all equipment is designed around. The others are worth understanding rather than adopting unless you have a specific reason.

Where These Grips Came From

The grips did not appear arbitrarily, and their history explains why the sport looks different in different parts of the world.

Penhold is the older style in East Asia and dominated the sport through much of the twentieth century, when a fast forehand-based attacking game was the winning template. Shakehand became dominant globally as two-winged topspin play developed, since it gives a genuinely usable backhand in a way traditional penhold did not.

The reverse penhold backhand emerged as the answer to that competitive pressure, allowing penhold players to attack from the backhand side using the reverse face. It is a comparatively recent development and is why penhold remains viable at the highest level rather than being a historical curiosity.

Understanding that arc is useful when reading older instruction. Advice written when penhold was dominant, or before the reverse penhold backhand was established, describes a different balance of strengths from the one that applies now.

The Shakehand Grip in Detail

Because this is the grip most readers will actually use, it is worth setting out precisely rather than describing loosely.

Hold the bat as though shaking hands with it. The index finger rests along the bottom edge of the backhand side of the blade, the thumb rests lightly on the forehand side, and the remaining three fingers wrap the handle. The web between thumb and index finger sits against the shoulder of the blade.

The single most common fault is placing the index finger too far up the backhand face. It feels more secure and it restricts backhand stroke range while closing the bat angle, which then has to be compensated for on every backhand.

There is a legitimate variation worth knowing: a deeper grip, with the hand further onto the handle, favours backhand play and control, while a shallower grip favours forehand power and wrist freedom. Neither is incorrect, and most players settle somewhere between the two without ever consciously choosing.

Penhold, and Why Anyone Chooses It

Penhold looks awkward to a shakehand player and has real advantages, which is why it persists at the highest levels particularly in Asia.

The forehand is the strength. Holding the bat like a pen gives greater wrist freedom than shakehand allows, which translates into more spin and a more deceptive serve. Penhold players also have no crossover point, the awkward zone at the body where a shakehand player must choose between forehand and backhand.

The historical weakness was the backhand, since the traditional penhold backhand is played with the same face and is limited. The modern answer is the reverse penhold backhand, where the player uses the reverse side of the blade with the curled fingers behind it, which largely solves the problem and is now standard among penhold players at high level.

For a beginner, penhold is a harder road with less available coaching in most countries, and it is not a grip to adopt casually. It is, however, entirely legitimate, and a player who finds it natural should not be talked out of it on the grounds that shakehand is more common.

The Seemiller Grip and Other Variants

Beyond shakehand and penhold there are grips worth knowing about even though few players use them, because they illustrate what the common grips are trading away.

The Seemiller grip, named after the American player who popularised it, is a shakehand variant in which the index finger wraps around the edge of the blade onto the forehand face. This rotates the bat and lets the player twiddle it quickly to bring a different rubber surface into play mid-rally, which is genuinely disruptive against an opponent reading spin off the surface.

The cost is backhand range. The rotated hand position makes conventional backhand strokes awkward, and Seemiller players typically use the same face for both wings, which limits what the backhand can do. It is a specialist choice built around a specific tactic rather than a general-purpose grip.

The V-grip holds the blade between the index and middle fingers, forming a V. It offers unusual reach and a very open bat angle, and it remains rare enough that most players will never encounter one. Both grips are entirely legal; neither is a sensible starting point.

How Grip Interacts With Playing Style

Grip is not purely a matter of comfort. It constrains which shots come naturally, which is why grip and style tend to settle together.

Shakehand is the most balanced across both wings, which is why it suits all-round and modern two-winged attacking play. A player who wants a genuinely strong backhand alongside their forehand is almost always better served by shakehand.

Penhold biases toward the forehand, historically at the backhand’s expense, and suits players who want to dominate with forehand topspin and move around the table to use it. The reverse penhold backhand has narrowed that gap considerably, but the forehand remains the shot the grip is built around.

Seemiller suits a specific disruptive tactic built on twiddling between two different rubber surfaces. That is a style choice as much as a grip choice, and adopting the grip without the tactic gives you the limitations without the benefit.

The practical implication is that if you already know what kind of player you want to be, that should inform the grip. If you do not yet, shakehand keeps the most options open, which is the strongest argument for it as a default.

Grip Pressure: The Part Everyone Skips

Which grip you use gets enormous attention and how hard you hold the bat gets almost none, which is backwards, because pressure affects every shot you play.

A tight grip locks the wrist, and a locked wrist cannot produce the brushing acceleration that generates spin. It also transmits less feel, making touch shots near the net harder, and it tires the forearm noticeably faster across a session.

Hold firmly enough that the bat does not move in your hand on contact, and no firmer. Pressure should vary by shot as well: relaxed for touch and short play, firmer at the moment of contact on a drive, then relaxed again. Holding maximum pressure continuously is both slower and more tiring.

A quick self-check: if your forearm aches after a session and your touch shots keep sitting up, grip pressure is a more likely cause than your grip style or your equipment.

Grip Faults and How to Spot Them

Most grip problems are small, specific, and correctable in days rather than months, which makes them unusually good value to fix.

• Index finger too far up the backhand face. Feels secure, restricts backhand range and closes the bat angle. The single most common shakehand fault.
• Thumb pressed hard against the blade. A common source of tension that reduces wrist mobility for exactly the shots needing it most.
• Gripping too far down the handle, which costs control, or too far up onto the blade, which restricts wrist action.
• Regripping mid-rally. Small deliberate adjustments are fine; a large unplanned shift usually means the base grip is not comfortable for both wings.
• Squeezing throughout the rally. Pressure should rise at contact and fall again, not stay at maximum.

The diagnostic that catches most of these is simply looking at your hand at the end of a rally rather than the start. If the grip has migrated without you deciding to move it, that drift is the fault worth correcting, and it is invisible if you only ever check before serving.

Practising the Grip Itself

Grip is unusual among table tennis skills in that it needs almost no practice time, only attention. There is no drill to run, and the whole task is noticing. That makes it unusually good value, since it competes for none of your table time and can be worked on during sessions you are spending on something else entirely.

Check it deliberately at the start of every session for the first few weeks after any correction. That is genuinely all it takes for a new hand position to become automatic, and it costs nothing beyond remembering to look before you start hitting, which is a habit rather than a skill.

Then check it again at the end of a rally rather than the start, since drift is invisible if you only ever look before serving. A grip that has migrated by the end of a point is telling you something the pre-serve check never will.

Shadow strokes are useful here too. Going through the motion without a ball lets you attend to the hand rather than to where the ball is going, which is the one condition under which most players can actually feel what their grip is doing.

One last check worth running occasionally: hand the bat to someone else and watch how they pick it up. A bat that people consistently grasp in an awkward position may have a handle shape that does not suit your hand either, and you may simply have adapted to it without noticing. That is worth knowing before you spend weeks correcting a grip that the equipment is fighting.

Grip for Children and Smaller Hands

Grip advice written for adults transfers imperfectly to children, mostly because standard handles are simply too large for a small hand. A grip that is correct in principle can be impossible to hold on a bat that is simply too big, and no amount of coaching fixes that.

A child gripping an adult handle will often compensate by holding further up onto the blade or by wrapping more fingers around than the grip calls for. Both are reasonable adaptations to equipment that does not fit, and both become habits that need unlearning later, once the child has grown into a normal handle and the compensation is no longer serving any purpose.

Junior blades with shorter, slimmer handles exist and are worth seeking out for younger children, since a handle that fits allows a correct grip to form naturally rather than being corrected against the equipment. A lighter overall bat helps for the same reason, since a bat that is heavy for the hand holding it encourages exactly the tight, compensating hold you are trying to avoid.

Beyond fit, the guidance is the same as for adults but applied more gently. Establish the grip early because it is genuinely hard to change later, and correct it without turning every session into a correction, since a child enjoying the game with an imperfect grip is in a better position than one being coached out of it.

Grip and Handle Shape Are One System

A grip that feels wrong is occasionally an equipment problem rather than a technique one, and it is worth checking before trying to correct your hand.

Handle shape is the obvious link. A flared handle widens at the base and locks the hand into a consistent position, which suits players who want security. A straight handle allows the hand to rotate, which is what a Seemiller player or anyone twiddling between surfaces needs. A player fighting their handle shape will find their grip drifting no matter how often they correct it.

Penhold blades are a different shape entirely, with short handles built for the grip, and are not interchangeable with shakehand blades. Buying the wrong one is an easy and expensive mistake if you are ordering online without checking.

Bat weight matters too. A finished bat that is heavy for you encourages a tighter grip simply to control it, which then produces the pressure problems described above. If your grip tightens involuntarily as a session goes on, the weight of the setup is worth examining alongside the grip itself.

Grip Questions Answered Directly

What is the correct table tennis grip? There is no single correct grip. Shakehand is correct for most players because it balances both wings and is the most widely coached, but penhold and its variants are entirely legitimate.

How many grips are there? Two main families, shakehand and penhold, with penhold splitting into Chinese and Japanese/Korean forms, plus the Seemiller and V-grip variants. Five distinct grips in common description.

Which grip do professionals use? Most use shakehand, and a significant minority, particularly in Asia, use penhold with a reverse penhold backhand. Both are represented at the top of the sport.

Should I change my grip? Usually not. Correct finger position and pressure within your existing grip first, since that addresses most complaints and takes days rather than months.

Does grip affect which bat I should buy? Yes. Penhold blades have short handles built for the grip and are not interchangeable with shakehand blades, and handle shape within shakehand affects how securely the grip holds.

How to Choose, and Whether to Change

For a new player the answer is straightforward: shakehand. It is the most balanced grip across both wings, the most widely coached, and the one nearly all equipment and instruction assumes.

For an existing player wondering whether to switch, the answer is usually no. A full grip change resets a substantial part of your technique, takes months rather than weeks, and typically makes you worse before better. Players frequently abandon the change halfway, which leaves them worse off than either committing or never starting.

A change is worth considering only if your current grip has a structural limitation you keep hitting, such as a backhand that cannot be developed further from your hand position, and ideally only with a coach guiding it. Switching because a player you admire uses something different is not a reason.

What is far more often worth changing is finger position and grip pressure within your existing grip. Those corrections take days rather than months and fix most of what people hope a grip change will address. Our dedicated guide on holding the paddle covers both in detail.

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