Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[Garrison]

hey everybody

Hello and welcome

 

[Gene Tuttle]

Congratulations on your conditioning.

 

[Der_Echte]

NL, rats on both ur situations.

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[NextLevel]

BTW, our club was flooded on Wednesday so I had to drive to Princeton if I wanted to hit a ball - had to cancel lessons through the weekend. Here is me practicing at Princeton. I was trying to do something with my backhand but what I thought I was doing and what I was doing were not the same. Sucks when that happens.

You don't have to watch the whole thing - any random minute after the first 10 minutes is fine.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

I am not sure but i think you're mainly the guy drilling, and the guy practising a little bit his BH block for you.
your BH is really powerful, spinny, deep, and you can finish with a harder and flatter BH. I, for one, cannot hit those kind of BH consistently.

On the other hand, we can see the limits of your technique, which is relative to your footwork and condition. you are a standing too straight, and you are not adjusting (or too little) your feet between each ball. You adjust mainly with your arm and wrist but if the ball is a bit too far from the ideal hit zone (left or right, or a bit lower) then thats causing errors and thats causing perhaps 80 or 90% or your misses.

My consistency in BH (and FH) has upped one level the day when i decided to get ready for the next ball and get my balance back immediately after hitting the ball. Not only the consistency but the ability to play one more ball, even if its coming on the FH. and also i get into the right "tempo". one can imagine TT like dancing. if the beat is 120 but you can only move a bit slower, after a few notes you're totally out of sync.

I'm not sure this drill is ideal for you. because in this exercise you are a step away from the table, i never see you in this situation in match, the guy is trying to block exactly where you want the ball to be, he is himself a bit far from the table so blocks the ball late with a high trajectory. So you will have very few chances to use it.

As for the guy blocking he has decent control. This exercise shows also that hitting hard the ball like you do in a game can be put in check by a simple block, and on the other hand that a speedy but passive block is met by a second , third... hard hit...

 

[NextLevel]

I am not sure but i think you're mainly the guy drilling, and the guy practising a little bit his BH block for you.
your BH is really powerful, spinny, deep, and you can finish with a harder and flatter BH. I, for one, cannot hit those kind of BH consistently.

On the other hand, we can see the limits of your technique, which is relative to your footwork and condition. you are a standing too straight, and you are not adjusting (or too little) your feet between each ball. You adjust mainly with your arm and wrist but if the ball is a bit too far from the ideal hit zone (left or right, or a bit lower) then thats causing errors and thats causing perhaps 80 or 90% or your misses.

My consistency in BH (and FH) has upped one level the day when i decided to get ready for the next ball and get my balance back immediately after hitting the ball. Not only the consistency but the ability to play one more ball, even if its coming on the FH. and also i get into the right "tempo". one can imagine TT like dancing. if the beat is 120 but you can only move a bit slower, after a few notes you're totally out of sync.

I'm not sure this drill is ideal for you. because in this exercise you are a step away from the table, i never see you in this situation in match, the guy is trying to block exactly where you want the ball to be, he is himself a bit far from the table so blocks the ball late with a high trajectory. So you will have very few chances to use it.

As for the guy blocking he has decent control. This exercise shows also that hitting hard the ball like you do in a game can be put in check by a simple block, and on the other hand that a speedy but passive block is met by a second , third... hard hit...

BH is fundamentally limited, some players rated even 300 pts above me can't do what I am doing. Adjusting to the ball on the backhand side is just difficult.

The drill is fun, and I have been doing some version of it since I was 1700. Then, I Was a bit more mobile so it helped me a lot when playing people who had hard third ball backhand attacks as I could step back, loop their ball onto the table and stay in the point. The other thing that happened, purely by accident as well, was that my third ball got much stronger as I could take a bigger swing at the ball if I needed to win the point immediately with my backhand. That was my first time learning that while you don't do useless things all the time, they don't go to waste if they are good things.

I was trying to implement a certain swing technique and timing, and that was the focus of the practice. I failed, but that is fine. The thing about my backhand technique is that it is the same, no matter where I am playing from, it is just the size of the motion that is different. At this point, I have mostly accepted my footwork issues as what they are, the goal is just to play higher quality shots that limit the angle of play and see how far I get.

 

[Archosaurus]

NextLevel, I can see you becoming One-Loop Man with that attitude. Just finish the point on the first loop and you won't need to move terribly much.

 

[NextLevel]

NextLevel, I can see you becoming One-Loop Man with that attitude. Just finish the point on the first loop and you won't need to move terribly much.

No so much finish the shot but play a shot with enough quality that the opponent's control and offensive options are limited. One shot table tennis relies too much on getting weak enough balls to put away or that your opponent is just not used to defending balls of your quality and this is not as easy to find at the above 1900 level anymore. When you start out, one shot table tennis makes sense, but a good coach and losing to better players when they start bringing those balls back will show you the importance of recovering *somehow*.

BTW I reviewed the video and I actually did manage to implement the pattern much better than I thought I had. Baby steps. For people who are curious, you can see the advanced timing on Timo Boll's backhand in slow motion. He waits for the ball, snaps his wrist reflexively at the right moment to add extra spin into his stroke. All the top CNT players have this motion in their backhand as well. What Brett told me was that my wrist rarely points back towards me and I think this video, the camera angle gives me less points than I deserve, but even then, my timing was better. As long as I added something, life is good, I think.

OF course, let's not compare Timo's core work to mine. Mine exists, but is far less visible. If you think I don't use my core at all, try to do what I am doing without using it and see what happens.

 

[Archosaurus]

The backhands of Timo Boll and the CNT are phenomenal, far above the quality of most 2500 or so forehands, it seems, so I wouldn't be terribly concerned.

Of course, improvement is always important. I strive for better mechanics and I'm at a much lower level of applying them, so in a way I understand your effort. Better start practicing high level mechanics sooner than later, or is that wrong?

 

[NextLevel]

The backhands of Timo Boll and the CNT are phenomenal, far above the quality of most 2500 or so forehands, it seems, so I wouldn't be terribly concerned.

Of course, improvement is always important. I strive for better mechanics and I'm at a much lower level of applying them, so in a way I understand your effort. Better start practicing high level mechanics sooner than later, or is that wrong?

Hard question to answer. The correct answer would depend on many things and is specific to each individual and their development path. Also coaching will give you a better idea of how these things develop in players and what is a reasonable way to develop them in players who don't have them. But the motion here is no different from throwing a Frisbee, it is the timing of the backswing that is extremely difficult. One can spend many hours missing the ball trying to get it and the core work shows you that there are other important things in the stroke. But people who trained as kids develop these things very naturally.

 

[Garrison]

The first thing I would go for is consistency before making the small adjustments

 

[NextLevel]

The first thing I would go for is consistency before making the small adjustments

If you play competitively at the same time as training, this is one approach. But sometimes, if you just put in the time with the right kind of training, what you think are small adjustments can be built into the main stroke easily. It also depends on how you think of the small adjustments. If you think they are natural things like throwing a frisbee, they can be easier than you think. If you think of them as advanced complicated GNT/CNT backhand, then you may never do them.

For example, I almost never used to loop topspin close to the table because I felt it was an advanced skill. But the trap is that if you don't try, you don't practice, and in table tennis, exposure is required to find the right strokes, so it is a trap that is easy to fall into. The kids who started looping topspin much earlier than I did got good at it much earlier. It separated us for a long time because I kept thinking it was an advanced skill and blocked on my forehand and looped only backspin. Trying to close the gap for the last two years has been hard and it is in part because I went for my consistent block/drive instead of taking the time to learn to loop topspin.

So I just want to make the point that consistency is not always an indicator of how easy or hard something is.

 

[Archosaurus]

The friend I am training, he has been playing for a month or so. I give him topspin in a very controlled environment and I show him how to do something to it and tell him to try it, and we drill until we get some results.

Advanced things like chopping, counterlooping etc. Of course, it's not like he magically becomes very good or even half-decent at them. He still gets exposure at a low level and doesn't keep a closed mind.

Didn't NL talk about that one very low level player who can counterloop? If you get exposed to it and try, I think it's possible.

 

[Der_Echte]

Ran into T95MWP and his son at the local club today again. He has a good following at work.

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[Der_Echte]

The visitor at the club was a worker at a business where T95MWP works and said he texted a lot of his work TT buddies to come out to the local club. (The guy was first time visitor to our local club in Sac.) I texted into his phone that fat, OLD, Obnoxious American 1300 level was talking too much noise and T95MWP should come to the club right away and shut him (me) up. I did not know he was talking to T95MWP.

haha, lo and behold, T95MWP showed up, he had tried to call me on my cell (he dialed wrong number), messaged me on nexyUSA.com FB page (I responded I would be at club) and he left message at my TTD profile. That is one motivated TT player !!!

I think T95MWP would defeat the new player 11-3 or 11-4 each game without breaking a sweat. I would say new player was 800-1000 USATT depending on circumstance. I hope new player comes back, we taught him stuff in 60 minutes he would take 10 lessons to get from a coach.

 

[Shuki]

Coach said something interesting yesterday. I always liked to block and keep the ball moderately slower.

Paraphrasing here, but basically she said that, if you always play a slower ball, hitting a fast one won't work because your muscles aren't comfortable doing this. They'll tense up and form will go down the drain.

However, if you're always trying to play faster strokes, trying to slow it down won't work because your muscles will be fighting against themselves in an attempt to slow down, thus tensing up and form going down the drain.

So the choice comes to practicing both, or only going one speed when you play. Against everyone.

p.s. Playing good lately. I'm extremely confident that I'm about to win our U1800 tournament next month, and will PROBABLY place in the U2000.

 

[Archosaurus]

Hello guys.

Here is 22 minutes of topspin vs block. The blocker is my newbie friend, he is very inconsistent. I was getting a bit irritated but I tried my best.

How is this? I can see a lot of mistakes, but I will let you guys judge it. I do know that I need a haircut, again.

@NextLevel
@UpSideDownCarl
@Shuki
@Der_Echte
@Takkyuu_wa_inochi

Whoever else I always forget who gives me advice.

 

[Shuki]

Hello guys.

Here is 22 minutes of topspin vs block. The blocker is my newbie friend, he is very inconsistent. I was getting a bit irritated but I tried my best.

How is this? I can see a lot of mistakes, but I will let you guys judge it. I do know that I need a haircut, again.

@NextLevel
@UpSideDownCarl
@Shuki
@Der_Echte
@Takkyuu_wa_inochi

Whoever else I always forget who gives me advice.

??? why not just serve him topspin instead of launching it straight to his side???

I've only seen players serve straight to their side when doing counterlooping drills...

 

[NextLevel]

Coach said something interesting yesterday. I always liked to block and keep the ball moderately slower.

Paraphrasing here, but basically she said that, if you always play a slower ball, hitting a fast one won't work because your muscles aren't comfortable doing this. They'll tense up and form will go down the drain.

However, if you're always trying to play faster strokes, trying to slow it down won't work because your muscles will be fighting against themselves in an attempt to slow down, thus tensing up and form going down the drain.

So the choice comes to practicing both, or only going one speed when you play. Against everyone.

p.s. Playing good lately. I'm extremely confident that I'm about to win our U1800 tournament next month, and will PROBABLY place in the U2000.

Oh wise Philosopher of Table Tennis, where have you been?

 

[Shuki]

Oh wise Philosopher of Table Tennis, where have you been?

midterms.

lots of lurking, less posting. Often when I feel like posting I'll type something up and decide not to post for one reason or another. Sometimes, knowing I may not be back reply in a timely manner is enough to dissuade me from posting.