Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

Shuki said:

I feel you, what adjustments sis you try to make though? It sounds like you were all in on your opening loop. Don't you practice the follow ups?

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I try to place the ball better. When I have time, it works, but if don't predict the placement of the push early enough, I play automatically cross-court which often leads to a counterattack I also often don't make adjustments at all. I just start the match by opening with slow heavy topspins all the time, and it works well, my opponent keeps putting them off the table over and over. But suddenly they adjust and outplace me with blocks/counters. I just keep doing the same thing thinking "crap, it worked so well before, should work now, WTF". I do pratice follow-ups, but mostly against a block, I'm not quite ready for a counterattack yet.

Shuki said:

I feel you, what adjustments sis you try to make though? It sounds like you were all in on your opening loop. Don't you practice the follow ups?


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Exactly. And sometimes, you have to push that third ball to beat blockers. Yes, it sounds crazy but it is true. The decision to attack is in part about ball selection - you have to select the right balls to attack and the right places to attack to. I just lost a match which I should have one on a third ball attack that got blocked back to my wide forehand.

Ilia Minkin said:

I do pratice follow-ups, but mostly against a block, I'm not quite ready for a counterattack yet.

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I seriously doubt that.

I see where NL is coming from and agree with his suggested tactic. Sometimes, you have to give the opponent what he doesn't expect, which is a in this case a NON-ATTACK, then you strongly attack when opponent isn't completely set.

Many a player who can block my cross court RAMBO opening loop will not attack the 4th ball if I do a short or deep push. When I attack the 5th ball, it is so much more effective. You cannot over-do that tactic either, but you can lean on it.

It makes sense, opponent is set and ready/waiting like a cat for na attack, but when you don't give it, their next shot is low quality, then BANG, you hammer away and it is point over.

It's a tough lesson to learn. A few players at my club serve a short-low-dead ball which I like to flip with my backhand which I'm very consistent at, and place it well too. But I can't load this ball up on spin and I would imediately find myself being ran back and fourth, or playing right into their strength by these counter topspin players. I was stubborn, thinking "being first to attack give me advantage and i'm always attacking first".

Then I found out if I just chopped their dead ball to them and they chopped it back, I could REALLY load up on that ball and they couldn't play as comfortably. Or if they managed to flip my attack I'd sometimes be waiting to just SMACK that ball back and give them a taste of their own medicine. After all, a counter topspin player's loop probably isn't as strong as a looper's.

That is the spirit Shuki.

After the knee injury which I had 2 weeks ago, I came back to competing in a small tournament, an inter faculty tournament. Last year our faculty won easily, so I thought this year will probably the same and it will be a good warm up for me to get back into training. Nope. There was a guy who had trainings 5-6 years ago, who was very good with the foundation skills. He beat me in the preliminary round 2-0 when we played games of up to 7 (idk why such rules).
Then as the 2nd team finishing the preliminary round, we get to play them again in the finals. This time I said to myself, I really wanna beat him to win it for the team and to get my revenge. This time, we agreed to play normal games up to 11. I lost the first set 8-11, then from losing 10-7 on 2nd game, i hung on to win 16-14. The final set was very similar, winning after many duce at 15-13.
Unfortunately my teammates lost their singles and doubles, so we ended up getting 2nd place this year.
The lesson I learned today, is to really work on my 3rd ball attacks against good players. Against weaker players, their return of serve is often of a lower quality, which makes it alot easier to execute a 3rd ball attack than say in a tight match, where the opponent is of similar skill level or higher.
Second thing is match mentality. My friend told me that from observation, I was playing alot more defensive, and usually I am an attacker. I think it is due to the anxiety as well as the other player's skill level, which made me more hesitant and as a result, I ended up backing away from the table. At times even went to do lobs, which is not something I practice.
Third thing is, I realise that in these matches, when I am nervous, I forget alot of the serves that I do. Especially my usual serves, I don't use them, and instead I moved on to do serves which I would use less regularly in normal games where I am not stressed.
In bottom line, I need to practice more 3rd ball attacks with good players, and continue to develop my match mentality to play out my style and use my serves haha

JeffM said:

After the knee injury which I had 2 weeks ago, I came back to competing in a small tournament, an inter faculty tournament. Last year our faculty won easily, so I thought this year will probably the same and it will be a good warm up for me to get back into training. Nope. There was a guy who had trainings 5-6 years ago, who was very good with the foundation skills. He beat me in the preliminary round 2-0 when we played games of up to 7 (idk why such rules).
Then as the 2nd team finishing the preliminary round, we get to play them again in the finals. This time I said to myself, I really wanna beat him to win it for the team and to get my revenge. This time, we agreed to play normal games up to 11. I lost the first set 8-11, then from losing 10-7 on 2nd game, i hung on to win 16-14. The final set was very similar, winning after many duce at 15-13.
Unfortunately my teammates lost their singles and doubles, so we ended up getting 2nd place this year.
The lesson I learned today, is to really work on my 3rd ball attacks against good players. Against weaker players, their return of serve is often of a lower quality, which makes it alot easier to execute a 3rd ball attack than say in a tight match, where the opponent is of similar skill level or higher.
Second thing is match mentality. My friend told me that from observation, I was playing alot more defensive, and usually I am an attacker. I think it is due to the anxiety as well as the other player's skill level, which made me more hesitant and as a result, I ended up backing away from the table. At times even went to do lobs, which is not something I practice.
Third thing is, I realise that in these matches, when I am nervous, I forget alot of the serves that I do. Especially my usual serves, I don't use them, and instead I moved on to do serves which I would use less regularly in normal games where I am not stressed.
In bottom line, I need to practice more 3rd ball attacks with good players, and continue to develop my match mentality to play out my style and use my serves haha

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IMO, you handled this tournament pretty well, congratulations. The changes in your game are most likely to happen because of the pressure of playing in a tournament. Just try to attend more competition play and you will get slowly used to it and will have a more usual play at tournaments. Saving 3 match balls to win a dispute in the decider+deuce against a player who has beaten you previously is already some good progress.

Yes, you obviously played well, JeffM. What I find about people who tend to play differently under pressure from how they play in practice is mostly three things.
1. Practice
2. Spin
3. Movement/footwork.

Practice is important as you have to get used to playing a certain way to commit to playing that way even under pressure.

Spin is next because I remember how differently I used to play in my club vs what used to happen when I left my club. I noticed that my club mates didn't have that problem and then when I started spinning more, the problem largely disappeared as I learned how to adapt my spin strokes to the environment and the plastic ball, while my hitting strokes were much more dependent on things like the environment (air pressure) and my timing. I also found it easier to adjust to the opponent's timing once I learned to spin as I could play slower opponents more consistently. It's very easy to be used to playing a fast topspin player and then get to play a slow pips player who messes up your timing. Your protection against this is to adapt your spin game to the pace of the player.

Movement is important because if you don't read and move to the ball, you tend to get anxious and this affects the quality of shots you can consistently play. It is very valuable when struggling to look at whether your feet are doing the right things. In fact, I try pretty hard to sweat these days before playing so that my feet are at the right level of activity. I have found that it takes me too many matches to activate my feet so I try to activate them as early as possible with jumping jacks and quick jogs.

@NextLevel: it is too bad your knees don't like shadow drills too much. That is my favorite way to get the sweat going to start. And all the important joints in your body will be better lubricated and more ready for real action if you can get yourself to break a little bit of a sweat before you are at the table. So good idea to do things that get that for you but are not hard on your knees.

==

Next subject. Last night I played a guy who is 2100-2200. I played him once before. He doesn't have to play hard against me. I can tell he is not tightening the clamps down. But I played him really well anyway. In the first game he was coasting and I almost took the game. In the second game it looked like he kept thinking he would come back and take the game but I made the money shots and got the game from him. First time I got a game from him. Then, at 1-1, he upped his game enough so that he had control of the game the whole time.

He still was not playing all out. I've seen that and it looked different. But he was not just letting me take control of the points and he was playing with an extra level of spin and focus.

So, for me it felt good to be able to get a player that much better than me to focus a little more. And I did not mess up and make silly mistakes when he was more focused. Which is what usually happens against higher level players. The level of their shots causes me to mess up on things that, on the surface, look like they should be easy. But I was reading the balls much better and so my short game didn't simply kill me.

My short game and my receive of serve both made me happy. I doubt if I have ever received serve as well or played short game as well.

Interesting what not playing as much can do! [emoji2]

It feels that by having my table time limited, that certain things have sunk into place and my brain processing, reaction time and reading of different responses and choosing an intelligent response were happening much better than usual.

Right now, I am thinking of a play where I served heavy backspin expecting a long push or an opening loop, because what I gave is not so easy to push short. Well, I got a real high quality short push.

In the past I would have gone in trying to open on it by default and I would have either messed up or given an easy ball to counter. Instead, I went in showing flip and dropped it short. He read it and dropped short again. But it was not quite as high quality as the first short ball and I was able to get a better opening off of it.

I know he could have opened on my serve and on my short ball. I know he was not playing hard. But I did not simply mess up on something deceptive that shouldn't be as hard as I usually make it. So, I was happy with my in game reading.

Also, his serves were almost all to my FH side and I have a much harder time with that usually. And I really handled his serves well mixing touch pushes with over the table loops and flips so that my receive was not too predictable. Improvement one step at a time.

Tonight I get to hit with Edmund for the first time in months. We are planning to film. So I should have some decent footage of it. Looking forward to that.


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NextLevel said:

I seriously doubt that.

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Some of us who want to play TT are on the "I am not good enough to try this and that or practice this and that" plan. This is a big mistake. You should take the opportunity to practice EVERY kind of offensive shot and situation that you think will show up in your games and add in some defensive practice (blocks, lobs and fishes) as well. If you don't practice counter attacking attacks at your current level, you will be like me starting to practice them at the 2000 level and find out that your counterattack are stuck at the 1600 level for a long time because you didn't get a chance to use them as your level rose.

What do I mean? If you are a 1200 player, it is easier to counterattack a 1200 loop than it is a 1500 loop. So you are better of learning to counterattack with Good technique so that you can use that counter vs 1200 loops and it will get better as you get better. That is my view anywayso.

The opposing view is that it is easier to build correct strokes where nothing exists. This is true but you can't build safe instincts without strokes, and trying to put that ball on the table with a made up stroke will fill in instincts that do not get the job done.

So practice counterattack ingredients loops, no matter your level. Your instincts as you get better will thank you for it. Or you will be like me, a player who counterlooping at an 1800 level trying to fight 2200 players with blocks and toothpicks.

This is the same with serving. Do not wait until you are 2000 to learn 2000 level serve technique. Learn it now so it grows with you as you get better. Or you will be scare to use serves that you haven't used to a high enough level to build the control you need to execute them.

NextLevel said:

Some of us who want to play TT are on the "I am not good enough to try this and that or practice this and that" plan. This is a big mistake. You should take the opportunity to practice EVERY kind of offensive shot and situation that you think will show up in your games and add in some defensive practice (blocks, lobs and fishes) as well. If you don't practice counter attacking attacks at your current level, you will be like me starting to practice them at the 2000 level and find out that your counterattack are stuck at the 1600 level for a long time because you didn't get a chance to use them as your level rose.

What do I mean? If you are a 1200 player, it is easier to counterattack a 1200 loop than it is a 1500 loop. So you are better of learning to counterattack with Good technique so that you can use that counter vs 1200 loops and it will get better as you get better. That is my view anywayso.

The opposing view is that it is easier to build correct strokes where nothing exists. This is true but you can't build safe instincts without strokes, and trying to put that ball on the table with a made up stroke will fill in instincts that do not get the job done.

So practice counterattack ingredients loops, no matter your level. Your instincts as you get better will thank you for it. Or you will be like me, a player who counterlooping at an 1800 level trying to fight 2200 players with blocks and toothpicks.

This is the same with serving. Do not wait until you are 2000 to learn 2000 level serve technique. Learn it now so it grows with you as you get better. Or you will be scare to use serves that you haven't used to a high enough level to build the control you need to execute them.

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I totally agree with this.

Edmund was teaching me how to counterloop slow spinny loops before I was able to really loop. And the funny thing is, for a while it felt like trying to bend a spoon with my mind. But now I have the feel and I have counterlooped off guys who are 2100 and done it decently. I have also counterlooped of Mike Landers, Paul David and Matthew Khan and done pretty darn well even though I know they were not trying to spin me off the table. They were still all impressed by my ability to track the ball and my touch on counterlooping.

And that is one of the things about a counterloop. If your opponent has the spin and the speed on the shot. You don't need a lot of effort. You just need good touch, timing and whip action/acceleration. You use their force to give your shot power.

It is worth practicing how to spin over the ball with a good snap right now.

And if you have read and understood NL's comments from a while back about the relationship between a counter-hit and a block that practice helps you develop the stroke for a counterloop.

The counterloop could even be the same size stroke as thee counter-hit. You are just adding the whip and the loop contact. And when you are comfortable with that it is not hard to add a fuller swing.


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Btw: you can ask Der_Echte or PPH. On Saturday during doubles I was counterlooping a lot of both of their loops. Shots Der_ was sure would not come back. [emoji2]


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NextLevel said:

Some of us who want to play TT are on the "I am not good enough to try this and that or practice this and that" plan. This is a big mistake. You should take the opportunity to practice EVERY kind of offensive shot and situation that you think will show up in your games and add in some defensive practice (blocks, lobs and fishes) as well. If you don't practice counter attacking attacks at your current level, you will be like me starting to practice them at the 2000 level and find out that your counterattack are stuck at the 1600 level for a long time because you didn't get a chance to use them as your level rose.

What do I mean? If you are a 1200 player, it is easier to counterattack a 1200 loop than it is a 1500 loop. So you are better of learning to counterattack with Good technique so that you can use that counter vs 1200 loops and it will get better as you get better. That is my view anywayso.

The opposing view is that it is easier to build correct strokes where nothing exists. This is true but you can't build safe instincts without strokes, and trying to put that ball on the table with a made up stroke will fill in instincts that do not get the job done.

So practice counterattack ingredients loops, no matter your level. Your instincts as you get better will thank you for it. Or you will be like me, a player who counterlooping at an 1800 level trying to fight 2200 players with blocks and toothpicks.

This is the same with serving. Do not wait until you are 2000 to learn 2000 level serve technique. Learn it now so it grows with you as you get better. Or you will be scare to use serves that you haven't used to a high enough level to build the control you need to execute them.

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NL, I think you are right. Although my training is a little bit limited, and I devote most of it to improve my first attack, I will try to do some counterlooping drills in the meantime.

I don't think he meant counterlooping, from what I understood he wants you try to play the 5th and the 7th balls in practice. The transition from the opening spinny loop to the 5th ball is not easy , what I experienced while practicing it is that its more about the preparation in terms of backswing , if you are getting a good third ball in , I would keep the 5th ball stroke shorter to start with and try to take it a the top of the bounce and cover ... Counterlooping is different and probably easier depending on how consistent your opponent is, atleast the crosscourt variation of it we all love to show off

Ilia Minkin said:

NL, I think you are right. Although my training is a little bit limited, and I devote most of it to improve my first attack, I will try to do some counterlooping drills in the meantime.

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ttmonster said:

I don't think he meant counterlooping, from what I understood he wants you try to play the 5th and the 7th balls in practice. The transition from the opening spinny loop to the 5th ball is not easy , what I experienced while practicing it is that its more about the preparation in terms of backswing , if you are getting a good third ball in , I would keep the 5th ball stroke shorter to start with and try to take it a the top of the bounce and cover ... Counterlooping is different and probably easier depending on how consistent your opponent is, atleast the crosscourt variation of it we all love to show off

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I used to do a lot of regular footwork drills that start with a backspin serve, i.e. that contain 3rd and 5th ball attacks in the beginning of the serie.

The actual thing that helped me counterloop better was being on the receiving side of a drill where someone else is working on third ball attack. They serve, you push, they loop, you go for it and counterloop their attack and keep going. When you get the touch to counterloop those spinny opening loops, then it seems easy to loop whatever comes back after your third ball when the drill is reversed and you are doing the third ball attack.


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Will that not solve your current issue ?

Ilia Minkin said:

I used to do a lot of regular footwork drills that start with a backspin serve, i.e. that contain 3rd and 5th ball attacks in the beginning of the serie.

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ttmonster said:

Will that not solve your current issue ?

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No, because he only does it against blocks. He needs to do it against loops and punch blocks as well. Many people say that such stuff is advanced and never try it but what I have learned is that you try everything and you see what you like and end up being good at. Don't put anything as being above your level. Just decide whether it shows up often enough in your games for you to focus on it. Because it is easier to learn the correct stroke and let it grow with you than to have a bad stroke then one day start the journey of learning a good one. Technique will always be refined but it is hard to retrain instincts to approach balls differently. If you block all the time, you may block forever.

I have a question for those who are good with BH flick. When you're receiving an empty or topspin serve, flicking is easier since you don't have to lift the ball up and just flick it straight away on the top of the bounce. But when you're receiving a double bounce back-spin ball, should you receive it on top of the bounce or after the ball dips a bit like an opening loop?

My service receive is really weak and ironically, it's something a player needs to excel at to play in most competitions. Since you're not going against a pro, you won't know what kind of serves the enemy has.