Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[Archosaurus]

Well, you made your decision. But my opinion about a good moderator is not to do something(like moving posts, deleting posts) just because he/she does not like it.

One of the primary functions of a forum moderator is to delete or move inappropriate or off-topic posts.

 

[kindof99]

Thanks for sharing your opinion. I will take it into account though my position is actually far more nuanced than just doing something because *I* don't like it, but that is for another time or day. If you seriously want to debate what this thread is for, you can review various parts of the thread (including the first page) and decide whose definition fits the thread better and then decide whether my definition is based on what I like or keeping in the spirit of what the thread is for. Ultimately, some of these things are judgment calls and I can be right and wrong about them.

I ,like many others, greatly appreciate your effort and time as a moderator and your help to a lot of people in the table tennis communities. I just feel that a moderator needs to think twice to move posts (not that bad), delete posts (quite heavy), ban a member for posting (very heavy).

 

[jonol]

Did an hour of practicing my serve receives only. Felt like I improved my game more in that 1 hour of practice than the last month of playing matches.

 

[kindof99]

I have been trying improving timing for backhand loop long backspin serve. I think I am fine technique wise, but timing is still an issue to me. My friend is left handed penholder that serves with backhand quick wrist motion. Sometimes it is hard to judge whether the serve is topspin or backspin. And the serve is particular fast because it is a straight line to my backhand.

I feel my timing is usually too early as I use compact body and wrist movement for receive.
How do you improve your timing especially for fast long serve?

 

[Archosaurus]

It's about time to put the commercial H3 sheet onto a backup blade again, so I measured the Provincial 41A, and it does confirm that my "40A" commercial sheet was some freak example. It must be 42 or 43 hardness in reality.

Weirdly I found it very easy to get speed out of, and I don't really remember the ball slipping much at all either. It could have way too much pore variation and it just ends up measuring harder than what it plays like.

The common trend I've seen is that 2.20mm thickness sponge H3 I've bought are the lowest grade in terms of consistency. They're a lot cheaper than the 2.10mm and 2.15mm ones, so it makes you think what the real differences are. I've used the 2.20mm Commercial one for almost two months now and it doesn't look worn at all apart from some scuff marks from hitting the table, and it still plays well. I expected it to bubble or tear by now; nothing.

All of the 2.10mm Neo I've had are excellent, measure basically exactly as you'd expect, and they were also much fresher than the 2.20mm sheets. Even my commercial 37A red is excellent. It was produced basically yesterday, so maybe it's just how fresh it is. 2.15mm seems to be a bit worse but I've only ever measured one, so that's probably ignorable.

Topsheets have been totally fine on all of them, but I don't know how I feel about basically +-10% sponge hardness variation. On the flip side, they're enormously cheap; I got my Commercial for 15aud after coupons and all that. How much can you complain? You don't even get a sandwich and soda for that price.

A DHS Hurricane 3 Commercial 40A 2.20 BLACK
Topsheet 32.5 - 33.5 A / 53.0 - 55.0 O
Sponge 37.5 - 38.0 A / 56.0 - 56.5 O

A DHS Hurricane 3 Neo Provincial 41A 2.10 BLACK
Topsheet 30.5 - 32.5 A / 53.0 - 54.0 O
Sponge 35.0 - 36.0 A / 55.5 - 56.0 O

A DHS Hurricane 3 Provincial Blue Sponge 41A 2.15 BLACK
Topsheet 29.0 - 30.5 A / 52.5 - 53.0 O
Sponge 35.5 - 37.5 A / 55.5 - 56.0 O

A DHS Hurricane 3 Neo Commercial 37A 2.10 RED
Topsheet 29.5 - 30.0 A / 52.0 - 52.5 O
Sponge 31.5 - 32.0 A / 52.0 - 53.0 O

Gonna have a session later today, hopefully my partner shows up so I can film those requested games.

 

[jonol]

I have been trying improving timing for backhand loop long backspin serve. I think I am fine technique wise, but timing is still an issue to me. My friend is left handed penholder that serves with backhand quick wrist motion. Sometimes it is hard to judge whether the serve is topspin or backspin. And the serve is particular fast because it is a straight line to my backhand.

I feel my timing is usually too early as I use compact body and wrist movement for receive.
How do you improve your timing especially for fast long serve?

General rule for receives is to move first and then play a compact, high percentage shot. Receives don't need to be winners and if the serve is already fast you've already got some pace to work with and can hit the ball fairly late/close to the body.

Practicing just spinning the ball up with a relaxed, compact brush with mostly forearm if it's backspin, and just going over the top of the ball if you read topspin. Serve receives are all about spin and placement, not power.

Unfortunately if you misread the spin then it's hard to deal with. I'd focus on trying really hard to read the contact and/or first bounce and then committing to a shot even if unsure. If you play a lazy return, it will probably miss or be a weak return that gets killed anyway, so you may as well play a shot that has a chance of being right.

 

[blahness]

I have been trying improving timing for backhand loop long backspin serve. I think I am fine technique wise, but timing is still an issue to me. My friend is left handed penholder that serves with backhand quick wrist motion. Sometimes it is hard to judge whether the serve is topspin or backspin. And the serve is particular fast because it is a straight line to my backhand.

I feel my timing is usually too early as I use compact body and wrist movement for receive.
How do you improve your timing especially for fast long serve?

I feel like there is just way too much problems with fake movements that I try to focus on the "vibe" of the ball lol which can only be obtained by lowering eye level to close to net. Reading the racket movement is just too difficult (esp with tons of people who hide serves esp with body/nonplaying arm, but even with people who dont hide but have advanced fakes it is hard af too). So basically topspin serves accelerate throughout their trajectory and backspin serves decelerate. So if it feels like it's accelerating or jumping at me i treat it like topspin and vice versa.

But tbh it is not so easy esp when sidespin is mixed in with various proportions and ambiguous lower spin serves. If you 'guess' wrong you will make a mistake. And like you mentioned, straight line makes the amount of information even lower.

This serve is particularly nasty at the pro levels too, you can see Sora Matsushima, WCQ and Lin Yun Ju kinda abuse it to the max too, so even the pros by no means have 'solved' it.

I also hate this serve a lot....

 

[Archosaurus]

Have you tried just moving backwards when you see it's coming long to your backhand? I feel like if you have your nuts to the line then it will jam you up no matter what kind of god-level shot you can do. This isn't my idea, I stole it from some video, but I can't remember which one.

That being said the fast backspin serve to the backhand corner seems to be extremely strong. It's one of my go-to and it's kind of silly how well it works even against objectively very good players.

 

[blahness]

I feel like there is just way too much problems with fake movements that I try to focus on the "vibe" of the ball lol which can only be obtained by lowering eye level to close to net. Reading the racket movement is just too difficult (esp with tons of people who hide serves esp with body/nonplaying arm, but even with people who dont hide but have advanced fakes it is hard af too). So basically topspin serves accelerate throughout their trajectory and backspin serves decelerate. So if it feels like it's accelerating or jumping at me i treat it like topspin and vice versa.

But tbh it is not so easy esp when sidespin is mixed in with various proportions and ambiguous lower spin serves. If you 'guess' wrong you will make a mistake. And like you mentioned, straight line makes the amount of information even lower.

This serve is particularly nasty at the pro levels too, you can see Sora Matsushima, WCQ and Lin Yun Ju kinda abuse it to the max too, so even the pros by no means have 'solved' it.

I also hate this serve a lot....

Adding to this. I learnt from Truls' approach which is very interesting because he also gives this guessing game back to the server.

So if you can only BH loop it with a lot of spin, then the opponent only needs to prepare for 1 return ie topspin. But you can do a 'fake loop' ie touch the ball on the correct area and do a fake loop followthrough. This will actually return a kinda sidebackspin ball back so the other player actually needs to really pay attention and adjust. If they think it is a loop and block it, it will go straight into the net.

This works better against lefty FH pendulum or righty BH pendulum because your 'touch' goes against the spin which increases the spin from these shenanigans.

 

[kindof99]

I feel like there is just way too much problems with fake movements that I try to focus on the "vibe" of the ball lol which can only be obtained by lowering eye level to close to net. Reading the racket movement is just too difficult (esp with tons of people who hide serves esp with body/nonplaying arm, but even with people who dont hide but have advanced fakes it is hard af too). So basically topspin serves accelerate throughout their trajectory and backspin serves decelerate. So if it feels like it's accelerating or jumping at me i treat it like topspin and vice versa.

But tbh it is not so easy esp when sidespin is mixed in with various proportions and ambiguous lower spin serves. If you 'guess' wrong you will make a mistake. And like you mentioned, straight line makes the amount of information even lower.

This serve is particularly nasty at the pro levels too, you can see Sora Matsushima, WCQ and Lin Yun Ju kinda abuse it to the max too, so even the pros by no means have 'solved' it.

I also hate this serve a lot....

I first tried looking hard at the contact and wrist motion to determine whether the serve is topspin or backspin, but it was not easy, as the backhand serve was quick. And usually I would lose focus in a while. Judging based on the ball trajectory and speed is slightly better.

 

[kindof99]

Adding to this. I learnt from Truls' approach which is very interesting because he also gives this guessing game back to the server.

So if you can only BH loop it with a lot of spin, then the opponent only needs to prepare for 1 return ie topspin. But you can do a 'fake loop' ie touch the ball on the correct area and do a fake loop followthrough. This will actually return a kinda sidebackspin ball back so the other player actually needs to really pay attention and adjust. If they think it is a loop and block it, it will go straight into the net.

This works better against lefty FH pendulum or righty BH pendulum because your 'touch' goes against the spin which increases the spin from these shenanigans.

The fake loop works great against penhold flat hitters because it messes their timing and they can’t borrow power. I sometimes also tried sidewide push that would cancel the sidespin for the lefty reverse or righty pendulum.

I guess the hard part is to determine the spin. I should probably assume all are backspin first and then find out the difference for those that are not.

 

[kindof99]

Have you tried just moving backwards when you see it's coming long to your backhand? I feel like if you have your nuts to the line then it will jam you up no matter what kind of god-level shot you can do. This isn't my idea, I stole it from some video, but I can't remember which one.

That being said the fast backspin serve to the backhand corner seems to be extremely strong. It's one of my go-to and it's kind of silly how well it works even against objectively very good players.

I’m fine against righty pendulum long backspin serve, just having trouble with lefty reverse long serve to the backhand as it is much faster. Also it’s much harder to return a lefty serve to the middle as it jams quite differently.

Moving one step back is definitely a good option and it is the main approach for me right now. Another approach I am experimenting is the quick topspin open when the ball is still on the rise, which requires much more precise timing.

 

[kindof99]

Another approach that I will try to return serves that I am not sure about the spin is to loop from the middle of the ball and cover to the top. It will probably be fine again any not very heavy backspin or topspin serves.

 

[Archosaurus]

Here's that one match which was requested. Major chicken wing action going on LOL. Against this opponent I feel like I'm gonna hit the table with my elbow and lift it. I don't know why. Maybe a lot of shots are an uncomfortable arc. Gotta work on that.

The block and push one will come later, gotta edit it a bit and no time exactly right now. It will be cut a bit short due to reasons.

 

[blahness]

Recently i am looking a bit more into the use of the fingers during the FH loop / counterloop to make spin production even more efficient (for eg. when people BH punch the ball down the line and you dont wanna give up the close table)

So with BH i have the 2 finger method (side of thumb pressing on right side of the Fh rubber and index finger tip pressing on left side of BH rubber to create the double lever arm which creates the rotational moment) which works really well for me at the moment, but on the FH side it is just too slow (ie i get good spin but the time to activate the spin is too long)

So based on some experimentation, i came up with a possibly better method.

So the problem with FH is that the bat needs to be stable, so there needs to be a stable pivot point, i found out that the 5th and 4th fingers can fulfill this role better than the thumb. So during contact they need to be active to stabilize the bat while the thumb and index finger do their work in initiating, they cant be inactive.

With the thumb, i realised something cool - i could start with the side of the thumb touching the FH rubber, and then end with the base of the thumb touching and gripping the rubber on the left side which also is important in stabilizing the bat face. This rotation of the thumb contact with the rubber also coincides with the forearm pronation force so contributes to the rotational moment, in addition to the side of the index finger pressing on the BH rubber. This way, the base surface of thumb can also 'hold' the bat steady during contact when there are quite large forces/acceleration coming from the lower body.

This is quite a bit different to badminton where for the FH shots the thumb is the pivot point, while the index finger together with the 3rd,4th,5th fingers produces the lever arm forces.

Will test this out later in the week when i play next.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

I’ve been taking a few lessons with a new coach lately

My main problem he says is that I can’t separate my lower body from the upper body. Upper body should be more relaxed and lower body more dynamic .

When my upper body get stiff, I can’t spin the ball well and miss

Move legs first then twist core and swing.

 

[NextLevel]

I’ve been taking a few lessons with a new coach lately

My main problem he says is that I can’t separate my lower body from the upper body. Upper body should be more relaxed and lower body more dynamic .

When my upper body get stiff, I can’t spin the ball well and miss

Move legs first then twist core and swing.

When you have bad knees like me, you look st such teaching, realize how desperate you are and your situation is, and just do what you can lol.

 

[jk1980]

Tonight was again a nice reality check and habits that bit me in the ass in the past did reoccur. Simply when i think i should easily beat an opponent i switch or start off in a mode that is "how much bullshit can i get away with and still win?". This means i do receive variants i never trained (resulting in below 50% success rate in these attempts) or half ass some shots, even falling back into pushing game thinking i can win by any means (looping or pushing).
In the match this brings me into situations where given a little luck by the opponent he wins a close set and then i am on the backfoot needing to search for an answer mid game, while still being in the too low gear to be really competitive. I often get dragged into push rallyes when it gets close and once i pushed twice i change my stance to defender (right foot forward) and from there it's incredible hard to become offensive again, because the stance restricts any good looping chance, because i'd need to shift feed before.

I lost the first set 9-11, second set 12-14, then i became a bit angry and won the next set 11-3 just to finish of to lose the last set 9 - 11.

Thing is i ideally would like to choose the correct shots for balls coming at me at the expense of winning, i.e. attack long serves instead of chopping them (while the later might be more successful in winning or not directly losing a point).

These are my first thoughts about the game that i lost today and it will be funny reviewing the video and then noticing that there were many other things that went wrong. It is quite often that the first feeling after a bad match are misleading and not the real reason i lost.

 

[Tyce]

Had a quick hour to play with my new blades and I have to say they're both growing on me quickly. BH is just perfect, very little between the two. Opening up with tacky BH is a dream and it feels like I can pressure the ball to the white lines.
FH is a little bit more difficult. Easy to hit the ball too thick and hit it out, I gotta get used to that. However, the combination of outer fiber and slower, tacky rubber is hitting quite the sweet spot where I can drive and block with pressure, yet also have the option to spin hard and slow.

Of course that's not all about the equipment. One thing I picked up and tried to apply was "finding the ball" before getting a stroke in. More tracking, less reactive, and it just makes for better hits. I had a bit of trouble starting up, until I started focusing on this, and immediately my shot landing percentage went up.
The hitting zones on both sides are so important... I usually remember that for my BH but forget it on the FH.

I like to set a technical theme for practice matches, but I changed the theme this week to practice winning, since that's what I need to improve right now. I have the technical skills I need for this level, what I need is to close out the match.

 

[Archosaurus]

I like to set a technical theme for practice matches, but I changed the theme this week to practice winning, since that's what I need to improve right now. I have the technical skills I need for this level, what I need is to close out the match.

I dunno about this. I used to believe in stuff like this too, but from coaching (not TT) and analyzing my own play in TT, I've noticed that people who have this problem usually have some key technical blindspot that isn't being paid attention to.

Granted if all your sets go to 10-12 then maybe it's just a matter of learning to win at deuce.