Equipment Advice

says 2023 Certified Organ Donor
says 2023 Certified Organ Donor
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Sep 2011
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The softness or hardness will depend on your impact and what you are trying to do.

This will differ for everyone.

I can say from my years in Korea that the old school coaches who trained their players for lessons, use a low spin, high speed, close to the table game to develop.

The coaches would right away go for OFF++ blades (think Schlager Carbon and blades of that class) with an older Tensor medium firm sponge (Yasaka Extend HS) that is medium fast and control oriented.

Such a setup made it SO DAMN EASY to bang bang back and forth close to the table with only a little spin... given that the player impacted the ball at the right part of the strike zone and the ball was at least net high on the rise or at peak. Coaches would drill the dog-crap outta that stroke and very quickly, a player would have a strong at the table rally game. (but would utterly suck at most everything else like receiving serves or serve or topspin vs underspin) (but what the heck, so much to work on and you gotta start somewhere, Koreans believe base form and stroke and footwork before the other stuff)

So... depending on how you hit, you could use a lot of stuff.

Personally, I find for a counter-hitting game close to the table, it is damned difficult to beat and All to ALL+ wood blade with modern control oriented rubbers in the sponge softness a player prefers. (I prefer a softer almost FX softness, many prefer and EL or harder softness)

Why?

That ALL blade and control rubbers allows you to hit harder and get into the topsheet/sponge without crazy rebound... that all contributes to landing the ball at higher percentages when you are close to the table and go for more power.

With enough time and training, one would learn to adjust the grip pressure to grow touch with a faster setup and still land it. (assuming one gets all the fundamental stuff right... and it is damned difficult to do that alone without coach or effective training)
 
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Why woudn't you get a moderately faster blade if you wanted a faster blade: Like going from All+ (Yasaka Sweden Extra) to Off- or even Off rather than jumping from All+ to Off++++?

Well, hopefully it is fun to mess around with.

I would think about getting something more like a Stratus Power Wood or a Korbel instead. I know those are heavier than you may want. But they will be better for you if you want to continue to improve your technique.


You were correct in your feelings that I might get on with this blade. However, it wasn't the extra speed that I found difficult to manage but more the fact that it was impossible to generate anywhere near as much spin as I got from the Yasaka Sweden Extra even though I had TSP Ventus Soft rubber on the T11+ which I have found the spinniest rubber I've used. An interesting experiment nonetheless.
 
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says Spin and more spin.
says Spin and more spin.
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Dec 2010
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You were correct in your feelings that I might get on with this blade. However, it wasn't the extra speed that I found difficult to manage but more the fact that it was impossible to generate anywhere near as much spin as I got from the Yasaka Sweden Extra even though I had TSP Ventus Soft rubber on the T11+ which I have found the spinniest rubber I've used. An interesting experiment nonetheless.

Something you have to understand, those things you are talking about are not separate. That is part of why, when someone is developing their technique and improving, a blade that is too fast makes it much harder for them to learn the precision of contact that makes it so you could generate massive spin even with something like a T11.

A decently high level player can generate spin with something like that. Often they just don't want to. But you have to have very good technique, very good precision, exact control of how deep you let the ball penetrate into the topsheet and sponge to effectively spin with something very fast.

So, often when mid-level players get something that fast, them learning to generate more spin becomes a much harder task. Learning the precision with a blade that lets you hold the ball for that millisecond longer on the topsheet allows you to develop that precision.

And learning to generate more and more and more spin is the alpha and omega of higher level technique. Each level up you go, they are dealing with exponentially more spin production. Which also means you have to learn how to handle more spin. Part of how you learn that is directly connected with how you learn to generate more spin.
 
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