@Carl
I heard of this club in NY haha, seems like a pretty cool place to play tt. U are right about the precision part. Also I think if u throw in too much power and energy it will make lose ur accuracy and tactics. This is also the case in other sports for accuracy but not for tactis mostly since tactics are realtively important in tt compared to other sports.
I agree, too much power is not what you want. Precision and timing. I am consistently told by better players that I am using too much arm and not enough body and that I am trying too hard.
As far as Spin NY goes, it is interesting. It is not a good club to play or train at, in my opinion. There are top pros there (or at least US top pros), and then the rest of the people are basement level players. That is sort of the crowd they are looking for. They do not have memberships where you can go and play. Even people who have memberships are renting tables by the hour, which means you would not jump from table to table and change who you are playing against. And most of the players there are corporate people who are coming from work and either playing with friends or on a date. The matches would not be interesting usually. But there is a real entertainment level there so it is a good place to go and watch the best pros in NYC playing against each other. That competition in the video happens every week with different players. Too bad Waldner and Applegren are not there every week.
But the level of play is good and who ever wins the competition gets real money, $500.00, which is not bad. So they all play hard and want to win.
But the club I play at is much better for training and improving your skills. There are two areas in the club where people just do drills the whole time and do not play matches. And then there is the area where people are playing matches. If you want to do drills, you just go and tell them you want to work into the rotation and they rotate people out so everybody gets a chance. There is usually someone there telling people what drills it would be best for them to do. But when he is not there people just sort that out for themselves. If you want to play matches, you go and call next on the table you want to play a match on. 3 tables for drills; 6 tables for matches. And then there are the tables where people are getting lessons.
The club is in NYC's China Town and is called NYTTF:
http://nyttf.com/
At my club you can rent a table by the hour but most people do not. Instead, you can pay for play time on any table. I have a yearly membership of unlimited play. I don't go with anyone. I show up and know everybody there. So it is a club in that sense. I think the people at Spin are more random people who came on that night. When they have those pro competitions at Spin, the people watching are mostly people who really know Table Tennis. During the competition there are always people playing on the other tables. Usually they cannot play and it never occurs to them to watch the pros.
But both places have their purpose. And I have to appreciate what the people who opened Spin are trying to do to make Table Tennis more popular. They are doing a good job of getting regular people more interested in playing. The more Table Tennis the better. And it is a lot of fun to go to a place where you can drink a few beers, order some food and watch top notch Table Tennis from 10 feet away.
