Any Service Advice for Me?

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That long backhand serve, if it helps you in a game, if people try to push that serve, then they are lower level than you and you should try to play better opponents as well. If the drill wasn't to try and push it, I would never have thought of pushing it.

And in that drill, for your level, the whole point should probably be, for you to get low, heavy, well placed pushes like a higher level player might give you if they actually pushed. So you can get used to moving to and looping pushes that are higher level. Smacking a high ball, you do that well. You don't need to work on it. [emoji2]


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

Well said!!
 
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Shuki - Warrior of TT said:
I USED to make my serves very heavy with lots of variation on all of them, But i found myself having to use more energy to get a decent stroke off with these serves. It was simply exhausting. And as I discovered my game being that of a slower player/fisher that still uses attacking strokes, just slow versions of them. I discovered that my service and play style didn't mix well.

Hmm, I find it real intriguing to see making heavy spin on your serves is wearing you out.

One should be able to make heavy spin with a really short stroke, (if that is the normal stroke one uses) or with better timing on a long and fast stroke. Neither of those is any more tiring to produce heavy vs moderate spin, with the short stroke being the least tiring, yet still capable of producing heavy spin.

I strongly believe that being able to generate heavy spin is an absolute must to make your lighter spin serves more effective if they appear to be the same form receiver's POV. So, that is why I feel it is big time important to generate that spin and placement early to establish a big variance. Moderate variances are good too, as long as you can control opponent's attack.

I won't go into great detail on how to make this kind of impact, like I have on several threads, but I will summarize it all by saying the following:

- At impact, horizontal plane of bat angle must be oriented horizontal, position of tip of bat can be nuetral, or pointed up or down, doesn't matter. Another way to define horizontal plane is to hold bat completely parallel to table aligned along side of endline with bat handle near BH corner and tip of bat pointed towards FH corner. If you rotate side of bat bat clockwise or counter clockwise, you messed up your bat angle at impact, if that is the angle the bat is at impact.

- stroke must be forward

- grip must be LOOSE

- max acceleration happens right before and DURING dwell period (you take a fast bat and make it faster while you catch and throw out the ball)

- you are relaxed and making a whipping motion - you can do this in a very short stroke or a long one.

- for a short serve, first bounce is in the area of a tad forward of halfway to net, but you have a wide variance possible.

You have to develop the touch, and the exercise where you toss of ball, swipe under it relaxed while standing up, shoot ball out a meter or two on the floor, and make ball spin back to you... this exercise develops the touch, timing, and needed bat angles, so when you go to the table and practice, you are better setup for success.
 
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Hmm, I find it real intriguing to see making heavy spin on your serves is wearing you out.

One should be able to make heavy spin with a really short stroke, (if that is the normal stroke one uses) or with better timing on a long and fast stroke. Neither of those is any more tiring to produce heavy vs moderate spin, with the short stroke being the least tiring, yet still capable of producing heavy spin.

I strongly believe that being able to generate heavy spin is an absolute must to make your lighter spin serves more effective if they appear to be the same form receiver's POV. So, that is why I feel it is big time important to generate that spin and placement early to establish a big variance. Moderate variances are good too, as long as you can control opponent's attack.

I won't go into great detail on how to make this kind of impact, like I have on several threads, but I will summarize it all by saying the following:

- At impact, horizontal plane of bat angle must be oriented horizontal, position of tip of bat can be nuetral, or pointed up or down, doesn't matter. Another way to define horizontal plane is to hold bat completely parallel to table aligned along side of endline with bat handle near BH corner and tip of bat pointed towards FH corner. If you rotate side of bat bat clockwise or counter clockwise, you messed up your bat angle at impact, if that is the angle the bat is at impact.

- stroke must be forward

- grip must be LOOSE

- max acceleration happens right before and DURING dwell period (you take a fast bat and make it faster while you catch and throw out the ball)

- you are relaxed and making a whipping motion - you can do this in a very short stroke or a long one.

- for a short serve, first bounce is in the area of a tad forward of halfway to net, but you have a wide variance possible.

You have to develop the touch, and the exercise where you toss of ball, swipe under it relaxed while standing up, shoot ball out a meter or two on the floor, and make ball spin back to you... this exercise develops the touch, timing, and needed bat angles, so when you go to the table and practice, you are better setup for success.

Sorry, I wasn't clear with my post. It's not exerting more energy on the serve, rather the follow up loop off their push on my heavier serves.
 
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Sorry, I wasn't clear with my post. It's not exerting more energy on the serve, rather the follow up loop off their push on my heavier serves.

You were clear - DerEchte just likes a chance to teach - he is kinda like me, just nicer.
 
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First a reply to ttmosters post




1. Lack of confidence in his swing - nope

2. Lack of footwork-Technically yes, I tend to instead of planting my right foot and pushing off for the forehand stroke, stepping with the right foot and stroking at the same time comes up

3. Lack of anticipation - Slightly true, car'l sidespin suprises me even when I know it's coming
4. Incorrect understanding of spin or lack of confidence in the understanding - Definitely true, see point # 3

5. Late timing - sometimes, but usually no.

6. Incorrect stance, as in favoring the backhand more- This is a tricky one, I start off in tournaments and league play with a forehand dominant stance, but as I tire out I make it more of a backhand stance and favor it.

7. not adjusting to the height of the ball. Not a big issue but it happens occasionally like it does everyone








Now to comment about carl's post with my serves and service return.


Like I said earlier, when I serve I'm on auto pilot. I'm completely capable doing shorter serves with heavier backspin. But thats simply not the kind of serve I would use in a game since I autopilot my serves in games. Why do a drill with serves I never use? This would give me very little benefit. The reason my service return is much better than my service is exactly that.

I USED to make my serves very heavy with lots of variation on all of them, But i found myself having to use more energy to get a decent stroke off with these serves. It was simply exhausting. And as I discovered my game being that of a slower player/fisher that still uses attacking strokes, just slow versions of them. I discovered that my service and play style didn't mix well.

Now if we were to play an actual game, You'd probably recieve the same serves from me since I'm so comfortable with them. The only difference would be the pace change, placement and speed of them. I would almost never add a lot of spin to them even though I'm capable.

I really hate heavy topspin, and the more spin that's on the ball, the more topspin my opponent can give me.


Thank you for the kind words about my backhand.

Oh and yes, carl is very right about my tracking with my forehand being not as good. My coach has also noticed this and blames my grip.

You were clear - DerEchte just likes a chance to teach - he is kinda like me, just nicer.

Nope, I sincerely believed Shuki was saying serving heavy spin wears him out.

However, yes, you are correct, I really LIKE explaining things on TT forums, it helps me think and reinforces my game, so it helps me out too. I cannot assign a value to TT forums in how positive they have helped my game. There is so much I gained from participating in TT forums.

Shuki, I still think one should serve heavy underspin to at least establish your underspin serve is heavy, so when you take away spin, you get easier setups if you disguised it well. Even so, there is nothing terribly tiring about looping heavy underspin for the first shot, it is a matter of getting down and exploding up with leverage. We use a similar amount of energy on a strong loopdrive from a ball a little high and not so much underspin. It surely IS tiresome to loop 5 in a row from a chopper giving it to you heavy though... or run all around the court trying to get in your FH...

I shoulda taken my Geritol® beofre reading Shuki's comments. :D
 
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Anyone not knowing Geritol, that is a real famous maker of chem laden vitimans heavily marketed towards really OLD people in US, so it was like you were not functional if you didn't take your Geritol... or that is the gist of it.

So that is a Der_Echte style wry humor saying Der_Echte has a bad case of Old-Azz-itis.
 
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@Shuki : I am thinking the point#2 you mentioned in reply to my post may be the reason why you are having an issue.

2. Lack of footwork-Technically yes, I tend to instead of planting my right foot and pushing off for the forehand stroke, stepping with the right foot and stroking at the same time comes up

See, this is how it went for me, I love spinning up against underspin and watching people miss their blocks or giving me an high ball back which I can loop early and finish the point . But this puts a lot of load on my right leg, my left knee has meniscus tear + cartilege tear + ligament tear :p , it happened almost 8 years back and I never had the time to do an arthoscopy , so now my right knee is starting to make noises even when I walk.

What I found was that if you can try taking the ball earlier instead of letting fall below the table level it will need a lot less power to generate a decently spinny loop , and you necessarily don't want people to miss their blocks, let them give you a ball back and a chance to loop again, but from then on they will be loops against pretty good topspin which need less energy.

now if you are having issues practicing this weight transfer when you are serving heavy yourself , you can first ask your training partner to serve short light underspin, you drop short to his forehand and ask him to push longer to your forehand cross court , where you start looping against underspin. You can ask him to increase the spin in his serve once you find your timing and footwork to contact the ball early .

The other, back breaking approach is to start playing with a chopper , I have tried this and that is where I started getting my loops spinnier, at somepoint you will have to do it too so why not start now ? You will find that with ball feeling , you can get away with better timing and less leg power .

Let me know if I was able to address your issue or I am way off the mark, which could very well be the case :)
 
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Okay. Here is the heart of things as I see them. Shuki has actually talked about play being tiring. This is not the first time he has indicated that, at a certain point, his energy level and his ability to play at his optimum level drops.

As someone who can and has played for 12 hours straight, I could pretend to not understand that. But I do. And there are three parts to the solutions. All three of which need to be addressed together.

Shuki, you are a thin dude. You are healthy, but you may need more 1) strength and more 2) cardio endurance. But, that without the 3) nutritional thing (I know, I risk a torrential tirade of comical advice from Der_Echte by opening up this can of worms but I have a feeling that the tirade and his jumping on the bandwagon of condemning the pharmaceutical establishment that will undoubtedly go with it will be good high comedy--okay, I made myself laugh imagining it all) the fitness training without the nutritional thing will not be as useful. You need 1) Cardio Training, 2) Strength Training and 3) Good Nutrition.

Anyway, given how you are prone to ebbing energy levels, making sure you eat some good, healthy energy food an hour or two before you play would be really useful. Also having some fast energy food that has electrolyte replacements for you during play, would be useful. Like, every 45 min having half a banana! Those two pieces of nutritional advice alone, would really help your play time energy levels.

But, some strength training and a decent high-intensity cardio regimen to get you in better shape would be really useful so that you don't need to worry about how much energy you expend and the idea of trying to conserve energy can be overcome. Crystal Meth works too. But I don't recommend that route. :)

For the cardio, if you did something like circuit training, where you take a moderate intensity, and then push the intensity up for a period and then drop it down to the moderate intensity and then you spike the intensity and drop it. And each time you spike the intensity, you spike it higher till you hit max intensity which would be something like you running as fast as you possibly can for a minute and then going back to a level where it is still fast enough to be a workout but slow enough for you to "catch your breath", that kind of workout with those kinds of peaks and valleys in intensity done for 30-40 minutes straight, 1-3 times a week, will really help you get in better shape.

But you should probably also add a certain amount of strength training to your regimen: yes, lifting some weights. Those 2 things (done consistently will get you to stop worrying about getting tired while playing.

As far as heavy backspin and why it is something that is hard to return short, the speed of the spin makes it so that when you lightly touch the ball, the ball jumps off your racket much faster than slow backspin would cause. I know, it sounds obvious. If your racket is angled correctly to push the ball over the net onto the other side, the spin will cause the ball to go back fast enough so that it is much harder to keep the push soft. But, with that, we are talking about HEAVY backspin.

But that is the standard reason why short heavy backspin serves are so valuable. It is hard to loop them when they are short, over the table and really heavy. And it is hard to keep the push short so you make it much more likely that you get the first attack and you get a nice spinny push to attack so your loop should be pretty darn spinny too.

But, the kind of heavy backspin that really does that is someone like Damien Provost's heavy backspin. In other words, 2700 level heavy backspin. His serves are ridiculous to try and return. :)
 
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Rest Hydration Nutrition and progression or often overlooked or neglected for various reasons... usually it is because there are only 24 hrs in a day.

TT is physical training... but we cannot get up early, work, eat shytty, work long, eat shytty again, play for hours, eat even shyttier, do a few hours of stuff past midnight... we cannot go on like that every day for a month. Something will give.

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@Shuki : To start with, get a decent 7-8 hours sleep , the earlier you can get to bed the better. This has always helped with my game. Also, have some carbs , like oatmeal about an hour or more before you start playing and throw some banana's to the mix when you are playing. You can also try pushing through the pain for 4 days consecutively and take a 3 days break, that is typically what works for me. A 3 day break is sure to restore your small muscle tears , you can figure out your optimal rest frequency , but different strokes for different folks , as they say :)
 
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@Shuki : To start with, get a decent 7-8 hours sleep , the earlier you can get to bed the better. This has always helped with my game. Also, have some carbs , like oatmeal about an hour or more before you start playing and throw some banana's to the mix when you are playing. You can also try pushing through the pain for 4 days consecutively and take a 3 days break, that is typically what works for me. A 3 day break is sure to restore your small muscle tears , you can figure out your optimal rest frequency , but different strokes for different folks , as they say :)

I get a solid 8 hours of sleep every night, wake up with a bagel. I then run 2 miles every morning before taking a shower. My schedule is moderately packed with 12 credit hours of college, 20-30 hours of work per week and then table tennis on top of these things. I eat pretty damn healthy but BIGGEST reason for my slender/skinny/lanky physique is adderall.

Adderall Is to help me stay focused since I have adhd and my work is moderately dangerous so it helps me stop injuring myself. Adderall is also an appetite suppressant so I have to remind myself that it's time to eat, otherwise I'll just stay focused on my project that I'm working on and completely forget about eating. However since it is an appetite suppressant, I make sure to eat healthy ( because everything sounds equally edible to me while I'm on it ).

I need to find time to work on endurance and building up muscle more than anything else.


Edit: Also Need to make time to spend with the significant other.
 
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