Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

So today, i went to my TT school (UPTY) to have my private coaching lesson with coach Sakamoto.

When I arrive there, first big shock.
There is a sign at the entrance saying that the school will close at the end of the month ! There was no announcement on their website. Sakamoto explained me he had no more time to manage the school, and that as a director of TT Saitama, he has a new project of making a TT training center in Saitama for both amateurs + professionals (different floors) and that would be more convenient for him to manage...

2nd shock when he told me that the other place where i was also going for lessons is going to close. I have not seen any official announcement, but the owner of the other school is Sakamoto's friend so every reason to believe this information.

Double shock ! i need to find another place with new coaches to get 1:1 coaching ... What a bad surprise .... :-/

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That royally sucks. Good luck finding a new coach. Is your coach moving to a far away place?

yes Sakamato is going to somewhere too far for me.

This is Tokyo, so there are quite a few other places to find coaching but it sucks for sure.

michaelfontes said:

Hello guys!

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Welcome Sir to TTD and to the DTTCC thread!

FYI, if you want to post video and ask for advice, you need 5 (or is it 10?) posts before you are able to post videos.

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

yes Sakamato is going to somewhere too far for me.

This is Tokyo, so there are quite a few other places to find coaching but it sucks for sure.

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Good luck Sir in finding a new club/coach that will be a good fit all around for you!

If you DON'T find a coach you feel helps your game, I feel with the amount of private lessons you have had, you already know what you need to work on. The members you used to hit with at your old club will also be looking for a new club, so you can practice with them or the members of your new club until you find a coach.

----------

I have an upcoming dilemma related to TWI's club closing.

My club will be closing for renovation in October that will take anywhere from 6 months to 1.5 yrs. My club is a Dept of Parks recreation center. I can go to another rec center and not have to pay membership fees, however, my current club is only ~25 mins walking distance from home. This enables me to play a little longer and get home within half an hour. Also, I get extra exercise from the walking and save on the subway fare.

There is another recreation center that is inconvenient for me to travel to by public transportation ... For me to get there it would take ~45 mins, so add another 45 mins to get home. But the worst is that they have an irregular schedule which really makes it difficult something like Mondays it's 1-5pm, Tuesdays it's 10m to 2pm, Wednesdays it's 4-9pm, etc.

I may have to pay for a membership at 42andbackpains' club and drive to that club as public transportation from where i live to that club is very inconvenient. I am not complaining about the playing conditions nor the caliber of the members' skill levels. It's just hard to find parking there at times. Also factor in with our eldest daughter in college, and our 2nd daughter going to a private college in Sept, we really have to watch our expenses.

So the search is on for a rec center that has decent playing conditions that has a regular afternoon/night schedule.

LOL at me ... if it's not one thing it's another that is challenging my training.

MOG said:

So I do not know if I allowed to hop on this thread, but here goes!

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LOL no permission needed to post on this thread.

I cannot speak on your conundrum with the rubbers but I want to welcome you to the DTTCC thread!

@OSP your ordeal is not fun as well. TT in the US is not very popular and you're suffering from it.

Regarding my personal situation, I train with coaches but my teammates mostly don't. I play with them in a different place.
I know a lot of things I need to work on, and have already received advice, but I'm a slow learner and a lot of things i need to hear advice more than once.

But more importantly, I have with coaches the kind of training that I can't have with my mates. Where we play together, basically its a sports center facility where anyone can go (not a membership club), and its not really possible to bring a bucket of balls and play. there would be balls everywhere and it would embarrass other people. Doing footwork exercises with a bucket of balls, or -better- multiball is really a good training, and I believe 1H of such training is worth many more hours of just hitting the ball with buddies, its much more demanding, and its keeping my body in form, which is very important. Its still possible to drill with my buddies, but when u have to pickup the ball every time, basically, we workout much less, perhaps we play 3 or 4 or more times less balls than if there was a bucket.

So, no, i will still find a coach, even if i learn nothing from a technical point of view (which i doubt, i have many things to learn) , its very important to keep fit.

Der_Echte has invaded the bay area for a 2 day mission. Unfortunately my health ( tonsilitis and tennis elbow ) has taken me off action for almost six weeks now , so I could not host Der this time around and David is doing the honors. However, that does not mean we are not making trouble. After Der and David were done with their table tennis trouble making we made it a point to hit one of the Korean BBQ joints , and only people who accompany Der knows what happens after. William causes trouble , regales the audience with his command of Korean culture, starting Korean food , wildly inappropriate phrases and jokes to 80s - 90s romantic songs and Korean TV Series. And this will have the middle aged waitresses around start falling in love with William and start hitting on him... Der_echte obviously takes care and makes sure he does not translate any of that .. but well lets just say that there were more than one bilingual person present yesterday night

We followed that up with some late night pool action , where again William showed that he is probably 1800 in pool as well .. however we teamed him up with David's wife to even out the competition ...

Thats all folks ! ...

The Goon Squad chased us out of the Billiards hall at 0200 hrs. Had to bug out to secret Hideout #14 with the Batmobile.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

@OSP your ordeal is not fun as well. TT in the US is not very popular and you're suffering from it.

Regarding my personal situation, I train with coaches but my teammates mostly don't. I play with them in a different place.
I know a lot of things I need to work on, and have already received advice, but I'm a slow learner and a lot of things i need to hear advice more than once.

But more importantly, I have with coaches the kind of training that I can't have with my mates. Where we play together, basically its a sports center facility where anyone can go (not a membership club), and its not really possible to bring a bucket of balls and play. there would be balls everywhere and it would embarrass other people. Doing footwork exercises with a bucket of balls, or -better- multiball is really a good training, and I believe 1H of such training is worth many more hours of just hitting the ball with buddies, its much more demanding, and its keeping my body in form, which is very important. Its still possible to drill with my buddies, but when u have to pickup the ball every time, basically, we workout much less, perhaps we play 3 or 4 or more times less balls than if there was a bucket.

So, no, i will still find a coach, even if i learn nothing from a technical point of view (which i doubt, i have many things to learn) , its very important to keep fit.

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I think multiball and train with many balls can be good.

But i think it is also good to play with only one ball so youplay at the correct tempo and learn to value the ball. I feel many times people that use many balls almost have an excuse to play to hard and to difficult, and therefore because they have more balls to use.

think the purpose of footwork exercises is to learn to move the well. Therefor in my opinion you should lower the tempo so many balls go over the net and you get to move the feet alot. People that play to hard so they miss after less than 5-10 balls over the net have missed the purpose of footwork drills. I do not want to be rude, but if you need many balls because you need to pick the ball up so many times otherwise while doing footwork drills, i think you play to hard and miss to much. My advice to you is to lower the tempo and get the ball over the net atleast 7-10 in average if you do footwork drills.

But it is hard for me to say this because i have not seen you play footwork drills. I am only saying this from what you are writing.

Sorry to hear that your coaches and clubs are closing. I hope you find a good alternative. Maybe you will find an even better club to train at and a even better coach to train with.

MY club tournament was today. Ever since my club down sized to a smaller space, they have not had good tournaments, only for players U2000, which means I am only eligible when I am playing bad lol. So since I lost a few points at my last 2 tournaments, I was eligible again. All the other strong players who would usually challenge me did not come, so I was almost 300 pts clear of the 2nd seed. Should be free prize money, no?

Well, my opponents didn't all see it that way. First guy was a Nigerian buddy. When he first came to the club, it was hard for him to get 5 points in a game against me even though he looked like a good player. A month or two ago, I had a long conversation with him about spin. I tested his rubbers, and they were too soft IMO for consistent spin drive technique, so I gave him sheets of G1 off one of my rackets.

He rewarded me for this lecture and the sheets of rubber by going up 2-1 against me (he has never won 2 consecutive games off me before and I can probably count on one hand the number of games he has ever won against me before today without using all the fingers). Not the prettiest sight but at least he was unrated so he wasn't going to affect the prize money. I engineered a comeback bringing out some serves I have not used in a while. He actually beat the #2 seed in the event so I realized it wasn't a complete fluke.

Then I played a guy who has been improving recently but is still around USATT 1000. That was a co-operative match, 3-0 as expected.

Then I played a 1500 guy with LP and Inverted shakehand who used to be 1900+ at his peak in the 1990s and has beaten some of the Pittsburgh TT legends, he stopped playing for about 10 years and started playing again recently. In the club when I first played him I used to kill him, and then he beat me one day and then I did the research to see his rating history. I won the first game today but I made it too close and that gave him confidence. He then won the next two games and you know how it is when you have lost to someone before - you know it is not impossible so you need to find your game. Watching the video, I can see that his twiddling was affecting more than I realized. It got to 9-9 in the 5th, I won my two serves and could go on.

Then I played a 1200 rated penholder who hits with one of my training buddies. It is really funny how things work, his serves had the worst effect on me, if I Was the one playing my forehand behind his serves, the match would have been over, but he didn't know how to attack popups properly so I was able to play rallies behind bad serve returns. That match when 3-0 as expected. But I didn't like the way I misread his serves.

Finally I played the #2 seed, who was a higher rated player than myself when I started out. Beat me a couple of times before I Got better and I think I beat him once after that. But he has stopped playing for a while so he is trying to get back. He is still young and athletic but he has to make some major technical changes to get his game back to an upward trajectory IMO. I was down 4-8 in the first game but I came back to win 11-8. After that, the match was never out of control even when I made it interesting. At 0-2, 8-9, he hit a backhand loop down the line that made me thank God that he didn't hit that shot at any prior time before that (as that would have made my game much more insecure). I managed to serve out the last two points and end the match.

So I got the trophy and the cash. I wasn't really happy with my quality of play but that is a work in progress. Winning cures almost everything. I Will take that for now.

Playlist below if anyone wants to see the matches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1V2GYKCt9w&list=PL1xHYZmEaJtS5Sr5mNTiv9EOkeKlDA88D&index=1

NL, you come to California and Ur eyes gunna pop out with more stories like this. E'nough said.

You did what you had to do as a Warrior under pressure to get there first. E'Nough said.

Lula said:

I think multiball and train with many balls can be good.

But i think it is also good to play with only one ball so youplay at the correct tempo and learn to value the ball. I feel many times people that use many balls almost have an excuse to play to hard and to difficult, and therefore because they have more balls to use.

think the purpose of footwork exercises is to learn to move the well. Therefor in my opinion you should lower the tempo so many balls go over the net and you get to move the feet alot. People that play to hard so they miss after less than 5-10 balls over the net have missed the purpose of footwork drills. I do not want to be rude, but if you need many balls because you need to pick the ball up so many times otherwise while doing footwork drills, i think you play to hard and miss to much. My advice to you is to lower the tempo and get the ball over the net atleast 7-10 in average if you do footwork drills.

But it is hard for me to say this because i have not seen you play footwork drills. I am only saying this from what you are writing.

Sorry to hear that your coaches and clubs are closing. I hope you find a good alternative. Maybe you will find an even better club to train at and a even better coach to train with.

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i agree with you about the pace of drills. I have good coaches. They instruct me correctly I believe.

I had a mini round robin tournament today in another club today, 4 matches for everybody.

Well, the TLDR is that I had better not go. Its my worst performance in many months, the kind I thought i could avoid now (that I'm supposed to play better).

My first match against a younger guy, i'm up 2-0 easily (6 3) but first alert, i lose the 3rd game before closing it 6 in the 4th. But set average is very important in this guy of tournament and its not a good sign.

Next match against a veteran chopper with SP. I had warmed up with him before the tournament begins so I'm not scared and confident. Perhaps too confident; up 10-6 in the 1st, everything is going well. But, from here its going to be downhill, i manage to choke, lose it 10-12, it affects my confidence and my nerves, and thats 0-3. The guy wasn't that good, and I'm not particularly bad against choppers, but I wasn't moving enough, I couldn't do my usual warmup drills (too many people on the table and no buddies) and I wasn't making the necessary efforts to play well.

The next match was even worse because i lost 0-3 a veteran that I comfortably won last time, but i had lost the first encounter tbh. Maybe i took him lightly, as I did the previous guy. Well whatever, it was a bad idea. He played positively contrarily to me. I was missing a lot of easy stuff, I was still perhaps shocked by the previous match.

The last match could have been very bad as well against another veteran, especially after I lost the 1st game and looked really bad, but somehow I managed at last to play a bit better, not attacking so much, but i was much more consistent and clean and won 3-1.

It really sucks because i lost those 2 matches against players that i really shouldn't be losing anymore, and on paper at least, i was one of 2 favorites to win the tournament. As a result, my rating takes a hit [only this kind of private round-robin tournaments has a closed rating system - you can't see other people's rating, but they give you a rating - there's no rating system for other regular JTTA competitions I participate in ].

I think i forgot to enjoy myself today. Its important to stay positive and have fun while playing to win. Its a pity because even yesterday I was playing rather well during training. I did 2H of drills with my (g)friend E and even beat her (3-2), which doesn't happen often at all...[albeit it was more her in a bad day than me really playing so well]

Usually i consider those round robin tournaments less important than other tournaments and more for training but todays performance is really bad and far from what I should be doing.

I re-aggravated a small muscle tear. Gunna need to back off the pedal for a while.

This is one of those small grade one tears that are bothersome, then usually heal within a few weeks if you back off completely, then rehab it.

I would back off, but not for long enough. Would back off enough to get it almost healed and get back in a little too soon, then back off again, rinse repeat.

This time, I will need to be more careful with my initial rest, treatment, and rehab. I am gunna wipe this one out so it doesn't bug me again.

It is surprising how much you use your non hitting pectoral and the rib muscle below it.

This tear is very near a nerve and it is more bothersome than a normal grade one.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

I had a mini round robin tournament today in another club today, 4 matches for everybody.

Well, the TLDR is that I had better not go. Its my worst performance in many months, the kind I thought i could avoid now (that I'm supposed to play better).

My first match against a younger guy, i'm up 2-0 easily (6 3) but first alert, i lose the 3rd game before closing it 6 in the 4th. But set average is very important in this guy of tournament and its not a good sign.

Next match against a veteran chopper with SP. I had warmed up with him before the tournament begins so I'm not scared and confident. Perhaps too confident; up 10-6 in the 1st, everything is going well. But, from here its going to be downhill, i manage to choke, lose it 10-12, it affects my confidence and my nerves, and thats 0-3. The guy wasn't that good, and I'm not particularly bad against choppers, but I wasn't moving enough, I couldn't do my usual warmup drills (too many people on the table and no buddies) and I wasn't making the necessary efforts to play well.

The next match was even worse because i lost 0-3 a veteran that I comfortably won last time, but i had lost the first encounter tbh. Maybe i took him lightly, as I did the previous guy. Well whatever, it was a bad idea. He played positively contrarily to me. I was missing a lot of easy stuff, I was still perhaps shocked by the previous match.

The last match could have been very bad as well against another veteran, especially after I lost the 1st game and looked really bad, but somehow I managed at last to play a bit better, not attacking so much, but i was much more consistent and clean and won 3-1.

It really sucks because i lost those 2 matches against players that i really shouldn't be losing anymore, and on paper at least, i was one of 2 favorites to win the tournament. As a result, my rating takes a hit [only this kind of private round-robin tournaments has a closed rating system - you can't see other people's rating, but they give you a rating - there's no rating system for other regular JTTA competitions I participate in ].

I think i forgot to enjoy myself today. Its important to stay positive and have fun while playing to win. Its a pity because even yesterday I was playing rather well during training. I did 2H of drills with my (g)friend E and even beat her (3-2), which doesn't happen often at all...[albeit it was more her in a bad day than me really playing so well]

Usually i consider those round robin tournaments less important than other tournaments and more for training but todays performance is really bad and far from what I should be doing.

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I wrote a long response to this before I had to do other stuff so I never posted it.

Zeio translated LGL saying that one of the reasons that ML perpetually struggled with WH was that he didn't position himself properly from a mental standpoint and it affected this technical execution.

ZJK said he played WH well because he always felt WH was a better player no matter the result.

WH before the 2013 SF vs ML told FZD and YA that if he took two games off ML, he would consider it a victory. And YA and FZD noted that he didn't say exactly two games and WH told then that by the time you get to two, you can't stop playing, can you?


Despite losing twice to WH at 2 prior SF at WTTC, ML still considered himself the favorite at 2013 WTTC and the pressure affected his technique. Just because he had beaten WH at other events.

Framing your goals is very important to how you play when things can be close and the technical level is correct. Otherwise you will not fight with all your weapons and random problems will turn from snowballs into avalanches. I suspect if we see the video from Saturday, there will be specific patterns in your play but how you find the solutions may not have been as sharp because your memory is framing it as losing to players you shouldn't have lost to.

My mentality is different even when I lose. I find that my hardest matches are with the worse players. They are the ones trying to take my points. The better players there is no pressure so I just play them. So I always try to play the worse players when I have the most focus so that I can avoid bad losses. Because they are the ones who swing like they have nothing to lose.

If you notice now, ML likes to put his lost games and matches in perspective. If he loses a game to Freitas, he talks about how normal it is given the opponent's level. The issue now is that he really felt the loss to FZD. It will be interesting to hear his perspective later.

Der_Echte said:

I re-aggravated a small muscle tear. Gunna need to back off the pedal for a while.

This is one of those small grade one tears that are bothersome, then usually heal within a few weeks if you back off completely, then rehab it.

I would back off, but not for long enough. Would back off enough to get it almost healed and get back in a little too soon, then back off again, rinse repeat.

This time, I will need to be more careful with my initial rest, treatment, and rehab. I am gunna wipe this one out so it doesn't bug me again.

It is surprising how much you use your non hitting pectoral and the rib muscle below it.

This tear is very near a nerve and it is more bothersome than a normal grade one.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

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Feel better. Not sure whether I told you I played JT at the Cary Cup.

Well I have this one too .. and for me the usual symptom is bad headache

Der_Echte said:

I re-aggravated a small muscle tear. Gunna need to back off the pedal for a while.

This is one of those small grade one tears that are bothersome, then usually heal within a few weeks if you back off completely, then rehab it.

I would back off, but not for long enough. Would back off enough to get it almost healed and get back in a little too soon, then back off again, rinse repeat.

This time, I will need to be more careful with my initial rest, treatment, and rehab. I am gunna wipe this one out so it doesn't bug me again.

It is surprising how much you use your non hitting pectoral and the rib muscle below it.

This tear is very near a nerve and it is more bothersome than a normal grade one.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

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@Der Echte
hoping for a swift recovery for you

@NL
thank you for the comment
fortunately i didn't take a video of the matches. I took only a video of the 1st match which I won easily, but played rather badly (at least in the 3rd).
The fact that i didn't take a video is a sign of bad mentality. I thought i would win the 2nd match easily, so i didn't film it. I thought the same for the 3rd, while feeling that if i lost i didn't want to see it... lol, wtf
Another sign of bad mentality is that i was not tchoooing as much as usual.

a match against a chopper is never easy because to play correctly you have to move continuously and position correctly to play topspin against backspin. But for example i beated last week a chopper which is I believe 1 level above that one, in a training match (and that i never had beaten before.) I know what I had to do, but i didn't do it.

My memory of the match is that i didn't produce the necessary efforts to avoid receiving mistakes, and forgot to stay low and alert and play topspin correctly. I remember that i wasn't moving well, I also remember i played too fast, didn't take enough time between points... and that I made a lot of mistakes. He didn't attack a lot so didn't score a lot of winners, except the occasional push popping up on my side being punished.

I think i will film everything from now on. Else thinking about it affects my mentality. I will delete unnecessary footage AFTER the matches.

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

@Der Echte
hoping for a swift recovery for you

@NL
thank you for the comment
fortunately i didn't take a video of the matches. I took only a video of the 1st match which I won easily, but played rather badly (at least in the 3rd).
The fact that i didn't take a video is a sign of bad mentality. I thought i would win the 2nd match easily, so i didn't film it. I thought the same for the 3rd, while feeling that if i lost i didn't want to see it... lol, wtf
Another sign of bad mentality is that i was not tchoooing as much as usual.

a match against a chopper is never easy because to play correctly you have to move continuously and position correctly to play topspin against backspin. But for example i beated last week a chopper which is I believe 1 level above that one, in a training match (and that i never had beaten before.) I know what I had to do, but i didn't do it.

My memory of the match is that i didn't produce the necessary efforts to avoid receiving mistakes, and forgot to stay low and alert and play topspin correctly. I remember that i wasn't moving well, I also remember i played too fast, didn't take enough time between points... and that I made a lot of mistakes. He didn't attack a lot so didn't score a lot of winners, except the occasional push popping up on my side being punished.

I think i will film everything from now on. Else thinking about it affects my mentality. I will delete unnecessary footage AFTER the matches.

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I find for me that revisiting bad footage allows me to put the play on perspective and find my own story. It may not happen immediately the match is over but I find a time to do it.