I'd like to use this post to personally thank a lot of the forum members who took the time to watch either of my two videos and offer advice. That's quite the time commitment to not only have to watch all those videos but to type out thoughts.
Putting yourself out there is always hard because when you video yourself you're often struck (at least I am) by how apparent your bad habits are that you just can't see while you're playing. That being said, if you're not afraid of some critique, boy can it pay off and last night at club it did.
Real quick. Almost forgot. Side note, was playing duel inverted last night. No Long Pips.
My goodness I was as
hot as a pistol. No exaggeration when I say at least 3-4 different members said to me throughout the night "What are you doing so differently tonight? I've got to know."
First, the thank you(s) and then I'll get into what I was focusing on.
Nuke:
For pointing out that looping high ball chops can and are different from standard or more lower chops. This is something to practice or at least be aware of. During most of the night I was playing players who would I say "normal chop" and was on fire. Then at the end of the night there is this one server (honestly not a good server) who slams his backspin serve into the table and when it's coming to me, I swear the ball is still ascending and is high. The feel of looping this ball is simply different. I still did pretty good here but not quite at the same rate I was earlier in the night vs normal chops.
Fabian:
For honestly just affirming to me what I saw in the video that my stance & legs were poor. Just too flat footed. No foot movement. etc. Your comment really motivated me to change that. More on this in my hit last night.
Dr Echte:
Not only in the advice to me but helping remind me that while we (or I) can become self absorbed in our own game "I should do this more" "why do I do this here." etc... that guess what? Our opponents have flaws to. Don't forget to spend some time point-pointing their weaknesses. That will help you. I specifically noted how you mentioned Ben always misses his FH when he takes 2, 3 steps. And if I can block his FH loop back, he's never ready. When I went back to watch for this. Not only did I see that, but I noticed his FH loops always land in the same spot. Basically just to the right of the middle line. So I know the zone I have to be ready to either block or counter from. That's a huge, huge win.
I didn't get a chance to play Ben in singles last night. Was meaning to and based on my hitting with him, I should have because I think I would have fared really well but it just didn't happen. We're training partners and we got challenged to doubles a lot in the night. I did however beat another penholder in singles 3-1 that without these fundamental changes, I'm not sure I would have won in the past.
NextLevel:
Man you've always put in the time to check out my videos and offer feedback. Just really, really appreciate it. So among all the advice, I particularly liked how you said that you played for years in that you served heavy backspin, get a predictable return in a push and then loop. So I did that last night and wow it worked. In the past, I had sometimes lost some of the quality of my service backspin in trying to disguise it too much or focusing on after fake motion too much. This time I just focused on heavy backspin normal pendulum serves and got a lot of opponents throughout the night to put those in the net and if they didn't? I was ready to loop as many of the pushes or chops went long. The key thing for me was getting a predictable return and being good vs that one type of ball really worked for me. And much like you analyzed, I feel pretty confident vs slower backspin balls. If people wanted to chop all my serves and let me get that first loop opportunity, that'd be just fine by me.
So what I focused on last night:
It's amazing how just doing the things that enforce good fundamentals can have immediate impact. Granted i'll have to work on this because I found myself throughout the night at times falling back into bad habits. But I largely focused on getting low (doing my best Timo Boll impression) and keeping those feet moving. Doing a lot of shuffle or mini jump steps (I don't know what they're called) just before and more importantly after each shot. Not only do I think this gets my feet moving or more active, it more importantly keeps me from reaching. When I'm in position and in my wheelhouse, my percentage is much greater.
Outside of the footwork improvements, I dialed back my service game. Kept it much more compact. Less wind up. Served probably 85% pure heavy backspin with the other 15% of the time being either dead or maybe side/top every once in a while. What I found is that the various opponents I was playing all night would largely chop or push. And a lot of them mistakenly put those long. So I got a lot of work in on looping pure backspin all night. These balls after I loop them in added with their existing backspin coming to me gives them such a heavy, heavy ball a lot of their blocks would then go long off the table. I can't tell you how many times I played this point out last night. Really good players might have better touch to keep the push short or be able to flip or loop. I'll be ready when this happens but overall I say thank you if they want to simply chop the serve because it feels safe to them.
It's only 1 night in a long journey of reinforcing new habits and I still have things to work on. You'd think keeping a serve short & low would be easy but I still have some loose ones get away from me so I need to lower that percentage of serves that end up bad as they're asking for trouble. And if I don't consciously think before the point "okay get low. Keep your feet moving" it's easy for me to just stand there too upright or watch the point. But I'll get there. Just have to go from here.
Again thanks to this board. It makes me happy to be a part of this community with other people who love TT as much as I do and like a community, we're here to help each other out. Just really appreciate it. Thanks everybody.
Will try to video some more matches soon.
