Is there a way to fix a rubber's arc and lift?

[Michael Zhuang]

it was suggested before to increase the grip apply the baby oil onto the front of the rubber

Yeah I've heard of that before, but that sounds really messy and kinda extreme. Maybe that should be a last resort. And I'm not sure if there is consensus that baby oil on the surface of the topsheet actually provides better grip.

 

[lodro]

in the beginning, when i started to ""experiment"" with rubber just more out of interest and boredom , I used to keep
the 2 big pieces of the rubbers that one gets after cutting it after it has been glued on to the blade.
one can then experiment without stuffing up the whole rubber.

One of my experiments involved applying WD40 and also CRC marine version on to the surface.....................just for fun.😁
I got a blade with some 61seconds rubber on that i "treated" maybe 2 years ago and the bloody things are still grippy 🤣

 

[Scarfed Garchomp]

Yeah I've heard of that before, but that sounds really messy and kinda extreme. Maybe that should be a last resort. And I'm not sure if there is consensus that baby oil on the surface of the topsheet actually provides better grip.

Wet a bit of paper towel with baby oil and wipe it on. A couple coats with drying/absorbing in between should be enough to add some grip back to worn rubbers. I don't think it has as much a difference on newer rubbers though

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

My FH swing is not like Ma Long, but with the same FH swing,

Damn, you must be a very high level player.
Not so many people in the world are able to compare themselves with Ma Long.

Anyways, if technique is good, you can use cheap hobby bats, and you can still do well.

One of my mates, decided to use a cheap 3 star Lion hobby bat, its high enough to have ITTF approved rubbers, so he can use them in tournaments.
A bit of a history, he used to be a former top south african junior national player, now near 40 of age and doubled in weight (he done very well to loose 20-30 kgs in recent months), he took that Lion bat to show people it is not able the equipment, at first it was just having fun and exercising, but his win ratio is very high and even current national players are having difficulties.
He nearly made it to the commonwealth games with that BAT.
He said, he would still use that bat at the CG if he had made the team.

PS, he didn't use any oil on that bat.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Damn, you must be a very high level player.
Not so many people in the world are able to compare themselves with Ma Long.

Anyways, if technique is good, you can use cheap hobby bats, and you can still do well.

One of my mates, decided to use a cheap 3 star Lion hobby bat, its high enough to have ITTF approved rubbers, so he can use them in tournaments.
A bit of a history, he used to be a former top south african junior national player, now near 40 of age and doubled in weight (he done very well to loose 20-30 kgs in recent months), he took that Lion bat to show people it is not able the equipment, at first it was just having fun and exercising, but his win ratio is very high and even current national players are having difficulties.
He nearly made it to the commonwealth games with that BAT.
He said, he would still use that bat at the CG if he had made the team.

PS, he didn't use any oil on that bat.

I am sure if he added baby oil to it, it would give it more bite / grip / tack and get into the CG team.

 

[tabletennisdaily1]

Damn, you must be a very high level player.
Not so many people in the world are able to compare themselves with Ma Long.

You misread Tony, he explicitly said that his stroke is not like Ma Long's. Then he says with his same personal stroke he is able to get more lift with other rubbers.

The point is Michael is curious is there any trick to make the rubber have a higher throw angle somehow without changing technique. A strange and rare but interesting question nonetheless.

Of course, the obvious thing to do is just cut the loss and just call it a rubber that you can't use without weird monkeying. But since you already have it, it would be amusing to monkey around anyways.

Michael, maybe try re-gluing the rubber with a healthy layer of glue and then slightly stretch (Dima style), or use a press, or use books to "squish" the down rubber when drying to get a "manual tensor" effect. IDK if this will have a different effect from boosting, but maybe worth a try other than baby oil?? (Or clean it with water and a cotton cloth 😜 (I suppose you already do that))

Maybe I should try this rubber, as I prefer to have a more open bat angle and have a natural tendency to loop the ball long... but I will stick with my current equipment and mold my technique to suit it.

 

[Michael Zhuang]

You misread Tony, he explicitly said that his stroke is not like Ma Long's. Then he says with his same personal stroke he is able to get more lift with other rubbers.

The point is Michael is curious is there any trick to make the rubber have a higher throw angle somehow without changing technique. A strange and rare but interesting question nonetheless.

Of course, the obvious thing to do is just cut the loss and just call it a rubber that you can't use without weird monkeying. But since you already have it, it would be amusing to monkey around anyways.

Michael, maybe try re-gluing the rubber with a healthy layer of glue and then slightly stretch (Dima style), or use a press, or use books to "squish" the down rubber when drying to get a "manual tensor" effect. IDK if this will have a different effect from boosting, but maybe worth a try other than baby oil?? (Or clean it with water and a cotton cloth 😜 (I suppose you already do that))

Maybe I should try this rubber, as I prefer to have a more open bat angle and have a natural tendency to loop the ball long... but I will stick with my current equipment and mold my technique to suit it.

That's an interesting thought. I think Duke was commentating on this from another thread, that if you stretch out a rubber, it actually decreases the dwell time. So that would seemingly make the rubber shoot even straighter. But that thread was a long while back, maybe I'm misunderstanding the takeaway from that thread.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

You misread Tony,

His FH swing is not like Ma Long, but with the same FH swing,

So if it is a same FH swing, then his level must be high.
I am no where near a Ma Long like swing

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

I am sure if he added baby oil to it, it would give it more bite / grip / tack and get into the CG team.

Talking about baby oil, he stopped seriously staying in shape because he had triplets.
Had to buy a 7 seater car and build 2 extra rooms to his house.

na, I think he just adjusted his technique to use a low end rubber to play against Tenergy and Dignics
We should have more information like this on forums, than oppose to baby oil, engine oil, olive oil etc

 

[tabletennisdaily1]

My FH swing is not like Ma Long

He says his FH swing is "not like Ma Long". This is explicit, at least to my understanding. It understand that it is confusing, because there was no need to mention Ma Long. He could have just said "with the same stroke I get more lift with other rubbers" with no mention of Ma Long.

I understand what you are saying, maybe me meant to say that his swing is "in the style of Ma Long" (set behind the leg, less arm snap than say Fan, more shoulder and body action). But again, he did not explicitly say "in the style of", he said his stroke is "not like Ma Long".

I think we all already know that even most pros do not have the quality of Ma Long's forehand, let alone us amateurs.

 

[tabletennisdaily1]

That's an interesting thought. I think Duke was commentating on this from another thread, that if you stretch out a rubber, it actually decreases the dwell time. So that would seemingly make the rubber shoot even straighter. But that thread was a long while back, maybe I'm misunderstanding the takeaway from that thread.

Yes, this is just a wild suggestion to experiment on, I have no idea what would happen with your rubber. As Dima has said, you can add an extra layer of glue or manually stretch (or compress would work too) the rubber during gluing to get more power. I would agree with you that it seems like it would decrease dwell time, and increase in power would result in less control and less arc too.

Maybe the slight increase in power would maybe change something (??). Honestly I am not so sure though, because the booster should definitely increase throw angle, but you said it had little effect if I remember correctly.

But I offered the suggestion because I can see no other thing you can do to manipulate the rubber, so "might as well try it", perhaps.

 

[Michael Zhuang]

My point is to make clear that I don't think my stroke is perfect or anywhere near Ma Long.

However, with the current stroke that I have, one rubber quite obviously provides less lift than all my other rubbers. Using the same stroke (which is my stroke), this one rubber does not perform as well as other rubbers.

And after 2 weeks of playing with it, I don't think it's only a matter of aiming more upwards. Because also the rubber doesn't bend the ball down into the court. What I find with other rubbers like H3 or Big Dipper, is that they really bite the ball and that lifts the ball decisively, but also bends the ball down into the table. Therefore, I started this thread to ask if there is a way to cause the rubber to bend the ball more and lift the ball more.

Anyway, I decided to add a tiny bit more baby oil to the rubber to see if it helps with holding the ball.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

My point is to make clear that I don't think my stroke is perfect or anywhere near Ma Long.

However, with the current stroke that I have, one rubber quite obviously provides less lift than all my other rubbers. Using the same stroke (which is my stroke), this one rubber does not perform as well as other rubbers.

And after 2 weeks of playing with it, I don't think it's only a matter of aiming more upwards. Because also the rubber doesn't bend the ball down into the court. What I find with other rubbers like H3 or Big Dipper, is that they really bite the ball and that lifts the ball decisively, but also bends the ball down into the table. Therefore, I started this thread to ask if there is a way to cause the rubber to bend the ball more and lift the ball more.

Anyway, I decided to add a tiny bit more baby oil to the rubber to see if it helps with holding the ball.

On the subject of technique.
Did you give it to maybe a higher level player in your club, and see if he also has trouble lifting the ball?

And how many layers have you added now?

 

[tabletennisdaily1]

On the subject of technique.
Did you give it to maybe a higher level player in your club, and see if he also has trouble lifting the ball?

And how many layers have you added now?

Good point, might as well talk about how to compensate a low throw rubber with technique too.

I play a slightly lower throw rubber (STN) compared with H3 (although I don't know how this compares to the GTX). To compensate for the less natural spin and arc, I hit with a faster brush speed to get the necessary spin and lift. (I use a "FZD style arm snap" at contact to do so.)

Here is a question, do you think it is advantageous to train on a low throw rubber, to force you to create more spin yourself, so when you go back to H3, your forehands will have monster spin?

Actually, Michael, did you try the rubbers on different blades? (Softer vs harder outer layer, flexy vs stiff blade, ...) Maybe this rubber just doesn't jive with your blade for the technique you use.

 

[Michael Zhuang]

I had the same thought: the GTX has a much lower window for a successful loop/drive. Because it doesn't curve as much as H3, you have to be very precise. So in one line of thought, maybe it will force you to make each one of your strokes fall precisely in that window. On the other hand, its just very frustrating to play with, and you end up having less shots per session because of how many misses it causes.

I haven't tried STN, but I tried Target 90. And trust me, Target 90 is way way spinnier than GTX. Target is far closer to H3 than it is to GTX in the spin/bite/lift category.

Yesterday I added a slight layer of baby oil, and it seemed to help. So today I added another light layer of baby oil, and will test to see the results later.

I did give the GTX to a 1700 guy for a few hits. He hit a few error-prone rallies and commented "your rubber is crazy. its bouncing all over the place". I think its not the speed (which is not high), but its the lack of grip/bite that causes the rubber to feel hard to control. Also, another forum member uploaded his play. He seems to be quite high level player. He also commented that GTX doesn't produce enough spin and its hard to bend the ball into the court. So those are my only references.

 

[lodro]

I had the same thought: the GTX has a much lower window for a successful loop/drive. Because it doesn't curve as much as H3, you have to be very precise. So in one line of thought, maybe it will force you to make each one of your strokes fall precisely in that window. On the other hand, its just very frustrating to play with, and you end up having less shots per session because of how many misses it causes.

I haven't tried STN, but I tried Target 90. And trust me, Target 90 is way way spinnier than GTX. Target is far closer to H3 than it is to GTX in the spin/bite/lift category.

Yesterday I added a slight layer of baby oil, and it seemed to help. So today I added another light layer of baby oil, and will test to see the results later.

I did give the GTX to a 1700 guy for a few hits. He hit a few error-prone rallies and commented "your rubber is crazy. its bouncing all over the place". I think its not the speed (which is not high), but its the lack of grip/bite that causes the rubber to feel hard to control. Also, another forum member uploaded his play. He seems to be quite high level player. He also commented that GTX doesn't produce enough spin and its hard to bend the ball into the court. So those are my only references.

All being said and done, we already knew that the GTX is rubbish 😁

 

[Lycanthrope]

And after 2 weeks of playing with it, I don't think it's only a matter of aiming more upwards.

I have no idea about this rubber, but if it doesn't grip the ball well, from my experience on my $2 pre-made racket which the rubber is so slippery and dead, more upwards doesn't help at all. The ball simply slides down on the rubber. In contrast, you need to hit the ball hard, make it trapped into the rubber just like you are holding the ball and pressing it into the rubber. Only that friction can lift up the ball. But my dead rubber got one advantage: the sponge is loose and soft, the blade is 5 ply balsa wood so it doesn't bounce the ball all over the place.

Besides the stroke, the place where the ball hits the racket is important. The sweet spot of the racket for loop is small, the sweet spot will become even smaller with a bad rubber which doesn't grip the ball well.

Basically, it is a good thing to try a bad rubber for training. Just be careful not to use a bad stroke to lift the ball.

 

[lodro]

[quote="Lycanthrope;375154"

Basically, it is a good thing to try a bad rubber for training. Just be careful not to use a bad stroke to lift the ball.[/p][/quote]

this advise is no good.
To use a bad rubber for training will get your muscles to memorize the wrong things and
when you take the good rubber to the match it will be all different again.

Training should be done with the same rubbers and blade-combo that one uses to play the matches

 

[Lycanthrope]

this advise is no good.
To use a bad rubber for training will get your muscles to memorize the wrong things and
when you take the good rubber to the match it will be all different again.

Training should be done with the same rubbers and blade-combo that one uses to play the matches

I see your point. You are correct. This is a dangerous tool, it sometimes helps. In most cases, it hurts the users.

 

[lodro]

I see your point. You are correct. This is a dangerous tool, it sometimes helps. In most cases, it hurts the users.

🙏 very gracious of you.
or as we say : Aussie Aussie Aussie , oi oi oi ! 😂