Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[UpSideDownCarl]

Hmmm... shadow training is not valuable to you?

And Gozo doing shadow stroke and footwork training would actually help him immensely with so many things that his body has not got the muscle memory or the sequential coordination of actions to do. Like how, when you take a one-step, and then pivot, backswing and stroke, how your upper and lower bodies are working in synergy by counterbalancing each other: like when you walk, if you are not thinking about it, when your left leg swings forward and your hips rotate slightly clockwise, your right arm swings forward and your torso rotates slightly counter-clockwise.

And, usually, when you see an older person who shifts the left hip forward while swinging the left arm and torso forward at the same time, that is occurring as a result of hip issues that cause the range of movement in hip flexion/extension to be limited by things like arthritis in the hip joints.

In any case, shadow stroke/footwork drills would actually afford Gozo the opportunity to get the full body coordination of footwork/stroke, footwork/stroke and when he went back to the table, over time, he would find an increased ability to move the the ball because, while leaving the ball tracking and eye-hand coordination of getting the racket to intercept the ball during the stroke, he would be learning the movements his whole body needs to do instead of trying to learn those actions while simultaneously trying to track and intercept the ball.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

we are all Gozos

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Took a pic of my Long V product description sheet. Mine weighs 90g and is 5.8cm thick. Yup! It feels like holding a piece of paper to me. It's like instead of heading into battle usually with a pole-axe, now I am holding a kitchen knife. Will let you know how I feel when I play with it next week.

Now let's see what rubber should I dress her in? Rummaging through my mystery trunk I find a piece of black R48 for FH but could not decide btw what to use for BH. The candidates are:

a) red Bluefire M2
b) green R45
c) red Vega Europe
d) red H3 37degrees

dilemma, dilemma & more dilemma.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

View attachment 25222
Took a pic of my Long V product description sheet. Mine weighs 90g and is 5.8cm thick. Yup! It feels like holding a piece of paper to me. It's like instead of heading into battle usually with a pole-axe, now I am holding a kitchen knife. Will let you know how I feel when I play with it next week.

Hopefully it is not 5.8cm thick. 5.8mm.....but really 5.89mm should get rounded to 5.9.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

And Gozo doing shadow stroke and footwork training would actually help him immensely with so many things that his body has not got the muscle memory or the sequential coordination of actions to do. Like how, when you take a one-step, and then pivot, backswing and stroke, how your upper and lower bodies are working in synergy by counterbalancing each other: like when you walk, if you are not thinking about it, when your left leg swings forward and your hips rotate slightly clockwise, your right arm swings forward and your torso rotates slightly counter-clockwise.

And, usually, when you see an older person who shifts the left hip forward while swinging the left arm and torso forward at the same time, that is occurring as a result of hip issues that cause the range of movement in hip flexion/extension to be limited by things like arthritis in the hip joints.

In any case, shadow stroke/footwork drills would actually afford Gozo the opportunity to get the full body coordination of footwork/stroke, footwork/stroke and when he went back to the table, over time, he would find an increased ability to move the the ball because, while leaving the ball tracking and eye-hand coordination of getting the racket to intercept the ball during the stroke, he would be learning the movements his whole body needs to do instead of trying to learn those actions while simultaneously trying to track and intercept the ball.

Too wordy me no liek!. Post too kom-per-li-ke-terd me no understand.

Me only know: koach sezs Gozo you change to thinner blade, me change. Koach no sez change to thinner blade, me stay with big big stuff coz me liek holding big things.

Oh by the way, I'll be heading to competition venue in about 2 hours' time. I am so pumped and fired-up. Yesterday was hitting at my club until 8.00pm. Was there from 5.00pm straight after work. 3 hours of intense practice to get me pumped up for today's comp!

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Since you really like what you use and seem to be addicted to the speed it gives you, to start, I am happy if you try to feel what the advantages and/or disadvantages of a blade that is almost 2x as thick as a normal thickness blade.

If you feel that, it is at least a start. Even though I doubt you will change your equipment since your racket is doing enough of the work so that you don't realize what the benefit of you learning the advantages of improving your timing, your quality of contact, your depth of contact and the bias of the blade face as you make contact.

One step at a time. See if you can observe how the 10.5mm blade feels making those adjustments to racket position and how it feels to do that with a blade that is less than 7mm thick.

Feeling a medium speed blade (off-) and using that for 6 months.....I am confident that would help you improve. I am also confident that if you did that, and did not touch anything else for those 6 months, when you tried your current blade you would wonder if you had been insane to use it. But I don't think you are going to try that experiment.

I can flirt around with a new blade but to go with six months without my main squeeze? I will develop separation anxiety and withdrawal syndrome.

 

[JeffM]

After driving 5 hr, I am back in the city. Although I am obviously tired, I committed to changing my rubbers.
I made that decision as I checked my phone, and I had the old rubbers for 18 months already..

I feel I should be fine as I will have at least 5 sessions of table tennis and changing them I believe would indeed give me the reassurance that it isn't the rubbers' issue but mine if I am messing up!

The edges of my rubbers are still pretty rough. For the FH side, I used a box cutter, then for the BH side, I tried using a scissor first time. I don't mind using box cutter for the hurricane as it can cut the sponge relatively easily, but for the butterfly rubbers, using the box cutter in the box has resulted in very messy sponges. This time, using the scissor makes cutting the sponge alot smoother but I find it hard to do a circular cut properly, whereas in the past using the box cutter is easier to mold a circular shape but it makes cutting the sponge harder.

I will begin my week of TT tomorrow.

 

[OldschoolPenholder]

Hello DTTCCers!

Last Saturday after work, I got to Chinatown's Columbus Park about 5:45pm. Was able to see Richard! He generally leaves before I get there, but he was helping a mutual friend glue on some rubbers. I haven't seen him since the 1980's, so about 40 years! We both learnt from Alex Tam however after a few lessons he told me to go train with Richard. So in a way Richard was my primary instructor. I was also fortunate to see Eddie, a college mate, I haven't seen for a few years and haven't hit with him in 30 years. Last but not least, a former League team member, friend as well as college mate was there too! Haven't seen him in 40 years.

Bunch of old friends reminiscing about the good old days lol

~opsh

To any of the older players in the NYC Table Tennis scene from the 1980s-1990s, my former TT League teammate/former college mate just called to inform me that Richard passed away 3 hours ago. Tremendous loss to the NYC TT scene

Ecstatic I was able to reconnect with him since last summer.

 

[OldschoolPenholder]

After driving 5 hr, I am back in the city. Although I am obviously tired, I committed to changing my rubbers.
I made that decision as I checked my phone, and I had the old rubbers for 18 months already..

I feel I should be fine as I will have at least 5 sessions of table tennis and changing them I believe would indeed give me the reassurance that it isn't the rubbers' issue but mine if I am messing up!

The edges of my rubbers are still pretty rough. For the FH side, I used a box cutter, then for the BH side, I tried using a scissor first time. I don't mind using box cutter for the hurricane as it can cut the sponge relatively easily, but for the butterfly rubbers, using the box cutter in the box has resulted in very messy sponges. This time, using the scissor makes cutting the sponge alot smoother but I find it hard to do a circular cut properly, whereas in the past using the box cutter is easier to mold a circular shape but it makes cutting the sponge harder.

I will begin my week of TT tomorrow.

Si-hing,

Sorry been busy with life, haven't played TT as much as I would like to. Also haven't surfed on here.

Still playing SH?

If so ... 'faan gwat zai'!!!

I AM KIDDING!!

 

[JeffM]

Si-hing,

Sorry been busy with life, haven't played TT as much as I would like to. Also haven't surfed on here.

Still playing SH?

If so ... 'faan gwat zai'!!!

I AM KIDDING!!

Hello OSPH!
It is my honour to be blessed by your presence on TTD today this morning before my first tt session!
Yes I am still playing SH, and just changed my rubbers last night.

Are you still playing TT, even if once in a while?
Miss your training videos.

 

[NextLevel]

To any of the older players in the NYC Table Tennis scene from the 1980s-1990s, my former TT League teammate/former college mate just called to inform me that Richard passed away 3 hours ago. Tremendous loss to the NYC TT scene

Ecstatic I was able to reconnect with him since last summer.

Sorry for your loss! Glad to see you are still around whatever the form or fashion. Got a few old heads posting in the last month or so. Glad to see that life exists and continues outside of the forum lol...

 

[JeffM]

First session of TT back in city:

It was a good one.
It is also the first session after changing my rubbers.
I came with my friend W, who brought another friend T to see if that guy would be a good doubles partner for my friend.

We warmed up forehands and backhands, then we practiced serve + open up. I mainly practiced using the bh to open up as I can kind of adjust rather quick with the forehand open ups (but in fact, in hind sight, I would appreciate some training of that today as well as I would have preferred my form to be more forward). It is so nice to be able to have proper forehands and backhand warm ups / exchange, really helps to find the feeling.

After the warm ups, I played 2 singles.
First was against T. I took the first set relatively easy, then in 2nd set, I got complacent and thought I would take it easy, but then lost it in duece. Third set was close but I took it out. So 2-1 for me. I didn't realise it then but quite a few of my fh loops against backspins just clips the net. It would have been great for me to practice opening up on the forehand to boost my confidence too. I was relatively happy with my bh receives, using quite a bit of banana (even though the serve was drifting long), they land with relatively high % and was winning me good points. I was trying to do the bh open ups but somehow in the match, I have been missing the contact with the ball.

Second was against my friend W. It was just a 1 set showdown. I took it and was using quite a bit with the banana as receive. Again, happy with the bh performance.

After these 2 matches, I then face them as a pair as they wanted to practice doubles and check their compatibility. I was doing so many bananas and they were landing so frequently that it shocked me and them. (Considering I have not been practicing that at all apart from the last 2 matches).

After playing around 2hr, I left as I didn't want to over play my limit as I still have quite a few sessions coming up and the last thing I need is an injury.

I need more forehand practice and backhand practice, but I think changing to a new bh rubber sheet really helped me in opening up and bananas. I still need to get the feeling with the fh but it isn't terrible.

Looking forward to the 2nd session on Tuesday.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Karma's a B ! T C H!

Yup the above is my title of my post.

An elderly pips player mid seventies whom I seldom play with ( due to different time we come to the club ) however my head-to-head score is in her favour. Yes, I do not have many opportunity to play with her and she beats me previously a couple of times with her pips ( pure BH pips blocker ).

So, this time she is paired with another opponent in the friendlies who, guess what, uses the same type of set-up as her i.e., long-pips on one side and tacky on the other.

So, what happen? The match was so painful to spectate. Serve and the ball goes out of play mostly into the net. And the match just goes like this the whole way. There is no rally at all. I stopped watching after less than ten minutes.

1. Karma's a B 1 T C H. She usually plays with conventional players and can hold her ground. But when faced with pips, she crumbled like dust. That shows, it is the equipment and nothing with innate skills.

2. As a spectator, it is pure bore-fest. It is so painful to watch two players played like kindergarten tots, i.e., no rally at all.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Below are some nice memeroble shots from yesterday lil'inter-club friendly.

 

[NextLevel]

Posted a couple of examples of Ma Long doing a stroke - just saw this one from Waldner - technique is technique.

 

[blahness]

Played in a new arena with really slippery floors. I have no idea how my friend plays so well under such conditions. Almost slipped a couple of times and never could get into the correct position... there were a couple of guys who played there with pretty much arm only strokes and they managed to fare quite well.

Ugh why are so many venues like this?!

 

[Ghostzen]

Played in a new arena with really slippery floors. I have no idea how my friend plays so well under such conditions. Almost slipped a couple of times and never could get into the correct position... there were a couple of guys who played there with pretty much arm only strokes and they managed to fare quite well.

Ugh why are so many venues like this?!

A damp towel or paper to try and get grip on your shoes can be a good idea...... It can help but still can sit in the mindset. Especially if you almost take a tumble.

There aren't that many to be honest especially arena sized venues. Sports centres can be another story mind.

 

[JeffM]

A damp towel or paper to try and get grip on your shoes can be a good idea...... It can help but still can sit in the mindset. Especially if you almost take a tumble.

There aren't that many to be honest especially arena sized venues. Sports centres can be another story mind.

I used the damp paper towel trick and it worked really well.
Now though with my new pair of tt shoes, that issue resolved.

 

[Der_Echte]

Played in a new arena with really slippery floors. I have no idea how my friend plays so well under such conditions. Almost slipped a couple of times and never could get into the correct position... there were a couple of guys who played there with pretty much arm only strokes and they managed to fare quite well.

Ugh why are so many venues like this?!

Hi blahness, it sounds super outrageous, but if you wear SLIPPERS for an hour or two once a week for a year, you will do VERY WELL on such floors.

The slippers force you to have effective balance and first step... also good slide step... and forces you to finish on balance.
It takes a while, but you can actually play your level in sandals. I have a few wins over Sergey Scobbie Doo wearing sandals. I rarely win vs him, like single digit win percentage.

 

[blahness]

A damp towel or paper to try and get grip on your shoes can be a good idea...... It can help but still can sit in the mindset. Especially if you almost take a tumble.

There aren't that many to be honest especially arena sized venues. Sports centres can be another story mind.

Lol it's like a safety hazard already - I saw quite a few people tumbling when trying to reach wide balls... I'll try the damp paper towel thing, but it seems like the entire university hall is slippery af. There's really a lot of unsafe crap out there tbh and very few venues actually invest in proper antislip TT flooring.