Differences in how to spin the ball: Chinese and European rubbers

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I'm not an equipment expert at all. I feel like I'm asking an extremely common sense question,

but for softer rubbers, you generate spin mainly by using the sponge? (as opposed to closing your racket more to spin the top of the ball for tacky rubbers)

I heard this while going through PingSkills (recommending resources for beginners) https://youtu.be/30zKrRSY0PE?t=140
and hearing that literally blew my mind. It's starting to make some sense to me now. I knew that was a factor, but I didn't think it was supposed to be the main factor. I've been playing my Tenergy like a Chinese rubber the whole time.

But I want to confirm with the equipment experts here. Do you guys feel that is true? Or am I completely wrong?

**********

As a follow-up, if that is true, doesn't that imply that in order to make a spinny shot with soft rubbers like Tenergy, you HAVE to make the ball go at least a certain speed (whatever speed the sponge launches the ball to)? You'd have to make the ball go pretty fast in order to put lots of spin on it.

I think I understand how blocking with soft rubbers would work in theory now, but I'd still like your thoughts on how blocking works with soft sponge. Do you still try to get the ball into the sponge when blocking?
 
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Well there is spin generated by the sponge and then by the topsheet. For many people it's easier to generate spin with softer rubbers because you can use the sponge even on low impact shots like slow opening loops. For harder sponges you either have to swing faster or use more of the topsheet which is a bit harder to do imho.

Tenergy is not a soft rubber although it's softer than classic Chinese rubbers. With Tenergy also the topsheet is super grippy and you can open up without using the sponge that much. You have to close your racket a lot anyway because its throw is super high (talking about Tenergy 05)
 
This difference is not only between Chinese and Euro, but between different Euro rubbers too.
Generally soft-hard rubber do matter the way Fabian explained.
In addition it depends on the particular combination between sponge hardness and topsheet hardness /plus gripp-tackiness/.
So there is a rubber for everyone and for every personal style.
 
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says Spin and more spin.
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David, I just wrote this a few days ago in a different thread. Perhaps this info will be helpful. I am sure NextLevel can add more to this.

I don’t know. Tenergy gets A LOT of spin. What makes H3 good is that it has a lot of control and so you can still swing full out and get the ball on the table and placed where you want it with full power.

Those giant swings that Ma Long takes would make it harder to have control with Tenergy. But with a compact and fast swing, a rubber like Tenergy excels.

Part of what you ought to know is that Tenergy and H3 generate spin in completely different ways.

H3 generates spin from topsheet, tangential contact and force. It is called topsheet spin.

Tenergy generates spin from what is termed mechanical spin. Here is how mechanical spin works:

You contact the ball while brushing. You make the contact deep enough for the ball to sink pretty far into the sponge but not far enough to hit the wood. As the ball sinks into the topsheet and sponge, the sponge wraps around a larger amount of surface area of the ball. Because the contact is tangential, as the ball sinks in, it stretches and distorts the topsheet as it compresses the sponge. As you do that you also hold the ball on the topsheet for a little longer. When the sponge and topsheet rebound it projects the ball out with a lot of spin. If you do the technique correctly and precisely much less effort will get you much more spin than you could hope to get with H3 and similar effort.

If you look at a guy like Timo Boll, in his prime, with T05, he had some of the spinniest loops in the pro circuit. But they were not as fast as Ma Long’s loops. Spinnier but not as fast. And he used much less effort.

So this is really much more about what you actually want.

H3 demands that you put full effort into all your shots and that your feet and body are in the right place to help your power. When that is the case you are able to take a much fuller swing while maintaining good control. The spin comes from the power you put into the shots. But if you put that power in, you get the results.

Spring sponge rubbers like Tenergy allow you to use the elasticity of the sponge and topsheet to create the extra spin. To utilize this, you need to have precision and good touch. Those are rewarded. But the full swing with raw power that H3 rewards, Tenergy will not reward in the same way. At a certain point the softer sponge of Tenergy will max out and you will get diminishing returns. The harder sponge of H3 with the tacky topsheet and less elasticity will reward more power.

But you better have amazing reset speed to use H3 effectively.


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy

A simple search for “mechanical spin table tennis” should get you good info and some decent graphic depictions.

And think about how fast the rebound of the topsheet can be. It is a tiny movement. But in that small space, the rebound of the distorted rubber is much faster than a human arm can move.


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy
 
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says Spin and more spin.
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What you need to create that distortion and rebound of the topsheet and sponge is touch and feeling. A slightly different touch and feeling than you would use for harder, tacky rubbers like H3.

Truthfully, you still should be able to spin over the ball with Tenergy or other catapult rubbers. It is just, how you touch the ball requires a slightly different finesse. Both kinds of rubbers require finesse. Just finesse that is a little different.


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Tenergy is not a soft rubber although it's softer than classic Chinese rubbers.

Indeed. If you want to test a feel of a really soft rubber, try Tenergy FX (or a ESN one of comparable hardness). My impression is that with an FX rubber it is possible to drive quite flat and still get OK spin. When I first tried T64FX on my friend's racket it felt like a magic wand that produced topspin almost no matter what I did :D With a 36-degree rubber it requires way more effort to get such effect from a flatter drive and brushing more is necessary in most cases. Just my two cents.
 
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One last detail on this subject. This is a quote from Killerspintt from an old and infamous thread. The post is great. And it gives some info on this subject in a very useful way.

It is possible to loop this ball by using "brut force", meaning as described by Pnachtwey, by reaching a very high paddle speed..........but it is also possible to loop this ball by touch.......has you described, by reaching a high dwell time (= "grabbing" the incomming spin).

Touch is everything in table tennis. I have faster arm speed on my FH loop than many of my team mates in my tt club, but a team mate is able to input incredible spin, more than me, even with is "slow motion" FH loop. He is able, thx to his touch, to deform the rubber even on "slow motion" strokes.

See this video of Shlager (serves) :

I do believe that anyone here can reach far higher bat speed on a pendelum serve than Schlager is using for most of his serves here. But nobody here is able to imput has much spin than Schlager. Thanks to his amazing touch, Schlager is able to input more deformation than us to his rubber, resulting to more spin than anyone of us, he is maximazing dwell time. And this is what you explain also at the end of your post, the acceleration is an important factor to reach a better dwell time/rubber deformation/higher spin.

Truthfully, this is one of my favorite posts of all time. Very well explained and it gave me a much better understanding of that feeling of the rubber grabbing the ball on those slow spinny loops vs backspin that I love so much. :)
 
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Thank you all for your reponses! After some practice today, I can definitely say that focusing on using the sponge to spin the ball gave me more consistent results (looping and flipping).

David, I just wrote this a few days ago in a different thread. Perhaps this info will be helpful. I am sure NextLevel can add more to this.

A simple search for “mechanical spin table tennis” should get you good info and some decent graphic depictions.

And think about how fast the rebound of the topsheet can be. It is a tiny movement. But in that small space, the rebound of the distorted rubber is much faster than a human arm can move.

Just out of curiosity, anybody, how would you describe spinning the ball with a rubber like Hurricane as opposed to a soft sponge?

EDIT: follow up question: with a soft sponge, it's supposed to spring the ball forward right? Doesn't that mean that it's doing some of the work for you? So you can focus on spinning more and not focus on sending the ball forward as much? Is that right?
 
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Thank you all for your reponses! After some practice today, I can definitely say that focusing on using the sponge to spin the ball gave me more consistent results (looping and flipping).



Just out of curiosity, anybody, how would you describe spinning the ball with a rubber like Hurricane as opposed to a soft sponge?

EDIT: follow up question: with a soft sponge, it's supposed to spring the ball forward right? Doesn't that mean that it's doing some of the work for you? So you can focus on spinning more and not focus on sending the ball forward as much? Is that right?

from a chopper here, for your extra q,

yes.

That also the reason why very easy to chop perpendicular to incoming ball using Tack Chop 2 or LP with thin rubber, the ball shall rebound back perpendicular to chop movement path, so chopper only need to focus on chopping.

with thick H3, I need to take incoming speed and spin into account, so my chop become much more lateral to incoming ball. :)

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