Hello, This is the best match out of 5 or 6 that i recorded, others had more mistakes, so may want to take this into consideration for rating?

Do you  notice any other tips or wrong doings or rough USATT?

Thanks, Murray

Does anyone think any higher or lower for USATT?

I would rate you between 1400 - 1500 USATT, given that you said this is your best match out of 5 or 6, and you are playing a friend.  The USATT ratings are all from tournament matches, and most people play worse under tournament pressure against strangers than they do against friends at their club.  

You played a lot of defensive or just keeping the ball in play shots, kind of soft and high, letting your friend miss.  You also retreat from the table quite a bit.  I don't think you would be able to do that with 1700s.  And you tried several BH flip service returns, good for you, but you missed some of them, so free points to your opponent.  

I worded that wrong. That was the best set out of our best of 7 (i won 2 sets, he won 4) - none were way worse or way better though.

I would be very appreciative if anyone would be willing to watch a this 3 minute clip (its the best points out of 30-40min best of 7) and if you have any USATT number thoughts or tips?

Thanks, murray

Since you asked, honestly you seem to be on the level with several players at our club so I would say 1200-1300. Not trying to be mean. Simply what I see.

I think 1400-1500 as stated earlier is a little on the generous side. Take Dave here from our club who is rated 1493 according to ratingscentral.com

He's in the bright red and a cerebral all around type of player.

Now onto the more important stuff. Takeaways from your game. 

I'm a penholder so that might effect my outlook but I'd like to see a little more aggression or power play. The good news is you're 15 so that'll come in time but when I first saw it I thought "strokes look a little robotic." Then a second later I'd see a pretty forehand. 

Then at 2:22... ?  Why camp at the middle of the table passively blocking that ball in play? You're in position to rip that backhand or step around for a big forehand. You lost that point by the way when you were in prime position to finish it off. IMO you camp in the middle of the table simply blocking a pinch too much.

Your consistency looks pretty good to me as far as keeping the ball in play. That's a valuable skill to have.

Just my 2 cents.

Could anybody put down the equivalency between the two rating systems, eg 1000 Cdn = xxUS; 1300 Cdn = etc.  And why the big discrepancy?

great to have a conversion table, but is there a typo?

1700 US x 1.667-950= 1883

1800 US x 2.6667-3650 = 1150?

Honestly I think there's a bit of generalizing going on here. 

Do I doubt you've run into Americans who have an inflated sense of ego? I'm sure you have. What's that sample size? 10 people that you can think of? 20?... 1000? ;)

The best player at our club has won our state games competition 9 out of the last 10 years, is in his 40s and trained as a child in Europe with professional academy. Long story short, he's a very good player by all accounts. I've never once heard him talk about his rating and he's one of the nicest guys around. 

All I'm saying is be careful when painting with a broad brush categorizing a certain type of people.

I know my strokes are robotic, im having a really hard time fixing it though! got any tips or exersises i can do to try fix it (i probably need more elbow movement too). 

And i found that in the previous match i did far worse by attack and missing, then in this one i started close blocking on my backhand more and suddenly i was doing far better by the score board. Is it better to risk the attack than block against players like this (player that i know will attack when i block, and are likely to attack faster than they can and miss eventually)?

Thanks, Murray

In Northern California, that level would be 1300's at best..

LULZ... youz a funny cat. 

Woah that was from way out in left field. Took it political talking housing market in a table tennis forum.

Kinda feel like you're defeating your own argument by letting your personal feelings get in the way. We get it. you're anti American. Read you loud and clear. 

That's nonsense.  The top rated Canadian is Eugene Wang with a TTCAN rating of 3952 and USATT rating of 2802.  The top rated US player is Kewei Li whose USATT rating is 2755.  Kewei defeated Eugene at the 2014 Cary Cup recently.  If anything, the Canadian system gives one an inflated ego. 

Perhaps the bottom one should be:

1) BH flick - you can slow down your motion and wait for the ball to come in more, focus on spinning it rather crushing it

2) FH loop drive - it's a great stroke, but you dont really get back to ready position, you seem to stare at your shot like "man that was an amazing shot". i only saw it happen twice, but the other guy blocked it back and you were caught off guard and out of position, so be sure to get back and ready after each shot

3) BH block - you seem to favor a block on your BH and that's okay and your block is fairly consistent (given the 2mins of video)

4) Smashing - you missed 1-2 smashes and that's just something you have to practice.

5) Step-around forehand - you did this a few times and it was good, try to do it more because your forehand is just stronger than your backhand.

In terms of rating, i agree with others, just dont worry about it too much. In the mid-west you're probably 1300-1400. But you are still developing as a player so i would just work on strokes and gameplay, worry about ratings later.

And i found that in the previous match i did far worse by attacking more and missing, then in this one i started close blocking on my backhand more and suddenly i was doing far better by the score board. Is it better to risk the attack than block against players like this (player that i know will attack when i block, and are likely to attack faster than they can and miss eventually)?

Thanks

this is good for lower level play, because after 2-3 loops, they will probably miss or be out of position, but the higher the level, the more consistent everyone is and they will be able to keep hitting those loops until you miss one

i would say keep blocking because it is a necessary skill to have at all levels, but work on backhand attacks in practice until you are confident enough to use them in matches

For the OP:

I think ive started some sort of mass political warfare :/

How ever does the fun sport of table tennis lead men onto fighting about US ego!

I ussually topspin the ball alot more but I was finding against this oponent (this was the 3rd or 4th set)  blocking consistently on backhand was working. I guess ill push myself to attack more in training. My backhand attack is ussualy very good (far better than many higher ranked oponents) although my forehand is "robotic" (decribed earlier and by a coach). Any tips or routines I can use to fix this robotic forehand? 

Thanks for the advice

There is a new troll on the forum, that's how.

Also, in the video - you're not sure about what type of style you want to play. It might be useful to pick one style (initially) and stick to it for a period of time. Positioning and footwork are different for different styles. 

I would suggest start with offensive/aggressive style - basically look to attack or to setup the attack on majority of the strokes. Focus on technique/strategy and not too much on the results.

If results are the priority as BBA said above - focusing on serve and service returns give you the best results.

The easiest way to improve is to develop better loops on both sides.  Footwork is probably the hardest way to improve.

I think you should improve your ability to topspin on both sides - nothing that your opponent was doing looked special enough to make someone like you scared if you had the right strokes.  You don't time the ball to generate heavy spin so your strokes are relatively low quality.  Your backhand is consistent for what it is, but as someone who once made a living with that kind of backhand hit, trust me, if you had a real backhand topspin, you would be ending the point with one shot or spin the ball once, get your opponent to pop up the ball, then put it away with your current backhand hit.

To fix your robotic forehand, develop a good forehand loop that generates spin.  This will require you to get your body parts moving synchronously and to have a looser wrist that allows you to vary your contact point on the ball so you can hit the ball early, late or at the top of the bounce with decent quality.  To gain racket head speed, these are some of the levers: feet/ankles, knees, waist/abs, shoulder, elbow/forearm, and wrist. You get those parts moving as fast as possible, time the ball by using your racket angle to hit a point on the ball, make the contact as silent as possible to show that you can impart rotation to the ball, and then start varying how heavy or silent you can make that contact to affect your spin.

Develop a good loop against backspin as the first step on your journey.  Practicing making the ball arc.  You are using looping equipment but not to loop - the way you play, you could just as well use pips.

Below is a video of a modern backhand, which is what you should emulating:

Without proper footwork - the only thing that will quickly develop is "bad technique"!

Sure - so does your coach have to move anywhere to beat you?  I think an honest answer to that question will place the emphasis where it belongs.  This is a racket sport first and foremost so  stroke quality and consistency comes first and to the degree footwork aids that, it is important.  If you can hit the ball past your opponent or to spots where they have trouble returning, that is more important than "footwork".   The problem is that footwork is used as a catch all for many things, some important and which should be built into stroke technique, and some less so, which are used by coaches to make money off students who wonder why they play for 12 years and never improve.  

Why not suggest to learn to play like pushblocker! The question OP asked was how to improve his game - not win. No, my coach doesn't have to move to beat me, another coach beat me sitting on a chair - but do they teach those techniques - NO! Racquet sports - most important thing is footwork - it's probably true for every other sport. To say learn to loop without proper footwork - is plain wrong! 

If footwork only means crossover steps and flying from side to side then OP should forget about it for now.  

I guess ill try a variety of forehand routines today

Actually the way you play reminds me a little of chubby(Fan Zhendong). I think you should watch allot of his matches and try to emulate his play style and stroke mechanics. Especially on the BH side. Watching him will also give you a better idea for when to block vs when to attack with the BH.

I like the way you use your BH in general. To improve upon what you are already doing I would say you need to be more active with your block. Make it more of a punch block and make more sharp directional changes. Again like FZD. Hard to tell from your vid whether or not you grip switch but I think you would benefit from more bias on your BH as I think this would close the paddle more and make your BH attacking shots more comfortable. Right now the paddle is too open which is, in part, why the ball sails long as there is not allot top spin. If you don't want to change your grip then you will need to bend your wrist more than you already do to close the blade. 

I don't see any major issues with your FH other than you don't use it enough and of course more spin. For the grip on the FH I would suggest a neutral grip and make sure you don't bend your wrist too much. 

Grip switching is not a big deal and can really solve allot of problems with certain stroke mechanics. 

That is a good question, and it is my main point.  Those things are largely stroke technique and balance and are important even when you don't move that much.  Moreover, there are players who know how to topspin without them or who develop workarounds.   An arm loop is not consistently powerful, but it is an essential technique when you are late to the ball and can be decent for the right kind of player who can consistently reflect pace all the time with a controlled stroke.  The key is that as long as you have good timing, how you generate racket head speed is about your inner strength and technique and some techniques (the traditional ones) are sounder than others for health, power and flexibility reasons.

Does it limit your ceiling if you can't move to the ball consistently?  Sure and I experience this all the time.  But does that mean that improving your movement is the easiest way to improve?  No.  It all begins with the stroke.  

I would rather that rather than using the abused term "footwork", that people speak about balance and movement.  Balance is important.  Movement is important when you meet a player whose strokes are on the same level as yours as the ball is always going to come back.  Strokes are always important because their quality largely establish your level.  My coach once told me when I was coming up that I hit the ball away from people but that if I had a good stroke, I would actually be able to spin the ball at them and get them to miss.  Initially, I thought he was joking, but as I got better, I understood exactly what he meant.  If I play a player under 1500, I don't even bother waiting for the ball to come back on the table when I loop - bad habit, I know.

This video is from a recent tournament 2 13 year olds playing: Kanak Jha has excellent footwork (Blue). Might help to watch them.

I think you are missing the point and drawing too many parallels to other sports where there is much more ground to cover to play.   OP has good movement.  He is 15 already - unless he decided to dedicate his life to table tennis, the boat of top level footwork and form has largely passed him by.  If he had access to the right kind of coaching, he would not be on this website.

Why would anyone be telling him to blindly(without information) emulate Kanak Jha who basically plays Table Tennis ALL the time and is the most talented junior in the US?

VGriper pointed out that OP's paddle is too open for most of his shots - that is linked to his stroke technique - if he knew how to generate heavy topspin (or the benefits of doing so), he wouldn't be doing that.

Strokes, strokes, strokes...  anything that makes your stroke better and more consistent should be the focus.

In fact, when you have the right stroke, you want to move to the ball because you know you have a chance of returning it with quality.  When you don't, you let the ball go because you know that even if you touch it, you aren't putting it on the table.

Well we'll have to agree to disagree on this one Nextlevel. In my opinion - if you're feet are not in the proper position - there is no way you can hit a proper stroke. But if you've found a way to do that might want to teach it.

I linked the Khank Jha - video because they are about the same age and in my opinion Jha has very good movement and good stroke mechanics - thought would be a good example of proper form and technique. 

 

No one is always on time to do the proper stroke - the key is to (intuitively) understand the physics of  generating racket head speed, ball point contact theory and good timing to produce the contact you need when you are late to the ball (as a looper especially).  The proper stroke is the ideal for when you get to the ball on time or when you are not forced to move to the ball - the less than ideal stroke should retain what elements of the proper stroke are necessary to stay in the rally because depending on the opponent, that might just be enough!  A good shot doesn't have to be a hard hit shot - it could be a ball with sidespin or a slow ball that one can misread the amount of the spin on the ball and put it in the net or off the table.  Because the OP doesn't topspin, he doesn't have the touch to produce such balls when he is out of position.

 

The gap between Kanak Jha's level of play and the OP may not be bridged in 4 years of daily training if it can be bridged in a lifetime.  When you show a lower level player a higher level player, they tend to look at all the wrong things unless they have achieved a level of play where they are ready for what is missing.  The OP is so far away from that level of play that what you are pointing out might just confuse him. Pushblocker is 2300 so even pushblocker's level of play will confuse the OP (as it confuses many on this website who just don't understand it).  I play a 1900-2000 level penhold push blocker in my club whose game is built around heavy spin reversal so I appreciate what it takes to play that game, even though I am sure there are nuances to Pushblocker's game that I may miss because I don't fully get it.

 

He is looping against chop so his stroke is more vertical but he can counter topspin with a similar but more horizontan stroke while generating his own topspin.

 

Finally, in order to make shay2be slightly more humble, I posted the set he lost ;).

 

not in the tristate area lol. they'd be around 1100-1300 USATT. and there's some discrepancies in canadian system at the lower levels bc it scales up quickly where chen hongtao is 3807 and wang zhen is 3952. i beat 1700's from canada easily when i was 1400.

*oh. just saw the conversion.

Finally, here is me playing an 1800 level junior.  My opponent did two things well - serve underspin (the lefty serve gives me the spin I hate the most and for some reason, I was having trouble looping that serve) and challenge my movement.  But my point is still that the main reason I got better at dealing with such players was that I learned how to play a quality ball.  Not because I move better.  I translated more of my stroke into spin and improved my balance.  But my mobility and footwork are still as bad as they were when I was 1200 - but the strokes are far more advanced.

 

 

To show that this is largely about strokes, a match that I never post... I didn't even record it...

 

 

Why not post your video with your sterling footwork? 

 

The bottom line is that when you are not a junior with lots of time to dedicate to the game or you weren't drilled daily as a child, footwork is hard to learn.  Work on your stroke.

After seeing your video - I understand your point of view. However, the OP is not tall as you are, doesn't have your knee problems. So I don't think your advice is appropriate for him. 

I think it's best to develop good habits as early as you can. 

Had to look up 'polemic'....nice one! 

I used to swing with my arms rather than using the legs and body. Now, I am trying to do it "correctly" using the legs and body - it take a little getting used to, but I believe I can generate much better shots. Provided I can keep my body relaxed through the stroke. Not always successful, especially in league matches - close games have to catch myself going to the arm method. 

But I think the OP has some good advice  and various opinions in thread, also some samples of how various people do it. Have fun and good luck. 

NextLevel - with your knee problems have considered a hitting/blocking style such as Hei Zhe Wen? Would think that would much easier on knees.

Agree 100%! 

An amateur player with no dreams of becoming a regional champion should worry first about the stroke itself and the micro footwork that comes with it. Macro footwork should only come into the picture much later, if ever.

  

 

"I would say the easiest way to improve is to focus on footwork."

 

Micro footwork is about things like foot positioning and balance and how they affect the ability to do weight transfer to improve stroke speed and recovery.  For example, if you hit your forehand out of a backhand stance, your footwork needs to be corrected.  If you look at OP, he almost never does this.  In fact, he may be guilty of hitting too many shots out of a backhand stance, but that all depends on how he intends to play but is a more advanced footwork error (but again, may not be if he has the athleticism to support it).  MAcro footwork would be more about covering larger distances, and while it helps advanced players, it is not the reason why most players lose points at the lower level.  In fact, players who never use it get as high as 2300.

 

The "correct method" is what fits into the player's goals. 

There is no such thing as micro/macro footwork - it's just stuff you're making up. 

Good luck to the OP - hope he improves his game!

Lestat said what I wanted to say best.  My original point was where to get the most bang for your buck in terms of TT improvement.  I was trying to tell OP that he should be more ambitious about improving his stroke mechanics - it's hard to find a single quality topspin in the original video.  Jrscatman said he should work on his footwork with a Kanak Jha model.  Nothing annoys me more than people being told to work on their footwork (especially in this case where the footwork is decent) when the real problem lack of good strokes.

1600 US - Level 1 coach Canadian Coaching Certification

Yes, there is. NextLevel put it well, you might call it whatever you like but if you don't make a differentiation between positioning footwork needed to perform a stroke and footwork needed to reach out to a ball FAST, what do you actually know about footwork? Most amateur players with good knees could do the first well, very few the second.

You went for a coaching certificate so you've obviously considered coaching. You will learn this soon enough, hamper an adult player with distance footwork drills and they won't be back.

Having had a quick look at the OPs video, footwork in terms of mobility is not a problem for him. He's keen to move, his feet are fast enough and he looks eager to learn. He just doesn't know what to do with himself at the table. I recommend a bunch of sessions with a good coach, sooner rather than later.