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NDH

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I am exactly the same.. I just see all the things I could do better, especially lately as I've become more aware of what I should be doing differently. I'm naturally too hard on myself.

Haha, yeah - Sometimes not knowing is better!

I always feel I play much better in my head, and then I see myself on film and just realise how much work needs doing.

I should definitely train more than I do - At the moment I play 2 matches per week and that's it most of the time.

You don't have the chance to practice things in those matches, and you just revert back to whatever you feel comfortable doing!
 
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Haha, yeah - Sometimes not knowing is better!

I always feel I play much better in my head, and then I see myself on film and just realise how much work needs doing.

I should definitely train more than I do - At the moment I play 2 matches per week and that's it most of the time.

You don't have the chance to practice things in those matches, and you just revert back to whatever you feel comfortable doing!

At least knowing is a start for the stuff I need to work on. It's quite nice knowing what I need to do more and less of, but doing it consistently is a different story.

It's the opposite for me right now. I get to practice quite a lot but league matches are infrequent. I miss playing local league in the UK when there were matches every week.
 

NDH

says Spin to win!
At least knowing is a start for the stuff I need to work on. It's quite nice knowing what I need to do more and less of, but doing it consistently is a different story.

It's the opposite for me right now. I get to practice quite a lot but league matches are infrequent. I miss playing local league in the UK when there were matches every week.

Yeah, I love playing league matches - Absolutely hate practice!

Where did you used to play in the UK?
 
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Yeah, I love playing league matches - Absolutely hate practice!

Where did you used to play in the UK?

Haha, complete opposite to me now! I used to love playing matches in the UK because that's all I did, never did drills until a year and a half ago. But now that I get to do it I love exhausting myself in practice, I just need more practice partners who enjoy it as much as I do ;)

I played in Taunton for 2 years and 3 years in Plymouth local league. Where do you play yourself?
 
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2 of the best Swedish players in a practice match. I'm very impressed by Gustaf Ericson (grey shirt), he hits killer shots with both fh and bh seemingly effortless. Both buys use LP on bh, Gustaf twiddles a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHpmelYHC-U

Im pretty sure gripler use inverted on both sides. And i so not really think We can call them two of Swedens best players. They are not bad But are a looong way from being the best players in Sweden. I think Ericssons backhand is very impressive! His forehand technique is not nice i think But it works for him. Ericson can kill the ball easy here since he is in my opinion much much better than the other Guy.
 
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Im pretty sure gripler use inverted on both sides. And i so not really think We can call them two of Swedens best players. They are not bad But are a looong way from being the best players in Sweden. I think Ericssons backhand is very impressive! His forehand technique is not nice i think But it works for him. Ericson can kill the ball easy here since he is in my opinion much much better than the other Guy.

Whaaaat?!? Gripler has got 3373 ranking points and Mattias Falck has only 2954 so Gripler must surely be better if not the best ;)

The Swedish ranking system is quite farsical sometimes.
 
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Ok, among the "better" players :) I don't compare these 2 guys with the Swedes on the world ranking, but in the domestic divisions. I consider one a great player if you play in the elite (Ericson in Superettan) and Gripler at age 53 is still a hard nut to crack. He's beaten Waldner in his youth as well :) He picks up points in the lower divisions nowadays. Yes Ericsons bh is great, watch him here vs Filus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHNeTY1-4uw
 
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I continued my job as a temp in division 6 with the kids (average age of my team mates 12.5). I encountered my first high level push blocker tonight. He basically played with OX LP covering the entire table and then killed the ball with an amazing loop as soon as it was high enough.

Our best player (Swedish ranking 1700 which normally plays in division 4) lost quite badly to the guy who is probably the most under ranked player I've ever seen since I started playing competitive matches (he had something like 1100). He lost with 11-4 11-3 11-3.

I managed to steal 6 points in the first set and then just gave up and lost 11-3 11-1. I had no weapons against his chop blocks as they were pretty much unreadable in terms of spin. I tried playing without that much spin but then he just loop killed the ball. Not fun.

I managed to win my other match but the fun was kind of taken away by the push blocker. Hard to improve on this as I pretty much never train with anyone using this style.
 
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I continued my job as a temp in division 6 with the kids (average age of my team mates 12.5). I encountered my first high level push blocker tonight. He basically played with OX LP covering the entire table and then killed the ball with an amazing loop as soon as it was high enough.

Our best player (Swedish ranking 1700 which normally plays in division 4) lost quite badly to the guy who is probably the most under ranked player I've ever seen since I started playing competitive matches (he had something like 1100). He lost with 11-4 11-3 11-3.

I managed to steal 6 points in the first set and then just gave up and lost 11-3 11-1. I had no weapons against his chop blocks as they were pretty much unreadable in terms of spin. I tried playing without that much spin but then he just loop killed the ball. Not fun.

I managed to win my other match but the fun was kind of taken away by the push blocker. Hard to improve on this as I pretty much never train with anyone using this style.

That style is hard to play against without practice, it takes advantage of everything a looper is trained to do. You cannot back off the table because the ball usually stays short and backspin doesn't look like backspin nor topspin like topspin because of how it is being created.

But finding a pushblocker to practice with can raise the level of your forehand topspin really fast. Looping the kind of backspin created requires you to time your acceleration well and sometimes, you learn to reduce your spin so that you don't generate more than you can handle.
 
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That style is hard to play against without practice, it takes advantage of everything a looper is trained to do. You cannot back off the table because the ball usually stays short and backspin doesn't look like backspin nor topspin like topspin because of how it is being created.

But finding a pushblocker to practice with can raise the level of your forehand topspin really fast. Looping the kind of backspin created requires you to time your acceleration well and sometimes, you learn to reduce your spin so that you don't generate more than you can handle.

Finding someone to practice with will be tricky as our club promotes a modern attacking game quite intensively from a very young age. I believe that we have 3-4 defensive players out of 200-300 members and they are all choppers. The kid in my team won most of his points with extremely fast/hard loops that borderline to drives which made the blocker miss the table with a few cm. The kid missed the table a lot (due to frustration).

A lot of the balls looked like no spin but they were in fact heavy top/back. I thought that I knew what I was doing and tried to drive / flat hit them back but they just went straight down or long.

I can certainly improve every stroke there is but our kid has played since he was 7 with coaching several times per week. I'm not an expert but his technique is extremely good (I think he placed 3rd or 4th in his age category during our national youth champs).

A good lesson in any case.
 
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Finding someone to practice with will be tricky as our club promotes a modern attacking game quite intensively from a very young age. I believe that we have 3-4 defensive players out of 200-300 members and they are all choppers. The kid in my team won most of his points with extremely fast/hard loops that borderline to drives which made the blocker miss the table with a few cm. The kid missed the table a lot (due to frustration).

A lot of the balls looked like no spin but they were in fact heavy top/back. I thought that I knew what I was doing and tried to drive / flat hit them back but they just went straight down or long.

I can certainly improve every stroke there is but our kid has played since he was 7 with coaching several times per week. I'm not an expert but his technique is extremely good (I think he placed 3rd or 4th in his age category during our national youth champs).

A good lesson in any case.

Yeah he needs an opponent with that style. I remember playing s tournament and was in the same group with an LP blocker and a looping junior. I beat the LP blocker 3-0, the looping junior beat me 3-0 and the LP blocker beat the looping junior 3-1. You get the gist.
 
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Hey guys I hope you are all doing well!

Today we had our first match of the second round in the third division and we won it 8:2.

However, what made me even more happy is that I won every match with a convincing 3:0, I have never been the player to win in straight sets, as my shots tend to be much too risky, they are very fast and sometimes spiny for my level of play, but my placement has been very bad. I would usually beat much higher ranked players on a good day and then lose to worse players the day after. So in the last half year I worked on the placement of my forehand loop.

In todays match I tried to not rush my shots, which made me feel very slow... but also gave me more time to position myself better for the next shot. I think I have never made less unforced errors in a match.

It all felt so easy, I would wait for a ball to go long and then loop it slow with placement. If a ball was blocked back I could attack it with more power, as the ball was easy to put away. I had some loops come up too short on the table, which can be dangerous against better players, so I need to work on that.

All in all thats a good start and I like to follow that path of playing :)

Have a good one
 
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Ok, among the "better" players :) I don't compare these 2 guys with the Swedes on the world ranking, but in the domestic divisions. I consider one a great player if you play in the elite (Ericson in Superettan) and Gripler at age 53 is still a hard nut to crack. He's beaten Waldner in his youth as well :) He picks up points in the lower divisions nowadays. Yes Ericsons bh is great, watch him here vs Filus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHNeTY1-4uw

Is Ericson playing short pimples as his red rubber?
 
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Ah I see, after watching another match of his it gets more obvious. Thanks for the link.

Another sensation I felt today: usually when warming up we'd do forehand counter hits, so far i grasped the weight transfer and the concept of letting the arm swing, but I never had a "good" feeling when hitting the ball. I would try to do all the aspects of the technique right and then hope the ball would find its target.. However, today it felt like i could grab the ball, its sounds strange but I could do it if I purposely slowed down the movement of my swinging arm... this way I could guide the ball. I then executed some slow topspins with the same emphasis... and even tho my swing was slow the ball seemed to have way more spin than usual, as my opponent suddenly could not block one ball back.

Sorry for the wall :D but I had a hard time putting my experience into words.
 
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NDH said:
Haha, yeah - Sometimes not knowing is better!

I always feel I play much better in my head, and then I see myself on film and just realise how much work needs doing.
I have frequently stated that often, I thought I moved in to flip a ball or do a short bump, but in reality, I only imagined I did sometimes. Technically, you could call that hallucinating. Gunna hafta check the origin of state on the mushrooms before I slice them into the salad... make sure they are not from California.
 
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NDH

says Spin to win!
Had a match last night against 3 of the top players in the county (which is the same as a US State).

I'd previously beaten their top player, whose a very good chopper that attacks occasionally. But I'd never beaten the other 2.

One is a consistent looper on both wings - But he generates a huge amount of spin, but not as much pace as you think (very consistent).

The other has some very deceptive serves and a big forehand - He's also just won the Veterans (over 40) title in the county, which contained some VERY good players.

Well.... I channelled my inner NextLevel and tried to open up on the backhand a bit more - It worked!

I beat the chopper 3-2.

I beat the consistent looper 3-2 (13-11 in the 5th).

I beat the serve master 3-1 after really studying his serves through the night - I was lucky I played him last so I could really observe.

Probably the best I've played all year!
 
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How come you played so good? It can not only be because you Opened with your backhand i think.
 
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