So after viscaria + t05

After joola rhyzer + tibhar chila

After donic persson powerplay + donic coppa gold

After dhs long 5 + t05

You name it, I tried it....

I went to the slowest equipment on planet earth.

Tibhar lebesson, sanwei t88-I fh, sanwei target bh.

And yesterday I lost to all the guys who have a similar level to mine.

3-0, 3-1

It wasn't very close.

Conclusion?

Equipment DOES NOT MATTER.

I can play with anything inverted and it doesn't make a difference.

The difference is how often I train and how intensively I do.

There, I said the truth, now you can start talking about mjamja's shadow tt in the toilet followed by kayaking in the amazonas and getting his racket eaten by a crocodile.

serr wrote: So you went for a slower racket and immediately started losing. That implies equipment does matter, I don't know what your logic here is.

No, I played with the slow setup many times.

In the beginning I thought maybe it made a small difference, cause I had a couple of good victories (I always play with the same guys inthe club)

Yesterday it was clear.

It doesn't matter.

What matters is how often I play, how much I train, how fast I am, how agile I am...

Yep... just watch Lubomir Pistej play with a hard bat. I think he could destroy most forum members with it.

The sentence is incomplete. It should say "Equipment does not matter for ME" (meaning you).

I can think of many people who's playing style is not much affected by choice of rubber.  In fact, mjamja's recent posts of FH choice of rubber (it doesn't seem to matter which he uses) may reflect that for *him* and "his style*, the choice of rubber doesn't matter.  Even in that case, there are limits; all the rubbers he's tried have sticky top sheets and I'm not sure how it would affect his game if he changed to something radically different.

The real point is that the choice of rubbers for amateurs is very personal, because our styles and techniques tend to be very unique to each of us.

I would say that equipment matters in that sufficiently bad equipment choices can make you worse. 

I would also say that there are gazillions of blades and rubbers made for pretty much the same kind of player and that given a bit of time to get used to the subtle changes needed to accommodate the properties of any one blade rubber combination, the following will happen: 

You will still be you.

well said. equipment matters. training matters more. you can make things worse, but lots of equipment choices that are more similar than dissimilar.

close I mean 1 month ago or less.

training done in previous years helps a bit, but it has much much much less weight than recent training time.

now you can go back to talking about which blade is good for the 9th ball when the air is humid and I am playing with a nittaku 2 star abs airbag polykamousious ball.

Hmm. Well if someone put in a lot of work at one point and gained a greater understanding/ability in TT...is it like a riding bike? I think so. I think once you get that better forehand (or whatever) you never really lose it.

What the training up to the event does is make sure the contact is solid, timing is correct, equipment adjustments and over all TT fitness.

Equipment matters to me - a little bit. I can't use Chinese inverted rubber (or pips or anti). My counter-hitting and pushing just dies. I'm used to the euro/jp catapult. Nothing wrong with Chinese rubber, but it is just a little too different to quickly switch. Now given practically any inverted euro/jp rubber I pretty much play the same and I'm sure could adjust in a few hours and in that sense, you are quite right. Body, footwork, ball reading, returning, serving, all of that matters so much more.

Try looping with these things...its impossible for a beginner. How can you teach looping to someone if the equipment does not allow the person to loop?

serr wrote: So you went for a slower racket and immediately started losing. That implies equipment does matter, I don't know what your logic here is.

+1

I'm only talking about inverted rubbers.

I said it many times....

I have a very clear example, my main setup is Ovtcharov Carbospeed + Omega V Tour + T05.

But I wanted to try a backup blade I have (Ma Lin Carbon) and glued an unboosted H3N + AK47 Yellow. This thing simply did not have power enough to win the points I´m used to do. So, I was forced to put more power and errors were multiplied. Lost 2 matches in a row to my practice partner, whose level is the same of mine.

Then got back to my main setup and won the third match winning points the way I always do.

Well of course you need time to get used to the new equipment.

But after you do, you might find nothing has changed.

Today played some more with the setup of the humble man.

Lebesson, t88-I, target

Won some, lost some.... In the end, nothing has changed.

A better educated population reaps rewards everywhere, most importantly in TT discourse 

This is wrong in many aspects

How you can be so daring to have that early conclusions with a couple of matches with your club partners?

I think that requires much more extended testing& longer time to get a proper conclusion. 

it's just that you don't read.

I said I played many times with this chinese setup.

Borrowing a term from cycling, people who EJ are often looking for "marginal gains" as they switch from one blade to another and one rubber to another, often among items with quite similar properties.  Every once in awhile someone finds one.  But a lot of the time it is just an endless cycle and, as someone else mentioned, a lot of people switch around pretty quickly.  Actually, at one point I did that a lot, often deciding after a single session that a particular rubber was not going to work out (but I at least I had more or less decided on Butterfly ALC blades a long time ago).  In retrospect, a big waste of time and money.

At some point I just got tired of trying new stuff, and have sold most of the stuff I will never use.

(By the way, I still have two Ovtcharov True Carbon ST blades if anyone is interested).

* The concept of marginal gains in road cycling as propounded by British Cycling and later Team Sky is that if you make enough tiny changes that give you a barely detectable advantage -- a gram here, a couple of watts there, they will add up enough to amount to a significant edge.  Problem is that in TT that aren't that many things we can mess with.

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Not to say my match views are all encompassing, but more often than not it seems to hold true, and those mis-hits might be the difference in the match at pro levels.

ask him to use his 2019 rubbers and blade without booster and he will loose all his matches as well 

yes, quite true, fully agree with you. 

[sarcasm] Equipment really does not matter. A pro can beat a beginner with a clipboard  [/sarcasm]

Equipment choices can matter.  But often it seems not to. 

FdT

It's funny you mention that, because it is such a classic move for many to do after a missed shot. I remember people doing this all the way back in the early 80s. I think it's a bad habit that many adopts, more than anything. Like saying "cho", for example. (not that saying"cho" is bad, but that it easily becomes habitual). I don't think people actually look at the rubber with a sense of it mis-performing, but more so to see if there's a piece of debris or a drop of sweat or something like that on it. The same way people will wipe the table surface after a miss. I mean "it must be something that's 'wrong' with the table... or the rubber... because I couldn't POSSIBLY miss that shot" is what is trying to be communicated. Sort of silly, of course - and with no ill intend. It's interesting that you say Chinese players don't do that. I must admit I've never noticed. Perhaps that type of reaction/habit would be frowned upon in China - I don't know. Regardless, I certainly don't think any kind of "questioning the equipment" should be read into these reactions.

The full match is available, better than those 7 min highlights...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nf_YcaIVvI" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nf_YcaIVvI

Schlager's face at 12-12 in the 7th!!! He was not going to lose that day!

my detonators.....

Today's setup was

Donic crest off

Joola rhyzer 48 in fh

Joola rhyzer 48 in bh

Felt pretty good to go back to fast equipment.

Much easier to play in general.

Results were also good.

I don't think I'll be going back to the slow paddle for now....

Lol you're really an EJ eh....

edit: the Vega Pro blade is discontinued but some are still FS in ST and FL at paddle palace and various Amazon stores like the http://www.amazon.com/s?me=A2Z8WXH83LXGV" rel="nofollow - PingPongHouse  for example.

https://www.amazon.com/XIOM-Vega-Pro-FL-Blade/dp/B012BHU4PK" rel="nofollow - https://www.amazon.com/XIOM-Vega-Pro-FL-Blade/dp/B012BHU4PK

But I did feel the contrary a few times.

"wow, there's no way I could have done that shot with the slow setup".

mainly in shots where I didn't have much time and had to use the power of the racket.

is this possible?

is it easier to play with faster bouncier setup?

this seems to be the conclusion.

Yes! Now I remember this match and Kong looking at his racket like "WTF?". See, I was totally wrong. 

edit: from DLC1325 says, I think it is at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nf_YcaIVvI&t=806" rel="nofollow - 13m26sec , at 1-1 in games, klh to serve and leading 2-0. klh almost says exactly that if we read his lips "WTF?"

by the way look at 1 0 in games and 1-1, Schlager to serve twice at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nf_YcaIVvI&t=464" rel="nofollow - 7m44s . Incredible 2 serves, the 2nd one being kind of humiliating . It's hard to believe they can fool themselves at that level yet apparently it's possible. klh does the same later at http://youtu.be/0nf_YcaIVvI?t=1732" rel="nofollow - 28m52s .

That is YOUR conclusion buddy

Please by all means swap your Viscaria with 

my Dhs PG7. 

Yeah, that ball died pretty hard @13:26. And those were some brutal Schlager serves!

I've had this though a lot lately--I should use a slower blade/rubbers when in reality all my problems could be solved by relaxing more. Personally I find the equipment doesn't make that huge of a difference but my confidence that I can make the ball do what I want with it does. If I tell myself a setup is really fast I tend to tighten up instead of really bringing out the touch.

maybe I will switch between them.

sometimes use the slow, sometimes the fast.

so I don't lose the custom to hit the ball hard I acquired with the slow.

Today I used a rather strange combination.

Tibhar lebesson

Fh - butterfly rozena

Bh - sanwei target

Kind of the opposite of what the chinese pros use.

Rozena felt really good in the fh.

It gave me a lot of power but I still had control.

I think unboosted chinese rubber in the fh is not for me.

and I don't want to boost.

so I guess I'll have to use euro fh.

In the bh the sanwei I like it because I can hit super hard.

I think this is actually improving my bh technique.

For now I will keep using this setup.....

hard, fast, but it's around 95g and with a rather big head.

lebesson is like 83g and with a small head.

the lower weight and smaller head felt pretty good.

power there's more than enough with the butterfly rozena.

it's a pretty fast rubber....

actually after using unboosted h3 for some time it really feels like a rocket.

Any setup you choose requires time to get used to. 20 hours of play - at least. If you need an advise ...

Since your EJ is not going to go anywhere soon one of the ways to put you back on track is this. Have two setups. Do not change anything in one of the setups for 2 months. No matter what, you loose or you win, just do not change. For EJ fun have another setup but play it no more than 30 minutes in the beginning of every training. It will give you time to satisfy EJ but also will not have too much effect on the rest of the training. Body takes 30 min to warmup anyway. After you feel like warmed up, go for prime racket and keep it for the rest of the evening. For 2 months.

Regardless of what you are going to choose as main racket, either slow or fast, head heavy or well balanced ... in the end of the second month you will like it (the first signs of it will come in 3 weeks). 183 - 188g is the best.

Obviously you can skip the second setup all together, if you can. Can you?

I have already reached my training and physical skill peak.

Right now I'm on the way down.

So I'm not trying to reach anything.

I just play for fun.

I don't even train now, I just go, warmup and play some matches.

just once a week.

also I don't have any more options to try.

so for now it stays lebesson, rozena in fh, sanwei in bh.

donic crest off with joola rhyzer both sides is also in the same bag, so it may jump to the playing field every now and then.

ohh.... there's another problem.

I have coming

-729-08

-dhs h3 37 degrees

-haifu whale III soft

so I'm gonna have to give them a try sometime.

I don't care much about rankings and ratings and who I beat and who beats me.

I'm more like the mad scientist of table tennis at this point 

it's a good combo but....

1- the crest felt pretty hard compared to the lebesson.

I'm not sure this is good.

2- I lost a match

so.... not sure, next time might go back to lebesson.

Hell, I even used my wife's $15 HRT Crysal Carbon blade with 1.9 Air Illuminas and everything was the same. My loops were just as spinny, etc., etc. Maybe I will take my wife's advice and just use a piece of plywood from Home Depot with some tire rubber. 

When is equipment well chosen , is not reason for next changes , but EJ virus  is definitely against.

My best advice is similary as Fmareks advice - to have secondary equipment for fun  , but all forces  concentrate for main setup.

Second advice - more oriented sight on fitness , footwork , tactics e.t.c.

I know , it is not very popular , but it is effectiwe way for progress.

we're slowly opening the eyes of the world!!!! 

I'd dearly love to see a clip of the "missilization". Was it a high throw trajectory after the loss? :-)