@KTableTennis please do yourself a favor and let your coaches dictate your equipment changes not random people from the internet
Yes I agree to this, only if you coach pushes you into a very specific direction without much reasoning behind it (like I've always used this or I always buy at that shop) then you can do your own research, which never hurts by the way, it always surprises me when I talk to high ranked/national players and some of them don't really understand what the play with. It's important to have an opinion around gear, you use it daily
D05 and D09c are probably more durable than ESN rubbers. So you might not be saving the money that you think you are if you are training that frequently and then need to start changing Xiom rubbers every 3 weeks.
This is also true in my experience and the experience of our top players at the club.
I would say I am a pretty advanced player. I have only been playing for a year and a half. my current rating is 1915 although I haven't played a tournament in about 2 or 3 months and I have been competing well against 2100-2200 and above players, I was really happy the other day because I beat my friend 3 times in a row in 3 days of practice and he is around 2200. I am changing to Xiom because I feel that it suits my style well especially because I need a softer rubber on my backhand for more control and I tested the asia rubber on one of my friends rackets and I really liked the feeling on the forehand. another reason is because it is a lot cheaper than buterfly and I am training 6-7 days a week now with 4-5 2-3 hour private lessons a week so my rubbers are wearing out a lot quicker so I am needing to change them every 1-2 months so I wanted to change to a cheaper but still professional rubber. I also really like xiom and am hoping to get sponsered by them eventually.
Yes I got that feeling already, good to know. And indeed if you train so much, good to think about budget if you don't have a sponsor yet. From this, some things I can say:
- The stradivarius is a very good blade, some of our top players use it as well (2400-2500 USATT approx), it will feel different than your Timo Boll ALC, mostly due to aramid vs alc, but maybe you enjoy the feeling more.
- If you are developing your BH, indeed the 09c is not the best choice. Since you enjoy tensor rubbers more than hybrids, it also make sense to me to choose a more tensor-like here, with a softer sponge, since the blade you choose for is already on the hard/stiff side, so better not to go for to hard rubbers to develop on the BH.
- Rubber choice looks good to me at first, see how it feels and then if you need something else, you can always mention what did not work, I'm happy to help
There is many alternatives here so understand first your feeling with the xiom rubbers is key to think of anything else.
