Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

SchemeSC said:

Thanks to Yecats and Nextlevel for the responses and to BRS for asking a really good question.

Let me give another concrete example:

Recently I've added a forearm snap to my FH topspin technique which has helped me tremendously. After spending many years of only being able to hit a maximum of 20 topspins versus block in a row (and in most cases I would miss at less than 10), I suddenly whipped out more than 50 forehand topspins in a row. I was pretty excited about this, and I just loved how the shot felt.

But then when I switched to trying to do a random transition between forehand and backhand, I suddenly lost the feeling for the forearm snap completely. It wasn't the fact that I was missing the table that was bothering me, but rather the fact that I had lost the feeling of the correct stroke. When I was doing the random training, I felt that I was doing nothing more than ingraining the incorrect stroke that I had been doing previously.

I guess that's why I need to gradually build towards random training as Yecats suggested, instead of diving into it head first

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Perhaps you were focusing more on the movement/reaction side of things, so your technique was affected. This is normal, and you'll find that the more you practice the random drill, the better your technique will become. Eventually, you'll get to the point where your technique whilst playing a random drill is 99% as good as when you are playing a regular exercise. Slowly adding random elements helps to stop the problem you are having as the exercises only change slightly, meaning your technique doesn't get thrown out straight away. Its like learning to walk before you can run

Keep up the good work!

Yecats Encerwal said:

Perhaps you were focusing more on the movement/reaction side of things, so your technique was affected. This is normal, and you'll find that the more you practice the random drill, the better your technique will become. Eventually, you'll get to the point where your technique whilst playing a random drill is 99% as good as when you are playing a regular exercise. Slowly adding random elements helps to stop the problem you are having as the exercises only change slightly, meaning your technique doesn't get thrown out straight away. Its like learning to walk before you can run

Keep up the good work!

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Nothing special to add here. I will only point out a couple of things from my own experience. And before that, I will point out that the brain needs to build neural connections specific to stuff. Building connections and reinforcing them takes time. If you remember that, then you give yourself exposure and time. I can humiliate people with serves in the first game, but everyone adjusts over time.

In matches, I can serve directly to someone's backhand and get the ball looped into my face. I can serve short to their forehand, get a push back, push back into the backhand and get that ball repeatedly missed.

Just forcing a movement makes the player miss the shot. In practice, you just want to accept what is while focusing on trying to make things better. The errors will get better as long as you take the goal. IF you video yourself at the beginning and at the end, things have gotten better. And if you do it again, it will get even better. It's all step by step progress.

It is part of the reason we recommend that you test your new skills vs weaker players first. In the absence of coaching, most of my third ball drills are really just matches with lower rated players where I have taught them to return my best serves or simplified the serves enough to get quality returns to attack. At game speed vs level or better opponents, everything breaks down with the improved cognitive load and most of us will revert to bad habits, even Ma Long. He just has far fewer of them than we do, as you can see from the recent video of a match vs Lubomir Pistej when Ma Long was 14.

went to the club for the 4th time this week. (!!) it was a bit too much, i was much slower than usual, could feel my heart beating a bit too quick...I'm not 20 anymore for sure...

what is strange when this happens, is that I know it BUT i don't react like I should: take more time between points. Often, a 15 second pause is enough rest to play the next point with enough energy. but the brain is unable to give the order to pause those 15 seconds.. it just becomes as tired as the heart...

no sports tomorrow before the tournaments this WE and probably some rest next week as well.

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

went to the club for the 4th time this week. (!!) it was a bit too much, i was much slower than usual, could feel my heart beating a bit too quick...I'm not 20 anymore for sure...

what is strange when this happens, is that I know it BUT i don't react like I should: take more time between points. Often, a 15 second pause is enough rest to play the next point with enough energy. but the brain is unable to give the order to pause those 15 seconds.. it just becomes as tired as the heart...

no sports tomorrow before the tournaments this WE and probably some rest next week as well.

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For me 2 days before tournament always just focus more on the touch is there. You certainly don't wanna do something like footwork or rallying practice

Coached my friend again some. The bare beginner.

Just forehand basics, trying to make his stance and stroke more efficient, more consistent and to help him get into a stance that is good for him. Little by little for a few hours.

He had some minor knee stress, not really pain according to him. Enough to be worrying, though. So I found out what feels good and I took it easy today. He hasn't really ever done squats or anything in his life, and I don't know how his body feels, so it could be anything. I didn't make him do anything that felt bad and I took feedback from him and was very, very careful with what I make him do. We went slow and easy.

The thing I am most proud of is what I thought up when I was teaching him how to do very basic forehand footwork.

I have been seriously working on my own footwork lately with bare basics drills, and I can do simple slow drills very cleanly although my game footwork is not good. This coaching has also helped me without a doubt, as I do many simple drills and footwork demonstrations during this. I can do slow paced footwork against predictable balls well enough that I think I can teach him.

Anyway, he had a problem with moving either too close or too far from the ball. He was rushing and moving too fast against balls that only really need a small step. Often the ball hit his hand because he was too close to it laterally.

I worked on his basic footwork and little by little eliminated some problems in his shuffle movement and made him do it until he could competently shuffle side to side with coordination one movement at a time.

Then I told him and showed him how to hold the bat where he would hit the ball if he took a swing at it, and I told him not to move it at all and just move to the ball and pay close attention to where the ball is relative to his bat. I told him to aim the ball in the center of his bat.

Then I took him to the table, and I fed him just a simple flat hit slowly and pretty high over the net to his side towards his forehand and made him move to it from his backhand corner. He kept stopping where the ball would hit his hand, or he would be too far away. But this made him aware at a slow pace.

Then after doing that for a little bit with my correction, he figured out the tempo and the coordination and the ball started landing near the middle of his bat. Once he could do it consistently, I told him to now swing and move his legs the exact same way.

He had some problems swinging at first, obviously, but he got it some time later. I corrected his stroke until he did a really clean one with a good, relaxed movement and a correct swing. I pointed at him and went "That's the one!" and told him to do that. We did that for some time.

I think today was pretty good. Little by little he is getting better.

Boogar, first thing I noticed is that your forehand counterhit form looks better. I'm not sure if it's placebo or what, but I think it has improved.

I will see the rest now.

Wow.... Booger played a real forehand. Do my eyes deceive me?

11:13 onward: That's it! Yesss!

I haven't been this excited about someone else's game in some time. Really nice progress.

I don't have time to watch the whole thing now, so I skipped. I will take a look later.

I just want to tell you: don't get discouraged from going for shots like the one at 14:20. The counterloop.

You read the ball and you got the bat on it and took a swing: I believe soon with enough training you will be hitting the counterloops. You can only go up in my eyes.

Hey Boogar, I only watched the first video, but it is looking good man! Apart from the compliments about the 'real forehand', I think you have shown the ability to mix it up in your loops of when to hit one with speed and when to brush more for spin, speed ones being the ones that creates a loud impact sounds, spinny ones being the ones that have a fine brushing sound to it. I also like your serves, it seems to be quite effective against your opponent. And not to forget your backhand, which you looped some balls off backspin with nice trajectory.

Well done mate

(looks at the time, quietly goes back to writing my paper)

SchemeSC said:

Recently I've added a forearm snap to my FH topspin technique which has helped me tremendously. After spending many years of only being able to hit a maximum of 20 topspins versus block in a row (and in most cases I would miss at less than 10), I suddenly whipped out more than 50 forehand topspins in a row. I was pretty excited about this, and I just loved how the shot felt.

But then when I switched to trying to do a random transition between forehand and backhand, I suddenly lost the feeling for the forearm snap completely.

Click to expand...

SchemeSC, the first thing I want to say is, I've been there and adding the forearm and getting the feeling and then having it go right back to the other when things speed up or become more random, man it can be FRUSTRATING.

For a period of at least 6 months my FH went back and forth and back and forth between the old thing it was and the form Edmund Suen and Damien Provost showed me it should be.

I actually did, literally thousands and thousands of FHs on a robot for months. Months and months. I would use the robot, start feeling it was starting to get into my body, go back to hitting with a human and it would start out there and then go away. I also used shadow drills and self hitting to help get the stroke in my body.

Don't worry about that, as long as you can go back and make things simple to get it back into your stroke again. At a certain point it sticks. And the old stroke with the elbow staying the same angle goes away.

The trick is to keep going back and forth between block, to get the forearm back and random to work on continuing to read the game.

I am going to add more. But it will be on random and that was part one specifically about getting the forearm snap fully into muscle memory so that eventually, when you play totally random, the forearm snap happens because it is in your muscle memory all the way.


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy

Went to Austin for the week and played a tournament on Saturday where I played well till I strained my back then lost to a much lower rated pips out on backhand player as I had lost my mobility. Took a lesson on Monday and Wednesday and played the league matches on Wednesday as well. Played 6 players about my level and all went 5 games... 2 matches where I was up 2 games to zero and I let them come back to beat me and 2 matches where I was down 2 games to zero and I came back to win. Over all I must get my serves shorter. I get looped too much on my serves. Right now when I serve short they are not nearly spinney enough. My spinney serves tend to go long as I am not brushing the ball enough.
My stamina was failing after a hour long lesson and 30 competitive games and I need to hydrate more...

Tough deal, as we discussed Gene, it is tough for you to get regular play and your results in growing become mixed and snail slow. You COULD work a lot on serves alone, you have the third ball for you and that is something to build on, but it sure is tough when y=the only decent action you get is a rare tourney. That is what it was like for me when I was in Lawton, OK and had to go to Dallas for tourneys and an AFB in TX to get any kind of play time. I know you fight and it counts for a lot, you love TT and it counts for more, we just need TT to be more active in more places, we are getting in that direction but it is single digit progress.