About all equipment issues..

[UpSideDownCarl]

Aaawww man.
I think i went kinda hard at him last time he was derailing and hijacking a thread.
I hope i didn't scare him off the forum, cause i didn't find any posts from him since then.
After all his posts were still fun to read.

I don't think you scared him away. He was posting less and less after he bought his 10 super fast and very expensive rackets and still couldn't figure out what to do to return serves.

But who knows, Perhaps he'll be back some day. I swear he reminded me of an old lady on estrogen therapy when he'd be complaining about losing matches or thinking the coach at the club had it in for him because he wouldn't listen.

But those are the people who ask questions on the Internet. Sometimes they aren't even looking for answers. They just want to ask questions. What would help them most? Probably some Valium and being given a good simple setup by a coach who knows their skills and what equipment would be good for them.


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

 

[Ilia Minkin]

- changing equipment is usually not good. Your blade is a nature product what means EVERY blade is unique in this world. Every change is a tragedy because your hand has to get used to something completely new --> Not good in a world that is dominated by automatisms. In the time what you are glueing thinking about if the new equipment is suited for you or not you are wasting time what you could invest in training --> not good . --> JUST CHANGE EQUIPMENT IF REALLY REALLYY REALLY NECESSARY

Let's look at the different situation. I have a spare setup with Yinhe Y-4/Xiom Vega China/BTY Feint Long III, an LP racket. It is totally different from my main racket in every aspect you can possibly imagine. I play with it a full session once in a week to have some fun and provide my fellow players experience of playing against a weird style. Am I destroying my "main" game by doing that?

 

[TT_Rogue]

Let's look at the different situation. I have a spare setup with Yinhe Y-4/Xiom Vega China/BTY Feint Long III, an LP racket. It is totally different from my main racket in every aspect you can possibly imagine. I play with it a full session once in a week to have some fun and provide my fellow players experience of playing against a weird style. Am I destroying my "main" game by doing that?

I think that depends also on how often you train per week. If you are just playing twice a week i would doubt that it is benefiting

 

[Ilia Minkin]

I think that depends also on how often you train per week. If you are just playing twice a week i would doubt that it is benefiting

I play 4-5 times per week, 2-2.30 hours per session.

 

[TT_Rogue]

I play 4-5 times per week, 2-2.30 hours per session.

Îf you are playing for your fun and just a bit result oriented i would say if you have fun with it go for it. But if you really want to improve and reach a higher league or something dont do it.. It has always effect when you are not playing your main style and you are wasting precious trainings time with it

 

[Ilia Minkin]

Îf you are playing for your fun and just a bit result oriented i would say if you have fun with it go for it. But if you really want to improve and reach a higher league or something dont do it.. It has always effect when you are not playing your main style and you are wasting precious trainings time with it

Okay, thank you for your opinion. Some people say that playing with a pips racket helps to get used to them and understand better how they work and how to play against them. As the result you will be more prepared once you meet an opponent with "junk" surface (they are rare in our area). What do you think?

 

[Pnachtwey]

We won't get agreement on this. The only thing you will achieve with a 1.5mm rubber (btw there is only a limited number of brands providing such a rubber thickness) is that your movements will be longer and use more force. At the end you will be struggeling getting any offensive play on the backend and stick with the "save choice" playing passive on the backhand.

First, I think 1.8mm is the minimum thickness that a normal inverted rubber user should use. That said I tried the 1.5mm Mark V on both sides of my Samsonov Alpha years back. I don't see any problem with that at lower levels but 1.5mm is too thin to block high speed loops at higher levels. 1.5mm 802 is different when blocking fast balls because the rubber isn't that fast and the pips are not spinny so the ball doesn't bounce off the pips that high. 1.5mm 802 is OK if playing a hitting chopping game. There are Chinese c-pen players at my club that are very good playing with 802 1.5mm but they just play a hitting game. 802 1.5mm is not good for counter looping but do beginners start out counter looping?

This is why the official guidelines are 1.8mm minimum for beginners. And the "drunken .... players" who wrote these guidelines are the A- and B- licensed coaches gathered in the VDTT. But nevermind....

I agree with the 1.8mm minimum under normal circumstancesn mostly because it doesn't bottom out as readily when blocking. I play with 1.8mm IQUL sv or reg on my BH and some sort of DHS Neo on my FH much of the time. I even like 1.8 Rakza 7 on my FH. Thicker rubbers are not as energy efficient as thinner rubbers but they do store more energy so one can return a faster or spinnier ball. I would recommend that the thickness of the rubber should be proportional to how far back from the table one plays most of the time.

I like IQUL because it comes in different thickness and hardness and is cheap. It will not be the limiting factor as to how well you play unless you are very good.

 

[TT_Rogue]

Okay, thank you for your opinion. Some people say that playing with a pips racket helps to get used to them and understand better how they work and how to play against them. As the result you will be more prepared once you meet an opponent with "junk" surface (they are rare in our area). What do you think?

Mehhhh I would say if you understand the principle of pips and you had them once or twice in your hand it's better to train against them than to play with them. I dont think that it's much benefitting, to me it's more like something what are the really old players saying. If you have a proper technique you can guess out after some balls the behavior of these "junk" surfaces and adapt to it, so i would say train more your normal style and if you have problems against pips out players train more against them but dont play them for yourself every week

 

[Suga D]

Thicker rubbers are not as energy efficient as thinner rubbers but they do store more energy so one can return a faster or spinnier ball. I would recommend that the thickness of the rubber should be proportional to how far back from the table one plays most of the time.

That's a point you have there, Peter.

Last week I just had an interesting read on another forum, saying that certain blades just don't give you a nice feeling and feedback and start feeling numb if you put on too thick rubbers, but also vice versa other blades don't feel nice with too thin rubbers as well.

I didn't know what to think of this. It was the first time i've heard that.

Would be interesting to know, what you guys think of that.

Well anyway, after having thought and re-thought about this from my very own experience i think i agree with Vossi on the rubber thickness point.
Here's why:

*story-mode-on*
I've learned playing in 38mm era where 2.5mm speedglue-play was normal. (with all that glue on it, it probably was 2.8mm)
but nowadays 2.1mm is totally fine for me.

When i started i had a friend who was really good, and was sponsored by a japanese brand. He didn't use rubbers longer than a week and many times gave me his "old" 2.0 and 2.5 rubbers. So i adapted to it and my friend coached me and taught me a few things.
Meanwhile the coach at our club to that time was his older brother, who actually wasn't very pleased with my rubber selection, since i've just started playing a couple of months ago, but as he saw how quick i adapted he was okay with it, knowing i didn't have a lot of money and used to play with chinese rubbers before that.
But then after about 2 years the coach had to quit due to his studying at a different university.
So then this old coach came up who was between 55 and 60 y.o. and playing a chopper's game with 1.0mm bty tackiness and an anti on bh.
And he asked if i was crazy using these thick rubbers and made me change to 1.5 FH and 1.3 BH.
He was mostly teaching us pushing, blocking and not a lot topspin, which got totally boring after a while. But my teammates and me did have a lot of control while pushing.
But one of my close friends was playing for a club at the neighbours town which was a Bundesliga Club where even Guys like Georg Böhm played for a short time.
And they had a more modern vision of teaching tabletennis. Most of their youth players were playing how i had before with 2.0 BH and 2.0 sometimes 2.5mm FH.

Well i got good at pushing and blocking and straight balls but not so much in spinning, whereas my friends from the neighbour town were spinning balls with rocket speed and massive rotation that found their way on the table with the precision of heat-seeking-missiles.

In the longer spin to spin rallies i just couldn't compete with a "quick-bottoming-out" 1.5mm rubber.

After a couple of years when i started finding this out, i went back to thicker rubbers and told the coach to let me play with what i wanted to play with.
He probably only accepted, 'cause he anyway was about to retire after that season and our club hired a new coach teaching us a more modern game and he was totally fine with thicker rubbers being used by us.
*story-mode-off*

So from my own experience thick rubbers suit an offensive game way better. It might be different if you want to become a chopper, but not very many seem to become one and that's never been an option for me too.

'Cause just like NextLevel and Upsidedowncarl: i like putting 'heavy' spin rotation on the ball...

 

[Der_Echte]

Okay, thank you for your opinion. Some people say that playing with a pips racket helps to get used to them and understand better how they work and how to play against them. As the result you will be more prepared once you meet an opponent with "junk" surface (they are rare in our area). What do you think?

In Korea, over 1/2 teh O40+ ladies crowd uses OX LP on an OFF+ blade, so I got me a cheepo OX LP and slapped it on a spare blade and played an hour a weeks mimicking their style. Not so much to learn how their ball comes off the bat - that is something I needed to adjust to with my eyes - but to get used to how the think and make decisions and execute their shots instinctively given a certain ball.

Playing an hour a week with a different bat can be valuable time spent.

 

[Der_Echte]

In D-Top's vid of the guy hating on OX LPs, he admitted it would take around 50 hrs to get used to it... hmmm... I got pretty darned good vs teh OX crowd giving them handicap points for the difference in division classification... what a coincidence, 50 hrs or one year of an hour per week.

 

[Ilia Minkin]

In Korea, over 1/2 teh O40+ ladies crowd uses OX LP on an OFF+ blade, so I got me a cheepo OX LP and slapped it on a spare blade and played an hour a weeks mimicking their style. Not so much to learn how their ball comes off the bat - that is something I needed to adjust to with my eyes - but to get used to how the think and make decisions and execute their shots instinctively given a certain ball.

Playing an hour a week with a different bat can be valuable time spent.

Interesting... I find playing with pips kinda funny anyway