Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[NextLevel]

So you need to learn the alternating pivot and cross drill. It is one of the best single exercises for footwork in TT. Moving to your right, do a cross step (or semi cross step) footwork. And from your finishing position, to your left, do a pivot footwork. then the cross. Then the pivot and alternate as many times as you want.

Obviously. you need someone to show you how to do a cross correctly and a pivot correctly before doing these. I have to find a good video as the best one I know is behind a paywall.

But IMHO, what you are probably not doing enough of is raw serve and thirdball practice. Get a higher level coach or player to return your serve with a mix of various qualities of returns and make you attack behind them. If you make a mistake, then the coach can fix. But even if they don't fix, your overall appreciation and anticipation if possibilities will make you play much faster at your level. The most important four things ‐ what to do when the serve is correctly pushed or flicked long, what to do when the serve is incorrectly pushed for a pop up, what to do against different placements and how to attack them, and how to avoid certain placements of returns by moving your serve around/changing the sidespin and how to bail out and just give a long ball back to rally. It is very hard to return a good sidespin serve to a place where you cannot anticipate if you practice playing behind it a lot. This is true for both forehand and backhand serves.

I find recovery after serve important but I don't think it is as important as just getting practice of all kinds playing behind your serve. Of course this might be a fringe opinion.

 

[OvrChkn]

So you need to learn the alternating pivot and cross drill. It is one of the best single exercises for footwork in TT. Moving to your right, do a cross step (or semi cross step) footwork. And from your finishing position, to your left, do a pivot footwork. then the cross. Then the pivot and alternate as many times as you want.

Obviously. you need someone to show you how to do a cross correctly and a pivot correctly before doing these. I have to find a good video as the best one I know is behind a paywall.

But IMHO, what you are probably not doing enough of is raw serve and thirdball practice. Get a higher level coach or player to return your serve with a mix of various qualities of returns and make you attack behind them. If you make a mistake, then the coach can fix. But even if they don't fix, your overall appreciation and anticipation if possibilities will make you play much faster at your level. The most important four things ‐ what to do when the serve is correctly pushed or flicked long, what to do when the serve is incorrectly pushed for a pop up, what to do against different placements and how to attack them, and how to avoid certain placements of returns by moving your serve around/changing the sidespin and how to bail out and just give a long ball back to rally. It is very hard to return a good sidespin serve to a place where you cannot anticipate if you practice playing behind it a lot. This is true for both forehand and backhand serves.

I find recovery after serve important but I don't think it is as important as just getting practice of all kinds playing behind your serve. Of course this might be a fringe opinion.

My coach gets me to do a few footwork drills each week, and then I get some of my practice partners to drill that with me. Nothing with the cross step though. I think you're right about the serve to thirdball practice. We've been focusing on mechanics for the past 6 months, and I have someone else helping me with taking those mechanics into matches.

 

[IB66]

Played a good bit of practice matches this week, and one big component that I'm having trouble with is getting into position after playing my pendulum serve. When I get more fatigued, I definitely stay in one place. Thinking to serve starting more into the middle and develop my backhand serve more, so I can have that stability.

Working on recovery after serving is very important, it makes a big difference. Gives you time.
The recovery also depends on the serve, if you are serving short heavy back spin then you can recover slightly closer to the table. If you serve FH pendulum heavy side spin wide to receivers BH (off the side not end) they you can recover slightly more towards your BH corner.
Knowing the serve receives you are likely to get means you can anticipate for a good 3rd ball attack. Recover after serving to suite, it all links in.

 

[OvrChkn]

Working on recovery after serving is very important, it makes a big difference. Gives you time.
The recovery also depends on the serve, if you are serving short heavy back spin then you can recover slightly closer to the table. If you serve FH pendulum heavy side spin wide to receivers BH (off the side not end) they you can recover slightly more towards your BH corner.
Knowing the serve receives you are likely to get means you can anticipate for a good 3rd ball attack. Recover after serving to suite, it all links in.

I've tried to set up my pivot FH on the pendulum to the BH, but I think I probably should focus more on getting the 3rd ball with my BH instead of pivoting wide off the table.

I was watching this video on Darko Jorgic's service game and got me to think more about how to set myself up for the 3rd ball attack:

 

[TampaBayTableTennis]

i really like that youtube channel, lot of good topics

 

[NextLevel]

I've tried to set up my pivot FH on the pendulum to the BH, but I think I probably should focus more on getting the 3rd ball with my BH instead of pivoting wide off the table.

I was watching this video on Darko Jorgic's service game and got me to think more about how to set myself up for the 3rd ball attack:

A lot of this comes down to coaching. I would coach two winged third ball. I would also coach you serve either sidespin or no spin or topspin in most of your serves - while of course deceptively making it look like backspin. Attacking behind backspin is an advanced skill and not worth it until you have a good loop vs backspin. So serving backspin should only be done at the lower levels if you really desire a pushing rally.

Serving spins that are hard to push will get you into an attacking mindset early . Also if your opponent returns the serves properly it gets you into a rallying mindset early which is important for your development.

So in short:
1) Almost never serve backspin unless you need to relax and push a bit.
2) Do third ball initially behind every other spin. When your loop vs backspin becomes more reliable, then you can add backspin to your thirdball practice.

Learning to develop an attacking mindset on thirdball is more important than serving backspin at the lowet levels.

 

[blahness]

At the club today I spent the first hour practicing against an older TPB guy. He has a tricky no toss reverse spin serve from his FH side, mostly down the line. I had mentioned before that I'm pretty weak against that service (though was in the context of a left hander serving pendulum from his BH corner, but it's the same). I got some really good practice against it and feel a lot better now. As expected, the new BH opening loop motion isn't quite ready for real match play yet as I can't quite execute it well without thinking just yet. That'll come in the next few weeks.

I also tried out the hook serve, that thing is straight nasty. When I served it right, he either popped it way up or tanked it into the net 80% of the time. I thought being an older Chinese dude he would've seen plenty of hook serves, so didn't expect it to be so effective. I'm gonna practice it a lot, as I can see it being a real weapon down the line.

Afterwards I played some doubles. BH feels a lot better now, I'm able to counter pretty well, but still can't drive very well. Even in singles my BH drive isn't too great, and in practice it also shows, so that's not really a surprise. My FH though is surprisingly back in form already. I think I only missed one counter loop in 9 sets. I think in future practice sessions I'll need to continue to focus on my BH, with a focus on the opening loop and BH drives. I just won't completely neglect my FH going forward.

Most ppl haven't encountered good hook serves so you can really bully a lot of ppl with it. The key is that you can separate the wrist/fingers (the part producing the actual spin), and the fake arm movement which can be faked or double faked, and if you do it with minimal time delay they're gonna be bonkers trying to read it. I always get a lot of free points with this serve, which is what I need against all those nasty penhold serves especially those with pips which have an unfair advantage in receive.

 

[blahness]

I found a kinda stupid way to play LP players which actually works insanely effective lol - I tried it against my practice partner and was just winning like 11-3 games with it when he doesn't use inverted. This works even better than the 1 push 1 loop sequence which usually leads to a lot of rallies and is a tiring way to win.

Against all balls, just lift the ball without spin to them with both BH or FH. Do not push or loop to them (they love that shit) - just take a step back, lift it and place it deep to both corners. So the idea is just don't give them spin to play with and see how consistent they can be without the ability to borrow spin lol. Occasionally just put some heavy topspin on the lifts to mess their rhythm up (especially if you sense they wanna attack the next ball). The key is when they give you a weaker high ball just FH loopkill it hard to the corners. They don't have the same ability to punish you and even if they do you can always block it back safely to regain control of the point. The thing is not to play their game and give them nothing to work with.

 

[dingyibvs]

I found a kinda stupid way to play LP players which actually works insanely effective lol - I tried it against my practice partner and was just winning like 11-3 games with it when he doesn't use inverted. This works even better than the 1 push 1 loop sequence which usually leads to a lot of rallies and is a tiring way to win.

Against all balls, just lift the ball without spin to them with both BH or FH. Do not push or loop to them (they love that shit) - just take a step back, lift it and place it deep to both corners. So the idea is just don't give them spin to play with and see how consistent they can be without the ability to borrow spin lol. Occasionally just put some heavy topspin on the lifts to mess their rhythm up (especially if you sense they wanna attack the next ball). The key is when they give you a weaker high ball just FH loopkill it hard to the corners. They don't have the same ability to punish you and even if they do you can always block it back safely to regain control of the point. The thing is not to play their game and give them nothing to work with.

Yeah, probably the same reason no spin services to their LP side works so well too.

 

[dingyibvs]

Took my wife and her mom to San Jose area to shop for a dress, and while they did that I went to Swan PPC. Had a good hit with a couple guys. Most of them were there for some form of inter-company league, so there were quite a few without warm up partners eager to have a hit. FH was a lot better, it's amazing how much a little practice does. BH is still a work in progress when it comes to game situations, but in practice it's been pretty fire. Need to have that translate, more practice with more variation is needed.

 

[Der_Echte]

Hi @dingyibvs , Yes, Swan has that league thing going with teams from wither Swan players, some other club players, or a company.

I did that league in 2017 when I first got to California in 2017... @ttmonster was the team captain and we had good players on the squad.

You BH and FH performance in matches is gunna swing left and right like a grandfather clock for a while... but you can also do things to make a more predictable ball to one wing and use that to get that wing back on track for at least one rep...

 

[Der_Echte]

I was at the Sacramento Open today and here are the two biggest overall things I saw...

Many adult players who like to hit or loopdrive it over spinny slow/heavy faced youth players who attack with hit or loopdrive or counter or defend well vs that ball in a rally...

... and time and time again, the adult player tried to pound that square peg into the round hole by insisting on playing fast at the table... they all crashed and burned that way.

Other thing I saw is DECISION MAKING on SHOT SELECTION... it either hurt the players' chances or made it way higher percentage to play with quality and win.

So many players did not sufficiently assess the risks and percentages associated with a shot selection... then went right ahead stubbornly played shot that had little chance of landing or had a high chance of getting finished by opponent.

 

[dingyibvs]

I was at the Sacramento Open today and here are the two biggest overall things I saw...

Many adult players who like to hit or loopdrive it over spinny slow/heavy faced youth players who attack with hit or loopdrive or counter or defend well vs that ball in a rally...

... and time and time again, the adult player tried to pound that square peg into the round hole by insisting on playing fast at the table... they all crashed and burned that way.

Other thing I saw is DECISION MAKING on SHOT SELECTION... it either hurt the players' chances or made it way higher percentage to play with quality and win.

So many players did not sufficiently assess the risks and percentages associated with a shot selection... then went right ahead stubbornly played shot that had little chance of landing or had a high chance of getting finished by opponent.

My training partner made it to the U1875 semis, not sure if you were watching that. Pretty good for his first tournament! I think he beat the top 2 rated guys in that group, but fell to another 1700s guy.

 

[Der_Echte]

Was he named Adrian? I showed up mid-tourney was not able to see everything except the several players I was trying to help.

LDM7 won U3100 doubles with Danny Yip. He clearly made his best strides in transferring improvement in training and club play into tourney performance. He could not apply it all, but clearly made a LOT more happen in tourney pressure than he ever did before.

 

[dingyibvs]

Was he named Adrian? I showed up mid-tourney was not able to see everything except the several players I was trying to help.

LDM7 won U3100 doubles with Danny Yip. He clearly made his best strides in transferring improvement in training and club play into tourney performance. He could not apply it all, but clearly made a LOT more happen in tourney pressure than he ever did before.

No he's Alec. Adrian I heard didn't do so great. His anti BH can cause some troubles but if you're familiar with it then he doesn't have a lot of other options.

And congrats to LDM7! He's always been willing to move for sure, so not surprised he'd shine in doubles.

 

[Der_Echte]

I simply LUV playing vs anti or OX LP players... unless they are better level AND take the ball quick off bounce and rush me.

Sometimes I still do well vs that type, but I do not like being under time pressure if I can help it.

 

[IB66]

Was he named Adrian? I showed up mid-tourney was not able to see everything except the several players I was trying to help.

LDM7 won U3100 doubles with Danny Yip. He clearly made his best strides in transferring improvement in training and club play into tourney performance. He could not apply it all, but clearly made a LOT more happen in tourney pressure than he ever did before.

great to hear LDM7 is playing well and improving.

 

[Der_Echte]

Hi IB66,
I wouldn't say he is turning the corner and getting results in tourney play (although he is at the USATT1000 level)...

LDM7's base level is way higher than his tourney performances that resulted in his current USATT rating that is prolly 700 points below his training and club play level... but for certain reasons he wasn't able to perform some basic things he should in tourney play, despite some number of sanctioned tourney reps...

He SHOULD be winning vs 1400 level players in tourneys and is certainly capable of it.

What I see is that compared to previous tourneys, his composure is 10,000% more in order and his decision making and adherence to risk assessment and a basic plan is applied in some points... many more points than before and it is a huge improvement...

... at some point, an even bigger breakthrough(s) will happen when he can do that consistently throughout a game, a match, matches, a rating event (division), and an entire tourney. This will be a progression to look for.

it wasn't all roses, but he showed enough to know he has improved night and day... and there is much more night and day stuff to work through... but the signs are there and they were certainly not there in any large degree before.

He may even lose ratings point this tourney, but took a lot of step forward and some backward.

I can say as a player too, that more than 1/2 of my tourneys where I lost points I actually showed improvement and played at or above my level. That can happen and it is good to see signs.

 

[IB66]

Hi IB66,
I wouldn't say he is turning the corner and getting results in tourney play (although he is at the USATT1000 level)...

LDM7's base level is way higher than his tourney performances that resulted in his current USATT rating that is prolly 700 points below his training and club play level... but for certain reasons he wasn't able to perform some basic things he should in tourney play, despite some number of sanctioned tourney reps...

He SHOULD be winning vs 1400 level players in tourneys and is certainly capable of it.

What I see is that compared to previous tourneys, his composure is 10,000% more in order and his decision making and adherence to risk assessment and a basic plan is applied in some points... many more points than before and it is a huge improvement...

... at some point, an even bigger breakthrough(s) will happen when he can do that consistently throughout a game, a match, matches, a rating event (division), and an entire tourney. This will be a progression to look for.

it wasn't all roses, but he showed enough to know he has improved night and day... and there is much more night and day stuff to work through... but the signs are there and they were certainly not there in any large degree before.

He may even lose ratings point this tourney, but took a lot of step forward and some backward.

I can say as a player too, that more than 1/2 of my tourneys where I lost points I actually showed improvement and played at or above my level. That can happen and it is good to see signs.

Considering the year he has had, he's doing really well. hard year indeed.

 

[dingyibvs]

Was he named Adrian? I showed up mid-tourney was not able to see everything except the several players I was trying to help.

LDM7 won U3100 doubles with Danny Yip. He clearly made his best strides in transferring improvement in training and club play into tourney performance. He could not apply it all, but clearly made a LOT more happen in tourney pressure than he ever did before.

Looks like Yip knocked out my training partner in the U1875. If you see him, could you ask him what he thought of my friends game? Any advice? It's always nice to have some extra perspectives.