Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

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I agree with you fully. I'm not a mean spirited person and love sportsmanship, and I believe most people are quite civil. But sometimes it's clear it's part of the opponents game plan to try and ruffle your feathers. Some people lose the civility when they get the competitive mind set, no matter what sport it is, but I've run into perhaps the weirdest people in TT than in any other sport. If it's not part of your game you surely have to block it out, perhaps by forcing yourself to smile every time the opponent tries to get in your head. Show him you don't care, that you actually find it funny.

I agree, it's a part. My point being, if engaging in it endangers your own mental tranquility/focus, well, than that may be a too high price to pay. I too take notice of players trying to heckle me to get me out of it, and I just zone out from that rather then engage in it, for that reason. The tough part of that mental part of the game is not to let it get to you, and one of the little tricks for that is to ignore it completely (block it out) entirely at its earliest onsets.

But that gets harder as you counterstrike, and even harder if you consider a preemptive strike strategy of messing with your opponent by hammering on stuff like serve legality, timeliness of getting ready to serve or receive, and so on. At least for me, that's bound to break my concentration more than my opponent's.
 
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But sometimes it's clear it's part of the opponents game plan to try and ruffle your feathers. Some people lose the civility when they get the competitive mind set, no matter what sport it is, but I've run into perhaps the weirdest people in TT than in any other sport. If it's not part of your game you surely have to block it out, perhaps by forcing yourself to smile every time the opponent tries to get in your head. Show him you don't care, that you actually find it funny.

Exactly! The best revenge for people messing with you is refusing them to do so.
 
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ok i'm going to emit some small critic though. I feel sometimes you play your FH while going back at the same time. but somehow you manage to make a (very) good shot even in this situation. Also sometimes your left foot goes in front of you when hitting a FH, that results in a loss of power. Your FH is your better side of course, but BH is quite good as well.
 
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ok i'm going to emit some small critic though. I feel sometimes you play your FH while going back at the same time. but somehow you manage to make a (very) good shot even in this situation. Also sometimes your left foot goes in front of you when hitting a FH, that results in a loss of power. Your FH is your better side of course, but BH is quite good as well.

Yep I agree, are you sure you mean left foot? I often step in with my right foot and then I'm in a bad position to play the next shot, especially if it goes to my BH. I've been trying to work on it and making better use of my right hand as it's just down when I play, but that's less important right now.

I see what you mean about going back, like at 0.53 I do this. Maybe because I'm not leaned enough forward? Not sure why I do it.
 
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Yep I agree, are you sure you mean left foot? I often step in with my right foot and then I'm in a bad position to play the next shot, especially if it goes to my BH. I've been trying to work on it and making better use of my right hand as it's just down when I play, but that's less important right now.

I see what you mean about going back, like at 0.53 I do this. Maybe because I'm not leaned enough forward? Not sure why I do it.


The problem as I diagnose it, which may not make sense to you entirely, is that you play a lot of upper body table tennis. The good news is that you are often not taxing your upper arm, though you sometimes do. The bad news is that you are losing a lot of power from the lower body because you aren't use it to power the stroke. When you do, you do it with a two legged jump more often than a left hip turn. If you spent some time rebuilding your forehand and then focusing on spinning the left hip into position with adequate backswing on basic and some power shots, as opposed to jumping into the ball for power, you could make some real special things happen. Your left hip should be doing a lot more of the shaping and powering of the stroke that it currently does.
 
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Since I've been recording quite a lot the last 6 months or so I decided to put together a small compilation. Incidentally I also had some recordings from around the time I started playing which I put in there. Funny the way I saw table tennis back then compared to now. I really had no clue at all.


Are you british from the beginning?

I like it that you keep the racket high against topspin all the time. very good. I do think that maybe you can try to use the body as support in your strokes. Do not really need to rotate very much, just use it little. I think this will give you much more control, and aswell power in the forehand loop. Sine it seems like you not play very close to the table you should have some time to rorate the body a little more.
 
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The problem as I diagnose it, which may not make sense to you entirely, is that you play a lot of upper body table tennis. The good news is that you are often not taxing your upper arm, though you sometimes do. The bad news is that you are losing a lot of power from the lower body because you aren't use it to power the stroke. When you do, you do it with a two legged jump more often than a left hip turn. If you spent some time rebuilding your forehand and then focusing on spinning the left hip into position with adequate backswing on basic and some power shots, as opposed to jumping into the ball for power, you could make some real special things happen. Your left hip should be doing a lot more of the shaping and powering of the stroke that it currently does.

Thanks for this NL, I think I see what you mean. So I think I need to plant my left foot more firmly on the ground so I can spin my left hip back and forward.. and then not let both my feet leave the ground. I guess it should be more that the toes rotate a bit forward from the hip rotation but my feet shouldn't leave the ground the way they do sometimes. Hope that makes sense..

@Lula I'm half swedish/british.. brought up in sweden and then moved to England for some years. Thank you for your advice :)
 
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Thanks for this NL, I think I see what you mean. So I think I need to plant my left foot more firmly on the ground so I can spin my left hip back and forward.. and then not let both my feet leave the ground. I guess it should be more that the toes rotate a bit forward from the hip rotation but my feet shouldn't leave the ground the way they do sometimes. Hope that makes sense..

@Lula I'm half swedish/british.. brought up in sweden and then moved to England for some years. Thank you for your advice :)


Both feet can leave the ground if both feet can spin back and forth, though being planted is likely the way to go. IT's just that your upper body is very often spinning without being really spun by your lower body, either on the backswing or forward swing or both. I played this way for obvious reasons (knee issues), but I think for you, it's just a evolution of technique problem since it gave you optimal control and you got good power without the lower body. You don't push off the left foot when spinning it, it just collapses and lets you come forward. But if you planted on it, maybe a lot of topspin vs backspin multiball where you lean over that foot and then finish with a full body stroke to return to ready facing the table, then that would start a solution.

You should also try to finish more towards where you are playing the ball when you hit the ball hard. That would force you to line up the backswing better even when you hit the ball hard by turning and spinning the hip back and then forth. Of course in matches, and even on really powerful balls, no one does this when rushed, but it's to improve how the body supports the stroke. You are leaving power on the table with the lower body usage right now. I know TTEdge has brought up all this stuff already but just looking at it, those are my thoughts.
 
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Both feet can leave the ground if both feet can spin back and forth, though being planted is likely the way to go. IT's just that your upper body is very often spinning without being really spun by your lower body, either on the backswing or forward swing or both. I played this way for obvious reasons (knee issues), but I think for you, it's just a evolution of technique problem since it gave you optimal control and you got good power without the lower body. You don't push off the left foot when spinning it, it just collapses and lets you come forward. But if you planted on it, maybe a lot of topspin vs backspin multiball where you lean over that foot and then finish with a full body stroke to return to ready facing the table, then that would start a solution.

You should also try to finish more towards where you are playing the ball when you hit the ball hard. That would force you to line up the backswing better even when you hit the ball hard by turning and spinning the hip back and then forth. Of course in matches, and even on really powerful balls, no one does this when rushed, but it's to improve how the body supports the stroke. You are leaving power on the table with the lower body usage right now. I know TTEdge has brought up all this stuff already but just looking at it, those are my thoughts.

https://youtu.be/aK3NaT1Fh4M?t=27 When I'm hitting the FH's here at the start other than the last one.. am I doing it correctly or should I be rotating my hips even further back and forward? Ok I'm a bit stressed for time here as I'm doing fh all over the table.. but I think when I'm hitting FH's against block in practice what I'm doing is basically that.

I mean to spin my left hip I have to lean on to my left foot and have quite a lot of weight on it for me to push off that leg and spin my hip right?
 
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https://youtu.be/aK3NaT1Fh4M?t=27 When I'm hitting the FH's here at the start other than the last one.. am I doing it correctly or should I be rotating my hips even further back and forward? Ok I'm a bit stressed for time here as I'm doing fh all over the table.. but I think when I'm hitting FH's against block in practice what I'm doing is basically that.

I mean to spin my left hip I have to lean on to my left foot and have quite a lot of weight on it for me to push off that leg and spin my hip right?

Your last question, for backspin and way off the table, yes. You may not have a lot of weight but folding over the foot tends to put weight on it.

So the thing about the drill with is that I can't always tell in the beginning whether you are getting lag and the arm is snapping as a result or that you are consciously snapping your bicep. I have tried really hard to eliminate the heavy forearm snap out of my technique - it should be a small and limited action, IMO.

I do think the last 3 forehands, including the last big one are all conceptually correct.
 
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Your last question, for backspin and way off the table, yes. You may not have a lot of weight but folding over the foot tends to put weight on it.

So the thing about the drill with is that I can't always tell in the beginning whether you are getting lag and the arm is snapping as a result or that you are consciously snapping your bicep. I have tried really hard to eliminate the heavy forearm snap out of my technique - it should be a small and limited action, IMO.

I do think the last 3 forehands, including the last big one are all conceptually correct.

I'm trying to get rid of exactly this too. Someone in my club told me last year that I should snap my forearm more.. so I started doing that consciously and now after knowing better from ttedge I'm trying to get rid of it again and just letting my arm snap without any effort from the force of my lower body rotation. In the drill above I was trying to let the snap just happen, but maybe I'm still doing it a little bit.

So this stuff is a bit of a form follows function deal, when there's not much time I can't lean too much over my left foot to get the rotation going.

But look at LGY here https://youtu.be/lbDZH53LbsM?t=387
To me he is putting a lot of weight on his left foot for each FH. This is what imagine I should be doing.. obviously he's very fast so it's not easy doing it like he does it.

So I think I'm doing the right thing in practice.. it's just very hard to get it going in match play.
 
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I'm trying to get rid of exactly this too. Someone in my club told me last year that I should snap my forearm more.. so I started doing that consciously and now after knowing better from ttedge I'm trying to get rid of it again and just letting my arm snap without any effort from the force of my lower body rotation. In the drill above I was trying to let the snap just happen, but maybe I'm still doing it a little bit.

So this stuff is a bit of a form follows function deal, when there's not much time I can't lean too much over my left foot to get the rotation going.

But look at LGY here https://youtu.be/lbDZH53LbsM?t=387
To me he is putting a lot of weight on his left foot for each FH. This is what imagine I should be doing.. obviously he's very fast so it's not easy doing it like he does it.

So I think I'm doing the right thing in practice.. it's just very hard to get it going in match play.

To me, he isn't putting that much weight - the first loop in this sequence is what I would call putting on weight,
https://youtu.be/lbDZH53LbsM?t=461
and you are close enough to me at least to what he is doing on the shots I referenced. He is just a world class athlete who can get lower and into position much faster and play with more power. Looping backspin to me is when you fold over the knee and the weight is apparent.

Well, it is tough to do anything you don't feel you have mastered in match play if the goal is to win points rather than to execute what you practiced. It takes lots of multiball and drilling to make the body comfortable that the best way to play is the way you practiced to play unless you just force yourself to play that way, which usually results in losing points. The fact you can do it in practice is encouraging.
 
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@Richie
please forget what I said, i think Lula and NL spotted things much better than me.

I'm curious to see a whole game. Are you able to play a whole match like that ? and what does it take to win against you ?

He has posted some of his whole matches a while back. I think he played Xu Hui in one of them. But he can post them again. I think he is somewhere around 2250 based on my estimate. My estimate may be off of course.
 
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@Richie
please forget what I said, i think Lula and NL spotted things much better than me.

I'm curious to see a whole game. Are you able to play a whole match like that ? and what does it take to win against you ?

I appreciate any criticism. Always good to get different points of view.

The last few months or so my performance has been volatile as there's a few things I'm trying to change technically. TTedge and NL has helped me a lot. NL has especially helped me with my BH.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7rK3yGlGuI

This was probably my worst loss this season to a blocker.. though I realized I didn't play too badly despite the loss. And I know my placement of most of my shots and variation of serve against this guy was atrocious.
 
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That blocker did pressure you, @Richie, and made your game awkward to play. I think you are right in your observation that a different choice in serves, yes, but placement, certainly, might have destabilized his game.

NL and Lula have said smart things about your power transfer/balance, and you mention NL and Brett TTedge Clarke have helped you make technical changes. There's one thing I think I'm seeing, and that's a BH wrist snap that for some or other reason surprises me. Not saying it's wrong, it's just something that catches my eye. Is that the BH thing you've been working on?
 
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I've done some work on my bh which was non existent in games before. Lately I've put work into fh against backspin and making sure I use my body better/properly to drive my arm instead of just using my arm muscles. The same goes for bh, I want my body to drive the action more and I also understand better how the BH works thanks to NL. Before I thought it was important to just whip the wrist.. now I try to rotate my upper arm which I think should be driven by the body and then I imagine my forearm and wrist just fall into place. When I think of it like this everything feels much smoother and I can generate a lot more power.

I've posted these clips in the thread before
This was me about 2 and a half years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxhDTgY1bLw
and you can see the way I do fh against backspin the technique is completely wrong, I'm just using my arm. I've been doing this up until pretty recently. And you can see on my BH's that there's no body usage and I'm just trying to whip the ball with my wrist.

https://youtu.be/qpb_vrLCBX8?t=117 here's my bh about 5 months ago when I tried to change it. I'd say it's a bit different now from then and I'd hope I've developed it a bit more since I recorded that, but I'd have to record again to say for sure. I have never felt this much safety in my BH compared to before though. I'm no longer desperately trying to avoid hitting BH topspins, now it's what I want to do lol.

I'm curious what you mean about the BH wrist snap that surprises you?
 
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