Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

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Passed the local umpire test yesterday evening on my third attempt after oversleeping the first time and not passing the written exam the last time. Of course I overslept this morning and couldn't make it to the first division of a tournament. On my way now for the other division in the afternoon. Anyway, the road to becoming the most hated umpire can get started lol

 

[Tyce]

Passed the local umpire test yesterday evening on my third attempt after oversleeping the first time and not passing the written exam the last time. Of course I overslept this morning and couldn't make it to the first division of a tournament. On my way now for the other division in the afternoon. Anyway, the road to becoming the most hated umpire can get started lol

Let me know when I can attend a low level tournament with the most hated umpire ever
West Germany preferably

 

[NextLevel]

Passed the local umpire test yesterday evening on my third attempt after oversleeping the first time and not passing the written exam the last time. Of course I overslept this morning and couldn't make it to the first division of a tournament. On my way now for the other division in the afternoon. Anyway, the road to becoming the most hated umpire can get started lol

Congrats. I need to do mine but ibam tied up in the Safesport compliance mountain of trainings.. Will need to make some progress on those.

 

[dingyibvs]

I went the the club to play last night, haven't done that on Friday for quite a while since I play soccer on Thursdays and usually I'm too tired to play. I guess I'm in a bit better shape now, so felt comfortable to go. My focus in the beginning was on using my updated BH technique, which involves taking the ball slightly later, bending my wrist a bit more but not flick it too much during the forward swing, and also pivoting more at the elbow. First 2 matches I played it went terribly, not only was I not able to execute nearly as well as I did in practice, the focus on BH caused everything else to be way worse as well.

I then shifted focus to footwork instead. My legs are still a bit sore, so I was being extra sluggish, so I figured let me just try to move better. When I did that, something just clicked. Besides executing everything else better, I actually executed BH much better as well. I guess the lesson here is that focusing on technique during matches is pretty useless, it's better to focus on more general things, like being more active with my feet, watch the ball more, being more relaxed. Specifics of techniques like how much to bend the wrist in which angle, how to bend the body, press with the fingers, etc. are better left to training, and just let these things seep through your game over time.

 

[NextLevel]

awesome! and great win. u played some Broward boys

Here are the other two Broward boys - my last shares from the tournament... would probably not share the injured chopper's match but I link to my best shot of the match lol... the 2300+ player watching asked whether I had anti on backhand after I did the shot lol...

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Here are the other two Broward boys - my last shares from the tournament... would probably not share the injured chopper's match but I link to my best shot of the match lol... the 2300+ player watching asked whether I had anti on backhand after I did lol...

what center is this?
love the high ceiling.
how many tables?

waiting for the day Taiwan can also have big halls to play table tennis.
If my project with another team works well, hopefully 5 to 10 years time.

 

[NextLevel]

what center is this?
love the high ceiling.
how many tables?

waiting for the day Taiwan can also have big halls to play table tennis.
If my project with another team works well, hopefully 5 to 10 years time.

It's a sport center in Myrtle Beach that hosts many different sports, tables and flooring were brought in just to make it better for table tennis.

https://www.visitmyrtlebeach.com/sports/myrtle-beach-sports-center

 

[TampaBayTableTennis]

Here are the other two Broward boys - my last shares from the tournament... would probably not share the injured chopper's match but I link to my best shot of the match lol... the 2300+ player watching asked whether I had anti on backhand after I did the shot lol...

wow, awesome! thanks for sharing these. your wins are good in these matches ive watched. getting wins vs them would make my drive home from Broward a happy one. i like your backhand serve and backhand open combo and u had some nice spinny low forehand opens and good follow-ups. sounds like a fun weekend.

 

[NextLevel]

wow, awesome! thanks for sharing these. your wins are good in these matches ive watched. getting wins vs them would make my drive home from Broward a happy one. i like your backhand serve and backhand open combo and u had some nice spinny low forehand opens and good follow-ups. sounds like a fun weekend.

Opening vs backspin is the foundation of my game, as is backhand play, my forehand is mostly serviceable to keep some balance. You find that if you can generate decent backspin and open against it, you have a window into beating just about every player who doesn’t counterloop, even players who are better than you would think you have a chance against. Expanding my ability to counterloop especially on forehand side has been my main project for a while now. Generating heavy top against thr backspin ball is still a helpful skill today even if it is not as dangerous as it used to be.

The other thing I think is undertrained is keeping the ball on the table vs hitting winners too many players have and focus on hitting the ball past the opponent technique vs keeping the ball on the table technique and this gives them no backup on the day their timing is off though it makes them look great when they are hitting winners. I think I got lucky in that we all played similar styles I was just a bit more experienced doing it.

 

[TampaBayTableTennis]

thats great insight, thanks. i could see your spinny shots landing deep on table with arc/security and giving opponents trouble. and as you said about keeping ball on table, you stuck around in the rallies with good spin and placement and get the advantage

im working on getting the confidence to open backhand more again, i went away for a bit and focused on setting up more forehands but i had become too passive on returns to my backhand, when I should've been getting things started with the backhand open.

 

[NextLevel]

thats great insight, thanks. i could see your spinny shots landing deep on table with arc/security and giving opponents trouble. and as you said about keeping ball on table, you stuck around in the rallies with good spin and placement and get the advantage

im working on getting the confidence to open backhand more again, i went away for a bit and focused on setting up more forehands but i had become too passive on returns to my backhand, when I should've been getting things started with the backhand open.

Try to spin the heck out of the ball, even if it goes very slow. Get those spin trainers from Amazon or Aliexpres. Getting good spin usually implies a whipping process that rewards many aspects of your game. Also backhand opener is mostly for push returns off half long or short serves, it is generally not a good idea to use the backhand on balls that are hard to time or that are loos and high unless you have a lot of practice expanding the strike zone. So part of making the backhand effective is setting it up with the right serves. Finally, always remember to squat/get lower against backspin and not just drop the arm. Getting lower usually wins 80% of the battle, leaving whip and timing to handle the other 20%.

 

[dingyibvs]

Opening vs backspin is the foundation of my game, as is backhand play, my forehand is mostly serviceable to keep some balance. You find that if you can generate decent backspin and open against it, you have a window into beating just about every player who doesn’t counterloop, even players who are better than you would think you have a chance against. Expanding my ability to counterloop especially on forehand side has been my main project for a while now. Generating heavy top against thr backspin ball is still a helpful skill today even if it is not as dangerous as it used to be.

The other thing I think is undertrained is keeping the ball on the table vs hitting winners too many players have and focus on hitting the ball past the opponent technique vs keeping the ball on the table technique and this gives them no backup on the day their timing is off though it makes them look great when they are hitting winners. I think I got lucky in that we all played similar styles I was just a bit more experienced doing it.

I'm sure you've experimented with this before, but I'm wondering why you don't cock your wrist more on your BH? You have great timing and do an excellent job of using the elbow as a pivot, and obviously you're able to play with good power and consistency on the BH side, so I'm wondering why you don't add a bit more wrist action to the shot.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

It's a sport center in Myrtle Beach that hosts many different sports, tables and flooring were brought in just to make it better for table tennis.

https://www.visitmyrtlebeach.com/sports/myrtle-beach-sports-center

eight basketball courts, 16 volleyball courts, land in USA is just heaven

Taiwan is extremely short of land, as most of the island is mountains.
So space is a challenge and many of the top teams in Taiwan train with below par space.

Lin Yunju's home center is basically just a small school hall that the school have loaned to him to train.
He can set up 2 tables of WTT court size (I do think it is a bit smaller than center court)
and then 3 tables on the side for kids to train.
The hall is about the size of a basketball court, with not much space outside the court lines.

 

[NextLevel]

I'm sure you've experimented with this before, but I'm wondering why you don't cock your wrist more on your BH? You have great timing and do an excellent job of using the elbow as a pivot, and obviously you're able to play with good power and consistency on the BH side, so I'm wondering why you don't add a bit more wrist action to the shot.

It's something my coach was trying to get me to do more before summer, for me my grip choice is very amateurish, it is designed to give me the ability to play many shots decently without massive grip transitions. I would probably need to do more of a grip switch to get a more visible wrist cock. What I do uses more forearm pronation and supination to get approximation but I suspect part of it for me is that I can do decently against backspin that is long but I would need to work harder on it to handle the over the table stuff. I think the timing of some shots would also significantly change if I used more wrist cock and it is hard for me to time counter topspins with it. But given there are limited avenues to improve, this is probably the one I am going to look at significantly on forehand and backhand next to see how much more I can get out of really improving the whip mechanics and timing (and hopefully drop some pounds as well).

 

[backspacer]

Let me know when I can attend a low level tournament with the most hated umpire ever
West Germany preferably

Well, I'm in the Southwest, but umpires don't umpire actual matches when they get hired for tournaments. You just walk around and check if everything is going smoothly.

Congrats. I need to do mine but ibam tied up in the Safesport compliance mountain of trainings.. Will need to make some progress on those.

Thanks! We have a rule here that requires clubs to have x amount of umpires depending on the number of registered teams they have so most umpires get forced into it and only do their mandatory two matches per year, but I'm not like that. Took me two years to finally get the license so no rush lol

 

[NextLevel]

Participated in a team event that was locally hosted. It had golden scoring and best of 3 matches, 9 matches, 3 doubles, 6 singles for a first to 14 games. It was double elimination and my team won our first match but lost our next two. Too much work, too little time. But I think I see the path forward now. I really need to work really hard on seeing how far I can go with improving my grip transitions and wrist motions.

 

[latej]

I'm on day 4 of my 3-4 days fast, as I originally thought, and this guy just ruined my day ;-)

 

[Novarac23]

ok so I went to train at a local club here at Lisbon and first day I was there I saw Aruna play on the table behind mine. At first I thought I must have mixed something up but once I saw the FH I knew it had to be him. They were not messing around and I did not want to disturb so today I had a coaching session and my coach was telling me that Apolonia and Aruna come all the time and that that was him playing the other day it was amazing seeing his fh in action, a thing of beauty and power

another thing that happened today was that my coach really showed me what it means to use hips in a FH top or under and once I figured it out all of my topspins were landing very close to the white line. This is the first time I had balls with such spin and arc that I was really proud of myself

 

[jk1980]

went to the venue for a league match expecting to start in position 3 (with a team of 4, so i play against their 3rd and fourth placed player) and got told that the number 2 was ill and i had to play on the second position, which means i had to play their best and second best player (both 100 rating points more than me). Played quite well and won the first two sets. Then i was up 9-6 in the third set and still manage to lose that one 10-12. This basically led to me losing the match with my opposition seemingly having adapted to me. These first three sets would have been the only chance for me to win, because all the backhand loops my opponent tried and either went into the net suddenly came in blasting past me. i guess i should have varied the amount of spin in my pushes to keep him guessing.

Funnily enough the guy i thought would be the weak link in our doubles match was their best player and he played short pips on the backhand and some andro impuls speed rubber that seemed quite slow. I had no trouble opening up against most things he threw at me and could also loop the next chop, but when the ball came high and i attempted to smash they mostly went into the net.

after reviewing the video footage i do now at least know what it takes to win against the first player i faced. He did serves into my wide backhand and when i managed to loop them properly there was no coming back for him, but the success ratio was simply way to low (like 2 out of 8). I will need to practice this and force myself to actually use it in the match. Apart from that my forehand block against spinny loops is just bad. I get a too strong contact and the ball goes out. i should have pressed down on it, but it happens so seldom that it is hard to remember that when the situation acutally arises.

after the match somebody from another team that also played at that venue told me that he saw that i was giving trouble to the first player and said that he also had issues against the anti-top rubber that the guy used. Now i am unsure if that guy actually played regular inverted or anti, because he twiddled.

it's a bit of a bad situation because people will take every advantage they can and even lie about their rubbers.
if i ask the opponent for their racket and ask if it has regular rubbers they say "yes yes, regular rubbers", but funnily enough the long pips player also answered an opponent "yes, regular rubbers" and then mumbled "regular pips".

 

[NextLevel]

ok so I went to train at a local club here at Lisbon and first day I was there I saw Aruna play on the table behind mine. At first I thought I must have mixed something up but once I saw the FH I knew it had to be him. They were not messing around and I did not want to disturb so today I had a coaching session and my coach was telling me that Apolonia and Aruna come all the time and that that was him playing the other day it was amazing seeing his fh in action, a thing of beauty and power

another thing that happened today was that my coach really showed me what it means to use hips in a FH top or under and once I figured it out all of my topspins were landing very close to the white line. This is the first time I had balls with such spin and arc that I was really proud of myself

Landing balls deep is good but don't get too enamored with it if you can't land 50 loops in a row against basic block under pressure - too many players get enamored with what happens when their loops go right and don't have backup for when their loops are not landing beyond defaulting to lame shots. You have to know how to measure your output and stay consistent when the opponent is not putting you under pressure and you are missing the table (or when the opponent is putting you under pressure and you can't play powerful shots).