Carl, that's good, and I'd want to get everyone's input to improve my own knowledge and play, but have you ever considered that perhaps you don't quite understand the gist of what I am talking about?
EDIT: And why would you NOT comment on something that is wrong if I have posted videos of me? Does the number of videos somehow increase truthfulness of what I say, not minding the videos' content? If I happen to be a pro player in disguise
and my technique is absolutely 100% textbook perfect, are my claims suddenly valid?
Do you understand the problem with that logic?
Life is not logic, life is experience. IT's one of those things that young people who have to succeed in practical matters learn as they grow. Remember when you posted on ooakforum and I accused you of trolling? It had nothing to do with logic but everything to do with the fact that table tennis is not physics or math, where people present objective arguments that are validated. When you involve human beings, understanding the variability of human nature across various demographics becomes a key factor as does expertise in subject matter. Having learned or trained people to successfully do what one is trying to teach is important. People who do not demonstrate a certain level of expertise working with themselves or others often cannot relate to others who are trying to achieve same.
The reason why I tend to resonate well with adult learners is that I played as an adult. I started tournament TT only 5 years ago. I learned from a coach who mostly improved as an adult as well and he had already coached one adult student to USATT 2000 before working with me. Now he has coached two adults, two children and has a bunch of 1800+ successes who just need to do a few things here or there but may have one or two things missing from practice time to experience to health to temperament. I always caveat some of my statements as being limited by my perspective. On certain things, I doubt I could give a USATT 2200 player much insight. But on other things, I could. But that said, I don't play at a USATT 2200 level so I would not make the mistake of speaking confidently about that level. I like to believe that aspects of my technique are at that level, but that my mobility and lower body issues make it hard for me to demonstrate truly proper technique and I have to accept that I am not yet close. But since I have only been playing for 5 years, it is quite possible that it is a matter of experience and less a matter of anything tangible. Since my videos are out there, people are free to note my level.
I know a guy whose CNT bias drives me nuts. He is not even a high level player. That said, he feeds great multiball and he has been the primary coach of a 2100+ player (well, officially, 2000+, but I will give him the 2100+ because your eyes do not deceive you). He has also been the primary coach of an 1800+ player who would be 2000 imo if the player didn't let his CNT technical bias blind him to non-athletic technique that the player would be able to support with his physical build. But all that said, I respect the guy who coaches these students as well as the achievement of the students. He is a very popular poster on forums about technique and because he has helped people play better, he is always worth reading and listening to. We have had many debates as as my high level coach friend said, good coaches disagree all the time, so technical disagreement is not as big a deal as some think because there is often more overlap than disagreement. And he always reliably links to a CNT practice video whenever discussing anything, so that takes away the issue with 90% of the discussions about whether what he is saying is valid and what context he is speaking about.
But you often posts without referencing higher level video or coaches as sources for your opinions. It's like you want us to take what you are saying on its merits. Which unfortunately is not how anything that deals with human beings works. Objective criteria for dealing with human variation are very difficult to come by and apply at the individual level, so what we do is default to people with expertise in doing what others cannot. No doctor is going to prove to you his logic, he is going to give you medicine that has been shown to work in prior situations. Since you have not coached anyone by your own admission, nor have you tried to get others to improve and see how difficult it can be, your comments about many things sound extremely naive. You have coached yourself, but we cannot see your quality, so we cannot say whether your ideas work or not and you often want them to be your ideas given that you do not always ground them in links to the videos of others. IF you did that, we could then see whether your interpretation squared with ours and guess your level.
Of course there are players who try to kill the ball whenever the opportunity arises. But there are also players who realize that the kill comes with risk and therefore it is better to set up the opponent. And even players who kill the ball have to set up their opponents to get the chance to kill the ball. Those who remain limited in their ability to set up the opponent usually wonder why they never get better even with all their awesome kill strokes. Ideally, you want to be able to have consistent and powerful strokes for your level. But as you get better, what is powerful changes and what is consistent changes. These are all things that would be evident to anyone who has gone through the improvement cycle. If I play Carl, I might look like a 3rd ball genius who is blasting every ball with ease. But if I play Der Echte, then my serves become normal, my loops become blockable and my receives are rally snots. Even Ma Long becomes normal when playing Zhang Jike or Xu Xin because they have played him enough to know where the ball is going and to return his most deceptive serves properly.
So your hard earned experience acquiring TT knowledge is inseparable from your TT expertise for a variety of reasons, as is your experience trying to coach. Most coaches uncritically simply try to coach their students the way they learned. And if the student doesn't learn, they just say the student is untalented and let go. Coaches who are real teachers try to find innovative ways of teaching their students. This can be stressful but can also be very rewarding. If you look at the internet, in order to learn the reverse serve, Brett Clarke had me doing frisbee tosses with reverse serve motion to get the swing right. Some coaches will draw lines on the ground, use exaggeration techniques, put you through saturation training etc. All just to get you to learn.
There are people who will rightly say that I am just espousing USATT 2000 level ideas, and then ignore me - that is a proper response in some contexts as I may have nothing to offer the,. Then there are people who will say that wow, he got to 2000 as an adult and I want to, let me understand what he did and maybe I can do it too if I check those boxes.
So sometimes, when you write as if doing certain things is no big deal, it helps to know what you actually play like. Because if you play really well, your attitude becomes more understandable and it can then be tied back to your comments and your comments will be taken more reasonably as being founded in a lack of coaching experience or maybe just a personality defect. But as it stands now, some of the things you say sometimes just sound like someone who thinks that all human beings are clones of himself.
