Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

Looks like a nice club UpsidedownCarl

Gene Tuttle said:

I have not been playing the app but I will now. The problem is I can tell you as soon as he begins the serve motion what is coming but I cannot seem to get my blade angle correct to get it back without setting myself up. By the time I get the touch correct I have lost 4 or 5 points to the service and I cannot come back. It is a tomahawk serve from a right hander. They serve it with combo sidespin/underspin rotating from my left to right. If I was to just hold my blade vertical the ball would want to go down and to my left. I was told after the match by a much better player that I could just slightly open my blade and just hit it flat with little forward motion or flip it. What I need is a practice partner to give me that serve over and over until I can return it short or long and remove my 50% chance to leave it in the net and the other 50% pop it up for a poly sandwich.

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The simplest way to return that serve (even if a little passive) is with a backhand push as the backhand naturally touches the left side of the ball. Otherwise, you need to push with your forehand contacting the left side of the ball. If you learn to create angles that stop the spin in general when returning serves, basic serve return becomes much easier and facilitates aggressive serve return more easily too.

Rode bike (what the choice of an utter fool !!) 26 km to club last night for league, won my table 4-0, then rode back like an even worse fool... and rode right by my turn-off from the trail... which gave me another 6 km of extra riding. I was already out of pedaling energy 5 km before that.

I really struggled to stay awake at work today. My body and legs were not nearly as sore as I thought they would be, but say it for sure, I do NOT have any bicycle fitness what so ever. I will try to do this once a week this summer and see how the fitness comes along. I measured the time. 26 km there 1.4 hrs. 32 km coming back 1.25 hrs. That will give me an indication of my fitness/technique and motivation.

I am a solid 225 lbs, maybe if I cracked under 200 I would do a half marathon.

Boogar, I do not believe my ride was very fast. I had all manner of people of both genders pass me up on the trail without looking like they were exerting much effort. I was prolly doing 75% of their pace if I was lucky. Of course, I am at a small disadvantage with a hybrid road/city bike not quite adjusted and fitted (got a lot of stuff adjusted and next ride will be better).

The bike trail and city streets over that distance had maybe a total of 100-150 meters of total climb each way (in tiny chinks), so relative flat travel. Even on weak inclines I waz struggling. A lot had to do with fitness. Some of it had to do with bike saddle and such not adjusted. Some of it was I am 100 kg and carried another 10 kg of stuff.

The ones passing my by had $2000+ road bikes built for racing... and they were prolly very fit. My bike is a hybrid, so you dont get the same efficient position riding to help pedal and cut wind, but you get to be upright when you need it.

Edit: The return leg was easier, it had more slight decline on the trail, and temps were way cooler, so I could ride in top high gear at 30+ kph for good stretches, plus I was motivated, until I ran totally out of energy 10km from home. I was motivated, I wanted to hit the mart before it closed to get a Fosters as a reward for completing the ride in a good time. False motivation can motivate.

Der, you keep that up and you might drop more weight than just getting down to 200. Good job.

Sounds like you deserved chicken and beer rather than just beer.


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

Bad thing about it, after not even half the can, the stuff didn't taste as good as I though. Had to commit alcohol abuse and pour out half the can.

I was prolly too thirsty and wore out for beer, so it was good I had only half. All those sugar/alcohol at night right before bed isn't good anyway.

I will do better eating home grown green leafy veggies no it is summer and they grow than working out. I have been working out and still was at 225 lbs.

I bet riding the bike builds up your calves and adds spring to your footwork.

Of course, because he took apart the bicycle , filled the hollow aluminium tubes with nails, and now its a beast !! ... thats why the speed on the way back was much faster , and the trail was clean of any nails ....

Gene Tuttle said:

I bet riding the bike builds up your calves and adds spring to your footwork.

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Played yesterday but no videotape (skipped Monday and Tuesday for travel). I tend to experiment a lot when the camera is not on and I am trying to work on holding the ball even longer than I currently do. My knees started hurting yesterday after a tough match and another match where I Tried to move into position to kill the ball to shorten the point. Then I lost really badly to a guy who I had beaten 3-0, then 3-2. So we played a fourth match and I tried to play with sidespin rather than topspin so that I would not have to hit the ball as hard (he also backed off the table and often didn't put much on the ball). I won 3-1 and I will look into honing this game to a high level. Will practice tonight and share video.

Drove to Lubbock yesterday and used the games as a way to work on my backhand. I was concentrating on trying to flip short serves and staying patient on high no spin returns so I do not just hit them flat and off the table. The people I play with there will not practice, only play games so I just use the games as practice and ignore the score.

Boogar said:

Do you guys have suggestions as to how i can get a slow super spinny loop with my backhand? As of now i can open up with the backhand pretty consistently, but not with alot spin variation.

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Practice, practice, practice. Use a circular upper arm motion to whip the wrist around the side of the ball - don't try to spin hard behind it,

I try to teach it here:

--https://youtu.be/N04Nb52GKfU?t=2144--

This too:

Boogar said:

Good attiitude Gene. It can really be tidious to have no one around to train.
What kind of flip do you use?

I myself like to do the backhand bananaflick. its so overpowered Yesterday i tried to use this stroke against all balls my opponent threw at me and it worked most of the times. I even managed to open up his heavy push into my forehand with the backhand bananaflick, meaning i hit the ball with the bh side on the far right side of my body. After that we just looked at each other like wtf... how is that even possible xD

Today im going to teach the juniors again and will later on work on new serve variations and backhand loops against backspin.

Do you guys have suggestions as to how i can get a slow super spinny loop with my backhand? As of now i can open up with the backhand pretty consistently, but not with alot spin variation.

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I agree it's about practice, but if you have a robot or someone to feed you balls it's so much easier to try different ways to go after the same balls looking to the results.

I feel like that is the way I will develop most of my strokes and when it comes to the game you just adapt and fine tune it to use without being in great position.

I always let out the best top secrets when NL has his camera off.

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I when into my little club yesterday and had some good matches that tested me and gave me some things to work on. It's hard to gage my development in relation to ratings because very few people at my club has a official rating anymore. My club is not the high lel club in town and its core players are mostly retired good natured men, but it's times for play fit my schedule. I had some good wins, But the best thing was I played a good player that visits the club some what regularly. The visiter actually still plays enough torments to keep a rating which is somewhere in the 1600's, And he kept a rating in the 1750 to 1780's several years. I lost to the visiter 0-3 which does not sound good but I took him to deuce twice and 9-11 in the last game. He's a control player not exactly defense but just the type of player that reads spin really well, has a developed in game strategy, with strong counters. I had good success on third ball opportunities and countering 5 ball off my serves. His serves are not really tough buy them self but they placement is very good with varied or often little spin with 3rd ball attack in mind. Really short to the forehand serve was eating me up. if I flipped it with my back hand his counter was to my back hand deep and I found myself out of place and my short forehand returns need work against better players. I was very happy that my serves had good success against him basically buy varying spin but giving similar looks. I have played him probably 15 times over the last year and I can say he's really good at reading spin because of this I do think he was over confident at returning my serves. it was not until early in the second game that he smiled at me that he realized i was changing and at least some what disguising spin and amounts of spin on purpose. That was a nice moment because because from his reactions I could tell he just thought he netted or popes up a fluke or poorly spun ball. Buy the end of our match I definitely had his full attention and i was still able to have success. And after out game we just hit forehands and backhands and work on flips together. He was able to give me some good feed back and tips. I Still need to hide my intentions more with serve but there was nice signs of improvement against a better player in a few areas, and it gave me some things I need to work on.
So starting on Friday I will be working on short forehand returns and recovering after the returns in drills. Also I had a few key moments where I was overly eager and I rushed my attacks after getting a ball I could attack. he worked with me and talked about being patient and always thinking about contact zone. other things I took away for match play is being more mindful of what my opponents strengths are not playing into them. I hit and returned to his back hand way to much out of habit even though that was his stronger side and I had success to his forehand he was very good at returning and countering with his backhand. Also I found myself reacting to the ball to much. I need to be picking things up earlier. Looking back at it this was a missed opportunity and since he was a better player this stood out more than usual. These last two points require me to be less concerned with myself more mindful of the opponent.


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Boogar said:

Thanks for the replies

Another problem i have with the backhand stroke is that i give the ball the wrong side spin, meaning it gets sidespin curving to the left from my perspective. Do you have any experience with that?

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Yes. It really depends on how you are swinging at the ball. There is nothing wrong with fading sidespin on any stroke as long as the stroke is still predominantly topspin.

I went to a relatively far club to train again. I went there soon after I left the hospital. Normally I like to clean my bat before my next hitting, but this time, I did not get to do so, either I have been too busy or I have trained alot more frequently (the latter probably).

I like to train with this guy because he is a nice guy and 1 or 2 level higher than me. Before I went today, I asked him whether it is ok if I bring my camera to film it while we train. He said ok, so I went ahead and got some footage! I have more than an hour of footage, so I won't be showing all of it lol. But I chose the best point of the training session, hope you guys like it!
Some context of the point: It was during a drill, where he will serve, and I will push to him to his bh side until he opens up. Then it is free for all : P

Enjoy. I find it quite funny what he said after the point as well hahaha