Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

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I think that when you are close to the table you should not use the forearm or body much, the time is not there. Bakhand close to the table is more used for tempo. If you want to loop harder you need to step out so you have more time to use the forearm and maybe body a little.

What i see as a coach and what i think personally when i play is that it is very important to accelerate fast with the wrist when you flip with the backhand. The ball often goes in the net otherwise if the opponent have alot of spin. I also think it is important to choose the right balls. Goes well to flip against all serves but pure low backspin serves are difficult in my opinion. I still sometimes try to flip pure backspin serves but those are not so safe for me, but i feel that it is somewhat possible if i come more under the ball.

When you are close to the table, using the body is far more important than people realize. The question is what do you mean by "using the body"? It is all about subtle use of the core and hip movements. If not the stroke will not have power. Even if it is just a small shoulder shrug or a quick bowing movement, it makes the stroke shorter and more powerful. But it is more language than anything else as people mean different things by using the body. Some people think it means large movements and if so I agree that no large movements close to the table.
 
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Today was a great day. Managed to sneak into the last hour of the cadet academy training session and then another hour with the veteran group which was followed by a 45 min one to one session with the coach. The message today was that most of my strokes are good enough but I always manage to get to the ball in the wrong position eventually (i.e. the weight on the wrong foot). The entire session was spent on doing footwork drills like in/out to the table mixing pushes with the occasional topspin. This is apparently the curriculum for the coming 3-4 weeks.
 
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Had the first adult training tonigth. Went pretty good. It was fun because they definely listen better then the kids and i feel that if they choose to participate in the training then they are really interested. But i think i maybe give to many tips because they can change so much, but then it will be hard for them to remember it.

I think we will try it again.
 
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I stayed today nearly 4 hours at the club and played a lot of training matches. I was very surprised by how well I played, so much better than last Sunday’s competition !

Against my teammate T who did very well on Sunday, I finally beat him for the first time in more than one year, and this time he was in good form, I didn’t win because he was having a bad day ! Closest of margins 13-11 in the 5th after being down 7-10 and saving 4 match points !

T is like two good levels above me so it’s a good win for me

Against E, a very talented young girl who beat me badly 0-3 last 4 or 5 times , I was up 2-0 (5 8) and in the 5th always ahead and 9-9 with my two serves but I jinxed it alas... still a very good match and all other matches were very good too

One thing I’ve been working on and doing well today was to fight a very old bad habit of choosing my receiver BEFORE I see the contact of the ball i.e. I’m not even looking at the spin or where the ball is going !

Of course it’s changing a lot of things when receiving is consistent and active !
 
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Another 2.5h tonight with a friend and his 13 year old son who is extremely good (more than treble my ranking). Tried his sons setup which is the same rubbers as mine but with an ALC blade. I lost badly against the kid when I borrowed his setup and then won 1 set using my own setup. The conclusion is that I’m seriously under ranked and should stay away from anything other than my Korbel. Blocking with the ALC blade was close to impossible and this is usually one of my strengths.

Fun fact: Might be able to play for 20h this week which is the most since I went to the training camp in Düsseldorf back in September. Sunday is the big day with a tournament where I’ve signed up for two different ranking classes.
 
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Another 2.5h tonight with a friend and his 13 year old son who is extremely good (more than treble my ranking). Tried his sons setup which is the same rubbers as mine but with an ALC blade. I lost badly against the kid when I borrowed his setup and then won 1 set using my own setup. The conclusion is that I’m seriously under ranked and should stay away from anything other than my Korbel. Blocking with the ALC blade was close to impossible and this is usually one of my strengths.

Fun fact: Might be able to play for 20h this week which is the most since I went to the training camp in Düsseldorf back in September. Sunday is the big day with a tournament where I’ve signed up for two different ranking classes.

You practice alot! I am interested in how and what your are practicing. Good focus? Matches? Exercises? what exercieses? i feel that you should see some improvements in your game soon if you practice this much. But as a part time coach, i know that you can practice many ways, both good and bad.
 
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You practice alot! I am interested in how and what your are practicing. Good focus? Matches? Exercises? what exercieses? i feel that you should see some improvements in your game soon if you practice this much. But as a part time coach, i know that you can practice many ways, both good and bad.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I play in a group which is managed by my coach (in another club). The sessions are 1.5h and she dictates who plays with who and what drill each pair does. She uses a lot of drills that I'm not used to but I have complete faith in her as she's got medals from both the world and euro champs (and she has also got two kids who are the best in their age group in Sweden under her wings). On Mondays we usually do a one to one session after the normal practice for 30-60 min.

On Mondays and Thursdays I have an option to train with my "real" club and I usually only go there on Thursdays to keep my spot in the veteran team. These practises are sometimes led by one of the better players (1800 ranking). We used to have a really good coach but he went to another club. We normally do standard drills like Falkenberg, open up against back spin, 3 point FH etc.

My "real" club has got access to another clubs training facilities so I can go there 24x7 and I usually train on Tuesdays and Fridays with the guys from the veteran team or other TT players that I know. Some drills but mainly playing matches.

Not very advanced and I would probably develop quicker with more one to one coaching sessions but it's hard to align my coach's schedule with mine.
 
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On Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I play in a group which is managed by my coach (in another club). The sessions are 1.5h and she dictates who plays with who and what drill each pair does. She uses a lot of drills that I'm not used to but I have complete faith in her as she's got medals from both the world and euro champs (and she has also got two kids who are the best in their age group in Sweden under her wings). On Mondays we usually do a one to one session after the normal practice for 30-60 min.

On Mondays and Thursdays I have an option to train with my "real" club and I usually only go there on Thursdays to keep my spot in the veteran team. These practises are sometimes led by one of the better players (1800 ranking). We used to have a really good coach but he went to another club. We normally do standard drills like Falkenberg, open up against back spin, 3 point FH etc.

My "real" club has got access to another clubs training facilities so I can go there 24x7 and I usually train on Tuesdays and Fridays with the guys from the veteran team or other TT players that I know. Some drills but mainly playing matches.

Not very advanced and I would probably develop quicker with more one to one coaching sessions but it's hard to align my coach's schedule with mine.

Okay. I am not so interested where you play and what days :) I am more interested if you have good focus? do you fight hard? many balls on the table? Are you training with quality and not quantity?

What exercises do you play with the other coach? the lady?

Do you never play exercises where you can choose to train mostly your strenghs or/and sometimes your weakness? or like serve and free? where you can try to build up how you should play serve and return to get those balls you want, to use your strenghts.

I think it is good to practice alot of different exercises if you are still developing your strokes. But i think you need to train some other stuff to, to be able to play good in matches and win matches. And i notice that you often write that you play tournaments so i think you should consider this. I think it is important that you find your playing style, what your strengths are and weakness. Try to learn how you should serve and return to be able to use your strenghts as much as possible. And also how you should play in the open game to use your stregths as much as possible. Then when you know your strenghts you should try to train these as much as possible so you are good at these, and also train serve and return so you get to use your strenghts. I would go so far to say that if your technique is already good, and almost fully developed you should almost only train your strengths. Everything else that you train that you do not use in a match is almost a wast of time and almost unnessecary. Like if you have a better backhand than forehand, then it is just stupid to train falkenbergaren were you train to go around and play with your forehand. why would you train this if you have a better backhand and never step around in a match? Maybe you also need to train your weakness also, but maybe it is better to become better at using your strengths. In ex Gatien and Liqin could barely play backhand i think, but that did not matter so much becuase they were good at serve and return and had good footwork so they could play alot with their strenght, their forehand. Another example is about my own play. i am somewhat confused about my game. I want to learn to kill the ball with the backhand, beacuse i mostly need to run around kill it with my forehand now. Should i try to triain one of my biggest weakness, to kill the backhand or should i try to be able to get to my strenghts, my forehand smash better? i do not know if it is better to try to make my backhand kill better or, try to make my placement and the pace of my backhand over the table better so i will get easier balls to go around and kill with my forehand smash, and even more important get better footwork so i can move around faster and can kill more balls with more forehand smash. What is the best option? i am not really sure. And at the moment i have gotten a better backhand kill in exercises but i do not really use it in a match. I need to implemnt it in match soon, otherwise i am practicing something that i am not using in a match.

I think coaches think different about this, and what you should focus on when you train. but i think the above is important, we do not have all the time in the world so we can nog become good at everything, and we are proably not able to become good at everything also since we need alot of talent for that. I have understood from our korean friends in the forum that in Korea they only focus on the technique and nothing about the things i just mentioned. Maybe that is better, but personally i do not think so. I would be very surprised if the pros train everthing, i think they only train stuff they use in a match and alot of their strength that they use alot in a match.

It is late, and i have a tendency to talk a lot but still no one understands what i am talking about. I hope you do, and maybe that this well help you a little.
 
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I am more interested if you have good focus? do you fight hard? many balls on the table? Are you training with quality and not quantity?

What exercises do you play with the other coach? the lady?

Not all practices are 100% all out efforts but I do try to focus. I guess that 50% of the week is quality and the rest is quantity.

Her group exercises are very varying. I don't think that she has repeated a single drill in the past 4 months. A lot of her drills involve patterns which I believe are supposed to teach you how to setup the ball in match play. An example pattern:
Short serve to FH
FH flick to FH long
FH loop against FH block x 3
Try to kill the ball (and free play)

Pretty much all exercises starts with a serve unlike drills like the Falkenberg. I think that these drills are extremely useful because I've started noticing that I use some of these setups in real match play automatically. Maybe not always successfully but at least there was a thought behind the ball which is a big change of mindset to me.

The one to one sessions focus a lot on the weaknesses (footwork and balance in my case). She exposes the weakness and then shows how to deal with it. The intensity of these drills is surreal.
 
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Not all practices are 100% all out efforts but I do try to focus. I guess that 50% of the week is quality and the rest is quantity.

Her group exercises are very varying. I don't think that she has repeated a single drill in the past 4 months. A lot of her drills involve patterns which I believe are supposed to teach you how to setup the ball in match play. An example pattern:
Short serve to FH
FH flick to FH long
FH loop against FH block x 3
Try to kill the ball (and free play)

Pretty much all exercises starts with a serve unlike drills like the Falkenberg. I think that these drills are extremely useful because I've started noticing that I use some of these setups in real match play automatically. Maybe not always successfully but at least there was a thought behind the ball which is a big change of mindset to me.

The one to one sessions focus a lot on the weaknesses (footwork and balance in my case). She exposes the weakness and then shows how to deal with it. The intensity of these drills is surreal.

It would be cool to know how good you would have been if you had played close to 100 % quality all the time.

Okay, that is good that she make them like a match. But i feel that your explained exercise seems pretty difficult and long. Do everyone get good play? then you proably have good players in that group. I feel also that it is somewhat unnatural to always play a flip on the serve, it will be difficult to flip all balls i feel and i do not know how good this is for there ball selection skills. I can imagine that it would be difficult to flip all the balls on the table, but maybe she tells you to do nospin, or sidetop serves so it is possible.

Nice to hear that you have so many training possibilites and coaches. What i have understand is that you are an adult, and i think you should feel pretty lucky that you that kind of possibilites. I do not think many adult players have that.
 
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It would be cool to know how good you would have been if you had played close to 100 % quality all the time.

Okay, that is good that she make them like a match. But i feel that your explained exercise seems pretty difficult and long. Do everyone get good play? then you proably have good players in that group. I feel also that it is somewhat unnatural to always play a flip on the serve, it will be difficult to flip all balls i feel and i do not know how good this is for there ball selection skills. I can imagine that it would be difficult to flip all the balls on the table, but maybe she tells you to do nospin, or sidetop serves so it is possible.

Nice to hear that you have so many training possibilites and coaches. What i have understand is that you are an adult, and i think you should feel pretty lucky that you that kind of possibilites. I do not think many adult players have that.

Yes, I'm quite old (40) and Stockholm offers quite ok training possibilities for amateur adults. You have Korpen which is a whole lot more serious than it sounds which probably has got 50-100 adults in structured training (and probably 300+ in the league). Spårvägen has also started up similar groups as they noticed the massive interest. I believe that Ängby has got a similar setup. Then there's also the smaller clubs that are copying the concept but most of them do not provide coached training sessions.

The thing with the drills is that each pair (most of the time) gets their own drill. She puts together the pairs so the quality is always quite good but not always. Some people don't like this as they want to play with their friend etc but I really like it. She will tell us if we're to serve under/top/no/side spin. The instruction can be to push or flip or whatever.

I'm not advanced enough to tell if this is a bad or a good methodology or if she is good with beginners or not. I believe that it's best to listen to one voice at a time so I will listen to her 100% until the summer and then evaluate.
 
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I agree but also want to add that aspirations and ambition matter. What is my plan with TT? What is my goal? If one want to become a world class player weaknesses need to be camouflaged or straightened out or those will be exploited by good players. I agree that Liqins fh was more than enough for him to become very successful, but his bh wasn't bad, it just wasn't his best weapon. He controlled the tempo and placement very cleverly with his bh, just waiting to pounce with his world class fh. And seeing as his third ball attack was so strong it most often was enough to win the point.

Okay. I am not so interested where you play and what days :) I am more interested if you have good focus? do you fight hard? many balls on the table? Are you training with quality and not quantity?

What exercises do you play with the other coach? the lady?

Do you never play exercises where you can choose to train mostly your strenghs or/and sometimes your weakness? or like serve and free? where you can try to build up how you should play serve and return to get those balls you want, to use your strenghts.

I think it is good to practice alot of different exercises if you are still developing your strokes. But i think you need to train some other stuff to, to be able to play good in matches and win matches. And i notice that you often write that you play tournaments so i think you should consider this. I think it is important that you find your playing style, what your strengths are and weakness. Try to learn how you should serve and return to be able to use your strenghts as much as possible. And also how you should play in the open game to use your stregths as much as possible. Then when you know your strenghts you should try to train these as much as possible so you are good at these, and also train serve and return so you get to use your strenghts. I would go so far to say that if your technique is already good, and almost fully developed you should almost only train your strengths. Everything else that you train that you do not use in a match is almost a wast of time and almost unnessecary. Like if you have a better backhand than forehand, then it is just stupid to train falkenbergaren were you train to go around and play with your forehand. why would you train this if you have a better backhand and never step around in a match? Maybe you also need to train your weakness also, but maybe it is better to become better at using your strengths. In ex Gatien and Liqin could barely play backhand i think, but that did not matter so much becuase they were good at serve and return and had good footwork so they could play alot with their strenght, their forehand. Another example is about my own play. i am somewhat confused about my game. I want to learn to kill the ball with the backhand, beacuse i mostly need to run around kill it with my forehand now. Should i try to triain one of my biggest weakness, to kill the backhand or should i try to be able to get to my strenghts, my forehand smash better? i do not know if it is better to try to make my backhand kill better or, try to make my placement and the pace of my backhand over the table better so i will get easier balls to go around and kill with my forehand smash, and even more important get better footwork so i can move around faster and can kill more balls with more forehand smash. What is the best option? i am not really sure. And at the moment i have gotten a better backhand kill in exercises but i do not really use it in a match. I need to implemnt it in match soon, otherwise i am practicing something that i am not using in a match.

I think coaches think different about this, and what you should focus on when you train. but i think the above is important, we do not have all the time in the world so we can nog become good at everything, and we are proably not able to become good at everything also since we need alot of talent for that. I have understood from our korean friends in the forum that in Korea they only focus on the technique and nothing about the things i just mentioned. Maybe that is better, but personally i do not think so. I would be very surprised if the pros train everthing, i think they only train stuff they use in a match and alot of their strength that they use alot in a match.

It is late, and i have a tendency to talk a lot but still no one understands what i am talking about. I hope you do, and maybe that this well help you a little.
 
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I had an interesting experience before practice today. I was playing a set vs a kid and I executed a poor chop which popped up a little bit. The kid execute a FH flick which was extremely fast. I was just amazed at the speed. What's the trick? I find it extremely hard to get that kind of power on FH flicks compared to BH flicks.

(Juts to put thing into perspective. The kid was 11.)
 
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I had an interesting experience before practice today. I was playing a set vs a kid and I executed a poor chop which popped up a little bit. The kid execute a FH flick which was extremely fast. I was just amazed at the speed. What's the trick? I find it extremely hard to get that kind of power on FH flicks compared to BH flicks.

(Juts to put thing into perspective. The kid was 11.)

Maybe you can ask the kid?

I play short pimple so i think it is very different.

But for a fast flip with inverted i think maybe you should think about this. Come in with the right leg and come close to the body with the ball. This will give you more control and power. Hard to get power if the arm is already extended. Have an open racket angle and flathit the ball at the highest point. Spin is slow so you need to have an open angle and flathit the ball. To be able to play hard you need to hit the ball at the highest point, if you let the ball go down you can not play hard since you need an arc to get the ball over the net. I also think it is important, as with all strokes but even more here when the stroke is so small, to try to explode at ball contact with an little fast explosive motion. when you want to flathit something you need to do a small stroke proably with almost just the wrist and try to stop the motion after ball contact, so you need to tense a bit at ballcontact so there is some resistance against the ball. If you do a longer stroke, the ball will go down since the ball is already pretty low and with a longer stroke it is hard to get that fast explosive motion.

i think you also can try to flip yourself and you will learn this from trial and error. And if you already have a good backhand flip maybe you can try to do the same on the fh.

I am not sure about this above. How to flip is not something i often learn, fh flip often seems to work itself out if they just do a small fast motion. With my short pimple it is very important that i have short contact and do like a minismash. Also important that i tense a little at impact.

Good luck and sov gott!
 
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I had an interesting experience before practice today. I was playing a set vs a kid and I executed a poor chop which popped up a little bit. The kid execute a FH flick which was extremely fast. I was just amazed at the speed. What's the trick? I find it extremely hard to get that kind of power on FH flicks compared to BH flicks.

(Juts to put thing into perspective. The kid was 11.)

kids learn very fast !
 
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Maybe you can ask the kid?

I play short pimple so i think it is very different.

But for a fast flip with inverted i think maybe you should think about this. Come in with the right leg and come close to the body with the ball. This will give you more control and power. Hard to get power if the arm is already extended. Have an open racket angle and flathit the ball at the highest point. Spin is slow so you need to have an open angle and flathit the ball. To be able to play hard you need to hit the ball at the highest point, if you let the ball go down you can not play hard since you need an arc to get the ball over the net. I also think it is important, as with all strokes but even more here when the stroke is so small, to try to explode at ball contact with an little fast explosive motion. when you want to flathit something you need to do a small stroke proably with almost just the wrist and try to stop the motion after ball contact, so you need to tense a bit at ballcontact so there is some resistance against the ball. If you do a longer stroke, the ball will go down since the ball is already pretty low and with a longer stroke it is hard to get that fast explosive motion.

i think you also can try to flip yourself and you will learn this from trial and error. And if you already have a good backhand flip maybe you can try to do the same on the fh.

I am not sure about this above. How to flip is not something i often learn, fh flip often seems to work itself out if they just do a small fast motion. With my short pimple it is very important that i have short contact and do like a minismash. Also important that i tense a little at impact.

Good luck and sov gott!

Thanks for the pointers. I know how to do a FH flick but it's always quite weak. Is the power supposed to be generated by the forward movement or is it mainly wrist? I guess that normally my arm would be fully extended.
 
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Like i Said i am not sure about the flip. You Will always need a short stroke here to have the time. So i think you need to use wrist and forearm, But i Do not think you turn you wrist so much. Will think that you have the movement in the wrist somewhat stiff and generate speed by you moving the Forearm a little.

I think you should use similar mechanics and technique like forehandsmash But smaller and like a backhand punch But with the forehand.
 
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i suck at FH flick. No matter how much i practise it, i still don't get it well, so I can't give good advice, but I keep on trying at nearly every session with the coach !

I’m no star in it, but have a reasonably solid fh flick. I think the main thing is stepping in and i think the relatively small flick-o-the-wrist is propelled from there, using a little hip-powered forearm whip with an explosive wrist snap.

They don’t all need to be kill flicks. When I realized that it fell into place.
 
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