Does tacky rubber slow down improvement?

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I have played with Chinese rubbers similar to DHS H3N the laste five years now. What I have found out is that you can benefit more from these rubbers more if your technique is better.I have never played with any Provincial or National H3, only commercial versions. I feel that it's my technique and foot work that is the boundary I have to extend all the time by hard work and practice.

My club is a very Stiga/Butterfly club, so I'm quite alone in the Chinese product area here :) I'm also the only one here brushing the ball, and I'm also the one all club members think have the most spin in the looping game...

I have tried the ordinary Tenergy 05, Dignics 05, Stiga DNA etc., but playing more brush strokes doesn't give me any effect. Ah. You know what I mean. Hybrids. I have only tried the Nittaku Sieger PK50. It just felt too mushy in a way, and the Xiom TAU II. The TAU II is really close to a H3N with a softer feel, so this one works really well. I just missed the last edge of the catapult effect that I got from H3N. By the way, I've tended to go for the hardest sponges the last year, and it suites me better. Better speed and it's easier to play in a more aggressive way.

Regarding blades. To use these rubbers and get the most out of them I have used Inner ALC blades like Yinhe V-14 Pro, DHS Power G5X and an all wood DHS Power G9. These blades gives me no vibrations when hitting the ball, and that feels better for me.Right now I use a DHS Hurricane 3 41deg and Yinhe Big Dipper 38deg with three layers of Haifu Seamoon booster, on these blades and it's the best for me so far.

Just go your own way. Don't start using "easy" rubbers because everyone says that you should :)

i wholeheartedly agree..
Especially what hard rubbers are concerned I also found them better for myself. I sold all my neo's and now only play with standard H3 .
I also think that inner force/inner layers work great with H3 commercial. I play with ALC and ZLC blades and i also have a quite stiff 5 wood blade.
Nothing fancy is needed

 

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I played with a lot of tensor, Chinese or hybrid rubbers in forhand. Now i´'m trying the New joola ZGR because i´dont like to boost and have metal issues with the cheating aspect. I also tried fastarc g1, genius, K1, dynaryz acc, vega x, ... i have good technique and can adapt to all the rubbers. Only vega x was difficult for me. Just what feels best to you. What clicks and what makes you search for mistakes in your own play instead of the rubbers. TT is a mental game. Feeling good about the gear you use is important
 
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while i completely agree with your statement re climate, I would like to add that the chinese tacky rubbers """CAN BE""" moisture and temperature sensitive. They will behave different when playing in dry warm conditions or cold humid conditions.

I play one night in a dry heated hall and the next night in a very cold humid hall and have always difficulties adjusting .

Yeah. I played a tournament in a hall that became very moist over the day, and what felt nice in the morning became a nightmare in the afternoon. Try to brush loop with a hard sponged anti rubber :D

 
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Most coaches are not equipment junkies and usually in EU including my country coaches are recommending few rubbers they like and that is it.
I will tell you what a national player that I spoke of before one year told me If I play with tacky chinese rubber I better stick with that for an year or more your technique will adapt to the rubber that is if you want to move and play forehand almost all the rally. When you give more to the tacky rubber that means spin and power the rubber will give you more back and the ball will be with crazy quality while a rubber like tenergy gives very good quality with a very short brushing action and stroke that is why people prefer it because eu tensor rubbers give more for less but no rubber will teach you going into the ball and brushing it like the chinese tacky rubber. If you brush too much and don't go into the ball the ball with drop to the net if you don't brush the ball and hit it the ball will go out.
Plus I don't think in general the technique to be crazy different most people who have used tacky chinese rubbers go to esn no problem you just have to get used to the feeling. There is a video of a woman coach on youtube yangyang in one of her videos she was saying that in one tournament she had to switch back and forth from hurricane 3 to tenergy 05 depending on opponents.
 
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Stick with what you like. Ma Long and Fan Zhendong weren't born to be at rating 3000. When they were at rating 1500, they were using tacky Chinese rubber. In contrast, most players in China believe tacky rubber is better for improvement than non-tacky.

It is nothing to do with tacky or non-tacky, you should use the one you like. Some people simply like what they like, and put their own preference on you. This behavior makes others uncomfortable and embarrassed but they just didn't consider others.
 
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while i completely agree with your statement re climate, I would like to add that the chinese tacky rubbers """CAN BE""" moisture and temperature sensitive. They will behave different when playing in dry warm conditions or cold humid conditions.

I play one night in a dry heated hall and the next night in a very cold humid hall and have always difficulties adjusting .

Believe me on this, where I live, very close to the Gulf of Mexico, it is a constant problem. And the one thing my clubmates and I can assure you is that ALL rubbers can be moisture and humidity sensitive! Some of my clubmates are originally from China and use tacky rubbers, I play with more conventional rubbers, and we all struggle with it.

 
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Most coaches are not equipment junkies and usually in EU including my country coaches are recommending few rubbers they like and that is it.
I will tell you what a national player that I spoke of before one year told me If I play with tacky chinese rubber I better stick with that for an year or more your technique will adapt to the rubber that is if you want to move and play forehand almost all the rally. When you give more to the tacky rubber that means spin and power the rubber will give you more back and the ball will be with crazy quality while a rubber like tenergy gives very good quality with a very short brushing action and stroke that is why people prefer it because eu tensor rubbers give more for less but no rubber will teach you going into the ball and brushing it like the chinese tacky rubber. If you brush too much and don't go into the ball the ball with drop to the net if you don't brush the ball and hit it the ball will go out.
Plus I don't think in general the technique to be crazy different most people who have used tacky chinese rubbers go to esn no problem you just have to get used to the feeling. There is a video of a woman coach on youtube yangyang in one of her videos she was saying that in one tournament she had to switch back and forth from hurricane 3 to tenergy 05 depending on opponents.

Actually I think the coaches are not wrong to do that. I can say from personal experience and from that of others is that many of the rubber and blade changes people talk about here don't really affect a player's level much -- but they could if the change is big enough and if the player gives it enough time.

Let's consider the vast majority of ESN rubbers, all made for pretty much the same kind of player, but with subtle differences here and there. So, a player changes from, say MX-P to Bluefire (for example), it feels a little different but the player ends up pretty much the same level. After all, the brain very quickly adapts, a very slight and almost inperceptible (or non-perceptible) change in technique accomodates the new equipment. Now, a change from, say, Tenergy, to a tacky Chinese DHS rubber is a different matter altogether. That is a big change. It requires a substantial change in technique, and it is going to take some time to learn to be effective with that! Maybe a year! At the end, there may or may not be a change in level.

And coaches, who used to be competitive players, have almost never made a change as large as that in the entire life and so would very rarely recommend it to students. Most coaches started young, developed their technique from a young age, got pretty good, and so never really explored much equipment space. Very few of the really good players I have known have been EJs. The exception has been when major rules changes have required it, like going from 38 mm to 40 mm, even more when speed glue was banned, and most recently withy 40+ balls.

 
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Actually I think the coaches are not wrong to do that. I can say from personal experience and from that of others is that many of the rubber and blade changes people talk about here don't really affect a player's level much -- but they could if the change is big enough and if the player gives it enough time.Let's consider the vast majority of ESN rubbers, all made for pretty much the same kind of player, but with subtle differences here and there. So, a player changes from, say MX-P to Bluefire (for example), it feels a little different but the player ends up pretty much the same level. After all, the brain very quickly adapts, a very slight and almost inperceptible (or non-perceptible) change in technique accomodates the new equipment. Now, a change from, say, Tenergy, to a tacky Chinese DHS rubber is a different matter altogether. That is a big change. It requires a substantial change in technique, and it is going to take some time to learn to be effective with that! Maybe a year! At the end, there may or may not be a change in level.And coaches, who used to be competitive players, have almost never made a change as large as that in the entire life and so would very rarely recommend it to students. Most coaches started young, developed their technique from a young age, got pretty good, and so never really explored much equipment space. Very few of the really good players I have known have been EJs. The exception has been when major rules changes have required it, like going from 38 mm to 40 mm, even more when speed glue was banned, and most recently withy 40+ balls.

I'm not so sure even changing from tenergy to chinese rubber requires much technical change per se. What it does do though is put more pressure on you to improve and have more efficient technique. So, you might have been able to get away with that with tenergy and and if you switch to chinese rubber you'll be almost forced to move towards more efficient technique or it's just not going to work well. In that sense, yes you'll have to "change your technique", but I believe it's more along the lines of improving your technique which you'd use for any other inverted rubber.

Like I said, a player I trained with the other week (with around 2200 swedish rating) used hurricane 8 and played exactly the same and did just as well. Another player I know has a 2700 rating here and plays with hurricane 8, I've seen him play with euro rubbers and his technique was as far as I could tell, near identical in training. From my experience and what I've seen, all top players regardless of inverted rubber do very similar things - though what they tend to do with their backswings and arm structure vary a bit.

I'm curious to hear if you have an example of what substantial changes in technique there would be if one would change from tenergy to chinese rubber? I made this switch myself the last year and I know I've made adaptations, but I believe that's because I've found ways to better my technique and I think I'd bring those with me if I switched back to tenergy again.

 
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I don't have anything specific. It would be interesting to video someone with each rubber to see what changes.
 
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I play H3N Pro BS FH and Dignics 05 on BH. Today at the club, it was hot and humid. Hurricane went back to tacky after a quick wipe down; Dignics 05 got slippery fast and stayed slippery. Even after numerous cleanings, put it in front of a fan, tried everything it remained slick at the club.
 
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I think In general tacky rubbers are slower due to the tacky surface and often because they are a bit harder. Maybe not true if you cheat with booster. Since the rubbers are a bit slower you need to use the body a lot more compared to regular rubber which is less tacky and often faster with softer sponge. So I think players that have used regular rubbers need to be able to use the body in the loop to successfully be able to play with tacky rubber.

I also think the tacky rubber result in that you do not need to brush as more since you get spin from the tackiness compared to regular rubber. So with regular rubber you need to brush the ball more compared to tackiness rubber so I think the technique differ there too.

I think players with a high level can use both without any real big change of technique but I think one rubber suits the best. I can imagine players like Lebesson, Gatien and Boll that use a lot of arm in their loop not be able to play as well with a China rubber since they would not get enough power since they do not not use the body so much.
 
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I think players with a high level can use both without any real big change of technique but I think one rubber suits the best. I can imagine players like Lebesson, Gatien and Boll that use a lot of arm in their loop not be able to play as well with a China rubber since they would not get enough power since they do not not use the body so much.
They actually don't use enough arm in their looping either, otherwise the ball would overshoot from their tensor rubbers if they used a bigger arm swing aka Fan Zhendong or Ma Long or Xu Xin. Timo Boll arm movement is nowhere near as big as those 3 mentioned, Timo uses waist rotation mostly as a basis for his looping whereas Fan Zhendong is mostly Tendon and hips that are perfectly simultaneously synchronized with the arm swing.

The connection between the upper body and lower body in players like Marcos Freitas or Timo Boll is completely incorrigible when it comes to a lot more efficient connection between those two body parts that FZD has perfected.

There's a misconception that with the hurricane you need to brush less than with tenergies usually you need to engage into the ball a lot deeper with the hurricane as there's lack of catapult effect that are in tenergies.

Overall there seems to be a lot more body rotation and torque movement in FZD looping techniue using the side tendons and hips, whereas in Freitas, Boll technique seems to be too uptight, straight-forward body leaning and too stiff. They should relax the upper body a lot more and mostly let the hip rotation do the work when it comes to producing power into looping. I bet that Freitas or Bolls hips aren't nearly as aching after a training or a hard match as Fan Zhendong's are, and that's where they do it wrong, that's the difference. They instead overly rely on their back muscles and stress it too much with all of the side-bending that they do when they go for a FH loop as if they are trying to do a deadlift, and that's where they get it all wrong. Not enough hip rotation.
 
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Hi! I opened this thread, because I got too many dislikes about tacky rubbers from almost every coaches that I had had private lessons.

A pro player in Turkey told me that tacky rubbers were good when speed glue was allowed. Now, new rubbers generate equal amount of spin, plus they are more dynamic. You can play better with dynamic rubbers...

Another good coach from Turkey who trains also super league players claimed that Chinese were thrash..

I got private lessons from 3 or 4 different coaches in Germany (one of them was former Iran national player) . They claimed every time that Chinese rubbers are useless. They were like irritated by it. They mention that there is no player until 1st Bundesliga who uses tacky rubber. I don't think that much possible.

Another one claimed that, Chinese rubber doesn't play same in Germany as it plays in China, because of humidity and temperature...

I now have 1500+TTR. I am improving anyway. I might gain extra 50TTR by using T05 on FH. It allows me to do a topspin even almost from ground. But, when I got tired I tend to stop moving. That's the reason for me to use tacky rubber. It makes me play actively till the end of the session. I feel I get more out of a training.

Of course I am doing lots of mistakes on training. My consistency is not that good (maybe coaches complain is because of this). I am putting more balls onto table when I use T05, but they are less effective. Good against pimple blockers or short pips but bad against an attacker who has equal amount of rating. The game is getting faster and uncontrollable.

I don't want my improvement to stop because of my equipment.

So long story short, does Chinese tacky rubber slows down improvement?

I think tackiness is actually the minor issue in this equation. The catapult or "tensor" or whatever you want to call it, as well as the general bounciness of the sponge (eg the speed) is the overwhelmingly dominant difference while you are not like a professional level player.

The bigger difference between, say H3 or H3 Neo and T05 is that H3 and neo are both much slower rubbers and (especially without boosting) have a much more linear response to bounce.

While tackiness vs grippiness will make SOME difference especially on the short game, you could get used to either relatively quickly. But the comparative lack of catapult of the H3, as well as it's overall lower speed will, if anything, be easier to learn, since you'd be better able to extrapolate in your head (or your muscle memory or whatever) how much a ball will bounce given a harder impact just by getting used to the response at lower speeds.

Whereas if you've only been playing with T05 at low speeds, it's highly dubious you'd be able to extrapolate the response of a harder impact just due to how non-linear tensor rubbers are.

The problem is you can't really lump "tacky chinese rubbers" into a coherent group. There are tacky, relatively low-catapult rubbers, there are tacky catapult rubbers (eg hybrids). Then there are non-tacky high-catapult and non-tacky non-catapult rubbers. And the two high catapult rubbers would play much more like each other than the two tacky rubbers would.

The difference between a rubber with high catapult and one without much catapult is much more significant than between a tacky and a grippy rubber in practical use.

If your end goal is that you will be using a tensor rubber, you should be practicing with a tensor rubber (and from the sound of it, this is your coach's approach). With a slower less catapulty rubber you will need a bigger stroke, but you should be able to make that bigger stroke with greater confidence. Great for starting out learning the game, not great for... learning to use a tensor rubber.

In short, if you are completely new to the game, a slower less catapulty rubber will, if anything, speed up your improvement. If you intend to eventually end up using a tensor rubber, then while you may be more error prone, it's probably better just to get used to it's particular non-linearity early. In the face of the difference between these tensioned rubbers and more linear ones, tackiness barely makes any difference.

 
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I think that the tackiness causes slightly more of the ‘dead’ feeling than the sponge.
if you cover the tacky surface with a film there is a lot more bounce than people generally expect when you do a bounce test.
put a film on a grippy rubber and the bounce test will be the same as without the film!!
Sure, H3 sponge isn’t in the same league as BTY spring sponge, by quite a way, but it has more bounce than expected!!!
D09C is what I would class as ‘barely’ tacky, the number of bounces is maybe a couple less than if you had a film on it. If it had similar tackiness as H3 the number of bounces would be way less!!

It’s really a bit of both!!

Spring sponge is exactly that, it compresses and is better at transferring the energy back into the ball, H3 sponge compresses and is less efficient at transferring the energy back into the ball.

So T05H 43 degree sponge hardness, H3 41 degree sponge hardness, which is harder to compress???
if the rubber top sheets had the same hardness/elasticity (this is another factor regarding bounce) Then you would expect it to be harder to compress the 43 degree sponge, for a same shot power/ force imparted into the rubber/sponge it’s going to compress less but it’s just better and returning more energy back, it’s not as absorbing.
 
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To me the bounce test doesn’t say a lot about bouncyness feel if you hit the ball hard. I.e. if you are an aggressive attacker. When I change from MX-P to MX-S, it felt really dead. MX-P, MX-S, Rakza Z, Dignics 09c, then H3 go more dead in that order. In the past when I played with Sriver. It was really dead as well. There seem to be more correlation in sponge spring effect plus hardness than tackiness to me. But probably they all contribute.

Also people say it’s harder to play with H3 when you are out of position. Which to me isn’t true. If you’ve been watching the pros play, you can see this. The Chinese loops wherever their positions are. They would make a bigger swing if the ball is a little far off, or twist the body more if the ball’s passed beyond. The Europeans tend to be a little more passive / or driving the ball if it’s too off position. This is not just the top Chinese. You watch those Olympics preps and other Chinese events, they all do that. I also personally do feel the ability to execute a longer swing gives me more forgiveness. So Chinese rubbers are actually MORE FORGIVING than bouncy rubbers.

(Dima and Boll said the same when they moved over to Dignics 09c. It gives them more control against spinny ball)

The thing that makes a wrong perception that Chinese rubbers are less forgiving is that we amateur players tend to not use power very efficiently and consistently so the bounciness enhances weak power input, making us feel a little more “confident”.

For the pros, it’s probably the effort that is more of the problem, as a couple of semi-pros told me. It just takes too much to power. And if you’ve been with spring rubbers for so long, that too much is impossible to overcome.
 
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Overall the 'dead feel' or how bouncy a particular rubber feels has many variables, thickness of sponge, hardness of sponge, pore size and density of sponge, pimple pattern, size of pimples (cross sectional area) thickness of rubber (flat part) length of pimples, hardness of rubber, elasticity of rubber, levels of grip / tackiness etc
 
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To me the bounce test doesn’t say a lot about bouncyness feel if you hit the ball hard. I.e. if you are an aggressive attacker. When I change from MX-P to MX-S, it felt really dead. MX-P, MX-S, Rakza Z, Dignics 09c, then H3 go more dead in that order. In the past when I played with Sriver. It was really dead as well. There seem to be more correlation in sponge spring effect plus hardness than tackiness to me. But probably they all contribute.

Also people say it’s harder to play with H3 when you are out of position. Which to me isn’t true. If you’ve been watching the pros play, you can see this. The Chinese loops wherever their positions are. They would make a bigger swing if the ball is a little far off, or twist the body more if the ball’s passed beyond. The Europeans tend to be a little more passive / or driving the ball if it’s too off position. This is not just the top Chinese. You watch those Olympics preps and other Chinese events, they all do that. I also personally do feel the ability to execute a longer swing gives me more forgiveness. So Chinese rubbers are actually MORE FORGIVING than bouncy rubbers.

(Dima and Boll said the same when they moved over to Dignics 09c. It gives them more control against spinny ball)

The thing that makes a wrong perception that Chinese rubbers are less forgiving is that we amateur players tend to not use power very efficiently and consistently so the bounciness enhances weak power input, making us feel a little more “confident”.

For the pros, it’s probably the effort that is more of the problem, as a couple of semi-pros told me. It just takes too much to power. And if you’ve been with spring rubbers for so long, that too much is impossible to overcome.

I agree with you, but I think when people say more forgiving they mean easier to put the ball on the table. Since many amateurs don't have that efficient technique and overuse the arm it is easier to play with euro rubbers.

It mostly comes down to how well the tool (rubber) suits the skills and technique of the player. That's why all of this is so subjective and some people saying one thing actually means something completely different to someone else.

But again, no serious table tennis player as far as I know plays with rock hard unboosted tacky rubbers, so this further skews the perception.

 
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