Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[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.

Tested this and it worked really well! First time it was so easy to get rich topspin from just the fingers lol. The good thing is that i can actually do a pretty nice FH topspin flick off a short ball and i can even make it rather short or long. Usually i default to the push flick (which is nontopspin), so this would be a useful variation.

But also the FH topspin is so much easier and flexible now with this change.

Now if I can get my serves back.... i think i need a stupid amount of serve practice to get my serves back, the trajectory control is just horrible and full of mistakes. I guess no way around it other than lots of practice.

Doesnt help that i have 4 systems of serves - hook, tomahawk, pure heavy under/no spin, FH pendulum to practice.....

 

[Archosaurus]

Played a bit with an-ex District player from Vietnam. He said he never qualified for the City team because his city was extremely competitive, so I guess you could say his max level was around 2100 equiv. I think he's about 1800-1900 right now; rusty and not playing for some time, but some shots are distinctly high quality way beyond that kind of level. I've seen him demolish 3rd division players, so he must be beyond that level at least.

We were supposed to play a few sets only, but I kept creeping closer and we ended at avg 8-11 after 6 sets or so . One even went to 10-12.

Also tried a more backspin oriented serving grip for a few days now and it's working really well. Also tried H8-80 unboosted on the backhand and I quite like it. I think H3 is overall better, but it's definitely acceptable for me. It feels a bit like something between H3 and T05 in feeling.

 

[Tyce]

It feels a bit like something between H3 and T05 in feeling.

That describes 90% of rubbers lol

 

[Archosaurus]

That describes 90% of rubbers lol

Lol, sure, but I mean in a literal way, it really does feel like they just took a H3 topsheet and a T05 sponge and slapped them together.