Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[pongbotrobots]

What kind of robot do you have now? I've been considering a mini-split system for the garage, but I'm thinking I should prioritize an eagle-eye system and then a new robot. I do the vast majority of my garage training late at night, and as you know the temp drops rapidly after sunset so heat is not an issue vast majority of the time. I also heat up quickly and sweat a lot, so practicing in 50's temp in the winter is fine with me too.

I'm going to China later this year, really hoping to buy the pongbot eagle eye system there! I'd love to see what speed and spin I can generate with different techniques, rubbers, blades, etc.

So glad to hear you @dingyibvs are going to China soon. Please let us know when you are coming over and we would be very glad to show you more about our products in our company. BTW, our HQ base is in Shanghai.

 

[dingyibvs]

Rating is always kinda subjective and wood be fluctuate in different environment lol

It is logical about different rating in different technical aspects - we all amateurs smashing more forehands than doing serve receives - because it is more fun 😁 and then all serve/receive game building on actual amount of games - so there is constant need to play matches with different opponents a lot.

I myself did serve receive training only in first year of training. Now I rarely do it. But I do third ball attacking drills mostly 🏓

As for games with coach - yeah sometimes it’s very close games - but he is better with serve returns and has a lot of variations and also very good at receives. Sometimes my opponents just giving me free service points (I even could say often) - but he almost never. But for training it is even better. I can take some sets against him but overall I’m much weaker player for now. I’m some kind of good in attacking and my defensive skill also not as good as of my coach. He used to block a lot - so he is really good at it. And I’m not the best of his students, just one them. He occasionally plays with about 2300-2400 players and sometimes even winning them. So our level is enough to him for teaching us and also maintaining some kind of playing level.

Thanks for the backhand - I think I have weak backhand mentality from my first years when I have developed forehand but my backhand was meh - and in matches I find myself in the middle of “backhand or forehand step around?” And while I’m thinking - im losing the point. But now, most of the time I’m trying on using backhand in such scenarios rarely doing step around forehands. I’m using MK Hybrid for a few months already and will keep using it.

I'm actually practicing a good amount of service receives these days. I find that service receive strains footwork and decision-making the most, so training against service receives can really help you in those areas, which in turn helps a lot in just about everything else.

I had a pretty good training yesterday. I began training the new FH technique with less sidespin again. I can control location much better with it, and it's much easier to generate speed, but a lot of practice is needed. I think it would be a useful stroke against lower spin shots, but for counter-looping I think I'd use my sidespin heavy loop so as not to eat the opponent's topspin too much.

On the BH side I'm finally getting better with the BH loop/drive. In practice I can both counter and counterloop with my BH against my training partner's FH loops. I've found that the counter and the loop have different starting positions. The counter starts at the same position as a block, while the loop needs to start lower. When the incoming ball is fast, I don't have time to judge the ball then decide which shot to use. I have to predict how the ball will come and have my hand in the correct position. My mistake before, particularly with the loop/drive was trying to do them from the block/counter position, resulting often in whiffing on the ball. Attempting the opposite often resulted in a very flat shot with no arc.

It'll take a while for me to be able to instinctively have my hand in the optimal position for each shot, and to switch between the two techniques while still executing with consistency. I suspect at my level I'll be able to loop most balls, but the "correct" way to do it is perhaps to be ready to counter but when the ball turns out to be slower and I've got time to switch hand positions then I loop it. When I get better at them perhaps I could use them like Ma Long and switch between the two purely as a change of pace during a BH/BH rally.

 

[SleepyMaster]

I'm actually practicing a good amount of service receives these days. I find that service receive strains footwork and decision-making the most, so training against service receives can really help you in those areas, which in turn helps a lot in just about everything else.

I had a pretty good training yesterday. I began training the new FH technique with less sidespin again. I can control location much better with it, and it's much easier to generate speed, but a lot of practice is needed. I think it would be a useful stroke against lower spin shots, but for counter-looping I think I'd use my sidespin heavy loop so as not to eat the opponent's topspin too much.

On the BH side I'm finally getting better with the BH loop/drive. In practice I can both counter and counterloop with my BH against my training partner's FH loops. I've found that the counter and the loop have different starting positions. The counter starts at the same position as a block, while the loop needs to start lower. When the incoming ball is fast, I don't have time to judge the ball then decide which shot to use. I have to predict how the ball will come and have my hand in the correct position. My mistake before, particularly with the loop/drive was trying to do them from the block/counter position, resulting often in whiffing on the ball. Attempting the opposite often resulted in a very flat shot with no arc.

It'll take a while for me to be able to instinctively have my hand in the optimal position for each shot, and to switch between the two techniques while still executing with consistency. I suspect at my level I'll be able to loop most balls, but the "correct" way to do it is perhaps to be ready to counter but when the ball turns out to be slower and I've got time to switch hand positions then I loop it. When I get better at them perhaps I could use them like Ma Long and switch between the two purely as a change of pace during a BH/BH rally.

I don’t really have much troubles in serve/receive when playing against about my level players. I just try to attack everything that goes long and it works - most of the time it is backhand serve or pendulum underspin/no spin/slight sidespin.

But when I play against coach that has gazillion variations of pendulum/reverse pendulum/hook/backhand/some weird motion also that can be no spin etc - it really can get me in the state of mind when I starting to loose confidence in receiving - so I’m doing some weak receive and get punished for that immediately.

Actually when I played against national level pro players guys/girls from bundesliga - I recognize that the most crucial part were they are far better is serve receive - they just almost completely shut down my ability to take an initiative first. But anyway I got complementing for my serves from them. And when I was able take my third balls and we are getting in to the rally it was 50/50 chances on winning a point. Plus when I finally got my chance to third balling I was in hurry like “omg I got a predictable receive I should execute it” that lead me in bad habits of rushing my movements and decisions at what part of the table I should land my shot. That’s all from lack of experience.

I was joking to my coach ones “it’s only first ten years of tt is hard” and now when I started to whining about how bad I’m he is telling me “ten years Oleksii, we are learning for now” 🤣

 

[blahness]

I'm actually practicing a good amount of service receives these days. I find that service receive strains footwork and decision-making the most, so training against service receives can really help you in those areas, which in turn helps a lot in just about everything else.

I had a pretty good training yesterday. I began training the new FH technique with less sidespin again. I can control location much better with it, and it's much easier to generate speed, but a lot of practice is needed. I think it would be a useful stroke against lower spin shots, but for counter-looping I think I'd use my sidespin heavy loop so as not to eat the opponent's topspin too much.

On the BH side I'm finally getting better with the BH loop/drive. In practice I can both counter and counterloop with my BH against my training partner's FH loops. I've found that the counter and the loop have different starting positions. The counter starts at the same position as a block, while the loop needs to start lower. When the incoming ball is fast, I don't have time to judge the ball then decide which shot to use. I have to predict how the ball will come and have my hand in the correct position. My mistake before, particularly with the loop/drive was trying to do them from the block/counter position, resulting often in whiffing on the ball. Attempting the opposite often resulted in a very flat shot with no arc.

It'll take a while for me to be able to instinctively have my hand in the optimal position for each shot, and to switch between the two techniques while still executing with consistency. I suspect at my level I'll be able to loop most balls, but the "correct" way to do it is perhaps to be ready to counter but when the ball turns out to be slower and I've got time to switch hand positions then I loop it. When I get better at them perhaps I could use them like Ma Long and switch between the two purely as a change of pace during a BH/BH rally.

I find that the straight FH loop seems to work best against FH pendulum serves (and other balls with similar sidespin), and the hook loop works best against BH pendulum serves and also straight serves (no sidespin) but the degree of hook needs to be bit less. Apparently it is even better to fade loop against FH pendulum, but i'm not very good at that and it usually ends up looping to their BH (where most ppl are best at defending) which I dont really like.

On BH, this problem is precisely why I like the modern BH loop (see for eg Harimoto, Lin Shidong, etc...) where you almost never drop your hand but instead go lower with the body (via bending in hips and knees) if the ball has backspin or is lower trajectory. This way you simply use your body to adjust instead of the arm which is way less confusing. And you have almost the same starting hand position between counter and loop which makes it super difficult for opponents to adjust to the spin variations. Also with this the speed (preparation time, recovery time) is much faster which makes it way easier to pressure the opponent.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

@NextLevel i gave you some places to play in Paris. Did you visit any ?

 

[NextLevel]

@NextLevel i gave you some places to play in Paris. Did you visit any ?

Yes. I wrote about it a while back, you may have missed it. I think it was Paris TT13 or something like that.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/daily-table-tennis-chit-chat.13168/post-467994

 

[Jslick89]

So glad to hear you @dingyibvs are going to China soon. Please let us know when you are coming over and we would be very glad to show you more about our products in our company. BTW, our HQ base is in Shanghai.

I have been day dreaming about the OMNI-S almost every day. I just need to build up the courage to ask my wife if I can buy one... LOL

 

[dingyibvs]

I don’t really have much troubles in serve/receive when playing against about my level players. I just try to attack everything that goes long and it works - most of the time it is backhand serve or pendulum underspin/no spin/slight sidespin.

But when I play against coach that has gazillion variations of pendulum/reverse pendulum/hook/backhand/some weird motion also that can be no spin etc - it really can get me in the state of mind when I starting to loose confidence in receiving - so I’m doing some weak receive and get punished for that immediately.

Actually when I played against national level pro players guys/girls from bundesliga - I recognize that the most crucial part were they are far better is serve receive - they just almost completely shut down my ability to take an initiative first. But anyway I got complementing for my serves from them. And when I was able take my third balls and we are getting in to the rally it was 50/50 chances on winning a point. Plus when I finally got my chance to third balling I was in hurry like “omg I got a predictable receive I should execute it” that lead me in bad habits of rushing my movements and decisions at what part of the table I should land my shot. That’s all from lack of experience.

I was joking to my coach ones “it’s only first ten years of tt is hard” and now when I started to whining about how bad I’m he is telling me “ten years Oleksii, we are learning for now” 🤣

Yeah, the reason I started practicing them more these days is because I'm facing a lot of people who are just as aggressive as me with 2nd and 3rd ball attacks and serve short/half-long most of the time. I need to find an edge in there, so practicing a lot of services and receives these days!

 

[dingyibvs]

I find that the straight FH loop seems to work best against FH pendulum serves (and other balls with similar sidespin), and the hook loop works best against BH pendulum serves and also straight serves (no sidespin) but the degree of hook needs to be bit less. Apparently it is even better to fade loop against FH pendulum, but i'm not very good at that and it usually ends up looping to their BH (where most ppl are best at defending) which I dont really like.

On BH, this problem is precisely why I like the modern BH loop (see for eg Harimoto, Lin Shidong, etc...) where you almost never drop your hand but instead go lower with the body (via bending in hips and knees) if the ball has backspin or is lower trajectory. This way you simply use your body to adjust instead of the arm which is way less confusing. And you have almost the same starting hand position between counter and loop which makes it super difficult for opponents to adjust to the spin variations. Also with this the speed (preparation time, recovery time) is much faster which makes it way easier to pressure the opponent.

The hand drop is fairly subtle, just a couple inches, which is why I didn't realize it before by simply watching the pros play. I'm actually not too sure how I drop the racket, I just make sure the racket stays just below the ball before the forward swing. Thinking about it, I might actually have been doing that by bending my upper body a little more, because the feel for the counter is that I'm moving my center of gravity forward and a bit downward upon impact, while the feel for the loop/drive is forward and a bit upward and sideways.

 

[Der_Echte]

@dingyibvs is addressing the amount of prep (vertical drop) on backswing... which will be different for the three main topspins... fast loop, medium sloop, slow, heavy loop.

The fast loop, which many prefer as a response, requires a racket drop roughly the top of bat (with the tip of bat facing sideways) at height of bottom of ball.

There will always be adjustments for type/amount of ball spin, vector of incoming ball travel at impact and pace of incoming ball, but an easy visual way is to drop top of bat to about bottom of ball as ball is entering the front part of strike zone for the fast loop.

A simple way to understand bat swing prep is to drop bat increasingly more for the medium and slow loops.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

Yes. I wrote about it a while back, you may have missed it. I think it was Paris TT13 or something like that.

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/daily-table-tennis-chit-chat.13168/post-467994

good it’s the best venue in Paris in summer

. The row nearest to the seats has usually the most competitive players and the etiquette is that anyone can challenge them and winner stays . Unfortunately way too often many lack etiquette and a group of regulars try to play only between themselves

On the other side are more hobby players usually from Asian descent

 

[blahness]

There are some videos of ZJK coaching students on bilibili and youtube, which have been quite insightful.

For eg with the FH loopkill against backspin - his cues are to drop eye level as close to the net as possible and then aim at the top of the net.

So this is a kinda weird cue but in order to drop eye level to net height, you have to lean much more into the lunge position.

He also does bend the knees a bit but not much (it never even gets close to 90 deg) - the majority of the bending is at the hip area. This is achieved by decreasing the angle between your upper body and the thighs (stomach will touch the thighs in such a position). The weird thing is that from this position it is super easy (physically speaking) to generate very large power into the loop.

The other way (bending knees but with much less lean) will result in much lower power.

i figured out the reason - it is because bending + straightening at the hip area engages the glutes, which can be a lot more powerful than the quads (which are engaged with knee bending/straightening). Also, holding too deep a squat makes it a lot physically harder to transition to and from the loop.

Anyway, this is a much easier method of looping underspin compared to Timo Boll's method which relies a lot on knee bending which is physically quite difficult.

 

[pongbotrobots]

I have been day dreaming about the OMNI-S almost every day. I just need to build up the courage to ask my wife if I can buy one... LOL

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to treat her to a special date night, then casually mention how much fun you'll both have with the OMNI-S-PRO. Win-win, LOL!

 

[NextLevel]

One of my friends (he also posts here, @Brs) said that when he went to a coaching camp in Europe to train, he was told by the instructors that they wouldn't work with him in volleyball shoes and that he needed to wear table tennis shoes to get the value out of the lessons. I thought initially that this might be overkill but with time, I have come to appreciate more and more what the coaches meant. The only advantage (maybe, I can't find table tennis shoes my size) of volleyball is that they might be more springy, but their soles don't bend and you can't really feel the ground. So they largely suck in executing some subtle footwork movements.

I have tried flexible sole sneakers with thin soles that are old school like Chick Taylor's but I used then when I first came back to TT after a 2 year break so whether because I was slower or because I didn't have the footwork, I noticed a benefit in speed when I switched to volleyball shoes again and have aruck with volleyball shoes for the past 2 years.

Recently, for an event, I bought white clipper canvases without laces and I accidentally hit with them and played with them without removing them. I really liked the feeling since I could bend the soles and feel the ground. I am really tempted to continue playing in them even though they might not withstand the stresses of TT competition. We will see how it goes.

 

[Scarfed Garchomp]

One of my friends (he also posts here, @Brs) said that when he went to a coaching camp in Europe to train, he was told by the instructors that they wouldn't work with him in volleyball shoes and that he needed to wear table tennis shoes to get the value out of the lessons. I thought initially that this might be overkill but with time, I have come to appreciate more and more what the coaches meant. The only advantage (maybe, I can't find table tennis shoes my size) of volleyball is that they might be more springy, but their soles don't bend and you can't really feel the ground. So they largely suck in executing some subtle footwork movements.

I have tried flexible sole sneakers with thin soles that are old school like Chick Taylor's but I used then when I first came back to TT after a 2 year break so whether because I was slower or because I didn't have the footwork, I noticed a benefit in speed when I switched to volleyball shoes again and have aruck with volleyball shoes for the past 2 years.

Recently, for an event, I bought white clipper canvases without laces and I accidentally hit with them and played with them without removing them. I really liked the feeling since I could bend the soles and feel the ground. I am really tempted to continue playing in them even though they might not withstand the stresses of TT competition. We will see how it goes.

I was trying to play in Gel Rocket 10s for a while because they were cheap but I had the same issues, they had very good cushion and support but that was also the downside because it felt like I could not pick my feet up or skip around very fast. I tried the Tibhar Blizzard Speed and Supersonic Agility models which were much, much lighter with a thin sole and good ground feeling and maneuverability but even though they were very light and agile, my feet would hurt a bit after using them because they had little to offer in terms of support or cushion. Nowadays I am using a pair of Donic Spaceflex and I feel like it is the best balance of attributes I've experienced so far, a bit heavier but more cushion and support vs the Tibhars but also lighter and better ground feel than the Gel Rocket.

 

[Tyce]

I'm a flexible sole nut, and I play in Xero shoes HFS. My previous pair was Merrell Vapor Glove 3.
Gotta say the Xero feels more stable, but the flexibility is still enormous.

I would highly advise a transition period for this type of shoe though

 

[Novarac23]

Guys I played my second ever tournament yesterday and won a game! An improvement (won zero games last time)! Should have 3 matches (out of 5) but that’s ok, we’ll get those next time!

One thing I really really need to work on is to get back in position after performing a push or a loop. Once I’m in a perfect position my loops ain’t bad but the problem is 99% of the time I perform a stroke and become “Frozen” in place because I keep watching the ball and seeing where it’s gonna land.

 

[turbozed]

Guys I played my second ever tournament yesterday and won a game! An improvement (won zero games last time)! Should have 3 matches (out of 5) but that’s ok, we’ll get those next time!

One thing I really really need to work on is to get back in position after performing a push or a loop. Once I’m in a perfect position my loops ain’t bad but the problem is 99% of the time I perform a stroke and become “Frozen” in place because I keep watching the ball and seeing where it’s gonna land.

I used to have that problem too. Early on, ball watching is a bigger problem because there's a higher chance of your opponent making an unforced error. So you're fixated and what he's doing instead.

When you start playing better players you're almost certain they're getting the ball back over, and not only that but you've played with enough people that have looped it with quality. So the game experience will teach you to push and jump back to position as soon as possible.

 

[Novarac23]

Thats a good point! Right now I have to remember not to look at the ball and sometimes even when I tell myself not to look at the ball I still do it! But being aware of it and sometimes even not doing it, is good progress! I’m so excited for September open! Goal is to win 2 matches!

 

[dingyibvs]

At a teams tournament right now, my goodness it's slow lol. 4 teams for a table, started at 9:30 and it's 5 hrs later and we're still in group stage with the last 2 team matches of our group to go.

I lost the first singles match against a Jpen player. He switched to his BH side mid-match with I think a slower rubber. They were the slowest blocks I've ever faced, I looped a countless number of balls into the net. My inability to adjust quickly was killer as I continued to back off more than needed after I make an opening loop. We lost that teams match 3-0.

2nd match was against a Cpen player. He seemed to have pretty normal equipment and I managed to beat him pretty comfortably. Our team has a sharp drop off at the bottom of the order, but we managed to win 3-2 for the teams score.

We're now waiting for the penultimate teams match to finish so we can begin our last one. I think to increase our chances we're gonna have to forgo playing our 5th player this match. She's our captain/organizer but she just can't read a service to save her life.