European Loop vs Chinese Loop?

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It does have alot to do with what type of rubber you are using. I am using Chinese rubbers now, and I used to use Euro rubbers before. Now I have to use alot more power from my arm and body in order to make a successful loop. But, of course that come with more speed and spin. Where as before I could T-rex my arm all day and loop and smash easily, but with lack of power. I think it is preference and a little dependent on your equipment.
 
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There is no such a thing like different Topspins. There is GENERALLY one stroke that is called Topspin and you variate it accordingly to the situation that you are in with the simple laws of physik. To a certain point these axioms hold: closer to your spine = saver; farer away from your spine more uncontrolled. There are some easy formular : angularvelocity omega= delta_alpha / delta_time. This fromular tells you how fast the outer point of your racket moves / how fast it describes a circle what should be approximatly your topspin movement. The tangential speed that you are generating what is proportional to the rotation and the speed that you are giving the ball is calculated by v = omega x r (the corssproduct from angular velocity and the distance from the point hitting the ball to your spine) . Furthermore the magnitude of what you can transfer of that to the ball is also dependent on the friction coefficient of your rubber and some other factors of rubber and blade. BUT if you have a clean technique it doesnt matter you even can do a topspin with a cleaning sponge. Now i will explain to you what variations of topspin you are seeing and why. That what you think is "European" technique with a bit shorter arm, means more acceleration to the ball what gives it more rotation, a higher loop and more safety because of the so called magnus-effect, that means your timing hasn't to be as perfect. What you see as "chinese" technique with the longer arm is a "dangerous" topspin that has more spin and more power due to above written laws. But it is exponentially more difficult to perform, because it is harder to control and not forgiving anything. But because the amount of training that chinese players are going through is also exponential higher than that of european players they manage to do that. So as long as you are not absolving this training i would recommend to you to hit the ball closer to the spine and not on full arm extension. And now please stop this hilarious discussion.

edit: of course the topspin also depends on the opening of the racket and the gripvariation you chose, on your ability to accelerate your arm in the right moment and so on
 
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Carl has seen them and they all work well if I am in position and ready to do it. Carl and Tony will tell you there is more than one way to skin a cat (fish).

Especially if you jumped off the Brooklyn bridge to catch that catfish.

Now Der_Echte, you can't let these guys know about how the goon squad is going to come after them if they try to do a "Chinese" loop with Euro rubbers. Or a "Euro" loop with Chinese rubbers. And who knows what the goon squad will do if someone tries to do a Chinese loop with Japanese rubbers. Not to mention Korean rubbers which everyone knows only work for Korean loops.

These guys are going to have to set all kinds of traps to try and escape and we will be able to just sit back and enjoy the stories. Only a few will be able to escape the goon squad and we will know that those are the guys who had a few good tricks up their sleeves.

So don't spill the beans and let anyone know that the goon squad will be after them.


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Not necessarily.the more force you add,the greater the spin.
But in the case of chinese rubbers,friction is on your side.the more force you add,it is assisted by friction to give you more spin.

if you know how to press the ball deep into your hard fh rubber you can do both short and long swing generating the same amount of heavy spin. The reason why we do chinese style loop near table is bcoz we can, the body strength is there, the recovery is still fast assisted by proper form and body coordination. We want the opponent to miscalculate and overshoot his defenses.

I would suggest the use of a medicine ball 5kilo wt. Throw the ball against a wall 100x everyday for 1month using the same form of fh spin, time will come you wont be needing to loop incoming underspin ball rotation near table.

btw:
very rich knowledge shared posts from Tony and Carl
[emoji106] [emoji106]

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Acceleration is what generates spin regardless of what kind of rubber you are using. What does acceleration mean? It is not the top speed of the racket. It is the ability of the racket to go from slow to fast.
Acceleration does not cause spin, the tangential component of the paddle speed, friction, and top sheet stretch and snap back create spin.
Acceleration is necessary to increase the paddle speed but other than that acceleration is not a factor.

There is a professor in Sydney AU name Rodney Cross that studied and written papers about how balls bounce and spin. His work focuses more on tennis than table tennis but the physics is the same. Read his papers.

Other than that I agree with what you said. I am also pleased that many others think the Chinese/Euro loop issue is bogus.
 
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nope, Pnatchwey is right. i would however stress the main difference between tennis and table tennis when it comes to physics... in tennis the ball is elastic while in table tennis only the rubbers are. that is why a spinning tennis ball changes its spin when it hits the ground, while a table tennis ball keeps spinning in the same direction when it hits the table.
 
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Hahaha :)

Acceleration is what generates spin regardless of what kind of rubber you are using. What does acceleration mean? It is not the top speed of the racket. It is the ability of the racket to go from slow to fast.

If you compare Ma Long's FH with ZJK's, FZD's, Fang Bo's, Xu Xin's, Wang Hao's and Ma Lin's, they all actually use different forehand technique. Interesting since they are all Chinese and supposedly doing a "Chinese" loop.

These posts give excellent information:



FZD is frequently using an FH stroke with mostly forearm snap and not much shoulder, especially when close to the table.



Tony might not be spelling everything out but there are real gems in there. That has a ton of information in only a few words.



That quote is really worth understanding.

As a general statement, when closer to the table, less shoulder and more forearm snap help you recover faster. As you move further away from the table the strokes become bigger. Also, when you do a stroke with mostly forearm snap and not much shoulder, you are taking the ball closer to you. When you use a full arm stroke you are taking the ball further away from your body.

But many of the guys credited with using a FULL ARM STROKE have so much training that they can use a stroke that is usually safer when you are at mid-distance, even when they are close to or over the table.

So I think the fact that the top Chinese players often use a "full arm loop" while still close to the table has a decent amount to do with how much training they have and how fast their reset is. I also think it has to do with the CNT philosophy for playing the game. Hit as hard and as fast as you can any time you can. Try to end the point as soon as possible.

Those gigantic over the table loops that Ma Long does so often off a push or off his opponent's half long serve, he is not doing them because he is expecting the ball to come back so he can set up his 5th shot. He is trying to end the point as soon as he can.

Most of the training I get seems to be about spinning the ball as much as possible, staying in control, going at only about 60% and trying to be ready for the next ball. The CNT players usually aren't doing that. And, going all out, they still can recover and play the next ball with a top quality shot after they just went 110% on their previous shot.

Full Arm Stroke and Half Arm Stroke are excellent ways of categorizing this.

The things about the DHS tacky rubber that really lends themselves to the Full Arm Stroke is that, rubbers like H3 have a lot of control, and the sponge does not catapult the ball quite as much. So you can take a bigger swing and still maintain control a bit more easily. The extra catapult qualities of the speed glue effect tensor rubbers give you so much pop that a full arm stroke from closer to the table is a bit more risky.

But a full arm stroke can be done with any kind of rubber and from any distance.

Thanx a lot Carl. Well explained. You and Tony made me laugh so much. I´ve been sitting in the Train, while reading this. And people start staring at me because of my laughter. :-D Made my day. Chinese Loop - European Loop are nothing compared to the southern capetownian Loop which is known to bring in the power from the hips.... ;-)
 
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Acceleration is what generates spin regardless of what kind of rubber you are using. What does acceleration mean? It is not the top speed of the racket. It is the ability of the racket to go from slow to fast.

Since this statement's meaning has been brought into question, I will say it differently.

In table tennis, the technique you need to generate good spin is that the racket starts at not too fast a speed on contact so the ball can sink into the sponge and the topsheet can grab the ball and while the ball is on the rubber, the acceleration of the racket, and the top speed you achieve while the ball is still on the racket allow the sponge and rubber to do their thing and create the spin.

If your racket just goes at an even speed that is decently fast the ball will leave the rubber too fast for most people to generate really good spin. If the ball sinks in to the sponge too far and hits the wood too hard, that, also, will not result in as good spin.

I don't know that starting a little slower and speeding up the racket's speed is as much of a factor in tennis. But I know that if you can get your racket to be a bit slower and accelerate during contact and the acceleration gets your racket to a fast enough speed before the ball leaves the racket so that the angle of the bat face and the deformation of the sponge and the grab of the topsheet combine to propel the ball out.....

Oh, that is too many words. My mind hurts. The players who have the skill and timing of making the bat go faster at the moment of contact and how much acceleration they get and what the top speed of the racket is as the ball leaves the rubber....

Oh no, it is still too many words.

If you look at Timo Boll's arm and racket and Ma Long's arm and racket in the videos presented above to illustrate the difference between full arm and half arm strokes, you can see that both of them bend their elbow fast on contact which accelerates the speed of the racket so the racket goes from slower to faster on contact.

Timo Boll's technique is particularly interesting. As he is about to contact the ball, his arm goes from bent to a bit straighter and then to much more bent as he is contacting the ball. It is almost like he is quickly writing a check symbol just before he contacts. That whipping action of the check symbol gives a lot of acceleration so his racket goes from slow to fast very fast.

Ma Long's technique is also interesting. His arm is moving at a moderate speed on contact (way faster than TBoll's arm which is moving the wrong way a moment before contact), his arm is almost straight, but right as MLong contacts the ball his elbow starts to bend and that makes the racket accelerate from a moderate speed to a much faster speed very quickly while he is contacting the ball.

So, from a Table Tennis technique standpoint, if the racket was moving very fast and at an even speed, no acceleration, no deceleration, the topsheet and sponge would not be able to do as much to generate the spin.

[I think I want to edit that last statement: So, from a Table Tennis technique standpoint, if the racket was moving very fast and at an even speed, no acceleration, no deceleration, the precision of the contact to get the topsheet and sponge to do their thing would would be exponentially harder to achieve.]

If the racket has enough acceleration on contact so that the racket on contact is not moving too fast but by the end of the contact which really is a very short time, the racket is moving much faster, then the topsheet and sponge will be able to do what they need to to generate the spin much more effectively.

All this is also dependent on the angle of the racket in relation to the ball through the stroke. But I am not going to bother talking about this because now my head hurts. Okay, no it doesn't really. I am just having fun.

I do personally think the original statement was enough for most people. But Pnachtway is actually correct from a technical standpoint. And I do appreciate that. I just know I like to simplify the overly technical stuff so that anyone can understand it without a physics degree.

If you have the timing to accelerate your racket on contact the sponge and rubber will be better able to do what they need to so that you can generate more spin.
 
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But does't grabbing the ball and allowing it to sink into the rubber (so to speak), even for a fraction of a second, mean it becoming part of the bat that moves along with it and thus does not receive a maximum transfer of rotation speed from it?

You do end up stopping the incoming spin before you put your own on it. And what you said would be true if the sponge and topsheet did not do their thing to the ball which is why Pnachtway is absolutely correct from a technical standpoint.
 
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I guess, one more detail: I have been told that in China the term used for what we call a loop roughly translates into "Pulling Passed". Because of how you are swiping passed the ball with the racket at an angle, even though the ball sinks into the sponge and the rubber grabs the ball so that the ball doesn't keep going towards you, the racket is actually still moving faster than the ball when the ball leaves the racket and the contact is imparting spin as it propels the ball forward.

But if you flat-hit the back of the ball with the racket at a 90-degree angle to the trajectory of the ball, that would cause what you said and that would be called a smash. But there is no need for slow to fast acceleration and the fraction of a second increase in dwell time for a smash.

I could be wrong with these details but I think I am on track with what you are talking about.

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I guess, one more detail: I have been told that in China the term used for what we call a loop roughly translates into "Pulling Passed". Because of how you are swiping passed the ball with the racket at an angle, even though the ball sinks into the sponge and the rubber grabs the ball so that the ball doesn't keep going towards you, the racket is actually still moving faster than the ball when the ball leaves the racket and the contact is imparting spin as it propels the ball forward.

I could be wrong with these details but I think I am on track with what you are talking about.

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Yes Carl you are on track, what you just shared is a highĺevel fh technique that really destroys timming of the opponent specially if he is attacking near table distance.



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@ Pnachtwey ... too bad that without the acceleration all other components are not doing anything.. the acceleration is the main component , it is the source of spin. With the acceleration the player is controlling the rotation of the ball.. read the papers again
Yes, acceleration is needed to gain paddle speed but if the acceleration is high and the speed is low there will not be much spin.

The speed of the paddle is fastest when the acceleration is 0.

The formulas for computing spin and speed after impact use the formula for coefficient of restitution and the conservation of momentum formulas. These do not include acceleration. If you are accelerating through the ball then you have impacted the ball before paddle has reached maximum speed. The spin and speed will not be as great than hitting the ball when the acceleration is 0. This is where timing comes in. How does one make contact at the peak velocity of the stroke?
 
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There is no such a thing like different Topspins. There is GENERALLY one stroke that is called Topspin and you variate it accordingly to the situation that you are in with the simple laws of physik. To a certain point these axioms hold: closer to your spine = saver; farer away from your spine more uncontrolled. There are some easy formular : angularvelocity omega= delta_alpha / delta_time. This fromular tells you how fast the outer point of your racket moves / how fast it describes a circle what should be approximatly your topspin movement. The tangential speed that you are generating what is proportional to the rotation and the speed that you are giving the ball is calculated by v = omega x r (the corssproduct from angular velocity and the distance from the point hitting the ball to your spine) .
You were doing well to this point.

Furthermore the magnitude of what you can transfer of that to the ball is also dependent on the friction coefficient of your rubber and some other factors of rubber and blade.
No, any reasonable inverted rubber grips the ball relatively instantly. It is the ability of the ball to stretch the top sheet across the paddle and snap back that adds spin to the ball because the snapping back and tangential velocities add. If there was no stretch and snap back ( trampoline ) effect the rotations ball speed would be limited by the tangential motion of the paddle.

BUT if you have a clean technique it doesnt matter you even can do a topspin with a cleaning sponge. Now i will explain to you what variations of topspin you are seeing and why. That what you think is "European" technique with a bit shorter arm, means more acceleration to the ball what gives it more rotation,
show me a formula where acceleration is used to compute spin.

And now please stop this hilarious discussion.
The part about Chinese vs Euro loop is silly. The physics part isn't.

BTW, UpSideDownCarl is right about the term Chinese use for loop. It is "la cho" or pull ball. The have other term for pulling curved or arc balls.
 
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Yes, acceleration is needed to gain paddle speed but if the acceleration is high and the speed is low there will not be much spin.

The speed of the paddle is fastest when the acceleration is 0.

The formulas for computing spin and speed after impact use the formula for coefficient of restitution and the conservation of momentum formulas. These do not include acceleration. If you are accelerating through the ball then you have impacted the ball before paddle has reached maximum speed. The spin and speed will not be as great than hitting the ball when the acceleration is 0. This is where timing comes in. How does one make contact at the peak velocity of the stroke?

amen. been talking about this for years but never had enough technical knowledge to explain it in such a good way.

No, any reasonable inverted rubber grips the ball relatively instantly. It is the ability of the ball to stretch the top sheet across the paddle and snap back that adds spin to the ball because the snapping back and tangential velocities add. If there was no stretch and snap back ( trampoline ) effect the rotations ball speed would be limited by the tangential motion of the paddle.

yes yes finally someone who understands!
 
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Since this statement's meaning has been brought into question, I will say it differently.

In table tennis, the technique you need to generate good spin is that the racket starts at not too fast a speed on contact so the ball can sink into the sponge and the topsheet can grab the ball and while the ball is on the rubber, the acceleration of the racket, and the top speed you achieve while the ball is still on the racket allow the sponge and rubber to do their thing and create the spin.

If your racket just goes at an even speed that is decently fast the ball will leave the rubber too fast for most people to generate really good spin. If the ball sinks in to the sponge too far and hits the wood too hard, that, also, will not result in as good spin.

I don't know that starting a little slower and speeding up the racket's speed is as much of a factor in tennis. But I know that if you can get your racket to be a bit slower and accelerate during contact and the acceleration gets your racket to a fast enough speed before the ball leaves the racket so that the angle of the bat face and the deformation of the sponge and the grab of the topsheet combine to propel the ball out.....

Oh, that is too many words. My mind hurts. The players who have the skill and timing of making the bat go faster at the moment of contact and how much acceleration they get and what the top speed of the racket is as the ball leaves the rubber....

Oh no, it is still too many words.

If you look at Timo Boll's arm and racket and Ma Long's arm and racket in the videos presented above to illustrate the difference between full arm and half arm strokes, you can see that both of them bend their elbow fast on contact which accelerates the speed of the racket so the racket goes from slower to faster on contact.

Timo Boll's technique is particularly interesting. As he is about to contact the ball, his arm goes from bent to a bit straighter and then to much more bent as he is contacting the ball. It is almost like he is quickly writing a check symbol just before he contacts. That whipping action of the check symbol gives a lot of acceleration so his racket goes from slow to fast very fast.

Ma Long's technique is also interesting. His arm is moving at a moderate speed on contact (way faster than TBoll's arm which is moving the wrong way a moment before contact), his arm is almost straight, but right as MLong contacts the ball his elbow starts to bend and that makes the racket accelerate from a moderate speed to a much faster speed very quickly while he is contacting the ball.

So, from a Table Tennis technique standpoint, if the racket was moving very fast and at an even speed, no acceleration, no deceleration, the topsheet and sponge would not be able to do as much to generate the spin.

[I think I want to edit that last statement: So, from a Table Tennis technique standpoint, if the racket was moving very fast and at an even speed, no acceleration, no deceleration, the precision of the contact to get the topsheet and sponge to do their thing would would be exponentially harder to achieve.]

If the racket has enough acceleration on contact so that the racket on contact is not moving too fast but by the end of the contact which really is a very short time, the racket is moving much faster, then the topsheet and sponge will be able to do what they need to to generate the spin much more effectively.

All this is also dependent on the angle of the racket in relation to the ball through the stroke. But I am not going to bother talking about this because now my head hurts. Okay, no it doesn't really. I am just having fun.

I do personally think the original statement was enough for most people. But Pnachtway is actually correct from a technical standpoint. And I do appreciate that. I just know I like to simplify the overly technical stuff so that anyone can understand it without a physics degree.

If you have the timing to accelerate your racket on contact the sponge and rubber will be better able to do what they need to so that you can generate more spin.
This long statement came to me 10 years ago, in much shorter term, when

My (informal) mentor in table tennis said to me,

“Tangkep dan Puter” (lit., catchand spin)

He told me te do this training,

Hold the blade, still, facing up, and

To spin the ball fast, just let the ball connect to your rubber, and

upon connection, swing sideways as fast as possible

For the chinese vs european loop, I agree with everyone, the concept is outdated.

For me, is just the dedication of strokes, whether

More to create spin (chinese loop), or,
Balance between spin and speed (european loop).
 
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He told me te do this training,

Hold the blade, still, facing up, and

To spin the ball fast, just let the ball connect to your rubber, and

upon connection, swing sideways as fast as possible

I do that all the time. Haha.



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