Skill or Equipment?

le xex wrote: id say both skill and equipment are equally important because for instance its hard to hit a proper loop shot with crappy-dead rubber. And also you will develop bad technique without proper equipment. You need both to be a good player.

This sums it up perfectly. Timo boll could not beat you with a noodle, could he?
I do tend to get a little bored with folks who over emphasize skill and say equipment is not important-- if it isn't very important then why even bother getting a decent setup -- why not just go to practice each time and borrow someone else's setup?

IceDefence wrote: First of all you need equipment to improve yourself Then you start thinking aoiut skills

i disagree. one shouldnt buy a schlager carbon with two bryces speed glues (or some other insanely fast combo) and then learn how to play with it.
one should play with a petr korbel with sriver el (or some other moderately fast combo) until your requirements in terms of speed are greater than your current equipment can offer you, then you upgrade.

alfie wrote: skill for sure but if your equipment is to fast for you and you can't control it then you will have a VERY hard time to learn the skills you need,also if the equipment does not match your style you will have a hard time

but you really dont change the speed in a paddle. unless you mean reflexes start off as slow as a motherfather then i still dont get it. and i dont know how to change the speed of my mouse. but i get what your saying.

Skill and equipment are both equally important.

As long as your equipment doesn't prevent you from doing something to the best of your ability, then its fine. The rest is skill.

Finding the right set-up for yourself is like finding treasure. It's quite difficult actually. But I believe one need to adjust both ways, ie getting used to equipment as well as adjusting/changing equipment (EJ-ing a bit) to fine tune your game.

PingPangQiu wrote: Well, sorry to pull you down but, the combination that suits you (medium soft 5 ply all wood with powerful rubber or rubbers with speed glue) may be best for you but not for other people

Yup, to each his own. LOL.

I just wanted to stress again that proper setup is very important once you develop your skills - but you have to develop them first. It's no wonder that in the beginning coaches give juniors relatively slow ALL or ALL+ rackets with controlling rubbers to force them to develop proper technique.

Once that is done they can gradually switch to something more suitable to their style - whether they want to be defenders or attackers or blockers or whatevers. That's when some degree of EJ-ing is appropriate. But once you have a setup which is good for your style, you really should focus much more on playing, skills, mental training, physical preparation etc... EJ-ing should move to the background after that... unless that is really something that you get a lot of fun from and you don't mind that spending time on it (and trying various blades and rubbers) prevents you from becoming a better player.

I do not believe that someone can give you a magic rubber which will make you a so much better player after you have already played at least 2-3 years of TT... almost the same goes for the blades (which are generally more important, imho, in the overall setup than rubbers). Therefore if your current rubber suits you, don't waste a lot of time and energy on researching and trying all other rubbers - well, maybe once in a blue moon wouldn't hurt as long as you have a spare pair of your old trusty Srivers stashed somewhere just in case.