Print Page | Close Window

random TT diary of sorts

Printed From: Alex Table Tennis - MyTableTennis.NET
Category: Coaching & Tips
Forum Name: Coaching & Tips
Forum Description: Learn more about TT from the experts. Feel free to share your knowledge & experience.
Moderator: yogi_bear
Assistant Moderators: APW46, smackman
URL: http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=91376
Printed Date: 03/28/2024 at 4:30am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.01 - http://www.webwizforums.com


Topic: random TT diary of sorts
Posted By: blahness
Subject: random TT diary of sorts
Date Posted: 02/08/2022 at 8:26am
Just some braindumps for myself to refer back to.

There's a way to block down powerful loopers very well, which is to move your blade sideways (BH to the left, and FH to the right) by extending (straightening) the forearm - this will help to take off a lot of incoming momentum and spin which allows a lot more control. The plus point is that it can even be used for super wide angle loops (you get a lot more reach as you extend your arm), and with the sideways movement you can add a subtle chop movement with the wrist to make it a chopblock. Got the idea from Hao Shuai who uses this extensively. However it can't really be used to add power to weaker incoming balls, so the shot selection is quite critical as counterattacking is quite important against steady consistent players - so ideally I would use this to block down high quality topspins, and then loop the weaker balls back hard. It's super good against 3rd ball attackers who don't recover well for the 2nd loop. 

For BH power, rely more on the squat/unsquat mechanism and push off both feet. If ball is too wide to the left, then push off the left leg. If ball is too wide to the right, push off the right leg. This makes the BH a lot more versatile and less likely to get jammed. I tried a bit of the rotation style but kept getting jammed so gave up on it. Pull the elbow towards the right during the BH stroke as it is important source of power (by mobilizing the lats). Still attempting to develop the down the line BH opening loop and the BH fade topspin during topspin rallies - that seems to be the huge missing link in my game.









-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(



Replies:
Posted By: SURF
Date Posted: 02/09/2022 at 12:39pm
Hi, do you have any footage of you doing backhand opening loop down the line?  We can analyze it, if you are interested.

My guess is that you are used to hitting ball perpendicular to the line of play so you can not adjust arm joints to create full stroke. If I am right about this then,

try following:
-  find a line of force that alows straight course of the ball, when your paddle contacts ball in such way that tip of the racket is in front of ball from its left side (if you are right handed). 
This will help a lot. The feeling during shot is like you want to aim for left side of net stand.

- also imagine that you are hitting the ball with the place on your hand where your watches would have face. This will correct your hand movement without spoiling it with wrist movements. 

- once you get used to it, find proper contact point on the ball and during stroke focus on pressing that point with your right side of the thumb (like you are pressing it to your index finger when you have open palm.

I hope it helps.

Concept of energy focusing will be discussed in future lessons on NEW LEVEL TT channel in graphical form.






-------------
NEW LEVEL TT lessons on YouTube


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/09/2022 at 5:32pm
I can do the BH down the line, it's just a low percentage shot at the moment compared to diagonal.  

The problem with down the line BH is that, it has to be sudden and not telegraphed, otherwise you'll be facing a FH which is quite a bad deal. 

I guess my other issue is that my BH tends to be quite sidespinny (left to right sidespin) which is not ideal when going down the line because it reduces the angle. Ideally it should be a fade topspin when going down the line and I've yet to really learn it (especially against underspin!) - I did a couple yesterday but the percentages just weren't that high. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/09/2022 at 5:42pm
Yesterday I played against someone who rallies really well, and I just couldn't penetrate his defence regardless of what I did, he was stepping back a little and kept returning my hard ish topspins with very spinny miniloops, in the end I always ended up overhitting the ball with it going out lol. 

What I did later to regain control is just to use the angles against him, and not give him any power to work from. Which is also a bit tricky because then he'll start looping hard (which he has a great quality loop) and I had to be ready to block those well. But it's a very good strategy as I ended up winning most of the matches this way (compared to previously when I was powerlooping all the time and still losing bad lol). Placement and spin variation can be very useful when you don't have the firepower to hit through someone. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/10/2022 at 3:51am
My old 2 step method of recovering after the serve (after weight transfer to left leg, reach with the right leg and land near the middle of the table, then drag the left leg backwards to bounce on both feet)  has reached its limit imo and is just not fast enough to deal with off the bounce returns. Recently watched a Pechpong video on this and decided to learn the more advanced method to cut out the middle step and reach the ready position in 1 single step. So the idea is to bounce off the left leg and then rotate the body to directly land with both feet simultaneously in the ready position. The important part I discovered is to use the head as a pivot point while rotating the body, this will ensure that you're leaning forward, and also there's less movement of the centre of gravity which means it's easier to execute (the feeling is like the position of the head is relatively steady and the entire body rotates around that pivot to reach the ready position)

-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: SURF
Date Posted: 02/10/2022 at 9:29am
You are focusing on the wrong points. Forgot it. It only overcomplicate problem. Simple solution.

next time do only 3 things during serving (as partly described in my videos, whatch it again, if it did not make sense for the first time). 
I did not discussed S/R sequencing yet. It is too early in the series, but here we are...


1) when you serve, at the time ball falls on the paddle you should land opposite leg to the ground.
2) then focus on rotating to ready position BEFORE ball hits opponents side of the table. Obviously lower head and COG. Make sure that your belly points to that spot - when you are in ready pos.  At all costs, do not let ball pass that point!! and watch opponent - wait. 
3) when you see opponents racket start approaching ball (its spit second info), jump back very fast but very little (split step). To make easier for you, try to catch the ball with your eyes, before it crosses the net when you land.

Learn how to count the beats. Your openig shot is at 5. 
for completeness, 4 is your body turn/bending for backswing. (depends on the type of stroke)

if you can do these 3, next 2 actions will feel very fluent. Trust me. You do not need anything alse. I will stop here, let me know if it helped. Record yourself doing so. 

I told that the first 2 videos are the most important for everyones progress. 

Then we will continue. See you.











-------------
NEW LEVEL TT lessons on YouTube


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/10/2022 at 7:02pm
Originally posted by SURF SURF wrote:

You are focusing on the wrong points. Forgot it. It only overcomplicate problem. Simple solution.

next time do only 3 things during serving (as partly described in my videos, whatch it again, if it did not make sense for the first time). 
I did not discussed S/R sequencing yet. It is too early in the series, but here we are...


1) when you serve, at the time ball falls on the paddle you should land opposite leg to the ground.
2) then focus on rotating to ready position BEFORE ball hits opponents side of the table. Obviously lower head and COG. Make sure that your belly points to that spot - when you are in ready pos.  At all costs, do not let ball pass that point!! and watch opponent - wait. 
3) when you see opponents racket start approaching ball (its spit second info), jump back very fast but very little (split step). To make easier for you, try to catch the ball with your eyes, before it crosses the net when you land.

Learn how to count the beats. Your openig shot is at 5. 
for completeness, 4 is your body turn/bending for backswing. (depends on the type of stroke)

if you can do these 3, next 2 actions will feel very fluent. Trust me. You do not need anything alse. I will stop here, let me know if it helped. Record yourself doing so. 

I told that the first 2 videos are the most important for everyones progress. 

Then we will continue. See you.










Yep this is consistent to what Pechpong recommended, and is exactly what I'm trying to implement in my game too.


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/11/2022 at 5:37pm
Tried the new recovery after service and it worked really well, I felt I had a lot more time to prepare a 3rd ball attack after the serve. 

Had a good day in general playing, but my legs really tired out and refused to execute any more FH loops lol.  It was a test of my passive game which I realised works really well - the idea is you don't try to go for winners but rather play out the rally at medium speed and focus on placement until you get an opportunity then you go all out. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: maur1010
Date Posted: 02/12/2022 at 1:48am
The down the line backhand is such a high wining shot I would really work on it. Check out how Harimoto does it. His right hip comes more forward out of the squat so the body rises more in the direction of the ball flight down the line. This body action allows full power for the down the line backhand.


-------------
Level one qualified coach


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/12/2022 at 5:07am
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

The down the line backhand is such a high wining shot I would really work on it. Check out how Harimoto does it. His right hip comes more forward out of the squat so the body rises more in the direction of the ball flight down the line. This body action allows full power for the down the line backhand.

Agreed - the few times I did it they were all direct point winners lol. Unfortunately it's just inconsistent af unlike my diagonal BH :(

I'll try your tip!


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/13/2022 at 1:28am
Today I tried training the fade BH counter (from the middle or FH side), it was quite powerful indeed especially if you combine it with the sidespin BH. So even from the FH side, you can fade to the FH, and then follow up with a block or counter to the deep BH and you generally would have won the point. Alternatively, just loop sidespin to the BH and then fade the next ball to the deep FH. Granted I was testing it against a weaker player lol, but it was close to unsolvable for him, I was winning like 90% of the balls if I used this strategy, and I wasn't even adding a lot of quality on the shot.

Pretty exciting stuff haha...


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/13/2022 at 10:47pm
Need to find some solutions to fast sidetopspin serves to the wide BH exiting the side of the table. I've always tried to loop them, however it's too easy to overhit it and have it fly long especially with spinnier serves because the incoming ball is actually kinda short (the distance to the table is not that great), even if I land them, because the placement is kinda fixed it's often not a direct point winner. More passive returns get countered hard because again they're just waiting in their BH corner to do exactly that. Pushing it is of course out of the question (them being sidetopspin serves with pace).

Thought of a solution to take a middle road to be safe but yet slightly active by having the racket trajectory going more to the side like how I block wide angle balls now, and then brushing it to the side, this will allow me to chopblock it, or create a weird sidespinny ball (essentially returning the favour to them) with very similar strokes, then go into a hopefully equal BH-BH battle. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: maur1010
Date Posted: 02/14/2022 at 4:27pm
Another easy way to do a down the line backhand ball is to just do a mini jump to reset your feet so you face more down the line. Then do your normal backhand with full power. The disadvantage is that your body shows the direction of the shot and you need a little time to do the footwork.
However, if you use full power most players will struggle or return a weaker ball for you to attack.

For short sidespin balls I have been practicing a side jab like motion contacting the side of the ball. I imagine this could work for longer faster wide balls too.


-------------
Level one qualified coach


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/18/2022 at 5:22am
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

Another easy way to do a down the line backhand ball is to just do a mini jump to reset your feet so you face more down the line. Then do your normal backhand with full power. The disadvantage is that your body shows the direction of the shot and you need a little time to do the footwork.
However, if you use full power most players will struggle or return a weaker ball for you to attack.

For short sidespin balls I have been practicing a side jab like motion contacting the side of the ball. I imagine this could work for longer faster wide balls too.

I feel like shifting the leg position is firstly slow, will make it less sudden because they can see your body turn, and if the ball turns out to be towards your FH you can't really adjust in time. The other problem I feel I have is because my BH is naturally quite sidespinny (which works really well for the diagonal line as I can get some very nice angles, and when targeting the middle - FH area it swerves into the opponent's elbow which is excellent), for the down the line shot due to the decreased shot length it feels like i don't produce enough topspin to get my percentages up. After thinking about it a bit more, the only way I can get the angle to produce purer topspin is if the elbow points more down and is closer to the body during the followthrough - that seems like quite a fancy way to disguise the direction too (pull the elbow towards the right and it's my normal sidespinny BH, if I pull the elbow down then it's more of the down the line BH with purer topspin. 

For the receive yes I'm thinking of that side jab movement too because it cuts off the wide angle, it's very efficient movement wise (like a fencer lunge stroke) and you get a bit more dwell time going around the side of the ball and you can manage the momentum better because you're approaching the ball at an angle to where it's coming from rather than hitting it straight on (perpendicular to the incoming ball direction). I already use it extensively for blocking, but i'm trying to modify it to use it offensively (which I already use for defense) against fast balls to my wide BH exiting the side of the table. I tried using my full BH stroke but it's just not fast enough against these long fast serves and I get jammed - if I go further back from the table, due to the wide angle I'm pretty much forced to go diagonal unless I go around the net (very very difficult!), if it's a normal diagonal they just block it down the line to my wide FH, then I'm super screwed. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: maur1010
Date Posted: 02/18/2022 at 4:24pm
For your backhand do you use left hip back and forward for bodywork? I like a backhand where it is more like a punch with my elbow closer to my body. This gives more topspin and less sidespin.

https://youtu.be/k-QJJzrY0g0" rel="nofollow - https://youtu.be/k-QJJzrY0g0


-------------
Level one qualified coach


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/18/2022 at 6:09pm
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

For your backhand do you use left hip back and forward for bodywork? I like a backhand where it is more like a punch with my elbow closer to my body. This gives more topspin and less sidespin.

https://youtu.be/k-QJJzrY0g0" rel="nofollow - https://youtu.be/k-QJJzrY0g0

Lol I written a long reply and my phone went out of battery and I lost it :((

I prefer the mini rotation style with left to right weight transfer (I modelled it after Liang Jingkun) for the most power. The more underspin the more I squat down and the less I rotate. If the ball is to my right I don't use rotation, just load up my right leg like a punch movement. Rotation requires more preparation time compared to the squat/unsquat movement, but is a lot more powerful. So it's better to just reserve it for slower balls to the centre/left of the body. It is very bad against faster balls and balls to the right where you will get jammed and out of position if you try to rotate. Getting out of position to hit a higher quality shots is a big no-no for me because you'll be really vulnerable for the next shot if it's blocked back. So I usually just use the squat/unsquat mechanism for those balls.

But in terms of the arm movement, I use the lats to pull my elbow clockwise towards the right (a very powerful mechanism for the BH), so my blade face starts open and facing the front and during the followthrough it's closed and facing the right side (this is why it produces sidetopspin). You can see the lat pull mechanism in many other current top players like Wang Chuqin, Lin Gaoyuan, Liang Jingkun, Harimoto, Lin Yun ju). 

Theoretically, if I pulled my elbow less to the right and more backwards (till it's closer to the body), this will create a purer topspin which I can use for the down the line shots. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/18/2022 at 6:21pm
11:07 in this video which contains both diagonal and down the line BHs from Wang Manyu, you can see the difference in elbow movement between the 2 directions.


 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: maur1010
Date Posted: 02/18/2022 at 10:21pm
Interesting. So many ways to use the body to hit a backhand. Ma long rotates from left to right as well as coming up from the squat. I feel this is more a martial arts type stroke. As everything is more in line with the ball flight, perhaps this is a more reliable shot and a faster set up.


-------------
Level one qualified coach


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/18/2022 at 11:34pm
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

Interesting. So many ways to use the body to hit a backhand. Ma long rotates from left to right as well as coming up from the squat. I feel this is more a martial arts type stroke. As everything is more in line with the ball flight, perhaps this is a more reliable shot and a faster set up.

Yes there is a lot of variety in the BH stroke, everyone's looks a bit different as they emphasize different aspects of the stroke. 

I like Ma Long's BH stroke too, it's very compact and it synergizes very well with his FH. 

There's quite a few videos of Ti Long on BH mechanics which I feel that he really gets it (unlike a lot of other YouTubers). 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: maur1010
Date Posted: 02/19/2022 at 3:11am
4.40 seconds is reverent

https://youtu.be/h_QHTCdCUbI" rel="nofollow - https://youtu.be/h_QHTCdCUbI


-------------
Level one qualified coach


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/19/2022 at 6:58am
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

4.40 seconds is reverent

https://youtu.be/h_QHTCdCUbI" rel="nofollow - https://youtu.be/h_QHTCdCUbI

Just watched it, that is the Ma Long way of going down the line, it's more of a punch. It's definitely a different approach for sure.


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/19/2022 at 7:00am
Tested out the new fade BH movement and the BH receive of longer balls (going along more of the side of the ball), both worked beautifully. First time in my life I felt in the driver's seat against both the inverted/long pips penholder and the topspin rally addict. 

The BH sidespin receive allowed me to gain a lot of confidence in receiving those nasty wide long serves, the quality is not as great as my full BH stroke, but it's really stable due to the longer dwell time (going around the side) and allowed me to focus more on placement (just deep BH or wide FH), and spin options too (it can become a disguised chopblock as well as heavy sidetopspin or even a flatter bump with very similar movement patterns). Also, this works against normal long serves too without a hitch, and it ties in with the chiquita beautifully. Previously I was being jammed badly by sudden long serves to the wide BH when I was busy chiquitaing short serves, this sidespin receive is much quicker to initiate which allows me to escape these long serves without giving up the chiquita. This worked amazing against the penholder because I could smoothly get the first BH attack in if he served to my BH wing, which allowed me to go into the topspin rally which I had a significant advantage. He stopped doing that quickly though, and after that I had to start dealing with FH short and long serves, which is another problem. He has this amazing "bottle challenge" down the line fast serve which can be nospin, heavy sidetop or even heavy sideunderspin which is really hard to deal with - on good days I can loop them hard if I read the spin well, but I need a medium commitment receive that works well on my bad days too. Maybe a similar sidespin receive would work well too on the FH.... 

The fade BH (using the elbow pull direction to change directions) is amazing in topspin rallies! I cannot believe how well it worked. Against the topspin rally guy (shakehander) which I usually had 50-50 rallies against, today I had like 70-30 rallies in my favour. So basically off the service return, somehow through various ways it turns into a BH-BH topspin battle lol. Previously I was struggling because he would pin me on my BH, and he was defending a lot of my BH powerloops, and if I ever tried pivoting it was immediately switched down the line, and if I tried to be passive on the BH he would add quality eventually and destroy me. With the fade BH, now he has to be extra careful when going BH-BH due to the additional options I had. Some strategies I employed are to pin him on the wide BH, middle area and then suddenly fade it down the line, the other one is to fade it directly after a chiquita or BH opening loop, and finally the doing the wide sidespin counter to his wide BH to pull him wide and then fading it wide to his wide FH (kinda evil strats lmao) off the bounce. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/20/2022 at 2:49am
What today taught me was that the mindset of being 100% aggressive is not that great in serve receive. For eg the adage "loop all long serves" is true, but if you try to go ham and big powerloops on all the fast long serves on a bad day you'll only get destroyed by your own unforced errors and by your opponent just blocking a big % of your big shots to the other direction. Rather, there needs to be nuances in this attack.

For eg if you're faced with a quality fast low long serve with deceptive spin, you must admit that you're actually on the back foot already because the opponent chose the spin, placement and rhythm which you have to react to. Unless you're reading his serves like a book, it's unwise to view the fast long serve as an "opportunity" but rather, you have to "work your way" back into a more dominating position, and if you earn the opportunity then you get to finish it off with the big flashy powerloop. So for eg an off the bounce miniloop to survive these serves and if possible, pose more problems to your opponent via your own spin/placement variations may get a lot more points than attempting to powerloop them from the get go. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/21/2022 at 10:32pm
One very good way to reduce timing related unforced errors with looping sidespin serves, moving with the direction of the sidespin so that your body maintains a relatively static position in relation with the ball. For eg with sidespin to the BH that swerves to the left, it's best to move your body to the left alongside the ball while preparing the BH loop, for eg by pushing off your right foot. With sidespin that swerves to the right, it's best to move the body to the right by pushing off your left foot. Same with looping on the FH wing. In this way, the body position is adjusting for the sidespin starting from the bounce, instead of having to "guess" the final ball position which is much harder.

-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 02/22/2022 at 1:09am
Cool to see I am not the only diary blogger here.  Had a quick scan, looks interesting.  

I never do the BH to the left unless I am over the ball in a banana... like a hook.  My FH is almost always faded to the left.  Unless fishing far from the table...

Down the line is my choice for all high ball backhand finishes = VERY EFFECTIVE and rarely are they there to reach for a return...

I tend to receive and return BH to their middle or to their wide bh.  Just feels safe and I am not very scared of most people's backhands... (William Henzell would kick ur ass wherever you returned)


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/22/2022 at 3:15am
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

Cool to see I am not the only diary blogger here.  Had a quick scan, looks interesting.  

I never do the BH to the left unless I am over the ball in a banana... like a hook.  My FH is almost always faded to the left.  Unless fishing far from the table...

Down the line is my choice for all high ball backhand finishes = VERY EFFECTIVE and rarely are they there to reach for a return...

I tend to receive and return BH to their middle or to their wide bh.  Just feels safe and I am not very scared of most people's backhands... (William Henzell would kick ur ass wherever you returned)

Yeah the BH diagonal line is definitely much safer due to the extra distance, but ppl are usually very good with dealing with all sorts of balls to their deep BH. So say you have a 80% of making the diagonal shot and 60% winning chance after that, if you have a 60% chance of making the down the line shot and 90% winning chances after that, your winning percentages are actually higher with the down the line shot. Besides there are ways to make the down the line shot more reliable for eg by increasing spin. The odds for winning improves for balls more to the middle as the landing percentages are almost equal regardless of whether you go diagonal to their wide BH or down the line to their wide FH, and the latter actually wins a lot more points.... 

Of course sometimes it's not all about winning matches but more about looking cool and making a statement hahaha


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: maur1010
Date Posted: 02/22/2022 at 3:14pm
I saw a video where the coach suggested to work on 2 or 3 ball combinations. Like side top backhand diagonal and then down the line. Or fast side serve diagonal and then down the line. Or ball to elbow and attack the open corner.

What combinations do you feel would be good to practice for your game style?


-------------
Level one qualified coach


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/22/2022 at 4:49pm
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

I saw a video where the coach suggested to work on 2 or 3 ball combinations. Like side top backhand diagonal and then down the line. Or fast side serve diagonal and then down the line. Or ball to elbow and attack the open corner.

What combinations do you feel would be good to practice for your game style?

Yes, combos like that are usually very effective and repeatable. For me a combo has to start from the serve or the serve receive to force certain responses out of the opponents, otherwise they too have too many options and you won't be able to execute your combo smoothly. 

For me I've had a lot of success recently with hook serves and heavy underspin/no spin and much less with the FH pendulum serve.  The hook serve to the BH usually invites a sidespin push back to my BH which is quite comfortable to open with, if it's short I can chiquita it and if it's long I can just loop it and go into BH-BH rally, and then try to execute some of the sidespin combos during the rally. On the rare occasion that they push short to my FH I just use the spin to push deep and wide to their FH corner (ball exiting the side of the table), if they go long to my FH then it's usually a hard diagonal FH loop. 

The hook serve to the short FH is even more limiting, 90% of the time they aren't gonna overcome the sidespin unless they receive with BH (which opens the deep BH corner up giving you an advantage), so if they receive with FH just wait in the middle to loop the loose FH ball. If they manage to push it short to the FH, the next best shot is usually a FH sideswipe to their deep BH. 

I find that ppl are receiving FH pendulum serves a lot better in general so it's quite difficult to build effective patterns with them.... I don't like serving them anymore lol

Against long pips the heavy underspin/no spin serve is a lot more effective as you don't get weird sidespins from them. So for eg serve heavy underspin long, they push it (it'll become a topspin ball), and then just counter the topspin ball. If I serve no spin long they push it and it becomes a light backspin ball which is again quite comfortable to attack. 

Patterns are a lot harder on the receive since you have to defeat your opponent's combos. It's all about disrupting your opponent's flow and giving them difficult balls while cutting down on unforced errors. I'm working now on a mini FH sidespin loop receive at full stretch (in a lunge position hitting the ball in front of the right leg) to cut off long fast serves to my deep FH early. I know the ideal "pro receive" is to get feet in position and then powerloop them top of the bounce but I've had very poor results with that because my feet just ain't fast enough and I'm not reading the spin well enough to reduce unforced error rates. So this mini FH sidespin loop at full stretch will allow me to loop these serves off the bounce without the need to get in a perfect position (with the right leg in line with the ball)


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 02/27/2022 at 1:21am
Played the penholder inverted/LP combo player today and he was largely unbeatable today and only managed to take about 30% of the games... Few things that worked very well was the down the line BH loop/chiquita receive which was probably the most effective receive out of all especially if it was combined with the diagonal version. But down the line is a real point scorer. My FH was malfunctioning coz my legs were dead from Bulgarian squats the day before... still I tested the lunge position FH and it actually allowed me to loop some of the fast serves back quite well. Will have to continue working on it. 

But the main reason why I lost was that he was hitting FH loopkill winners left and right consistently which I wasn't able to block back well due to the tremendous angles he was getting (normally he would make a lot more mistakes but today he was largely mistake free), and I made way too many unforced errors attacking on the FH unfortunately, and whatever landed he blocked back way too well. He also managed to trick me on the serve placement and spin too many times. 

Also tested a new FH pendulum serve concept movement which could potentially be disguised with the FH hook serve (my main serve), I actually managed to completely fool him a few times when I pulled it out, he actually misread the sidespin direction lol (first time I ever managed to do that against LPs)


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/04/2022 at 5:21am
Realised that in longer games that on balls to my FH, I'm not tracking the ball the whole way unlike my BH, which results in poorer accuracy. My training partner pointed it out that I was not looking at the ball during contact but was simply guessing the position of the ball lol. 

-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/06/2022 at 5:07am
Changed back to Dignics 09c on the FH and man what a joy it is to play with it. I would say that the K1 plus experiment is over lol, 09c is just a superior rubber in every single way. The FH powerloops just go so much faster now and I feel so much more relaxed when performing them, not worrying too much about missing the table. I guess Butterfly can keep having my hard earned cash after all!




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/07/2022 at 5:43am
Gonna experiment with a BH counterloop brushing over the top of the ball as a variation during rallies... I think it'll be quite a nasty surprise hahah

-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/11/2022 at 6:32pm
Played quite well yesterday night combining a lot of things I learnt but still only got a 10% winrate against my practice partner lol. Super frustrating losing all those 9-9 and 10-10 situations - there were a lot of them and I think I only won like 1/7 of those games, some of them due to bad luck, and others just coz I misread the combos (too many combos to come from long pips/inverted twiddlers yikes). Apparently my chiquita was way too predictable in terms of the placement from the short wide BH as it was too hard to go down the line for those. He suggested that I should try the wide BH to wide BH short diagonal line - which I'll try the next session. 

Learnt that deceptive fast down the line hook serves to the deep FH can be quite deadly against penholders! Even when they manage to loop it, if you block it wide to their BH the point is often decidedly in your advantage. 




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/18/2022 at 8:15pm
Improved my winrate to around 50% the last 2 sessions. The key changes I did was varying my serve placements a lot and being unafraid to serve long and fast, but just being mindful of recovering fast after the serve. 

Other changes I did was to be a lot more active on the feet by doing a lot of microsteps especially when the ball is falling down during the opponent's serve toss. I also got a lot more aggressive on the FH loops, the basic idea is to really go after the ball (80% effort) with a very high quality powerloop. The strange thing is that recovery time was actually better if I committed to the stroke and doing the complete weight transfer. By having a dangerous FH which my opponent knows he can't control well, this limited the variety of placements for me to deal with. 

Some areas that need improvements - FH flicking very short LP balls (not as easy due to spin variations), looping higher quality fast/long BH pendulum serves (strange thing is I loop FH pendulum serves much more easily and effectively). 




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 03/19/2022 at 3:59am
Cool. Serve and return has always been the key to success in our sport.  The amount of variation in speed, spin and location is quite extreme.

I have since I returned to playing almost given up on my FH (clip the left side of the ball) serve.  There is something about the bh clip the right side and fh clip the right side that makes it really hard to return.  Especially when crosses the elbow point.  Bounce on the opponents bh side but swings over to their fh.  It just puts it into a bit of no mans land.

Variation is key and I too must keep practising the usual fh left clip for variation which often gets free points too when it is unexpected.

---

Here's the simple difference between a low level player and a high level player returning the ball.

low level player will return the ball where you want with the stype of side spin you put on your serve.  The high level will go the opposite very often.

Hence, if I want a high level player to push to my backhand I will serve sidespin that would go to my forehand usually in a return.

Weird world of TT.




-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/19/2022 at 4:29am
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

Cool. Serve and return has always been the key to success in our sport.  The amount of variation in speed, spin and location is quite extreme.

I have since I returned to playing almost given up on my FH (clip the left side of the ball) serve.  There is something about the bh clip the right side and fh clip the right side that makes it really hard to return.  Especially when crosses the elbow point.  Bounce on the opponents bh side but swings over to their fh.  It just puts it into a bit of no mans land.

Variation is key and I too must keep practising the usual fh left clip for variation which often gets free points too when it is unexpected.

---

Here's the simple difference between a low level player and a high level player returning the ball.

low level player will return the ball where you want with the stype of side spin you put on your serve.  The high level will go the opposite very often.

Hence, if I want a high level player to push to my backhand I will serve sidespin that would go to my forehand usually in a return.

Weird world of TT.



I agree, hook and reverse pendulum serves are usually harder to return well compared to standard FH pendulum serves. I really hate the fast long versions to my BH with huge amounts of spin, the way I do it is just to powerloop them hard in other to scare the opponent from serving them again, but if they continue doing that they'll know that the success rates are not that great, and the follow up is not that easy either if the block is good. I actually receive the FH pendulum serve with my BH with ease no matter if it's pushing, chiquita or looping. 

Lol at lower levels they won't even be able to return to serve let alone control the direction.... 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 03/19/2022 at 5:13am
wasnt referring to that low.  Just to a cross over a point and more so talking about a strategy to get good players to play to your strengths.  Probably why I always clip the right of the ball in serves...  I want them to go to my Backhand for me to open.

-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/19/2022 at 5:31am
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

wasnt referring to that low.  Just to a cross over a point and more so talking about a strategy to get good players to play to your strengths.  Probably why I always clip the right of the ball in serves...  I want them to go to my Backhand for me to open.

I would say higher level players especially those with LP, they can pretty much receive your serve to whatever placement they want. In a real match though, due to percentages it's just safer to go diagonal because of the increased length, so you serve to the short BH corner 70% of the time it's gonna go to your BH. It even works with FH pendulum sidespin serves to the same location. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/22/2022 at 6:53am
Played a round robin with much stronger players and lost all of them as expected... The biggest issue I noticed was the quality of the serve which was insane. They looked almost identical especially the hook serves and the heavy under/no spin combos but had such heavy spin variation. And the placement was just deadly precise to all the uncomfortable areas. Tbh they had some issues with my serves too but they were at least placing them to awkward positions with heavy spin which made it quite difficult to attack even if it pops up, whereas if I misread their serve it was often just a direct point ouch....  I didn't really feel I was that disadvantaged in the rally and i think my loop was actually of higher quality than theirs being a young guy lol. But I couldn't get there, they completely jammed my chiquita and I just wasn't able to get past their serve/receive game which is on a completely different level. 

One guy had a really interesting stroke, it was a BH opening loop with inside out spin, I literally never thought it was possible (most of my BH openings are with the normal sidespin direction, diagonal). It was such a powerful weapon because it was short, low and ultra spinny and to the FH corner. I have no idea how he does it but it'll be such a powerful addition to my BH opening loop repertoire. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 03/22/2022 at 8:30am
service return is such a pain.  Even when you think the serve is nothing special, because its 'new' to a new spot...  Sounds like you had fun.

-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/22/2022 at 9:45am
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

service return is such a pain.  Even when you think the serve is nothing special, because its 'new' to a new spot...  Sounds like you had fun.

Yes... serve return (especially against players you haven't faced before) is a huge pain. Just way too much variation and disguise to deal with. And if you don't return serve well you already lost for the most part... I guess it's part and parcel of the table tennis game. Even in pro matches there are some downright ugly games which were all about serving.....

The other takeaway I had was to try out shadow practice with just body mechanics without arm (a tip I got) to further improve shot quality. But tbh none of those would have saved me from being destroyed by their serves.  




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: maur1010
Date Posted: 03/23/2022 at 2:34pm
On the body movement without your arm.

I got an old bat and placed a wedge of foam behind it and strapped it to my chest.
So with  normal stance it faces where you want the ball to go.

The idea is to do the squat and up thrust method of the modern backhand and get the ball on the table.
Really makes you learn how to be more dynamic like Harimoto LOL

I might make a video of my attempt of this and post it to my youtube channel maurice tate




-------------
Level one qualified coach


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/23/2022 at 10:57pm
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

On the body movement without your arm.

I got an old bat and placed a wedge of foam behind it and strapped it to my chest.
So with  normal stance it faces where you want the ball to go.

The idea is to do the squat and up thrust method of the modern backhand and get the ball on the table.
Really makes you learn how to be more dynamic like Harimoto LOL

I might make a video of my attempt of this and post it to my youtube channel maurice tate



haha that's kinda extreme LOL but yes it's the same idea. Combining the two sources of energy (body, arm) is not so easy though, requires some really good timing. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: maur1010
Date Posted: 03/24/2022 at 2:29pm
'' Combining the two sources of energy (body, arm) is not so easy though, requires some really good timing. ''

I find to focus on the delay of the body moving first and the arm then follows next makes the timing issue much easier. One of the secret keys of table tennis that most coaches never talk about.


-------------
Level one qualified coach


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/24/2022 at 6:12pm
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

'' Combining the two sources of energy (body, arm) is not so easy though, requires some really good timing. ''

I find to focus on the delay of the body moving first and the arm then follows next makes the timing issue much easier. One of the secret keys of table tennis that most coaches never talk about.


It's true that the body needs to go first, however the arm can't be too delayed too imo, there's a timing that is just right and missing that timing will lead to much lower shot quality because of inefficient transfer of energy to the ball, regardless of the input energy. 




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: maur1010
Date Posted: 03/24/2022 at 8:34pm
Yes I agree it also depends on swing length. Big swing usually means big delay. But then again Timo Boll forehand has big delay with no actual backwing of the arm before the whip action.
I generally see club players do not have enough delay compared to the opposite issue of too much.
Brett Clark kept telling me backswing as the body is going in the opposite direction in all strokes.


-------------
Level one qualified coach


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/25/2022 at 2:12am
Originally posted by maur1010 maur1010 wrote:

Yes I agree it also depends on swing length. Big swing usually means big delay. But then again Timo Boll forehand has big delay with no actual backwing of the arm before the whip action.
I generally see club players do not have enough delay compared to the opposite issue of too much.
Brett Clark kept telling me backswing as the body is going in the opposite direction in all strokes.

Agreed. Most players overuse the arm including myself at times. Using the body effectively is key to improving shot quality everywhere from serves, pushes, flicks, loops. The delay is definitely part and parcel of ensuring that the body leads the movement and not vice versa. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 03/27/2022 at 7:17am
Nobody really talks about this concept probably because I am untrained and love being that way.  Hence I make up shit nobody might get a lot of the time.

But I know a lot of the high level players have very different grips (and probably stances)

With that pretext out the way, 

I have a very strong possibility of doing either BH or FH but I am never high probability in the middle of doing either.  It's just too late for me to alter that or I couldn't be bothered altering it.

What does this mean?  Instead of thinking of "delay"

I wait on a FH or a BH.  Not both.   Because my FH is way weaker than my BH I almost always "wait" for a forehand (especially at random moment like service receive) since I can quickly adapt to do a BH.

This is related to your timing and delay ideas.  It's related to probability of success etc.

It's in my opinion much harder to quickly do a FH than BH so waiting on the FH makes sense.

Waiting on something is how you hold the bat, how you position your legs etc.  


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/27/2022 at 8:34am
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

Nobody really talks about this concept probably because I am untrained and love being that way.  Hence I make up shit nobody might get a lot of the time.

But I know a lot of the high level players have very different grips (and probably stances)

With that pretext out the way, 

I have a very strong possibility of doing either BH or FH but I am never high probability in the middle of doing either.  It's just too late for me to alter that or I couldn't be bothered altering it.

What does this mean?  Instead of thinking of "delay"

I wait on a FH or a BH.  Not both.   Because my FH is way weaker than my BH I almost always "wait" for a forehand (especially at random moment like service receive) since I can quickly adapt to do a BH.

This is related to your timing and delay ideas.  It's related to probability of success etc.

It's in my opinion much harder to quickly do a FH than BH so waiting on the FH makes sense.

Waiting on something is how you hold the bat, how you position your legs etc.  

I think the delay we were talking about is the lag between the body movement and the arm movement, which is part of the stroke, not so much about the timing of which you hit the ball (on the rise, top of bounce, falling). 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 03/27/2022 at 8:41am
the delay is a delay and the time has to come from somewhere.  Hence I didn't think anyone would get it.  you can talk about taking time to move your body or whatever now.

-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/28/2022 at 4:11am
Lost 4 games in a row against a better player and I had match points for each of the games. Damn these guys really have a lot of experience how to play during crucial points. There's always some nasty serve or receive variation that they never used before in the game, whereas I had to show all my cards to get to that position (with match points). 

Maybe next time imma gonna do the same, reserve some special weapons for use at crucial moments. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 03/28/2022 at 5:32am
I am always on the topic of should I be treating this game as practise or try to win.

Today I got one player who just serves long topspin sidespin repeatedly to my bh.  

We only played points, not games today, but I know that he would change that the moment he is losing.

Similarly, I say to people who want to play games: I am happy to play them, but I will be focussing on something.  (might be a cop out to say why I will probably lose) but I don't care.  It's how you get better for real comp where it's recorded.


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 03/28/2022 at 9:12pm
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

I am always on the topic of should I be treating this game as practise or try to win.

Today I got one player who just serves long topspin sidespin repeatedly to my bh.  

We only played points, not games today, but I know that he would change that the moment he is losing.

Similarly, I say to people who want to play games: I am happy to play them, but I will be focussing on something.  (might be a cop out to say why I will probably lose) but I don't care.  It's how you get better for real comp where it's recorded.

I think it's always good to be working on something every match. Otherwise it's just doing the same thing every time which is really boring... 



-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 03/29/2022 at 12:03am
I wouldn't say boring, maybe less productive to improvement.

Same guy I mentioned yesterday, today we played games and of course 90% were short spinny to my FH... :)

Match play is for strategy.

Still I find myself somewhere in between, I don't want to annoy my partners with constant misses or continuous losing, so if I say am practising a weak serve or shot during games, I make sure I mix it up with strengths too... 

As for you playing players much stronger... yes you pretty much have to give them the best you got for that period.

Nothing boring about that.  


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 05/20/2022 at 11:27am
Didn't play for a few months, and then came back and actually somehow became even stronger lol. I think I lost most of my chiquita accuracy - it's so bad that I'm resorting to pushing, but otherwise I felt I play a lot more loosely and relaxed and somehow that is resulting in some really powerful shotmaking which I'm liking so far haha. 




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 06/20/2022 at 7:53am
Played a competition and tried out a new strategy, go for my shots all out and not play half heartedly or safe. Surprisingly did quite well and beat some players who were better than me lol. 

Got completely destroyed by a penholder who had some insane serves though. These penholder serves are just downright nasty af and I outright missed like 50% of his serves, I had absolutely no idea what was on the ball Dead. I thought I had a decent serve myself but he read it with no issues at all ugh. The match was just unplayable like that. 

The other thing I realised was that my FH pendulum serve was not really reliable, I had to give up on it in favour of the hook serve halfway through the competition, which reduced my options a bit. Heavy underspin and no spin serves were quite the killer though, very easy to control and very reliable to keep short compared to the pendulum serves. 

I lost a narrow match to a shakehander, and he duly exploited my lack of a reliable FH flick (targeting the FH short area repeatedly), as well as my lack of a BH counterloop against heavier topspin. As long as he started looping, I could only block on the BH and due to his amazing shot quality, it was just a matter of time before he got the balls past my defence, whereas he was able to counterloop any slightly weaker topspins from me, which was very problematic. Also he really exposed my slow short receive to long ball transition, which I'll have to work on too. 

My newly developed quick off the bounce BH "loop" against underspin proved to be quite valuable as it closed off a major loophole in my game so that I could focus more on getting the powerful FH in instead of having to find a good position to loop. It was inspired by Harimoto where you open your blade angle (sometimes even contacting more of the underside of the ball depending on the underspin), and then just power forward (instead of the traditional way where you use brute force brushing to overcome the underspin with the legs with a more closed blade angle). A lot of players don't expect it at all, usually off a long push they're expecting a slow spinny loop, or a quick long push back. I like it so much that I'm gonna develop it further. The real advantage is that long pushes no longer force me away from the table to loop it which reduces the amount of ground I have to cover with footwork.


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 06/21/2022 at 3:29am
I only know one guy that serves so well that it kills me.  He was best in the state and I think because it was left handed and dam good serving the combination made it unreadable.

I got no answers for serves that just can't be worked out.  
They are basically 50% of your points.

Stand back wait.  Hope to see how they bounce.

A weak return is normal so run back a bit to have a chance to get back in.

dunno.


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 06/21/2022 at 5:40am
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

I only know one guy that serves so well that it kills me.  He was best in the state and I think because it was left handed and dam good serving the combination made it unreadable.

I got no answers for serves that just can't be worked out.  
They are basically 50% of your points.

Stand back wait.  Hope to see how they bounce.

A weak return is normal so run back a bit to have a chance to get back in.

dunno.

It was a best of 3 so I had absolutely no opportunity to adjust to the serves :( and I think I was being way too aggressive against them (I looped a lot of them and failed lol). Even got aced down the line a couple of times. Kinda humiliating tbh... Basically with his serve, you don't see the bat till the last moment (very borderline hidden), though you do see the contact, but that's kinda useless because you don't get to see the preparation or followthrough and he serves quite a lot of different serves using very similar bat angles. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/06/2022 at 10:26am
With recent training, I have started to really recategorise my BH strokes. Unlike on the FH wing where I can overpower a lot of the incoming spin thanks to a stronger mechanism for generating power and spin, with the BH, using the wrong stroke in the wrong situations will result in a lot more unforced errors and/or insufficient pressure on the opponent. Also the BH is very unforgiving in terms of correct body positioning, making the right shot selection is crucial to maintain low unforced error rates. 

So for short balls you have the chiquita which I differentiate between the chiquita against standard right hand pendulum sidespin where I start with a more pronated position (blade pointing towards myself) to contact more of the right side of the ball in the beginning and then wrapping around it, the chiquita against reverse pendulum/BH/tomahawk/hook serves where i start the stroke with the blade in neutral position (blade pointing to the side or even a bit forward) so that I can contact more to the left side of the ball. With heavy underspin/no spin serves it's a dilemma because both work but I tend towards treating it as the latter. 

Same goes for BH loops against long serves which is similar. I have these 2 stroke categories against these 2 different sidespin categories. 

Against heavy pushes, I open the blade up to contact the underside of the ball, then make sure the followthrough goes high up (pretty much blade tip has to point towards the sky at the end no matter what). With this stroke I am never afraid of any backspin regardless of how heavy it is and how out of position I am - it is just an adjustment of how open the blade angle is. 

Against fast topspin exchanges I just do a small stroke (no time for anything else), contacting with slightly closed angle, and stretching the arm forward. 

With opportunity balls, I have a special stroke where I contact at 90 degrees and the followthrough goes down to hip level almost. This is also very useful against weird flat-ish spin balls too. If the opportunity ball is short, just use the chiquita stroke (except aim the followthrough downwards). 

All of these contact point, blade angle and followthrough adjustments make it a lot easier to deal with different balls even if the body positioning is less than ideal. For eg without actually opening up the blade angle and contacting the bottom of the ball, there's very little chance of overpowering a well placed, heavy, fast underspin push. Trying to chiquita pendulum and reverse pendulum serves the same way will result in a lot more unforced errors due to not avoiding the strong spin axes. Trying to rip winners (with the followthrough at the hip level) during fast topspin exchanges is also bad advice - the unforced error rate shoots way up - it's way better to pressure with small safe strokes, wait for opponent to give you a weaker ball, then rip the winner. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/08/2022 at 11:11pm
Had a serious training session yesterday and won against someone I lost against badly a few months ago. The main improvement was in the BH wing because it is much less of a weakness than it was especially in serve receive. I also ripped two off the bounce hard BH counterloops in matches for my first time lol but I felt I got lucky with those - placement blocking is still in general much more secure - but obviously against better players they will just keep looping and I will eventually lose the point...

The FH heavy underspin/no spin and hook serve won me significant amounts of points. I felt like the FH pendulum was close to useless lol - everybody knows how to read and deal with those ugh. Probably will just throw it in from time to time as a surprise....


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/21/2022 at 9:42am
I'm giving up on developing a BH counterloop - I feel like it's a kinda useless shot for my game. It is way too demanding on accurate positioning of the feet and the eyes locating the ball very precisely in 3D space. Also, due to the emphasis on brushing and producing a lot of power, often it leaves me in a bad position and often late for the next ball. The BH counter is significantly more flexible as you can do quite decent shots even out of position, also it's very simple to vary and disguise the shot direction, and the stroke is quite controllable. The main disadvantage with the basic BH counter is the lack of shot quality (spin and speed) which means some opponents just take a step back and they're no longer troubled by the speed. So what I'm toying around with is to add a bit of a wrapping movement (not a crazy amount but just some - the main stroke is still hitting through the ball) to create more spin, more stability in the BH counter and simply use that. This also has the advantage because I can simply vary the amount of wrapping I do to create spin variation on the fly.

-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/21/2022 at 10:48am
One of the most effective ways I've learnt to change the direction of the BH counter is to change the direction of the weight transfer. So from the half squat position, when coming up to attack the ball, mentally I can either think about pressing on the right foot - this will transfer weight to the right foot and produce a diagonal shot with the classical left to right weight transfer. If I wanted to go down the line, I think about pressing on the left foot, which produces the right to left weight transfer (opposite) which allows for more direct body power behind a down the line shot. I found this method to be superior to the fade method (which is cool but inconsistent and power is always lacking), or degree of body rotation (easiest to read as the opponent already can tell the shot direction from the shoulders). It is also consistent (you can use the exact same arm movements for both diagonal and down the line shots) and easier on the hand because the body power is behind the shot always regardless of direction (rather than say having the body power not being applied in the same line as the outgoing ball direction). 

The basic idea is to half squat to prepare for the shot, but the hip is a very flexible joint, which allows one to come up from the squat to face many different directions (the angle range is pretty much just limited by the feet direction), this is super deceptive because the preparation will look exactly the same (from the half squat position). 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/22/2022 at 10:07am
After watching some matches and being in absolute awe of Xiang Peng and Lin Shidong FH flicks - I watched them closer in slowmo - they do not drop their wrist at all when they're doing their insane flick kills - in fact the blades are usually pointing slightly up, not completely horizontal. I tried that change and immediately felt a significant improvement in power transfer kinetic chain - also seems that this would result in much more solid contact. Reminds me a bit of the badminton netkill shot. Will definitely try this - if I can develop a strong FH flick too, I can punish a lot of the no spin or sidespin serves to my FH, which is what everyone's exploiting at the moment ugh... 




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/24/2022 at 4:37am
Omfg I tested the new FH flick movement on the table and am loving it so much. Finally, it feels powerful and deadly, and I can generate quite a bit of topspin on it too, and it felt super easy to control the direction too! Can't wait to test it out in some matches haha... now they have no safe space to serve their bullshit sidetopspin and no spin serves without getting attacked hard.... Big smile 




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 07/24/2022 at 5:11pm
The only catch with matches is you don't always know your opponents serving arsenal/tendencies.  Still be ready to unleash it.  I tend to be cautious on serves early on playing someone until I have babied a few back at least.  

I like the FH flick I see some others do where their feet are off the ground to reach the shot.  Impressive.


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/24/2022 at 6:16pm
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

The only catch with matches is you don't always know your opponents serving arsenal/tendencies.  Still be ready to unleash it.  I tend to be cautious on serves early on playing someone until I have babied a few back at least.  

I like the FH flick I see some others do where their feet are off the ground to reach the shot.  Impressive.
.

I actually got to do a few FH flicks with the feet off the ground yesterday.... I didn't realise how important not dropping the wrist is. The really hard part is recovering after a flick to loop the next ball - there seems to be 2 schools of thought here, 1 is a quick off the bounce loop focusing on placement and taking it early - 2 is a standard powerloop. After experimenting I kinda feel 1 is easier to execute because it's very difficult to have the feet in position to powerloop after the 1st flick gets returned.

Yeah I hate having to decipher new serves.... There's a lot of ppl out there with really tricky serves, especially the older folk....it's super annoying when they receive your serves perfectly well and then you eat their serves for breakfast. And a lot of them are really sneaky with it too. 

Nevertheless, I don't push a lot in my games because I don't like giving the initiative to the other player. I always favour looping and chiquita which are my strengths. The only underspin shots I do are fake opening loops and fake chiquitas, fake FH flicks  - but usually those only work against aggressive players, not against passive players who adapt to the spin more easily. I'm working on varying the placement of my BH loop receive of long serves down the line with the new directional disguise I learnt. 

I tend to be a bit more gung ho these days. Better to lose playing spectacularly than win playing ugly :) 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 07/24/2022 at 8:06pm
I think my age, fitness and general lack of built up muscle has sub-consciously withdrawn me from the spectacular gun-ho => toward the if I want to play for 3 hours non-stop I have to also chop and block.

That and fetching the ball on lower percentage shots hitting the edge of the blade.

I still get sore after playing now that I have LP twiddling, but no where near as much as ripping loops both wings.

I do get the 'ugly' concept.  I also think it is not wonderful to watch people missing potentially spectacular shots :)


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/24/2022 at 8:50pm
For me table tennis is my aerobic exercise of choice (I hate running or swimming or biking), so it doesn't make sense for me to play passively and then not achieving my goals of aerobic fitness and body fat % reduction coz I've been playing like a sloth. Ive recently been lifting 2-3x a week too and doing a high protein low carb diet to lose the lockdown fat which has been relatively successful so far. That said, aggressive TT is really hard when on a calorie restricted diet - I feel like I have to really push myself especially at the 2hr mark.  My legs and glutes start to really burn at that point.

Hahaha life's too short not to make spectacular shots - for me it is what makes table tennis fun. I'm still waiting to do my first roller shot (around the net which barely bounces)! 

Also, I feel like I don't play frequently enough to win at the touch game against some of those old players who play like 5-6 days a week. They really do have some insane feeling for the ball even if their strokes are relatively weaker. So I actually get better results against them when I leverage my strengths which are my physical strength and try to overwhelm them with superior shot quality (since I'm not gonna beat them in the medium pace game), then I have a chance. Otherwise they pretty much destroy me with their 1001 nasty combinations ugh.

"Everyone has a plan 'till they get loopkilled down the line." applies in TT LOL


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 07/24/2022 at 9:36pm
I do this backhand extremely sidespin serve from my fh side to their fh but much wider that makes me a lot of points against most people unless they push... a couple of days ago, one of these stronger players (I was told just before I played them they would kill me) who is very strong on loop kill, absolutely killed it around the net.  I applauded him for it.  

I beat him 3:1 in the match and that same serve he air swung, or failed to return it to the table 50% of the time.  Ugly to see anyone fail to return so often.  If you saw him training with the other guy (of same standard in quality power loops) for the first 2 hours you'd think they were pros or at least the best players in the packed club.  

Anyhow, it is fun to loop kill the ball off someone's pretty tight serve for sure.  Love the look on their face demoralised. Probably the best shot Hurricane 2 excells at.  The tack and almost horizontal bat angle it demands for the shot is perfect.  

Keep cool :)


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/24/2022 at 11:37pm
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

I do this backhand extremely sidespin serve from my fh side to their fh but much wider that makes me a lot of points against most people unless they push... a couple of days ago, one of these stronger players (I was told just before I played them they would kill me) who is very strong on loop kill, absolutely killed it around the net.  I applauded him for it.  

I beat him 3:1 in the match and that same serve he air swung, or failed to return it to the table 50% of the time.  Ugly to see anyone fail to return so often.  If you saw him training with the other guy (of same standard in quality power loops) for the first 2 hours you'd think they were pros or at least the best players in the packed club.  

Anyhow, it is fun to loop kill the ball off someone's pretty tight serve for sure.  Love the look on their face demoralised. Probably the best shot Hurricane 2 excells at.  The tack and almost horizontal bat angle it demands for the shot is perfect.  

Keep cool :)

If he had played control/pushing, he might not have won anyways. There's a lot more to TT than FH topspin vs block lol... (what everyone trains for 90% of the time for some unknown reason). Imo at the amateur circuit the way I spot really good players is from the serve/receive quality for the most part... Being good at looping doesn't mean shit if you get destroyed in serve/receive. I spend a lot of time working on serve/receive too. 

Btw this is the exact serve where a FH flick would be much better suited as compared to a FH loop, unless the serve actually goes a bit longer that it almost exits the rear line of the table in length. Almost every player worth some salt knows that the FH short corner is a weakness for the majority of shakehand players because very few ppl figured out how to FH flick reliably to punish these sorts of balls (it's not a natural stroke at all!). It's all FH hook/reverse/tomahawk serve or BH serves to the FH short corner followed by some pop up or mistake and then end the point via loopkill. Lol I use the exact same pattern shamelessly too Big smile 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/25/2022 at 9:51pm
On BH followthroughs, I find that the reverse salute stance like what Lim Jonghoon does (with the blade pointing up, blade facing the right, and reaching a position slightly to the right of the face) works better for me as it puts less strain on the forearm muscles as it involves more of the bigger muscle groups in the upper arm and back. There's a bit more topspin component when I use this followthrough too which helps with the unforced error rates. The weakness is in recovery speed as the stroke is larger compared to a more compact stroke, but I still like it! 

Furthermore, it's now incredibly similar to a badminton BH lift, which also helps because I play both sports haha. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/27/2022 at 8:44am
Tried to play attacking against this amazing rally player and lost most games still. Apparently the only way I can beat him is to convert it to an underspin game and play pushing (even long balls!) till I get a good chance to finish it hard, and/or let him make the mistakes attacking instead. It's a very strange dynamic.... So against him, the optimal play against a long fast topspin serve is not to loop/counter, but to chopblock it to invite the push to attack hard, or invite the loop that I can block to some awkward position.

His blocks and counterloops are just a bit too much for me to handle, I almost feel like I had no advantage even when I looped first wtf.... He also serves a lot of long serves with weak spin to invite the first loop lol (he takes a step back after that long serve)

Due to the problems I had getting my loops past him, I plan to shorten my FH stroke even more to make it much more concentrated so that I can recover faster and do more damage closer to the table. 

Also I attempted a lot of BH down the line harder loops, I think I'm getting the hang of them now but tbh the success rates are still not that amazing compared to the diagonal ones, but I'll have to work harder on it. They looked amazing when they landed though!




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: vanjr
Date Posted: 07/27/2022 at 9:40am
Originally posted by blahness blahness wrote:

Tried to play attacking against this amazing rally player and lost most games still. Apparently the only way I can beat him is to convert it to an underspin game and play pushing (even long balls!) till I get a good chance to finish it hard, and/or let him make the mistakes attacking instead. It's a very strange dynamic.... So against him, the optimal play against a long fast topspin serve is not to loop/counter, but to chopblock it to invite the push to attack hard, or invite the loop that I can block to some awkward position.

His blocks and counterloops are just a bit too much for me to handle, I almost feel like I had no advantage even when I looped first wtf.... He also serves a lot of long serves with weak spin to invite the first loop lol (he takes a step back after that long serve)

Due to the problems I had getting my loops past him, I plan to shorten my FH stroke even more to make it much more concentrated so that I can recover faster and do more damage closer to the table. 

Also I attempted a lot of BH down the line harder loops, I think I'm getting the hang of them now but tbh the success rates are still not that amazing compared to the diagonal ones, but I'll have to work harder on it. They looked amazing when they landed though!

Isn't this what makes TT so fun?!!! I love how different matchups go, even with the same style of play.




Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/27/2022 at 10:03am
yeah there's certainly some weird af matchups. But for me attacking is fun and gives me the most room for improvement, since I used to be more on the tricks side (even as an inverted player). I want to improve my attacking skills too which is why I insisted on playing like that even though I knew it was the losing strategy, it's all casual matches anyways. It's kinda like Truls vs Lim Jonghoon at the WTTC. Truls tried to play an honest attacking game and got destroyed hard, it was only after he started using all the chopblocks, flat smashes and all the bag of tricks that he won easily. Sometimes TT is weird like that. 

But he definitely exposed some weaknesses in my topspins. I rely way too much on a big first attack (which most ppl don't return well unlike him), and am usually a bit unprepared for the second topspin. I realised that I need to really shorten my FH stroke to keep up the aggressive play in the rallies and work more on the BH down the line - and work more on the footwork to handle all the transitions.





-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 07/27/2022 at 6:23pm
If he beat you at your own game, then you have found the right person to train against more.  Especially if he was keeping it on the table against your fastest and spinniest attacks.

The only other alternative is mixing up your speed/spin but still not going to the push chopping. Possibly more side spin hook and fade to the loops maybe?




-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/27/2022 at 9:00pm
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

If he beat you at your own game, then you have found the right person to train against more.  Especially if he was keeping it on the table against your fastest and spinniest attacks.

The only other alternative is mixing up your speed/spin but still not going to the push chopping. Possibly more side spin hook and fade to the loops maybe?



Yeah, I pretty much never won much against him unless I pull out my bag of tricks (all the fake underspin flicks or loops, chopblocks, sidespin hook/fade pushes with sidetop or sideunder, playing the extreme angles with most balls exiting the side of the table, etc) and dragging him down into the mud of ugly TT (then I win against him quite consistently). Either that or I go into training mode, simply not attacking hard and just doing easy topspin countering from the first shot and see who is more consistent (I win like 60% of the time in this)

The thing with attacking is that sometimes his blocks are very soft and there's almost no energy on the ball, but yet it's low and a bit short too making it hard to attack continuously, other times he adds this wrist flick on his blocks and they are then jumping at me. Playing placement doesn't help much since he has quite good footwork and reaches most balls, and contorts his stroke quite well to reach middle area attacks too. Going for the angles with sidespin actually increases my risks of missing without really improving the win odds. 

My issue is that I don't have a fast concentrated FH, it's all too smooth and loopy at the moment which tbh is exactly what feeds a good blocker. I tested something which had a lot of promise, which is to do close to 0 backswing, keep the racket high, place weight on right foot and do the weight transfer to the left foot while forearm pronating through the ball, with close to no followthrough too - most of the power is coming from the weight transfer, worked reasonably well in training although I'm not super consistent with it yet. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/29/2022 at 9:46am
Started to rejig my FH structure to reduce the movement to the absolute minimum required coz I was really annoyed at losing to this rally player. I realised the few things that are downright required. I tried to do away with the salute and it just didn't work lol. Somehow bringing the bat not high enough with the strokes just results in a subpar forehand topspin with insufficient arc and consistency. However it's just finishing high, you still have to bring a lot of power, contacting the ball at near perpendicularly. I'm starting to see the value in Aruna's crazy looking FH loop. 

 Weight transfer is definitely required. What is not required is actually the backswing. As long as I get to this "power position" with the legs bent and racket behind the ball in a crouched position leaning forward, that's all the "backswing" that is needed. This is regardless of the spin on the incoming ball.

Somehow, simplifying the stroke actually increased my FH power even further. I tried it against a couple of good blockers in the club and it was starting to overwhelm their defences. 

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to find something similar for the BH. I realised what my BH is incredibly weak against, shoulder high balls with pace (especially with weird spins). Sometimes I would rather have a low ball to loop than these awkward monsters. I need to find some solutions for them. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 07/29/2022 at 7:18pm
I'm surprised you notice such details about your own strokes.  Self awareness and heading to the club with a tip to try out or focus on is essential for bigger gains.

I remember when I was full on serious wanting to be the best I possibly could be.  I wrote notes after each session (bit like we are foruming now), what worked, who caused trouble, what that trouble was exactly, some ways to try to tackle the trouble.  And cycle through that and revisit pages from a while back to see if it is 'solved'...

Really there is a whole gradient of FH topspin. Only really two opposite end points.

0 = still paddle block the topspin
1 = block with slight forward on the back of the ball - 1.5 = from slight back swing first
2 = block slight forward higher up etc. to graze/brush - 2.5 = with slight back swing 2.6 = with more and more back swing

3 = can't call it a block top spin with slight backswing 3.5 = big back swing

etc.

10. Monster backswing smash 10.5 drive 10.9 Monstrous loop with full backswing, body transfer, the blade almost knocks you unconscious in a salute (have seen that happen!)




-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/29/2022 at 8:40pm
Yeah I guess I'm good with details like that... I always like to surprise my friends with some new stuff that I've learnt. It's part of the fun in table tennis too. 

What I'm trying to do now is go to level 9-10 without much backswing at all, and seeing what I can get away without compromising the essentials of the stroke. The problem with backswing is that it costs time and time is always a premium in table tennis especially when playing against good blockers. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 07/29/2022 at 8:59pm
It's going to pretty hard to use the full potential of either of the rubbers you use without much backswing against a medium paced block.  

I'm still in a not sure land with MXP because it is quite dense.  My plan is to spend time slogging into it as hard as possible to see if I can get up to the that kind of 'line' of the unblockable either with speed or spin.

You said you work out, maybe try laying on the ground with a dumbell and train accelerating your arms in the direction of the topspin stroke repeatedly, till that muscle group in particular is like a extreme muscle memorised slingshot.

Or maybe Im just crazy...  Wacko


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/29/2022 at 10:30pm
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

It's going to pretty hard to use the full potential of either of the rubbers you use without much backswing against a medium paced block.  

I'm still in a not sure land with MXP because it is quite dense.  My plan is to spend time slogging into it as hard as possible to see if I can get up to the that kind of 'line' of the unblockable either with speed or spin.

You said you work out, maybe try laying on the ground with a dumbell and train accelerating your arms in the direction of the topspin stroke repeatedly, till that muscle group in particular is like a extreme muscle memorised slingshot.

Or maybe Im just crazy...  Wacko
Yeah I am physically stronger than many TT players so I can produce quite a lot of power in general which I plan to use to my full advantage...which means I can reduce the amount of rotation I do and still get good power behind the loop. Tbh most of the power comes from the legs anyway, training the arms is not that useful imo. I think cable core rotation for the FH and deadlifts for the BH are the closest gym exercises to the corresponding loop movement. The hand is more like a conduit of power and a force multiplier to control the arc and direction of the ball. But if the arm movement is not correct, the leg power applied on the ball will have no control which results in many errors. imo I compensate for my lack of hours on the table with power... I have worse feeling for the ball compared to many players at my level....


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 07/30/2022 at 4:31am
There is for sure an advantage to being fit. Time at the table is hard to beat though (being fit overlaps that).  Quality time is more specifically important too.  I remember when I reached my best playing:

There was a guy who had a coach, multiball, and would only play the best players.  Constantly training routines with them.

I bought a robot, and played everyone I could.  No coach.  Avoid drills like the plague.

Until I gave up the sport we reached the same level (I'd beat him in comp and then he'd beat me etc....)  And I put that down to the main difference being he has a better forehand, and I had a better feeling for how points can be won in the real world.  

There so much weirdness in table tennis, especially trying to return some wacky new serve, dealing with some weird rubber, someone who is exceptional at some part of the game in some weird arse way etc.  and without time at the table facing tons of it, it is hard to see real results on the ladder no matter how fit your are and how much you play two wing highly ranked players.

Any way rant over :)





  


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/31/2022 at 3:46am
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

There is for sure an advantage to being fit. Time at the table is hard to beat though (being fit overlaps that).  Quality time is more specifically important too.  I remember when I reached my best playing:

There was a guy who had a coach, multiball, and would only play the best players.  Constantly training routines with them.

I bought a robot, and played everyone I could.  No coach.  Avoid drills like the plague.

Until I gave up the sport we reached the same level (I'd beat him in comp and then he'd beat me etc....)  And I put that down to the main difference being he has a better forehand, and I had a better feeling for how points can be won in the real world.  

There so much weirdness in table tennis, especially trying to return some wacky new serve, dealing with some weird rubber, someone who is exceptional at some part of the game in some weird arse way etc.  and without time at the table facing tons of it, it is hard to see real results on the ladder no matter how fit your are and how much you play two wing highly ranked players.

Any way rant over :)
  

Yeah TT is a sport where technical stuff is a lot more important than sheer physicality. There's a lot of weird shit in it in general and ppl who play weird are often rewarded for it. It can be a bit unsatisfying in general as a sport imo....


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/31/2022 at 3:55am
I finally have what I was looking for on the BH, the "power position" from which I can unleash max power on the ball without much backswing. It even works for counterloops   - I felt confident enough to BH counterloop too. Will take some time to get used to it. It's a bit hard on the forearms tho...  

Played a round robin, tried all my new strokes and lost like five best of 5s in the decider wtf. I missed way too many FHs long coz of the stupid hardened D09c which refused to spin the ball strong enough to pull the balls down onto the table, and also my service spin was just lacking despite the effort I was putting into the serve. My conclusion is that it must be a bad batch - my last D09c lasted for easily a year and remained a spin monster at the end, this felt like I was playing with old unboosted Sriver wtf... And with the amount of power that I usually put into the FH, any lack of spin and the ball will sure fly long. 

At least I'm a bit closer to my goal of six pack abs. I found that TT is quite effective in fat loss when coupled with a caloric deficit. I pretty much just cut by 0.1-0.2kg every time I play because I only drink plain water during the session. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/31/2022 at 9:12am
The main thing in achieving that power position in the BH is actually using the nonplaying arm. So the BH stroke involves a pull from the lats. But somehow, if I pull with both lats (pulling both elbows to the sides) it makes the stroke significantly more powerful and concentrated. The other thing is not to drop the wrist at all or doing anything with it - the main power comes from supination (aided by the thumb press). In fact, with the wrist in neutral position, the bat is very slightly raised relative to the hand.  All the energy sources (including the "deadlift" power from the lower body, the lats, supination and thumb press) must be precisely timed. There's no need to bend the wrist inward, or rotate the upper body, or bringing the elbow forward relative to the hand, all of these cost valuable time... The only backswing required is the slight hip hinge and bend in the knees, a relaxed forearm placed horizontally close to the body, behind the ball, and strangely enough, the left hand must be close to the ball too.

-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 07/31/2022 at 4:44pm
I thougt of you a bit the last couple of days.

1.  being blocked easily = I had no idea how easy MXP blocks.  I know this sounds like nothing, but until you actually play it yourself, so just remember if you are getting blocked easily by someone, they are not amazing, there are rubbers that actually make blocking and with mild action on them sooooooooooooo easy to position the ball anywhere they want no matter how much effort you put in.

I literally almost never missed getting the ball onto the table if it contacts the rubber surface. It's that insanely simple.  (only requiring some basic angle adjustment, but no rocket science here.)  The only time I can miss is when I actively loop and the catapult kicks in where I don't want it.

2.  The high pressure moments always favour the more simple strokes.  Going for a big swing has so many things that can wrong.  It all depends how much winning means to you.  If winning all it is then you'd probably develop a game around controlled equipment = easy to do everything with = not amazing at anything.  If improving is your desire then suck it up and just keep killing every shot, eventually you will be rewarded for it.  But don't change that when you come to the pressure moments = because then you are playing suddenly in a way that does not favor what you trained = probably lose.

3.  Doubt Melbourne is any warmer than Brisbane.  Have you considered the weather?  Put your bat under your arm before you play and try to bring it up to body temperature.  Remember rubber needs to be warm to be elastic/flexible.  Also moisture is a pain...


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/31/2022 at 6:48pm
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

I thougt of you a bit the last couple of days.

1.  being blocked easily = I had no idea how easy MXP blocks.  I know this sounds like nothing, but until you actually play it yourself, so just remember if you are getting blocked easily by someone, they are not amazing, there are rubbers that actually make blocking and with mild action on them sooooooooooooo easy to position the ball anywhere they want no matter how much effort you put in.

I literally almost never missed getting the ball onto the table if it contacts the rubber surface. It's that insanely simple.  (only requiring some basic angle adjustment, but no rocket science here.)  The only time I can miss is when I actively loop and the catapult kicks in where I don't want it.

2.  The high pressure moments always favour the more simple strokes.  Going for a big swing has so many things that can wrong.  It all depends how much winning means to you.  If winning all it is then you'd probably develop a game around controlled equipment = easy to do everything with = not amazing at anything.  If improving is your desire then suck it up and just keep killing every shot, eventually you will be rewarded for it.  But don't change that when you come to the pressure moments = because then you are playing suddenly in a way that does not favor what you trained = probably lose.

3.  Doubt Melbourne is any warmer than Brisbane.  Have you considered the weather?  Put your bat under your arm before you play and try to bring it up to body temperature.  Remember rubber needs to be warm to be elastic/flexible.  Also moisture is a pain...

1. So far, I haven't encountered many ppl who can block my FH loop reliably (even those who are above my level) when I get a good swing at it (aside from that rally player who is an anomaly - but even he knows to never serve long to my FH - only to my BH which is not that strong). Also I used to play a more tricky passive game which had good results too against certain players, but tbh that doesn't consume many calories which would defeat my ultimate goal of playing table tennis (as a replacement for aerobic exercise)

2. Tbh I don't usually miss that many FH sitters like that (they were literally high balls which I missed which ultimately cost me too many points in the deciding sets). I had no choice but to put those away tbh, I've learnt a long time ago that if I pushed those back it'll be high too and be smashed. 

3. Yes, most likely it could be the weather, it's been quite cold and wet these days - I didn't consider that tbh. I'll try those tips!


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/31/2022 at 9:51pm
After reflecting on the shots I missed on the FH, it's almost all opportunity balls. Strangely enough, I didn't even miss that many loops on normal low balls, serves drifting long, etc... Wtf i'm becoming just like Hao Shuai now....

-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 07/31/2022 at 9:58pm
IS he that dood who lost to Michael Maze long time ago to lobs?

EDIT

The sheer joy of higher balls to my backhand with MXP cannot be explained... This is why I am still searching for a non-tacky fh even though my tacky gives me so many other easy points.




-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 07/31/2022 at 11:03pm
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

IS he that dood who lost to Michael Maze long time ago to lobs?

EDIT

The sheer joy of higher balls to my backhand with MXP cannot be explained... This is why I am still searching for a non-tacky fh even though my tacky gives me so many other easy points.



Yeah that's the guy lol... Anyway imma gonna search for some new setup now


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 08/01/2022 at 11:24pm
Back before the Youtube days, I was mad about TT and that's the first and only set of DVDs I bought.  

Classic tournament in my opinion.  The days of speed gluing Kreanga swinging. 


-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 08/03/2022 at 3:56am
Lol i ended up ordering the Cybershape blade + Xiom Tau II on FH and Victas V15 extra on BH. Not sure why there's so little stock of everything around....

-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 08/03/2022 at 7:40pm
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

Back before the Youtube days, I was mad about TT and that's the first and only set of DVDs I bought.  

Classic tournament in my opinion.  The days of speed gluing Kreanga swinging. 

Haha that must be quite the sight. I came in much later - my first TT memories was with the huge Wang Liqin FH which was the most awesome thing to watch - like the hammer of the gods. Maybe that's why my BH really suffered a lot in development - I just wasn't as motivated to develop it back then....

Funny how everyone has much smaller strokes now and there's almost none of this wild big swings these days. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 08/03/2022 at 7:53pm
Did a lot of BH focused and footwork training yesterday... the free arm movement (lat pull with both hands rather than just with the playing arm) really helps a huge ton in terms of accuracy, stability and power. When the timing is right, some of my BH loops with D05 were even faster/spinnier than my FH loops with the crappy D09c. The strange thing is that my D05 is actually older than my D09c - it's been like 8 months and still going strong!

With the BH, timing is really everything - sometimes it is even worthwhile to jump towards the ball to get to the correct timing - missing the timing window (especially being late to the ball) results in much lower shot quality in general especially if it's not hit in the ideal strike zone in front of the body or even slightly to the left. 

Also did some serve and receive footwork training, focused mainly on making the recovery after the serve and receive faster. I noticed that sometimes I kinda delay the recovery rather than doing that immediately. Basically the recovery has to be part of the stroke movement too - can't be lazy during training!


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 08/03/2022 at 10:35pm
Looks like some EJing fun ahead.  My friend really likes that blade.  That FH rubber sounds and looks cool on the packaging.  Look forward to hearing about them.

-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 08/04/2022 at 10:23pm
Originally posted by bozbrisvegas bozbrisvegas wrote:

Looks like some EJing fun ahead.  My friend really likes that blade.  That FH rubber sounds and looks cool on the packaging.  Look forward to hearing about them.

Can't wait to test it out!


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 08/05/2022 at 9:59am
Made some breakthroughs today. Although my FH rubber is just absolutely terrible, what worked was not going for the powerloops, but trying to go for max spin like Timo Boll...so apparently that still works for the D09c. It's just not spinny enough to bring the powerloops down to the table anymore ...  Unfortunately as I won't have any replacement rubbers anytime soon, I will have to live with not able to powerloop hard on the FH....which sucks Dead

With this strat and an improved BH (thanks to the free hand movement), I was able to stand my own in the rallies and win some games off this rally player playing aggressive table tennis instead of trying to win ugly lol. I still lost a ton of games in the beginning before starting to take over, so adding all of them up it was rather even. There were a huge ton of exciting topspin rallies going on (even loop to loop from mid distance) which must have drawn some spectators haha....


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 08/07/2022 at 8:45am
I boosted the D09c with olive oil and it came back to life roaring lol. My FH powerloops are all back :O 

Played some doubles today and it was so fun... the games were somehow always quite close regardless of the pairing and doubles really punishes passive play - because the aggressive player doesn't need to worry about recovery - the partner can easily take over even if the shot is out of balance. With doubles I was doing mostly FH whole table (as it is the most efficient strategy) as it is the hardest shot to return by far, most flexible and consistent. My newly learnt FH flick became super useful because I could even punish most of the short no-spin and side-top serves, and still be ready to loop most of the long serves. The problem with using the BH receive/chiquita is that if the serve turns out to be long I'll have to make it a full fledged BH loop which is just not as strong as the FH loop - it is extremely hard to transition from a chiquita preparation stance to a FH loop. Also did a lot of quality short pushes which I normally don't get to do much in singles play - it is actually highly effective at shutting down a good player coz if you push short with quality they pretty can't do their high quality topspin opening loops. 

I don't think the receiver is at that much of a disadvantage in doubles as it is in singles because the available service placements is cut by half. Felt so much better in the serve receive compared to singles tbh. 


-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(


Posted By: bozbrisvegas
Date Posted: 08/09/2022 at 3:55am
So the tackiness is still there, just the sponge lost its flex/liveliness.  Cool if all it needs olive oil.

yup, serving for doubles has got to be tight.  I receive both ways see which works better with their serves, especially if my partner is strong FH... that way I'm out the way with bh receive.






-------------
Grubba Variant ALL
fh: Hurricane 38 degrees MAX
bh: tensor MAX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQgNPkpILsg&list=PL9V-XUSPJgk-loYl2zRhQZ29lsAK7tdLX" rel="nofollow - Watch me playing TT


Posted By: blahness
Date Posted: 08/10/2022 at 10:39pm
Continued more BH training yesterday night - I did a lot of BH mid-distance "slow spinny looping" to improve my feeling for spinning up the ball and general moving towards the ball to further ingrain the non-playing arm movement into my consciousness. Felt really good and I reckon I should do more of these although my BH is still mainly a close-table BH - it really improves the spin feeling which is extremely critical to success rates. Mid distance looping is a real treat for the legs tho, i think it's as intense as leg days in the gym...

I played with a player who wouldn't practice properly, he was a penholder who goes RSM kamikaze smashing during practice, and even during BH to BH he's doing all sorts of nonsense (intentional imo) like going super wide on blocks, chopblocks and suddenly increasing the power.... So in the end I got fed up and just loopkilled the ball whenever it came to my side of the table, and I think he actually enjoyed picking up the balls all the time lmao.... Swear I'm never gonna practice with that guy anymore... 




-------------
-------
Viscaria
FH: Hurricane 8-80
BH: D05

Back to normal shape bats :(



Print Page | Close Window

Forum Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 12.01 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Copyright ©2001-2018 Web Wiz Ltd. - https://www.webwiz.net