New Equipment -- Budding EJ

[NetProphet]

2. Don't expect much helpful advice from this forum.

Proceeds to give advice 😂😛

In fairness I can see your point but there is also lots of good advice in here, the issue is recognising it from what is also possibly bad advice.
Take the current case in point, Sriver or Rozena.
Both are recommendable for beginners but there are different types of beginners and only the OP can decide which is going to suit him best starting out.
Sriver will allow you to learn everything you need to learn as a beginner, no question about that. And as a hobby beginner it is perfectly fine.
If you are a club beginner (who will play a lot, maybe get a bit of coaching, watch YouTube videos while obsessing over technique and maybe enter local leagues) then maybe Rozena is a better choice starting out? You'll almost certainly go further with it before thinking you need a new racket and it costs almost the same as Sriver...
Lots of new players at my club started with a Mark V racket and played league with it before moving on to Rakza etc so Sriver and Mark V still have a place for beginners. I've also seen many beginners play years with premade killerspin rackets too. They don't hang out in forums like this and they don't watch YouTube either, they just ask for a bit of help at the club and PLAY! 😁

 

[Lazer]

There is another thing about Sriver. It was made to use with speed glue and with celluloid balls

No it was absolutely not. I used it BEFORE speedgluing was discovered in the 70!s. And the type of ball just doesn’t matter. It’s a little slower and harder to spin that’s it.

Cheers
L-zr

 

[NetProphet]

Nowhere on the Butterfly page does it say that Rozena is "beginner-friendly" or "made for beginners", but it does say that Rozena is "recommended for players aiming for the top". What on earth are you talking about?? Did you even read what the page says?


Nowhere did I say that Spring Sponge and Tensor are the same thing. I said that Tensor and High-Tension are the same thing. Please read more carefully.

As I understand it, tensor technology is primarily about adding tension to the topsheet of the rubber by mechanical stretching and non-volatile chemical compounds. This is meant to replace the tension created by volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in speed glue, which was outlawed.

The technology that we compare to Andro's Tensor Technology is Butterfly's High Tension technology, not the Spring Sponge technology. While no other company makes an exact replica of Andro's Tensor Technology, rubbers which use this kind of tension technology are widely known as "tensors". Rozena, and most other modern European rubbers, definitely fall into this category. Are you unaware of this?


You are making incorrect assertions with amazing amounts of confidence. I have to wonder if this is an issue with your reading skills, or if you are just brazenly lying. While I am not an expert, I am also not making assertions which are easily refuted with 5 minutes of googling.

Why do you have such venom for the things I am saying? My opinion, that Rozena is a bad decision for beginners, is certainly not outside the realm of reasonable opinions. Players and coaches who are way above both of our levels hold this opinion. You don't need to call my judgment into question in order to disagree with my opinion.

It's common knowledge that Rozena is the Butterfly rubber of choice for many many beginners in the game.
What I saw on the website was
"ROZENA marks an important bridge between "classic" rubbers such as SRIVER or TACKINESS and high performance rubbers like TENERGY or DIGNICS.

While close to TENERGY in terms of high spin and precision, ROZENA is softer which provides increased dwell time and improved touch which make it easier to handle and control during passive shots."

I can see why you would maybe recommend something else for beginners but I can also see why many will recommend Rozena. Both approaches can work just fine but it's up.to.the OP to decide if classic (no spring) rubber or a bit of catapult is what he wants.
Then again, asking for equipment advice in the EJ thread was always going to lead to this 😂

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

sriver rozena, rozena sriver... in the end all of us end up with tenergy and dignics. The ultimate winner: Tamasu Co. Ltd.

 

[d3nium]

I don't think Rozena is a beginner rubber tbh. It's fast, with lots of catapult.

 

[Lazer]

sriver rozena, rozena sriver... in the end all of us end up with tenergy and dignics. The ultimate winner: Tamasu Co. Ltd.

Sriver = Mark V
Rozena = Rakza 7
Tenergy = Rakza X
Dignics = Rakza Z

Not really identical but close enough for marketing, for amateurs it doesn’t matter that much. And I’m sure all the other manufacturers have their own alternatives too.

Cheers
L-zr

 

[Amayzde]

It doesnt matter if Sriver is supposedly too 'dead' or the Rozena has too much catapult, you will get used to them and play equally as good.

 

[Tyce]

Sriver dead, lol. You know what else is dead and has no catapult? Hurricane 3.
Guess what, the lack of catapult is not a problem.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Play with Sriver for giggles and Lulz in your dad's basement.

Play with Rozena for THE REAL TT experience. You need to familiarize yourself with the Spring Sponge as all roads lead to Tenergy.

Be a man, do the right thing.

What about Hurricane Mister Gozo sir, you asked? Well, lad, those are for a special breed of masochist, and it is a story for another time.

Gozo: Helping the EJ community since 2021.

 

[Lazer]

Play with Sriver for giggles and Lulz in your dad's basement.

Play with Rozena for THE REAL TT experience. You need to familiarize yourself with the Spring Sponge as all roads lead to Tenergy.

Be a man, do the right thing.
View attachment 34047

What about Hurricane Mister Gozo sir, you asked? Well, lad, those are for a special breed of masochist, and it is a story for another time.

Gozo: Helping the EJ community since 2021.

Well, Rozena is a dead rubber to me… I can get more out of Mark V….

Cheers
L-zr

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Well, Rozena is a dead rubber to me… I can get more out of Mark V….

Cheers
L-zr

Liar liar pants on fire!

 

[TableTennisBD]

Play with Sriver for giggles and Lulz in your dad's basement.

Be a man, do the right thing.


Gozo: Helping the EJ community since 2021.

 

[Lazer]

Liar liar pants on fire!

I’m dead serious…

Cheers
L-zr

 

[piligrim]

No it was absolutely not. I used it BEFORE speedgluing was discovered in the 70!s. And the type of ball just doesn’t matter. It’s a little slower and harder to spin that’s it.

Cheers
L-zr

Did you start to play in 19 century?

 

[Lazer]

Did you start to play in 19 century?

In the 70’s with long long absence. Started 1971 and quit 1975. Picked it up again 2019.

Cheers
L-zr

 

[ThePongCommenter]

Nowhere on the Butterfly page does it say that Rozena is "beginner-friendly" or "made for beginners", but it does say that Rozena is "recommended for players aiming for the top". What on earth are you talking about?? Did you even read what the page says?

What "5 minutes of Googling" could've done for you...

"Rozena - A Rubber to Improve"


(Butterfly CEO Takako) Ohsawa sums up the potential user of ROZENA:

ROZENA is the rubber for a wide range of players from beginners to those who aim to participate in national-level competitions. As a table tennis manufacturer, we have a strong desire to respond to the demands from players who like table tennis and want to improve even a little- We think it is one of the missions of Butterfly to improve the level of table tennis and enhance the enchantment of the sport by reacting to these demands. ROZENA is recommended for players on their way to the top, who wish to learn and improve their game.

TENERGY has a lot to offer, but also post requirements to the player in terms of his technique and skill. To enjoy the full potential of TENERGY, a player must be able to hit the ball with precise angle and timing.

Enter ROZENA​

One main focus in the development of ROZENA was the pursuit of “tolerance”. Where TENERGY requires the player to hit the ball with precise angle, ROZENA compensates for such delicate errors. Yuichi Tsuchiya, Head of Butterfly Research & Development department, sums it up fittingly:

Table Tennis is a sport where you have to stroke the ball with various speed, spin and trajectory back to the opponent’s side of the table. Top players with high physical and predictive abilities as well as reaction speed will be able to stroke the ball precisely: in other words, they are able to stroke the ball at exact position with exact racket angle, swing direction and speed. However, the lower the level of a player is, the more difficult it will be for him to stroke the ball perfectly. Then, tolerance becomes important.
ROZENA’s tolerance makes the rubber especially easy to play and helps to reduce small errors due to incorrect angle and swing direction, making it possible to safely return the ball onto the opponent’s side and still apply pressure. The rate of error decreases and the fun increases!

Ohsawa is sure: Butterfly positions TENERGY series in the highest rank, as rubbers “to win”, ROZENA is a “rubber to be stronger”, to help players raise their levels to play TENERGY rubbers in the future.

Butterfly ‘Rozena’ released on 21st April 2017 is a new generation tension rubber optimized for entry level players. While utilizing the technology of ‘Tenergy’ series, ‘Rozena’ is concentrating on ‘Tolerance’ instead of spin or speed for reducing the mistake when it is used by entry level table tennis players whose skill level is still low.

"Tensor" is a trademarked term owned by German company ESN, who make a lot of different rubbers for many different companies. Tensors used to have the tensor logo on the topsheet, and on the packaging, but recently this has disappeared for a lot of recent ESN-produced rubber. My guess is that the TT equipment companies wanted to play down the fact that so many rubbers were made in the same factory, and focus on their own branding instead. Tensors include Joola Express, Tibhar Evolution, Adidas Tenzone, Andro Rasant, Xiom Sigma, and many, many more.

Most TT manufacturers make some kind of claim about the "tensioning" of their rubbers. Butterfly, for example, call theirs "High Tension". Tenergy isn't made in the ESN factory, so it's wrong to call it a Tensor, but it is supposed to have some tension effect (although I'd say that Tenergy's success is more down to the quality of its topsheet and the introduction of a porous sponge).

You mention Grip-S Europe, which is an interesting example. It's definitely not a Tensor, and is made by Haifu in China. Some say it's a rebadged Blue Whale, but who knows? It does have some factory-tuned voodoo witchcraft though.

As for gluing - since the glue ban, the manufacturers have all moved to factory-tune their rubbers to the maximum possible. It's a risky game to use old VOC glue on modern rubbers, especially ones with porous sponges IMO. It's OK with some, but crazy with others. I had a nightmare with Rakza 7 Soft a few years ago - rapid expansion, unreliable performance, crazy shrinking later. Water-based glue is the safest way to go these days. The advice above from geotjakra is good - one layer on sponge, one on blade, wait until totally dry. Some glue can take several hours to completely dry, so just use a hairdryer if you can't wait.

It seems you were not aware of the differentiation between ESN and Butterfly and that Andro rubbers are literally made by ESN, but hopefully this series of posts clarifies it

 

[Brs]

This argument really is kind of useless to the OP. Sounds like you guys are having fun though.

In 2012 I was this OP. 43 years old, started playing TT in a town with a community center club one night a week, nearest proper club 2.5 hours drive away. No coaching. The good players in Comm Ctr were like 1400, best player in the county 1800. Table Tennis Poverty Zone is how NL called it.

Nonetheless I became obsessed with TT. Bought robot, put table and floor and AC in my garage, trained with local partners, web coach, went to camps, drove to club for coaching and to play different people, went to fucking Europe to camps for God's sake. Like, I really made a serious effort. I don't think the OP will go that far as I did, which is smart, imo. Here is what I learned.

You will never succeed at being a really good TT player in the environment you have. Half the things you practice will actually make you play worse. You will develop bad habits and to try to un-learn them will take long and hard work and most likely still fail.

If you just want to play pingpong and get to a decent hobby level like 1400 usatt, you can totally do that. At ~1400 you can play long rallies, make friends, get some exercise and have a good time. But in absolute terms that still really is a low level, and it may get boring after a while. Or if you are someone who gets most of your enjoyment from the feeling of developing skills, getting better, hitting a plateau can be very frustrating. You know yourself, the forum cannot advise on how you will react. But it is extremely likely that you hit a plateau somewhere between 1200 - 1600 and that's it.

Equipment is not very important. I would say only two things.
1. Get a blade that is medium speed-wise. Can be carbon or all-wood, but not super slow like Sweden classic, and not crazy fast like FZD SALC, garaydia ZLC. Anything between a Korbel and a Viscaria, which is like 1000s of blades, is totally okay, you will adapt. More important than picking the perfect one, is to NOT CHANGE IT once you pick. Changing blades sets you back a lot every time.

2. For rubbers similar advice. Get something that makes and reacts to spin, but not something crazy. I started with flextra and then sriver, because of dumb, decades-old advice. It will not teach you to play proper strokes. You won't learn anything useful. Because TT is all about making and dealing with spin, and those rubbers don't cut it with the new ball. Rozena fine, rakza fine, fastarc, rasanter, bluefire, like any $30 - $40 eurojap rubber with 42 - 48 degree sponge and grippy top is totally fine. Again 100s of perfectly fine choices. Don't get 53 degree sponge, no hurricane, no hybrids. That sorts your equipment.

What you really need is some coaching. It can be just a little to start, but so helpful to get it early. Do a weekend camp maybe, or go get two hours one-on-one at the faraway club once a month, if they have a coach. If there are better players in your town, invite them to your basement TT man cave and learn to feed multi ball for them, and block for them. Then you will have both some new friends, and some training partners. Practice serves as much as you can or want. But be careful using the robot too much. I owned four or five different robots, including the very good ones. They all suck if you use them too much. They are great for fitness, and you can work on your technique when you don't know how to do a shot at all. But they train you to not read the ball off an opponent's body and paddle. Which is pretty much the single most important skill in table tennis. So to use the robot 1/3 or 1/4 of your TT is okay. If you get close to half your table time being robot training you are actually making yourself worse at playing real games.

 

[ThePongCommenter]

This argument really is kind of useless to the OP. Sounds like you guys are having fun though.

In 2012 I was this OP. 43 years old, started playing TT in a town with a community center club one night a week, nearest proper club 2.5 hours drive away. No coaching. The good players in Comm Ctr were like 1400, best player in the county 1800. Table Tennis Poverty Zone is how NL called it.

Nonetheless I became obsessed with TT. Bought robot, put table and floor and AC in my garage, trained with local partners, web coach, went to camps, drove to club for coaching and to play different people, went to fucking Europe to camps for God's sake. Like, I really made a serious effort. I don't think the OP will go that far as I did, which is smart, imo. Here is what I learned.

You will never succeed at being a really good TT player in the environment you have. Half the things you practice will actually make you play worse. You will develop bad habits and to try to un-learn them will take long and hard work and most likely still fail.

If you just want to play pingpong and get to a decent hobby level like 1400 usatt, you can totally do that. At ~1400 you can play long rallies, make friends, get some exercise and have a good time. But in absolute terms that still really is a low level, and it may get boring after a while. Or if you are someone who gets most of your enjoyment from the feeling of developing skills, getting better, hitting a plateau can be very frustrating. You know yourself, the forum cannot advise on how you will react. But it is extremely likely that you hit a plateau somewhere between 1200 - 1600 and that's it.

Equipment is not very important. I would say only two things.
1. Get a blade that is medium speed-wise. Can be carbon or all-wood, but not super slow like Sweden classic, and not crazy fast like FZD SALC, garaydia ZLC. Anything between a Korbel and a Viscaria, which is like 1000s of blades, is totally okay, you will adapt. More important than picking the perfect one, is to NOT CHANGE IT once you pick. Changing blades sets you back a lot every time.

2. For rubbers similar advice. Get something that makes and reacts to spin, but not something crazy. I started with flextra and then sriver, because of dumb, decades-old advice. It will not teach you to play proper strokes. You won't learn anything useful. Because TT is all about making and dealing with spin, and those rubbers don't cut it with the new ball. Rozena fine, rakza fine, fastarc, rasanter, bluefire, like any $30 - $40 eurojap rubber with 42 - 48 degree sponge and grippy top is totally fine. Again 100s of perfectly fine choices. Don't get 53 degree sponge, no hurricane, no hybrids. That sorts your equipment.

What you really need is some coaching. It can be just a little to start, but so helpful to get it early. Do a weekend camp maybe, or go get two hours one-on-one at the faraway club once a month, if they have a coach. If there are better players in your town, invite them to your basement TT man cave and learn to feed multi ball for them, and block for them. Then you will have both some new friends, and some training partners. Practice serves as much as you can or want. But be careful using the robot too much. I owned four or five different robots, including the very good ones. They all suck if you use them too much. They are great for fitness, and you can work on your technique when you don't know how to do a shot at all. But they train you to not read the ball off an opponent's body and paddle. Which is pretty much the single most important skill in table tennis. So to use the robot 1/3 or 1/4 of your TT is okay. If you get close to half your table time being robot training you are actually making yourself worse at playing real games.

This is a great post. I agree with pretty much all of it. Can you elaborate on dumb decades-old advice that landed you on Flextra and Sriver, and it not teaching you to play proper strokes? The latter is another thing I see posted often (rubber teaching/forcing someone to do X) which is completely untrue but seems to persist time and time again.

This argument really is kind of useless to the OP.

It is not entirely useless to the OP nor future people reading this thread and I think you know why.

 

[Tyce]

I guess that depends on what you see as proper strokes (long swings, or compact power transfers) as well as how you feel you could learn those best.

The old-fashioned methodology being learning the movements first, and increase spin after (Sriver), and modern times often having people just diving in the deep end and hoping to come up and swim (Rozena, or insert any other introductory tensor rubber).

Funny thing, my daughter started on hard, thin, old 729 rubbers (pretty much sriver-esque but even slower) and transitioned to Rakza 7 without a hiccup after about 6 months.
But when she started and used my old bat with 2x Rakza 7 for a training, balls flew everywhere and it was very discouraging.
She's still really light in terms of power, but she gets the basics behind a stroke, bat angle, placement, power.

Could someone start with Rozena? Absolutely. Especially if there's a bit of determination, this route will work, just as kids starting out with carbon bats will work.
Could someone start with Sriver? Absolutely. And there is no real detriment in either route that won't converge after a couple of months.

 

[NextLevel]

But when she started and used my old bat with 2x Rakza 7 for a training, balls flew everywhere and it was very discouraging.

This is really a matter of framing and judging using standards that do not promote adaptation. I had a coach once tell me to push topspin serves into the net and push backspin serves off the table. He believed doing this would encourage me to understand my ball control and strokes better. It might not work for everyone, but for me, it changed the way I approached and played and trained table tennis. I stopped being so focused on getting it right immediately and gave myself time to adapt to anything I faced anew. I stopped focusing on looping the ball on the table every time and played around with varying aspects of my topspins and learning how they affected the ball.

Could someone start with Sriver? Absolutely. And there is no real detriment in either route that won't converge after a couple of months.

In the infamous words of Werner Schlager, you want the player to make as few adjustments as possible as instincts are hard to break. To have them adapt to one thing (rubbers that are not designed to spin the ball forward) and then adapt to another (rubbers designed to spin the ball forward) can affect their hitting, pushing and blocking instincts. So the sooner you can get them to what promotes the instincts you expect them to keep and optimize, the better.