what do you picture as you execute your strokes ?

It's not about winning. If speed works out for that's fine, but for most people speed won't work. There are so many positive aspects of playing with spin.
You automatically have more consistently, better placement and play more calmly. The risk your running into with speed is that you tense up in games, which will decrease the speed in your shot. You'll often only play the ball on the table without placement and since you always need to be in perfect position to play with speed your consistency will also drop. Of course I'm talking about the shots were both players still haven't taken full control over the point. Once your opponent is in a defensive position, most of the time it is better to kill than to play spin.

fatt wrote: Many coaches disagree but I keep swearing by "speed is king, speed is better than spin, spin is speed's helper." I should say the ball is king and we must do what it wants but before we need to define what that is: the ball wants to land on the other side and not come back. From its perspective, it wants to be free, get away from the table and live its ball's life not being struck again and again. If we want to be good people, we have to help the ball realize its dream and for that, speed is best. Spin borrows from speed helping the ball land on the table and more spin than necessary to achieve that is a waste of speed, it means more time for the opponent to get in position.  We can control incoming spin with technique, bat angle, following through the block and all, but we can't deal with a ball faster than our brain and footwork.

balldance wrote: I always wondering this as well. People talk about speed and power like they are two separate things. I don't get it. If speed means the speed of the ball, then what is power?

mjamja wrote: Maybe instead of power we should think more in terms of total energy. The ball has both energy due to its linear motion and from its rotational motion. How difficult it is to return is a result of the combination of the two. Mark

Sorry, Mark you never loop with the backhand!

@balldance
I might have worded my question wrong. I'm not asking which ball is faster when it bounces on the table. What I'm asking is how the spin influences the loss of speed and spin in the air. So if more spin has a positive or negative influence to the air resistance.

blahness wrote: There's basically just a few elements to shot quality, i.e how early the opponent hits it, how much power (ball speed+spin), and the spin to speed ratio, and of course placement. It's not rocket science. It's much harder to block incoming topspins with very high levels of spin and speed (which is usually what is described as high power shots). Harimoto's shots are taken earlier which is why it appears faster, but doesn't necessarily have a lot of power especially compared to guys like Fan Zhendong for e.g... I believe if you compare the balls coming from Harimoto and Fan Zhendong, Fan Zhendong also imparts a lot more spin onto the ball compared to Harimoto at the same ball speeds which makes it "heavier". I believe lots of interviews are mistranslated because words in the Chinese language have many subtleties which don't translate well...

you can't play fast and with a lot of spin. You can play a mix of both, but it'll be slower than someone playing fast. Marcos Freitas said something like that when reviewing his blade on tabletennisdaily's channel.

Since physic are getting addressed here, I'd like to ask a question. The ball loses a lot of spin and speed on its way to the opponent, especially with the plastic ball. Lets just say there are two topspins. Both have the same speed, but one has way more spin. How does the spin influence the loss of speed and spin to the other side of the table? if you put more spin on the ball, does it slow the ball down even more in the air or less? Of course power is the wrong word from a scientifically standpoint. But then a lot of things that were discussed on the forum over the years would also just be pseudoscience. And I'll say this again. When talking about table tennis the feelings have a big impact on how we perceive things. If we look at equipment for example. There might be tiny difference in blades or rubbers or woods, which would almost be irrelevant. Yet when talking about them we can really feel huge differences between them. The dwell from an allwood compared to an alc for example. There is slightly more dwell time on the allwood. But when playing with an allwood it almost feels like the ball is staying 1-2 seconds longer on the racket.

There's basically just a few elements to shot quality, i.e how early the opponent hits it, how much power (ball speed+spin), and the spin to speed ratio, and of course placement. It's not rocket science. It's much harder to block incoming topspins with very high levels of spin and speed (which is usually what is described as high power shots).

Harimoto's shots are taken earlier which is why it appears faster, but doesn't necessarily have a lot of power especially compared to guys like Fan Zhendong for e.g... I believe if you compare the balls coming from Harimoto and Fan Zhendong, Fan Zhendong also imparts a lot more spin onto the ball compared to Harimoto at the same ball speeds which makes it "heavier".

I believe lots of interviews are mistranslated because words in the Chinese language have many subtleties which don't translate well...

Edited by blahness - 10/05/2018 at 11:47pm

I read something about speed, spin and power a few years ago. I can't remember if it was liu guoliang commenting on his players, or just someone writing. If I remember correctly liu guoliang talked about want liquin, ma lin and wang hao. He said that wang liquin has power and speed, but lacks spin. Whilst ma Lin had speed and spin, but was lacking power. Wang hao was the next generation combining all three elements in his forehand. Couldn't find it online, but maybe someone also read this and remembers.

Tt Gold wrote: Science disagrees with a lot of things that we, the players, perceive. Things like dwell time on different woods. Table tennis has a lot to do with feelings and that's something that should be taken into account here. I consider a more powerful shot harder to block for example. I always explain the difference between power and speed by talking about the feeling of the racket when blocking those shots. A fast ball feels comfortable when blocking, but a powerful shot feels uncomfortable when blocking. It's not the spin that makes it hard to block. I guess it's the way the racket responds to the ball. In feels like The racket is shaking a little and you have to put in more effort to put the ball on the table. I had a lot of guys say that there racket is shaking when blocking those shots.

There are only two things, speed and spin. If a shot is harder to block it has more of one thing or the other, or both. There is not some other special property called power which disagrees with science, is neither speed or spin, and makes it harder to block. It is the spin or it is the speed. It can only be one of those two things (or both). It is the way you feel it on the racquet, but those are the two things you feel.

Science disagrees with a lot of things that we, the players, perceive. Things like dwell time on different woods. Table tennis has a lot to do with feelings and that's something that should be taken into account here. I consider a more powerful shot harder to block for example. I always explain the difference between power and speed by talking about the feeling of the racket when blocking those shots. A fast ball feels comfortable when blocking, but a powerful shot feels uncomfortable when blocking. It's not the spin that makes it hard to block. I guess it's the way the racket responds to the ball. In feels like The racket is shaking a little and you have to put in more effort to put the ball on the table. I had a lot of guys say that there racket is shaking when blocking those shots.

When evaluating ball quality I like to consider speed (of the ball), spin, and placement (depth and/or location).

When evaluating tactics I like to consider quickness. A push right off the bounce puts more pressure on opponent than waiting until the ball starts to drop. Same for blocks and loops.

I also think there is a perceptual problem in how we judge speed. If the ball takes longer to get to us we perceive it to be slower. But a faster ball may take longer to get to us not because it is slower, but because it has more distance to cover.

Maybe instead of power we should think more in terms of total energy. The ball has both energy due to its linear motion and from its rotational motion. How difficult it is to return is a result of the combination of the two.

Mark

obesechopper wrote: You can slap someone in the face, really fast right? But it wont hurt all that much. Power is the force behind it. Like if someone did the same slap but with their weight behind it. Speed + mass etc. So you can do speedy hits without much power, or speedy hits with a lot of force behind it.

Power is the ability to produce ball speed nothing more.

If you slap someone in the face really fast it will hurt like hell.

PythonMonty wrote: Tt Gold wrote: Harimoto [compared to FZD] has more speed and spin in his backhand. But it doesn't have as much power. If Harimoto's backhand has more speed and spin then it has more power. For practical purposes, power in a table tennis shot equals speed plus spin. Depth of the shot on the table counts in terms of how much of the power gets to the opponent. So by power do you mean the depth of the shot? Or do you mean that FZD generates power in this backhand more efficiently, with faster recovery, etc.?