Knowing when to change rubber type (or not)?

I am using short pips on forehand and know Falcks coaches that put pimple on him personally since i have had them as coaches.

It is way to early to put short pimple on him. He should try to learn to loop for atleast some years, Maybe More or less five years.

To not have Tried to learn to loop is not a good reason to change to short pimples. I played for Maybe six, serven years before i changed because i had worked alot on the loop But never became satisfied.

I am also a part time coach for 10 years. I have also put short pimple on one of my players forehand. He have Maybe played 3,4 years. I regret this since it was to early.

Part of my regrets is that short pimple is much more limited than an inverted, harder to play with and harder to become good with in my opinion. And Maybe his forehand loop would have become good.

So the short answer is that he should try to learn to loop then after some years, if he have not fixed his loop by then he can try short pimples. But Maybe there are rare cases when players have a natural flathit. But you need to have played atleast some years to see that. In the beginning almost No players have a good loop with spin.

Try working on the technique. Try closing te angle of the racket so he comes over the ball then accelerate fast with the forearm and brush the ball. That way he Will get more topspin.

If you post a video We can help you further.

I think it is awesome that you are helping your son and are interested. So it is great that you are Asking here. I Do not know your profession. I used to study to a psychologist. Your thinking and reasoning here are almost like i would have been working as a psychologist only after one year of education. Bad example haha. But Maybe you see my point. It takes years to learn the strokes well, and We need to let it take that time. We can not expect that We can Do everything and Do it good in the beginning.

I hope i was not rude in the last part of my text. Just wanted to put things in a perspective.

Good luck.

I would not suggest changing the rubber type.
The way you describe his errors its obvious that he hits flat, but thinking that he is executing a top spin.
He just need to develop more consistent top spin technique.
In future he may switch, or not, to SP, but for now a SP rubber would hinder his development.

Should he change to SP?

No. No. No. No. No

Hell no.

Is he having one to one coaching or group coaching?

Like others have said, it’s a technique issue, not an equipment issue.

If hes only ever had group coaching, it’ll be hard for him to develop quickly. One to one is the way to go.

Short pips ups will place a very low ceiling for him in my opinion, and whilst he might have some luck early on, his peers will soon blow past him and he’ll never catch up.

I Do not know about low ceiling. I think i beat the majority here and Falck show it is possible to become good.

But you need to change after several years of training, for the rigth reasons and your coach need to know how to play with pimples.

I also think an inverted rubber is in general easier to play with, have more advantages and Do not need as much training as short pimple play so if you can loop well with inverted there are not really any reasons to change.

He can loop ok on training but it's just the matches he starts to flat hit more? He just needs more experience and training. He hasn't been playing long.

Lula said:

I Do not know about low ceiling. I think i beat the majority here and Falck show it is possible to become good.

But you need to change after several years of training, for the rigth reasons and your coach need to know how to play with pimples.

I also think an inverted rubber is in general easier to play with, have more advantages and Do not need as much training as short pimple play so if you can loop well with inverted there are not really any reasons to change.

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Sorry, was in a rush this morning and should probably have elaborated a little more.

My belief is that unless you have SP specific coaching and really work hard at it - Your ceiling will be lower than most other players.

On the whole, there aren't going to be the coaches who can get you to the same highs that you'd achieve using inverted rubbers - There will of course be exceptions, but at times, Table Tennis is a law of averages.

If the kid isn't going to be training a lot, have a SP specific coach, and really work hard (as in, professional level hard) - and lets face it, that applies to 99.9% of the people in the UK - I believe SP will give you a lower ceiling than inverted.

The key thing is does the OP want his son to become professional? If no, don't worry about it. If yes, then give it a try.

zeio said:

The key thing is does the OP want his son to become professional? If no, don't worry about it. If yes, then give it a try.

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It's not necessarily just about that, but I follow your point.

His son is only 10, and hasn't been playing that long.

From the sounds of it, he hasn't learnt the strokes fully yet (or if he has, he doesn't do them properly in matches) - This will come with experience.

Switching to SP would be a mistake in the long run, and whilst he may not reach professional standard, I believe he'd be hindered down the line if he used SP at 10 years old.

It's probably way early to be thinking about professional he's a beginner and may drop table tennis at any moment because that's what kids do. Also if he did want him to be pro I fail to see how giving him SP at this stage would be an advantage. Seems like a disadvantage.

FruitLoop said:

It's probably way early to be thinking about professional he's a beginner and may drop table tennis at any moment because that's what kids do. Also if he did want him to be pro I fail to see how giving him SP at this stage would be an advantage. Seems like a disadvantage.

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I think the advantage would be that he could potentially get used to SP relatively quickly, and when he plays against most other 10 year olds, they'd not have a clue what to do.

But...... This where my "ceiling" metaphor came in - Once the other kids developed using inverted rubbers, I think they'd fly by him.

I find it funny that We are still discussing this. I am not the best coach in the world and We members Do not know everything But i think We all can agree on that keep playing with inverted at the moment is the best option.

He is 10 years old and have just started. There is No way to see now if he would be good with short pimples or not because he have not had the time to learn the proper strokes yet. He need to use inverted for several more years to see how his loop and feel for spin develops. If you change to short pimple now he has No chance to learn the loop. It is like putting long pimples on his backhand because he likes pushing at the moment, then he Will not learn a proper backhand.

I am Very very confident and certain that Falck played several years with inverted and Tried learning to loop well before changing to short pimples.

If he can do fh loop in training then equipment has nothing to do with it. Flat hitting in matches is just a stress response.

Even if in another year he is still reverting to flat hitting under pressure, I'd be more inclined to change his coach than switch to SP.

Maybe you can learn to loop with a short pimple rubber, But if you are going to loop you should keep the inverted rubber. It is still two very difference things to use short pimple and inverted, you can not play the same stroke successfully with both of the rubbers.

Short pimple Will always have the disadvantage to inverted that short pimples can not create spin as well so it is not as safe because the ball Will have less arc. There are advantages and disadvantages with both of the rubbers.

I somewhat agree with the above that If he Do not learn to loop with spin Maybe it is better to change the coach. The reason to change to short pimple should be that his forehand loop is not good enough ans he is naturally better at flathitting compared to creating spin.

StuartMarquis said:

I 100% take your point on this, and he will carry on using inverted for now. But what is interesting is that even though we're talking about using SP's, we're still viewing the use of SP's "through the lense" of double inverted play in the sense that the "proper" stroke is deemed to be an inverted loop, and he should only switch to SP's if he fails to develop this "proper" stroke. But if you view the game through a SP lense, then an inverted loop is never the proper stroke to begin with. If I were to change him to SP's now then it is true that he'd have no chance to properly learn an inverted loop, but if he's playing with SP then he's no need to learn how to play an inverted loop anyway!

I've spoken to Mattias Falck over facebook a few times and he told me that he switched to SP's when he was about 14/15. So he certainly did play for several years with inverted before switching to the pimples. But the question is, has Mattias benefited from playing inverted for several years only to then switch, or would he now be an even better player if he'd switched to SP's even earlier, or had only ever used SP's to begin with?

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I think ii is often view so because inverted is the more common way of playing and coaches know more about this. I can agree that it is often some hate against using other kind of rubbers, but i think that is much because coaches do not have knowledge about them.

Personally i believe that it is easier to learn all the strokes and learn spin with inverted rubbers so it is best to start with it. One of the reason i think players should use it for a while before changing to pips, like in mine och Falcks case is that maybe we had developed an awesome forehand loop with some training. Like your son, maybe his best shot will be his forehand loop,but we will never know that if we put pimples on him now. But of course we can say the same thing about pimples.

I think an inverted rubber is superior to other kind of rubbers, they are simply better, are easier to play with and it is also proably be easier to become good with them. But i think that coaches with less knowledge do not want their players to try other rubber because they can not teach that, and that is not good. I think everyone should try different rubbers when they have played for a couple of years if they think they will become better with it. We should try to make our strengths better with material.

It is hard to argue about this what ifs, maybe Falck had become better if he still played with inverted. We will never know that.