Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[blahness]

Just got back from a friendly inter-club game. I did poorly, no surprise here.

First opponent I meet; yes! You guess it; a F**king long pips / inverted combo player. I was like a deer in the headlight situation and lost badly. Confidence smashed.

OK on to the Second game, should be better right? Wrong; meet a leftie and again mess up my serve and receive game. The placement is all mirror image.

I was screaming inside: Hey! Be a man, use the right rubber.

and

Play proper TT, be a right handed player.

But alas, I live in a real and not a fantasy world.

If you need me, I'll be at the Joola e-store looking at some shinny Pickle ball paddle.

Gozo you gotta fight fire with fire, put some anti or pips on your BH and show them how it's done!

 

[blahness]

Had some interesting matches today. I went toe to toe with my practice partner until he was like getting 2-3 nets/edges per game and I didn't...and lost most of the deciders yet again lol.

I met a new penholder guy who had an amazing serve game just like mine. Guy could serve 3 types of serve from the same starting FH serve position. Fh pendulum, heavy under/no spin, and penhold hook. Ffs the serves were downright almost impossible to read, because he too knew how to use his body weight transfer and knew how to impart really heavy spin. It wasn't so much due to hiding but he had excellent fake movements and trajectory control (so I couldn't really read the trajectory reliably too). The real annoying thing is that he follows it up well with an extremely spinny penhold FH and RPB which is hard to control and guy can run like a rabbit. He had a bad habit of retreating from the table so in the topspin rally I pretty much destroyed him.

But he also couldnt read my serves - i have the same combinations and i know how to exploit them to the max. The funniest ugly match ensues with more than 5-6 direct service points per game on each side and more if you count indirect service points. It was such a clown fiesta and we were pretty much guessing each other's serves.

Some of it is because I learnt how to upgrade one of the variants of my hook serve to have extremely heavy sidetopspin which made my hook serve a lot more dangerous (it was already my best serve anyway).

We ended up 2 games to 2 but I reckon if I read his serves better I will win a lot more (he probably thinks the same way lol).

 

[latej]

So I have lamented a few times here about the pains of being unable to move. I started taking collagen supplements and while I am not sure whether they work or not, I have to accept I feel somewhat better and will continue to use them for at least the next six months.

Did you consider fasting? ... out with the old and in with the new ;-)

 

[NextLevel]

Did you consider fasting? ... out with the old and in with the new ;-)

I should give it some consideration, the problem is that extended fasting is stressful and without vacation time, it is on top of everything I am already going through. Life was so much easier before the kids came...

But I should think about it at some point, maybe schedule some days in second half of the year to do it

 

[blahness]

I actually did some short push serve receive training with the penhold guy I played, and I realised a few weird things. It was really easy for me to short push against his hook serves to my FH and it would reliably be very short. However when it I tried a similar technique for FH push against FH pendulum (trying to get rid of momentum to the right), I started missing balls here and there, and those were often long.

The conclusion is that if the ball is curving to the left and I'm trying to approach the ball going to the right, there is a high amount of relative movement and this results in a strong contact which is very desirable for long strong spin pushes and undesirable for short pushes. However due to the sidespin I still have to contact the ball on the right. Apparently, the trick is to move in the same direction as the ball (right to left movement, and even going backwards towards the body to absorb even more momentum). This actually works the same way for BH short push against FH pendulum, the racket has to be going leftward.

Reverse is actually true too. I always thought about going to the left when receiving BH pendulum serves with BH, I should actually try to go rightward and back towards me when trying to short push.

 

[OvrChkn]

Has anyone dealt with slippery playing surfaces, such as a gym floor? Trying to train getting lower in my stance for longer periods of times, but I get drained when trying to push off and slipping to get to my next position. My shoes still have grip on them.

 

[dingyibvs]

I actually did some short push serve receive training with the penhold guy I played, and I realised a few weird things. It was really easy for me to short push against his hook serves to my FH and it would reliably be very short. However when it I tried a similar technique for FH push against FH pendulum (trying to get rid of momentum to the right), I started missing balls here and there, and those were often long.

The conclusion is that if the ball is curving to the left and I'm trying to approach the ball going to the right, there is a high amount of relative movement and this results in a strong contact which is very desirable for long strong spin pushes and undesirable for short pushes. However due to the sidespin I still have to contact the ball on the right. Apparently, the trick is to move in the same direction as the ball (right to left movement, and even going backwards towards the body to absorb even more momentum). This actually works the same way for BH short push against FH pendulum, the racket has to be going leftward.

Reverse is actually true too. I always thought about going to the left when receiving BH pendulum serves with BH, I should actually try to go rightward and back towards me when trying to short push.

Yeah, the pros all push reverse services to the FH side by swiping right, for example.

 

[latej]

Has anyone dealt with slippery playing surfaces, such as a gym floor? Trying to train getting lower in my stance for longer periods of times, but I get drained when trying to push off and slipping to get to my next position. My shoes still have grip on them.

I'd say more often than not. Wet/half-wet towel helps. You don't use it?

 

[OvrChkn]

I'd say more often than not. Wet/half-wet towel helps. You don't use it?

I do, but I find it lasts maybe 1-3 minutes of playtime at best before going back to it and then I just kinda get too focused on trying to play. It may just be something that I have to get into the habit of using more.

 

[blahness]

Yeah, the pros all push reverse services to the FH side by swiping right, for example.

Yes I know that, but nobody talks about receiving the standard pendulum (which you have to go leftward to reduce relative speed between the racket and the ball at contact)

 

[Der_Echte]

Has anyone dealt with slippery playing surfaces, such as a gym floor? Trying to train getting lower in my stance for longer periods of times, but I get drained when trying to push off and slipping to get to my next position. My shoes still have grip on them.

OC... once a week or once a month... I PURPOUSELY play wearing cheap sandels...

WHY? It forces me to pay attention to my stance, balance, and how I move to the first ball. it even trains my slide step... yes, you push off and slide to your position.

This has helped me big time as I have been a real heavy old and short dude.

 

[dingyibvs]

Had some interesting matches today. I went toe to toe with my practice partner until he was like getting 2-3 nets/edges per game and I didn't...and lost most of the deciders yet again lol.

I met a new penholder guy who had an amazing serve game just like mine. Guy could serve 3 types of serve from the same starting FH serve position. Fh pendulum, heavy under/no spin, and penhold hook. Ffs the serves were downright almost impossible to read, because he too knew how to use his body weight transfer and knew how to impart really heavy spin. It wasn't so much due to hiding but he had excellent fake movements and trajectory control (so I couldn't really read the trajectory reliably too). The real annoying thing is that he follows it up well with an extremely spinny penhold FH and RPB which is hard to control and guy can run like a rabbit. He had a bad habit of retreating from the table so in the topspin rally I pretty much destroyed him.

But he also couldnt read my serves - i have the same combinations and i know how to exploit them to the max. The funniest ugly match ensues with more than 5-6 direct service points per game on each side and more if you count indirect service points. It was such a clown fiesta and we were pretty much guessing each other's serves.

Some of it is because I learnt how to upgrade one of the variants of my hook serve to have extremely heavy sidetopspin which made my hook serve a lot more dangerous (it was already my best serve anyway).

We ended up 2 games to 2 but I reckon if I read his serves better I will win a lot more (he probably thinks the same way lol).

Man, I'm trying to learn the hook serve, but I'm having trouble getting a consistent sidetop one that isn't too obvious. It seems like somehow my sideunder one looks like sidetop, because people dump that serve into the net quite often. I think I'm starting with the bat too high, so I can only really brush down.

 

[gordonluvsu]

Man, I'm trying to learn the hook serve, but I'm having trouble getting a consistent sidetop one that isn't too obvious. It seems like somehow my sideunder one looks like sidetop, because people dump that serve into the net quite often. I think I'm starting with the bat too high, so I can only really brush down.

I have done an experiment yesterday with the same goal.
Learning a hook Serve, mostly side/Topspin.

My goal Was to simply Hit 100 serves ( at home on my table).
At first, İ just did 20 to try it out and get a feel.

Important point: I generally did 3 serves at a time, not just mindlessly picking the balls from the Box and repeating, 3 serves, then thinking and picking the balls up from the table ( I did it so they would not easily fall of).

Then I Set up a camera to see my self.
The next 40 balls I worked on specific parts to get a feeling, mostly wrist and forearm swinging and snapping.

If it didnt work, I imagined myself from a 3rd Person POV, how it would Look like if I did it correctly, that really helped me get the movements better.

After 60 balls, i took a break, I Watched myself and 5-10 minutes of YT Videos on the topic, I think Fang Yinchi and Craig Bryant.

Tried to imitate the instructions and get a feeling.

Then again, I did the remaining 40 serves in 2 Sets of 20.

And voila, it worked really well, my return Boards were getting furious at my serves.

There are things I learned throughout that Practice, but it is best to experience it yourself.

Later in the evening I Watched 2 more tutorial from Fang Yinchi.

I might do the 100 Serve challenge again today.

My recommendation:

Set a specific, numerical goal like 100 serves and count in your head ( doesnt need to be accurate, I probably did 10-15 more)

Practice it in larger Sets, where you reflect and take a break each time and work on something.

Practice in smaller Sets in those larger Sets ( for me It was 3 or 3-5 serves at once).

Gl and have fun!

 

[latej]

Man, I'm trying to learn the hook serve, but I'm having trouble getting a consistent sidetop one that isn't too obvious. It seems like somehow my sideunder one looks like sidetop, because people dump that serve into the net quite often. I think I'm starting with the bat too high, so I can only really brush down.

Here's a link that @gordonluvsu spoke about.

He brings the bat to the contact height level, and then the movement is identical, it contains both the movement which can generate top and the movement which can generate under. And depending on time of contact...

I think in my case also sidetop looks obvious, because the sideunder doesn't contain enough of the movement which could generate the sidetop, and is there to fake...

 

[dingyibvs]

Played today for the first time since I had a hit with @Der_Echte, legs didn't feel like they wanted to cooperate. Overall went pretty well though, continuing the momentum of an improving BH. Worked quite a bit on the banana flick. I have some trouble receiving topspins to my FH side, so I decided to try to use the banana flick to receive it. I was afraid to use it before because I would then have too much trouble receiving long serves to my BH side, but now that I've gotten a lot better at it I felt I could cover both possibilities.

One issue I've always had with the banana flick is that I keep reaching my arm out instead of leaning forward to reach the ball. I focused on correcting that bad habit today, and which allowed me to get a much deeper brush on the ball. The next issue is that as my brush got better, the ball kept going long, so I worked on aiming lower. I was able to get pretty solid flicks by the end of the night.

When I served, I mostly worked on the hook serve. It was not very good, but it absolutely flummoxed my opponent. He's usually one of the better serve receivers in the club, but he was completely confused by the spin much of the time. At best he could sometimes block one back, which I just killed right away. To that end, my FH feels back to normal now. I've been mixing in some more FH practices recently as I no longer need to practice the entire breadth of BH shots each session anymore, and now I feel like I'm at a stage where I can work on some new things on the FH side soon.

On the BH side, my opening loops were pretty deadly. I had a wrist injury a couple weeks ago, so I couldn't practice much with my BH when I had the session with @Der_Echte, but after some rest now it's all healed and I focused today more on practicing what he taught me. It's really amazing how such a relatively minor adjustment can increase my BH drive quality so much. I'm getting good contact just about every time now. Still not sure yet where to aim, but that'll come with more practice.

 

[dingyibvs]

BTW, @blahness the same channel with the topspin push video also has one for the no spin loop, not sure if you saw it. I'm still focused on the basics right now, but you might be interested in it. It looks to me kind of like a FH flick hidden in the motion of a loop.

 

[blahness]

Man, I'm trying to learn the hook serve, but I'm having trouble getting a consistent sidetop one that isn't too obvious. It seems like somehow my sideunder one looks like sidetop, because people dump that serve into the net quite often. I think I'm starting with the bat too high, so I can only really brush down.

There's like 4-5 different contact ways to generate sidetopspin on the hook serve. You have to be quite creative in disguising it. I would recommend Craig Bryant's video for some starters, but there are bits and pieces i learnt from multiple sources (mainly WRM and Douyin).

With advanced hook serves you can even disguise even the sidespin direction so that ppl will completely miss the ball even due to it kicking the wrong way that they expect.

BTW, @blahness the same channel with the topspin push video also has one for the no spin loop, not sure if you saw it. I'm still focused on the basics right now, but you might be interested in it. It looks to me kind of like a FH flick hidden in the motion of a loop.

Thanks for sharing this, I think I got how he does it. This is the way I disguise the spin on my BH opening loop too so it does make sense that it works similarly on the FH. Might give it a try some time. Waldner's version (disguising a sidespin loop as a topspin loop) is downright nasty tho and I've been shadowing it a bit after understanding the concept. I think it is probably easier for me to incorporate as I always love brushing on the FH loop. With it I can even switch all the way to the sideunderspin loop if I so wished.

 

[gordonluvsu]

Had 2 serve training sessions today at home.
Focus again, only on hook serve.

In total, probably around 50 minutes of training.
Only hook serve.
Serve after serve, Ball after ball with video recording from my phone, and its looking more like an actually good serve now.

They are getting better and better and it is starting to feel more comfortable, natural and automatic.

I am a little excited, got 2 tournament days coming up this weekend and I am feeling much more confident in myself and my skills right now.
Previously in tournaments, I was always struggling with big performance issues, largely due to inability to focus, jiterryness and similar things.
I have been working on these things and I think I could have cracked something now and should be able to do better this time.
Our season is almost over, we wont promote or drop a league, so its pretty much all about rating points and having fun at the moment.

Will update on my hook serve journey!

 

[gordonluvsu]

Another 45-50 minutes of serve training, divided in 2 sessions today.

Its getting really, really good.

Can put any spin, speed and placement the way I want to quite easily already.
With good quality.

Can disguise the spin pretty well.
Even so much that I, myself, get confused watching it on camera.

More natural and comfortable feeling.

But its getting on my legs from the weight transfer, staying low and using the body during the serve.
Gotta pay a price for a good serve I guess.

 

[gordonluvsu]

Here is the QSB serve playlist with subtitles on almost every video.
Google translate this page and search for hook serves.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhmVqdS7Hjy163dQUxwRfC8egORF6Z01l

Edit:
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