How to play with a bad feeling player

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Probably need more explanation of what you mean playing with players with no ball feeling? Are you saying they make a lot of mistakes & easy touch play errors?

Anyways. I like playing less experienced players every now & then to practice looping vs low spin or almost no-spin. Particularly if they can hit their almost no-spin balls at any sort of pace.

That's just something I find you can't simulate when you play good players. They can't help themselves. They hit with great spin. That's what good players do. So you get use to that one style and then you run into a solid player at a tournament who can hit somewhat fast but their hits have little to no spin on them and you're wondering why you're sending everything long & missing so much.... Whew that was a mouthful. Sorry. Anyways, the point of that story is that I think one can find things to practice or work on even if playing with lesser players.
 
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Are these 'bad balls' happening in practice or in the match? If the latter, then, well, looks like they have plenty of 'feeling', since it's your opponent's job to make life difficult for you.

If it's a practice scenario, OK, either help them to be better at blocking for you, or treat it as a random block practice instead and work on your footwork, perfecting your strokes against dead balls etc. Should help you with dealing with the same balls in match scenarios down the line.:rolleyes:
 
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Its a test of your footwork , feeling ( grip pressure control and understanding of spin ) , and whip mechanism ... so essentially its a test of how good a player you are ... there is no good or bad "feeling" .. the moment you categorize it as bad you will never be able to give the proper respect to those balls and develop the required skill to handle them .. .
 
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I treat these players like they're playing with antispin rubbers. Every (or almost every) ball comes at you dead and floaty so I gently loop the ones I can't outright smash (if they're high enough). If I'm feeling confident I'll try to play more of a loop drive, but I work up to that as it can take some time to develop feeling against these dead balls.

If they start smashing because my loops are too high and slow then I try to work in a few pushes/chops. But sometimes if they play a good smash it's kind of hard to return those as those balls have no spin.
 
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Only time and experience (meaning the right kind of practice) will give you the feeling of your own to play with these kinds of players.

I would bet a lot from your question that you probably are only practicing against nice clean balls and where the timing is totally predictable and it is giving you a false sense of your own level. Because what you are saying is that it is very easy to disrupt your own timing. This is a normal stage in player development, so you are not unique. (I suspect the same thing from a lot of people who post threads about how to do this or that on their forehand loop). I get that it is a cool shot, the centerpiece of modern offensive table tennis. We all know that "chicks dig a guy with a big loop". Still.......

You need to incorporate a lot of random elements into your practice. That means randomness in placement and also randomness in terms of the pace and spin that balls are delivered to you. And practice everything that arises in your matches. How often do I see people spend hours (or at least the majority of their time) practicing their loops and forehand counters only to be pretty much unable to use either shot once a match starts? And then they struggle. If that is you, then your level will stagnate and not increase as fast as it could. You have to practice all the shots and against all the shots.
 
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recently I've listened to a very interesting podcast about how pro athletes where there is a need for a really quick reaction play. It was about major league baseball players. So basically the ball travels way too fast for the hitter to react to it and to hit it. Also, it turns out that baseball hitters have the same reaction times as other regular people. Not a faster one. Simply put it's in human physiology, that it takes X amount of time to process data and the ball flies in X/2 time. So, because of a lot of practice, they learn how to get the info needed to hit the ball from the pitcher's movements before he lets the ball go. And that's the only way. And then hitters start to hit the ball before the ball has left the pitchers hand. And that's the only way. And pro players struggle with unorthodox players also.

The same rationale should be valid for TT too. And in this particular case why you struggle with players who can't play that very well.
I have this problem too. From time to time I play with players who don't have good fundamentals and aren't playing technically correctly. It feels as if it takes more effort to win against them then against a much much much better players. These players don't have a correct stance, they don't "get into ready for a shot position" and they don't do correct hand movements so it's much harder to know for what you should be getting ready. (And then they make some crazy shot from their ass :) )


So in short if you want to win against such players effortlessly, you should practice against them to know them, but is there a point for that? You won't become a better player for doing that for sure.


So I really recommend to listen to this podcast. It's very interesting: https://soundcloud.com/youarenotsosmart/132-practice-rebroadcast The podcast is on the shorter side, but the author explains the principle really nice.


For those who will listen, let me know your thoughts and impressions
 
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This is an interesting theory. What I usually do in such situations is to break their habits rather than trying to dictate my game. It’s often easier to exploit someone’s bad footwork than to do 5 topspins right after another. This weekend I played against someone who likes to block and does it really well. I lost to him last year 2-3. This time around, I just refused to attack, and instead tried giving spinny pushes with variations in placement, and I won 3-0 without much effort. Now, I know this doesn’t really work against stronger players, but sometimes it’s an easier way to win against a weaker player.

recently I've listened to a very interesting podcast about how pro athletes where there is a need for a really quick reaction play. It was about major league baseball players. So basically the ball travels way too fast for the hitter to react to it and to hit it. Also, it turns out that baseball hitters have the same reaction times as other regular people. Not a faster one. Simply put it's in human physiology, that it takes X amount of time to process data and the ball flies in X/2 time. So, because of a lot of practice, they learn how to get the info needed to hit the ball from the pitcher's movements before he lets the ball go. And that's the only way. And then hitters start to hit the ball before the ball has left the pitchers hand. And that's the only way. And pro players struggle with unorthodox players also.

The same rationale should be valid for TT too. And in this particular case why you struggle with players who can't play that very well.
I have this problem too. From time to time I play with players who don't have good fundamentals and aren't playing technically correctly. It feels as if it takes more effort to win against them then against a much much much better players. These players don't have a correct stance, they don't "get into ready for a shot position" and they don't do correct hand movements so it's much harder to know for what you should be getting ready. (And then they make some crazy shot from their ass :) )


So in short if you want to win against such players effortlessly, you should practice against them to know them, but is there a point for that? You won't become a better player for doing that for sure.


So I really recommend to listen to this podcast. It's very interesting: https://soundcloud.com/youarenotsosmart/132-practice-rebroadcast The podcast is on the shorter side, but the author explains the principle really nice.


For those who will listen, let me know your thoughts and impressions




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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This is an interesting theory. What I usually do in such situations is to break their habits rather than trying to dictate my game. It’s often easier to exploit someone’s bad footwork than to do 5 topspins right after another. This weekend I played against someone who likes to block and does it really well. I lost to him last year 2-3. This time around, I just refused to attack, and instead tried giving spinny pushes with variations in placement, and I won 3-0 without much effort. Now, I know this doesn’t really work against stronger players, but sometimes it’s an easier way to win against a weaker player.


I think this is such good advice - especially for beginner to intermediate players. My coach used to say to me: sometimes you have to play an ugly game to win.
 
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If you want to win easily without effort just play backspin all the time until you get a ball to smash or topspin where they can't get at it.
These weird-ball players can usually block a bit but backspin will kill them.

Hope it helps
 
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