Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[NextLevel]

Tonight I went to the usual club session. I had a blast.

I first played with the nearby townmate, whom I view as better than me, as he did quite well in the last competition. Ranking wise, he is 120 points above me, but his ranking may not be accurate due to very few activity. The first 3 sets I playedd really well, and I stomped to a 3-0 lead. The 4th set, it got closer, it almost feels like he is coming back, but I won the set 12-10. So it was a 4-0 victory for me. The recent times it has been very close between us, and sometimes he would beat me close or badly. I am not sure exactly what clicked this time, but I think it is a combination of factors: 1. I stayed on my toes more at the start of the point, especially when I am receiving, and almost like I am slightly shuffling at the start. I received better this time, and I felt my fh flick was better and my bh banana were good too (perhaps because I am moving into position faster). 2. I take my time in my serves, I think about what serve I want to do and what he won't like, then I execute. I did not go into automatic mode and just serve straight away. 3. I started rope skipping, and today I brought my new rope with me to the centre, and I did a personal record of 75 times! The rope felt amazing, it has some weight, and I can feel it really well, so I am quite pleased with the purchase.

Then I played against a younger man who doesn't have a backhand. I have sort of figured him out as he likes to use his fh on everything. His bh is rather weak, so I exploit that, either by serving to his bh side to force him out of position then fh finish down the line, or serve a fast one down the line into his fh to do an ace etc. 4-1 for me.

Then I played against a club veteran. I know his game very well, so it was more of a game where I get to practice looping with my forehand, and using my bh to open up on his serves. 3-0 for me.

I will have to try replicate my findings next week to see how it works. The shuffling will probably tire me out faster in a comp, but then if it makes me play better, then maybe it is favourable for me. Sadly the nearby townmate has to cancel our training session tomorrow, so I will have to wait for a week for my next tt. Meanwhile, it is fitness building time.

The more you use the legs, the more anything becomes a tiring, athletic activity. But the legs are also extremely resilient if fueled and trained well. So you have to manage your electrolytes and fuel more aggressively.

 

[JeffM]

The more you use the legs, the more anything becomes a tiring, athletic activity. But the legs are also extremely resilient if fueled and trained well. So you have to manage your electrolytes and fuel more aggressively.

I see.
It didn't feel tiring tonight, but I was just speculating what might happen in a competition.
Given how I played tonight, it is giving me second thoughts about changing to dignics 09c.
But I think it should still be fine.
I will have 2 weeks after changing and before the competition.

 

[blahness]

Can you push with sidespin?

Sidespin is too easy to read where im playing. I never push straight anyway, the sidespin helps tremendously with control. But, a short push with sidetopspin (that looks like a push) will really give some long pips vibes to the opponent. My training partner has the nastiest LP short push which almost always leads to ppl popping them up for easy kills which is what inspired me. I did it a few times accidentally in the past and was confused why the ball behaved so strange. The feeling is a bit like serving sidetopspin hook or sidetopspin reverse pendulum, but I figured out a way to disguise it with the normal push.

 

[OvrChkn]

Something I want to work on soon is getting short pushes on my forehand side. I always go for the flick, but I'd like to learn it.

Had two good practices this week. Definitely takes me a while to get my legs and hips going, something to keep in mind for events.

 

[NextLevel]

Going to be in Canada (Ontario) for a few days. Hoping to get some TT in!

 

[Ghostzen]

Trained pretty hard last night and feeling it today...... 2.5 hours of really solid level play. Trying to keep up and get ready for the new season which is coming up rather quickly it would seem!.

Will need to work on service recovery quite a bit more to hold that level when the matches start. Was getting caught quite a lot at the start. Just wasn't ready for the level of return.

Happy with service return mostly and opening but the recounter after that first attack feels like I'm rushed badly.

Really good to get a wake up call that what you think is good enough can always be better!

 

[NextLevel]

Trained pretty hard last night and feeling it today...... 2.5 hours of really solid level play. Trying to keep up and get ready for the new season which is coming up rather quickly it would seem!.

Will need to work on service recovery quite a bit more to hold that level when the matches start. Was getting caught quite a lot at the start. Just wasn't ready for the level of return.

Happy with service return mostly and opening but the recounter after that first attack feels like I'm rushed badly.

Really good to get a wake up call that what you think is good enough can always be better!

Any plans to play in the TTDSL so we can get that video?

 

[Ghostzen]

Actually the lad I was training with is playing in it this season a few times for one of the clubs.

 

[NextLevel]

Actually the lad I was training with is playing in it this season a few times for one of the clubs.

I imagined as much, the TT scene for good players is not that large in any country.

 

[Ghostzen]

The takeaway from it is graft my socks off some more

 

[Ghostzen]

Lots more!

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

Friends and coaches say I’m improving but I’m a bit disillusioned again with some bad losses. There is no official rating in Japan, just a private rating system for a small subset of officious tournaments and I’ve been drifting down there while seeing my friends with similar age and training volume going up. Plus I’m paying coaches…

One friend joked that I should pay them according to my match results: they should not get paid if i don’t win or I should change the coach…that’s an interesting concept but I’m not sure my coaches would agree…lol

I still get those losses because there’s holes in my fundamentals. I can have a very high technical level in some situations or some shots but for example still
can’t receive with consistency and quality some of the simplest of serves, especially as soon as there is some variation or some tension in the match.

I have been focusing more my training towards serve receive and 3rd ball , and drills with randomness but it’s not yet at the level that I need to compete at the level I want.

 

[Ghostzen]

Irregular drills are great and keep you thinking on your feet. Serve, receive and the first 2-3 ball can improve results quiet a bit. Sometimes a simple well placed touch return can really open up the next stroke and put a player on the front foot.

 

[blahness]

Tested the new method to produce both sidetopspin and sideunderspin with similar looking pushes. It basically works with quite good deception I think. But the applicability is limited to BH receiving BH pendulum short serves or FH receiving FH pendulum short serves, and if the opponent doesnt give you those specific placements you cant use it.

For BH receiving FH pendulum short serves the chiquita or strawberry is much better. I created a clearer picture of how to vary the strawberry spin with the fingers (sidetopspin and sideunderspin), and it can now be used against long FH pendulum serves too.

FH receiving short BH pendulum serves is the hardest - I've been using the FH no spin flick with good success so far but that requires a good follow-up as it goes directly into a topspin battle. I think I need to increase my quality of the FH no spin flick by getting into a better position and use the body a bit more. Also need to start developing sharper receives for that particular serve archetype. Candidates are tomahawk short/long pushes (D05 not helping me here) as well as the FH fade which functions the same way as the strawberry but i need a lot more practice to use it well.

I tried a BH pendulum serve and was pleasantly surprised - seemed easy to execute and vary (same movement as the strawberry anyways), and the placement from the middle line to the wide short FH of the opponent seems quite a good way to start the point. It is almost cheating how easy it is to recover after that serve, no problems at all! Maybe I will reserve the service for special occasions, similar to the tomahawk serve.

Played games against the combination penholder and won the first 2 best of 5s before succumbing to his variation lol, lost the next 3 best of 5s, and I think i pulled a glute muscle a bit at the end . The long pips service is still confounding me a bit, but I'm receiving it much better now. Basically I need to treat it not as a FH pendulum serve but as a straight medium underspin/no spin series of serve, because it doesn't have the FH pendulum sidespin although the movement looks like it does (which is why the trajectory looks weird af). Once I fixed that picture in my mind it helped me tremendously (basically with straight serves you have to kinda contact the side of the ball a bit to receive it more easily and be less bothered by the spin variation)

 

[NextLevel]

Friends and coaches say I’m improving but I’m a bit disillusioned again with some bad losses. There is no official rating in Japan, just a private rating system for a small subset of officious tournaments and I’ve been drifting down there while seeing my friends with similar age and training volume going up. Plus I’m paying coaches…

One friend joked that I should pay them according to my match results: they should not get paid if i don’t win or I should change the coach…that’s an interesting concept but I’m not sure my coaches would agree…lol

I still get those losses because there’s holes in my fundamentals. I can have a very high technical level in some situations or some shots but for example still
can’t receive with consistency and quality some of the simplest of serves, especially as soon as there is some variation or some tension in the match.

I have been focusing more my training towards serve receive and 3rd ball , and drills with randomness but it’s not yet at the level that I need to compete at the level I want.

The coach that improved my game the most, he did very little general training. Very little. He would mostly watch me play matches, see what he felt was losing me thr most points. and work on it. His students always were the fastest improving players in the club.

There are many ways to win and lose points, one should be careful that if you want to improve, you are really doing something that would make it easier to beat better players or at least give them trouble at the level they play at, not just finding another way to beat players you would beat anyways.

The one thing that the coach strongly believed in was that you should be able to kill any popup or long push return off a sidespin serve. So I think third ball practice is in the right direction for you. Heavy Sidespin to the short forehand, attack the third ball no matter the return. Get it down to a science.

Sidespin serve receive and 4th ball is probably even bigger I think. Being able to push as many balls as possible short and recover to play out the point is very helpful.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

The coach that improved my game the most, he did very little general training. Very little. He would mostly watch me play matches, see what he felt was losing me thr most points. and work on it. His students always were the fastest improving players in the club.

There are many ways to win and lose points, one should be careful that if you want to improve, you are really doing something that would make it easier to beat better players or at least give them trouble at the level they play at, not just finding another way to beat players you would beat anyways.

I think thats another problem #1 the one coach i train most with, he doesn't watch me play matches...maybe a few videos from time to time, but i don't film a lot. so I need to better coach myself == see where i lose points and matches and ask him to fix that.

There's a coach who's from time to time seeing me play live matches, but i don't go often with him because he's freelance and we can't train in a school, with many balls. So i end up playing with a couple balls and spend my time picking them instead of training. i get 2 or 3x less for my money.

 

[blahness]

Friends and coaches say I’m improving but I’m a bit disillusioned again with some bad losses. There is no official rating in Japan, just a private rating system for a small subset of officious tournaments and I’ve been drifting down there while seeing my friends with similar age and training volume going up. Plus I’m paying coaches…

One friend joked that I should pay them according to my match results: they should not get paid if i don’t win or I should change the coach…that’s an interesting concept but I’m not sure my coaches would agree…lol

I still get those losses because there’s holes in my fundamentals. I can have a very high technical level in some situations or some shots but for example still
can’t receive with consistency and quality some of the simplest of serves, especially as soon as there is some variation or some tension in the match.

I have been focusing more my training towards serve receive and 3rd ball , and drills with randomness but it’s not yet at the level that I need to compete at the level I want.

serve and serve receiving is almost everything in TT. You need some good solutions vs almost all serve archetypes (FH pendulum, BH pendulum, straight heavy underspin/no spin), and a good plan for the next few balls. Similarly you need to have serve and 3rd ball patterns you can safely rely on against different types of players.

 

[blahness]

Tonight I went to the usual club session. I had a blast.

I first played with the nearby townmate, whom I view as better than me, as he did quite well in the last competition. Ranking wise, he is 120 points above me, but his ranking may not be accurate due to very few activity. The first 3 sets I playedd really well, and I stomped to a 3-0 lead. The 4th set, it got closer, it almost feels like he is coming back, but I won the set 12-10. So it was a 4-0 victory for me. The recent times it has been very close between us, and sometimes he would beat me close or badly. I am not sure exactly what clicked this time, but I think it is a combination of factors: 1. I stayed on my toes more at the start of the point, especially when I am receiving, and almost like I am slightly shuffling at the start. I received better this time, and I felt my fh flick was better and my bh banana were good too (perhaps because I am moving into position faster). 2. I take my time in my serves, I think about what serve I want to do and what he won't like, then I execute. I did not go into automatic mode and just serve straight away. 3. I started rope skipping, and today I brought my new rope with me to the centre, and I did a personal record of 75 times! The rope felt amazing, it has some weight, and I can feel it really well, so I am quite pleased with the purchase.

Then I played against a younger man who doesn't have a backhand. I have sort of figured him out as he likes to use his fh on everything. His bh is rather weak, so I exploit that, either by serving to his bh side to force him out of position then fh finish down the line, or serve a fast one down the line into his fh to do an ace etc. 4-1 for me.

Then I played against a club veteran. I know his game very well, so it was more of a game where I get to practice looping with my forehand, and using my bh to open up on his serves. 3-0 for me.

I will have to try replicate my findings next week to see how it works. The shuffling will probably tire me out faster in a comp, but then if it makes me play better, then maybe it is favourable for me. Sadly the nearby townmate has to cancel our training session tomorrow, so I will have to wait for a week for my next tt. Meanwhile, it is fitness building time.

I also tried shuffling before and it is indeed quite tiring, so I switched away from it. So what I noticed from some newer pro players especially the LeBrun brothers and also Anders Lind is the bounce on the knees method to start the engines (for the legs that is). I found that to be equally effective and much less tiring than the shuffling method.

 

[NextLevel]

Went to MyTabletennis club in Missasauga, Ontario, Canada this evening. Got there around 750pm so limited time to play since the club officially closed at 9pm. The club owner was probably surprised that I got there so late but still charged me for the 2 hours lol.

I saw two players playing athletic table tennis on table 1 and considered playing there but figured I might have trouble. But they played for a bit so eventually I walked around the club. Got invited to a table by someone who was leaving so I could play the guy who remained.

Hit with the guy who remained for a bit. Trained forehands and backhands. We played a match. I won 2, 3 and 8 or something like that. The main thing I noted was that people were using the Double Fish ball. It grips the table much more than the Nittaku Premium. Which makes my spin more effective and slows down the game a bit. Can't complain there.

Met a couple of Nigerians (one of them was playing on table 1 when I got there). They were probably exhausted from playing and they both had extremely good touch. The first, I got lucky that he used a paddle that let me win the first two games. then he changed paddles and won the third and I managed to win the 4th. He had said he was exhausted even before we started playing so I really couldn't take credit and he did look older than me.

The second guy had energy and wanted to defend his club against the Texan invader lol. He won the first to games we played, thr first at deuce and the second at 9. He had a very all round game that sometimes had me missing smashes or swinging too early at snakes or getting my loops punch blocked. I then decided that no matter the score, just try as much as possible to focus on heavy spin and let him do whatever he does. The strategy gave me a structure and he started missing his fair share of blocks. We played some good rallies and I managed to tie the match 2‐2. He went up 5‐1 in game 5, I managed to get it back to 3-5, 4‐6, 6‐8, 7‐9, 9‐9. He missed a forehand opener off a long push and then I managed to play a few topspins in a row with precise placement and won the match. I am sure people were wondering why this guy was choing at the top of his lungs in a quiet club.

We had a rematch, I won the first two games easily, had match points at 10‐8 but managed to push the third ball chances long twice in a row. Shame on you NL. Lost that game but wontue 4th 11‐9, the match point being another series of forehand topspins to different points on the table with the final shot being a smash to the forehand side after looping to the backhand. A good workout!

Will be going to CCTTA in Markham to meet a guy whose YouTube channel features a lot of Ontario TT. He is at least USATT 2200, so I don't expect to be able to beat him, but I hope I don't look terrible lol! Wish me luck.

Hoping I remember to brace my core with this new style. It works but I need to protect my lower back.

 

[JeffM]

I also tried shuffling before and it is indeed quite tiring, so I switched away from it. So what I noticed from some newer pro players especially the LeBrun brothers and also Anders Lind is the bounce on the knees method to start the engines (for the legs that is). I found that to be equally effective and much less tiring than the shuffling method.

How do they do it? I have seen but forgotten.
Their knees are bent initially then as the server tosses the ball, they bounce once with their knees back to bent position and ready to move?