Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[dingyibvs]

Had a great practice yesterday, worked a bit more on FH this time, and to vary placement with my BH which is a work in progress. BH is becoming fairly natural to use, and FH form is improving but still not there yet. It looks a bit off, and feels a bit off as well. I think whereas before I had a straight line weight transfer from right to left, with little rotation, whereas now I'm doing heavy rotation with the rotational axis around the center of my body. I noticed that when comparing FH forms with pros and noticed that I'm simply not putting that much weight onto my right leg. What I should do is combine the weight transfer and the rotation, so that I'm basically rotating around an axis BEHIND my body.

My partner is getting a lot better at defending against my attacks and we're getting into rallies more often. He's also tightened up his services, going short or half-long more often, making it more difficult for me to stay aggressive. For him we're trying to work with his opening loops which is still spotty. I think if he can confidently open up more consistently he can take a big leap in his game.

Here are a couple of our games. Again, trying to be more active and use FH more and hitting to more than just cross table with the BH. I think I did well when serving pendulum, but now that my training partner is getting better receiving my reverse spin services it's revealing a lot of holes in my 3rd ball attacks after reverse spin services, particularly against the soft, go-with-the-spin type of flick/block to my wide FH. I think a big issue is that I don't really weight transfer with those shots, so I hit them late and can only hit them to his BH side which is quite predictable.

 

[NextLevel]

Couldn't figure out where to put this so...

86K views · 1.1K reactions | HOW DID HE REACH THAT ???? 🤯 HOW ???? 🎥@ceskystolnitenis #tabletennis #sports #foryoupage | European Table Tennis Union

HOW DID HE REACH THAT ???? 🤯 HOW ???? 🎥@ceskystolnitenis #tabletennis #sports #foryoupage.

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[NextLevel]

Looks like TTD got the same video:

 

[dingyibvs]

In reviewing my practice matches, I find that I need to have a different 3rd ball strategy for reverse spin services. When I do regular pendulum services, I protect my BH first and foremost, but I think when I serve reverse spin I should protect my FH a bit more. It's a lot easier for the opponent to direct the ball to my FH side with a minimal stroke, giving me less time to react, whereas placing the ball to my BH side requires a more deliberate stroke and thus giving me more time to prepare.

Also, have you guys noticed that some style of play may be more conducive to getting nets and edges? Adam Bobrow's videos seem to show him getting a lot of nets/edges, consistently more than his opponent. Since I've been playing a lot of practice matches against my training partner the past month, I've found that he gets a lot more of those than I do. First couple weeks I thought it'd just even out, but this week it got worse. I just counted it while rewatching our matches, and across the 4 matches (17 total sets) we played he got 24 edges/nets compared to my 11. Not that there's anything to do about it, but just an interesting observation.

 

[Tyce]

In reviewing my practice matches, I find that I need to have a different 3rd ball strategy for reverse spin services. When I do regular pendulum services, I protect my BH first and foremost, but I think when I serve reverse spin I should protect my FH a bit more. It's a lot easier for the opponent to direct the ball to my FH side with a minimal stroke, giving me less time to react, whereas placing the ball to my BH side requires a more deliberate stroke and thus giving me more time to prepare.

Also, have you guys noticed that some style of play may be more conducive to getting nets and edges? Adam Bobrow's videos seem to show him getting a lot of nets/edges, consistently more than his opponent. Since I've been playing a lot of practice matches against my training partner the past month, I've found that he gets a lot more of those than I do. First couple weeks I thought it'd just even out, but this week it got worse. I just counted it while rewatching our matches, and across the 4 matches (17 total sets) we played he got 24 edges/nets compared to my 11. Not that there's anything to do about it, but just an interesting observation.

Absolutely! Lots of attacks generally means the ball drops near the end of the table, so you play with an arc which clears the net.
More backspin, or no-spin, means you have to be closer to the net to hit the table with the same power because your arc is low, flat or reverse.

 

[Novarac23]

Played 3 league matches today and lost all three. Played really bad. Got frustrated I lost the first game and then everything went downhill from there. Sssuuuuper frustrating.

 

[NextLevel]

Sometimes I wonder wherher Tablw tennis has distorted my body lol...

Usually I thought it was ideal to play the forehand besides me, backhand in front of me. But I am thinking tha maybe I had it wrong and my forehand and backhand should both be played in front of me just one with some body rotation and one without. Maybe I have it wrong and of course I can't use my lower body the same way but if someone wants to see what I am thinking of now (and I can't really emulate it even if I wanted to, my upper arm.is not quite where his is), you can look at Jun Mizutani"s arm and elbow positioning on forehands and backhands.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

This is so faniliar; almost deja-vu

Spoiler: Deja-vu?

 

[backspacer]

State championships are taking place this weekend. I took part in the lowest class today and lost all of my group matches and the doubles match with a random partner. I slept less than two hours and felt awful in the first match. I was so slow and my opponent was more of a smasher than spin player. I think he had pips on his backhand because he never opened up with it. A few heavy spin loops on the way too big forehand I couldn't deal with, but yeah, I just wasn't there yet somehow still defended match points and won a game at least. I drank coffee afterwards and was in better shape for the second match. Some open rallies, but too many receive mistakes from me because I wanted to punish the weak serves and overshot almost always. What on this level often happens in open rallies is that players don't play spin with the backhand which I'm unfortunately guilty of too, but he got the spin in whenever he could. I could block the first one, but I missed the table eventually when he kept it up. My backhand basically completely died after watching so many backhand videos because I used to swing my arm like a madman and now I'm so overly conscious of every backhand I play doing tiny motions without even putting spin on. It has become so frustrating. That said, I once again defended match points and won a game, but ultimately he was better and won rightfully. That match was fun though unlike the first one. Not having fun is the worst imo when playing so that cheered me up a bit. Last match was against a kid I was expected to lose to and I did lose 0-3. The entire match was almost decided in serve receive. I think he misread the spin more than me, but dealing with the amount of spin was definitely the problem. I'm absolutely awful at attacking serves with my forehand partly because my stroke is bad (hitting sidespin) and I just don't have the confidence. So many wasted chances on the forehand and I overshot every time with my backhand. Last game at least went into deuce. I checked my opponents' rating afterwards, all were rated much higher, but the first two were way higher than the kid so I guess I should feel good for winning at least a game against them. Actually watched Levenko's latest video earlier and he said to think about what kind of player you are and I feel reassured in saying I'm the open rally guy after today. That's where I get most points in playing tournaments and is probably why I also don't enjoy league that much because most of our league players aren't that type. That's on me too when I fail to get the rally started, though. Tomorrow is another tournament I probably shouldn't play because my rating plummeted the past few months, but I will take any tournament I can. Infinite room to improve, but I know I'm not in the right environment and I'm sick of it. It's a widespread issue for most adult players in Germany because most clubs only offer the space and time to play and not more.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

State championships are taking place this weekend. I took part in the lowest class today and lost all of my group matches and the doubles match with a random partner. I slept less than two hours and felt awful in the first match. I was so slow and my opponent was more of a smasher than spin player. I think he had pips on his backhand because he never opened up with it. A few heavy spin loops on the way too big forehand I couldn't deal with, but yeah, I just wasn't there yet somehow still defended match points and won a game at least. I drank coffee afterwards and was in better shape for the second match. Some open rallies, but too many receive mistakes from me because I wanted to punish the weak serves and overshot almost always. What on this level often happens in open rallies is that players don't play spin with the backhand which I'm unfortunately guilty of too, but he got the spin in whenever he could. I could block the first one, but I missed the table eventually when he kept it up. My backhand basically completely died after watching so many backhand videos because I used to swing my arm like a madman and now I'm so overly conscious of every backhand I play doing tiny motions without even putting spin on. It has become so frustrating. That said, I once again defended match points and won a game, but ultimately he was better and won rightfully. That match was fun though unlike the first one. Not having fun is the worst imo when playing so that cheered me up a bit. Last match was against a kid I was expected to lose to and I did lose 0-3. The entire match was almost decided in serve receive. I think he misread the spin more than me, but dealing with the amount of spin was definitely the problem. I'm absolutely awful at attacking serves with my forehand partly because my stroke is bad (hitting sidespin) and I just don't have the confidence. So many wasted chances on the forehand and I overshot every time with my backhand. Last game at least went into deuce. I checked my opponents' rating afterwards, all were rated much higher, but the first two were way higher than the kid so I guess I should feel good for winning at least a game against them. Actually watched Levenko's latest video earlier and he said to think about what kind of player you are and I feel reassured in saying I'm the open rally guy after today. That's where I get most points in playing tournaments and is probably why I also don't enjoy league that much because most of our league players aren't that type. That's on me too when I fail to get the rally started, though. Tomorrow is another tournament I probably shouldn't play because my rating plummeted the past few months, but I will take any tournament I can. Infinite room to improve, but I know I'm not in the right environment and I'm sick of it. It's a widespread issue for most adult players in Germany because most clubs only offer the space and time to play and not more.

Spoiler: TL;DR version of What actually happened...

 

[dingyibvs]

State championships are taking place this weekend. I took part in the lowest class today and lost all of my group matches and the doubles match with a random partner. I slept less than two hours and felt awful in the first match. I was so slow and my opponent was more of a smasher than spin player. I think he had pips on his backhand because he never opened up with it. A few heavy spin loops on the way too big forehand I couldn't deal with, but yeah, I just wasn't there yet somehow still defended match points and won a game at least. I drank coffee afterwards and was in better shape for the second match. Some open rallies, but too many receive mistakes from me because I wanted to punish the weak serves and overshot almost always. What on this level often happens in open rallies is that players don't play spin with the backhand which I'm unfortunately guilty of too, but he got the spin in whenever he could. I could block the first one, but I missed the table eventually when he kept it up. My backhand basically completely died after watching so many backhand videos because I used to swing my arm like a madman and now I'm so overly conscious of every backhand I play doing tiny motions without even putting spin on. It has become so frustrating. That said, I once again defended match points and won a game, but ultimately he was better and won rightfully. That match was fun though unlike the first one. Not having fun is the worst imo when playing so that cheered me up a bit. Last match was against a kid I was expected to lose to and I did lose 0-3. The entire match was almost decided in serve receive. I think he misread the spin more than me, but dealing with the amount of spin was definitely the problem. I'm absolutely awful at attacking serves with my forehand partly because my stroke is bad (hitting sidespin) and I just don't have the confidence. So many wasted chances on the forehand and I overshot every time with my backhand. Last game at least went into deuce. I checked my opponents' rating afterwards, all were rated much higher, but the first two were way higher than the kid so I guess I should feel good for winning at least a game against them. Actually watched Levenko's latest video earlier and he said to think about what kind of player you are and I feel reassured in saying I'm the open rally guy after today. That's where I get most points in playing tournaments and is probably why I also don't enjoy league that much because most of our league players aren't that type. That's on me too when I fail to get the rally started, though. Tomorrow is another tournament I probably shouldn't play because my rating plummeted the past few months, but I will take any tournament I can. Infinite room to improve, but I know I'm not in the right environment and I'm sick of it. It's a widespread issue for most adult players in Germany because most clubs only offer the space and time to play and not more.

Get good rest my man, super important! I'd recommend the new video by Jan Valenta, a lot of super good info. A couple things I think would be especially helpful for you.

Besides rest, I think another important thing he mentioned was that while in practice we should be mindful in terms of technique, playing matches should be completely mindless when it comes to technique. Don't think about your BH form when playing a match you're trying to win!

 

[dingyibvs]

I had a fun day at the club yesterday, played some matches against someone I partnered for doubles a few months back. I had already been implementing some of what Valenta's video mentions, but this time I especially kept it in mind. After winning the first match pretty easily, shocking him with my recent BH improvements, I started working on the more recent training. Specifically, I'm trying to move more actively to get in a good BH position, use my body more, and hit the middle and down the line more with my BH. I figured those 3 things kind of go hand-to-hand for a dominant BH. You can't use your body well or hit powerful shots down the line without getting into a good position, for example, and you can vary the amount of body rotation to vary the placement as well, very much like on the FH side.

When all 3 things worked at the same time, the shots were beautiful! Now I just need to get them working more often

 

[NextLevel]

In reviewing my practice matches, I find that I need to have a different 3rd ball strategy for reverse spin services. When I do regular pendulum services, I protect my BH first and foremost, but I think when I serve reverse spin I should protect my FH a bit more. It's a lot easier for the opponent to direct the ball to my FH side with a minimal stroke, giving me less time to react, whereas placing the ball to my BH side requires a more deliberate stroke and thus giving me more time to prepare.

Also, have you guys noticed that some style of play may be more conducive to getting nets and edges? Adam Bobrow's videos seem to show him getting a lot of nets/edges, consistently more than his opponent. Since I've been playing a lot of practice matches against my training partner the past month, I've found that he gets a lot more of those than I do. First couple weeks I thought it'd just even out, but this week it got worse. I just counted it while rewatching our matches, and across the 4 matches (17 total sets) we played he got 24 edges/nets compared to my 11. Not that there's anything to do about it, but just an interesting observation.

It depends on placement. It is always easier for a serve to the backhand to be directed back to the backhand side and a serve to the forehand to be directed to the forehand side, the sidespins can make certain angles harder on passive play but those rarely tend to override the ease of going crosscourt with active play. What is usually riskier is whether you have trained enough to adjust your contact point on third ball especially when the sidespin is continued with a push but the backspin is maintained. But regardless of sidespin, active play cross court is what is easier and active play down the line is harder.

 

[NextLevel]

State championships are taking place this weekend. I took part in the lowest class today and lost all of my group matches and the doubles match with a random partner. I slept less than two hours and felt awful in the first match. I was so slow and my opponent was more of a smasher than spin player. I think he had pips on his backhand because he never opened up with it. A few heavy spin loops on the way too big forehand I couldn't deal with, but yeah, I just wasn't there yet somehow still defended match points and won a game at least. I drank coffee afterwards and was in better shape for the second match. Some open rallies, but too many receive mistakes from me because I wanted to punish the weak serves and overshot almost always. What on this level often happens in open rallies is that players don't play spin with the backhand which I'm unfortunately guilty of too, but he got the spin in whenever he could. I could block the first one, but I missed the table eventually when he kept it up. My backhand basically completely died after watching so many backhand videos because I used to swing my arm like a madman and now I'm so overly conscious of every backhand I play doing tiny motions without even putting spin on. It has become so frustrating. That said, I once again defended match points and won a game, but ultimately he was better and won rightfully. That match was fun though unlike the first one. Not having fun is the worst imo when playing so that cheered me up a bit. Last match was against a kid I was expected to lose to and I did lose 0-3. The entire match was almost decided in serve receive. I think he misread the spin more than me, but dealing with the amount of spin was definitely the problem. I'm absolutely awful at attacking serves with my forehand partly because my stroke is bad (hitting sidespin) and I just don't have the confidence. So many wasted chances on the forehand and I overshot every time with my backhand. Last game at least went into deuce. I checked my opponents' rating afterwards, all were rated much higher, but the first two were way higher than the kid so I guess I should feel good for winning at least a game against them. Actually watched Levenko's latest video earlier and he said to think about what kind of player you are and I feel reassured in saying I'm the open rally guy after today. That's where I get most points in playing tournaments and is probably why I also don't enjoy league that much because most of our league players aren't that type. That's on me too when I fail to get the rally started, though. Tomorrow is another tournament I probably shouldn't play because my rating plummeted the past few months, but I will take any tournament I can. Infinite room to improve, but I know I'm not in the right environment and I'm sick of it. It's a widespread issue for most adult players in Germany because most clubs only offer the space and time to play and not more.

The problem with being the open rally guy is that a large amount of TT improvement is tied to being more dangerous on the first four balls (or at least being more safe). In fact with this new ball, I have often done the test of serving plain serves and other than against the blockers, my level drops significantly against the players who back off the table to just smack the ball of who are aggressive returner. My serve game is simple but advanced, I serve varieties od backspin and no spin with different placements and depths and try to get passive returns to attack. I know your training environment doesn't improve you, but it is worth just trying to get your serve (with a decent training partner or friendly kids, I was lucky to have two young kids playing around me when I started so I played them a lot and while they beat me and easily surpassed me, my level always grew even if slower than theirs because they made me able to play faster) to arrive place where you can enter the rally on favorable terms.

 

[backspacer]

The problem with being the open rally guy is that a large amount of TT improvement is tied to being more dangerous on the first four balls (or at least being more safe). In fact with this new ball, I have often done the test of serving plain serves and other than against the blockers, my level drops significantly against the players who back off the table to just smack the ball of who are aggressive returner. My serve game is simple but advanced, I serve varieties od backspin and no spin with different placements and depths and try to get passive returns to attack. I know your training environment doesn't improve you, but it is worth just trying to get your serve (with a decent training partner or friendly kids, I was lucky to have two young kids playing around me when I started so I played them a lot and while they beat me and easily surpassed me, my level always grew even if slower than theirs because they made me able to play faster) to arrive place where you can enter the rally on favorable terms.

Yeah, I noticed that when I played the tournament yesterday. I tried to punish serves, missed often or outright failed the receive. Not many third balls I could attack no problem or failed to do so. My backhand is absolutely killing me at the moment in so many ways. I also have the problem with the pendulum serve that the spin and placement control is terrible because I stomp. When I practice the serve it's much better because I don't and can't even stomp. I will try to get some regular time in for the serve to figure this out. I use the hook mostly in official matches, but my shitty pendulum has saved me sometimes.

 

[NextLevel]

Yeah, I noticed that when I played the tournament yesterday. I tried to punish serves, missed often or outright failed the receive. Not many third balls I could attack no problem or failed to do so. My backhand is absolutely killing me at the moment in so many ways. I also have the problem with the pendulum serve that the spin and placement control is terrible because I stomp. When I practice the serve it's much better because I don't and can't even stomp. I will try to get some regular time in for the serve to figure this out. I use the hook mostly in official matches, but my shitty pendulum has saved me sometimes.

The first serve I could get serious deception on vs good players was the backspin vs no spin combination and as my backspin serve improved, the deception improved tremendously. In general, I find that amount of spin is easier to deceive people with than the decision between top/back. I used to serve long backspin and long no spin to a player much higher rated than me and he used to loop kill the ball repeatedly with lots of errors. And my serve technique wasn't good then, I basically just varied the contact point and he would assume there was always heavy spin. Players don't give you credit for changing the amount of spin on your serve unless they have reached the level of awareness where they give you credit for their mistakes (he felt I was too low rated to be pulling the errors out of him at the time). I probably underuse no spin on sidespin serves but it can be effective as well. Just food for thought, because people focus so much on trying to deceive between top and back that they miss the opportunity to add spin and give a less spinny ball and let that variation drive errors. That said, one has to be able to generate spin (get the ball to come back towards you on backspin serves or get the serve to break sharply left or right on side backspin serves) for the deception to be most effective. What some people call sidespin serves are really no spin serves.

 

[dingyibvs]

Thinking about Levenko's video re: knowing what type of player you are, I think I'm just an aggressive player, mainly due to a lack of patience. I used to think I'm very FH oriented, but now that I'm getting better with my BH, I'm getting super aggressive on that side as well. Basically in practice, as soon as I feel comfortable with one level of aggression, I turn it up a notch and try to be more aggressive. I'm now trying to figure out the down the line and inside out BH techniques, for counters, loops, and loop drives.

As an aside, I noticed during the practice matches this weekend that I didn't do very well with my opening loops when I maintained a bit more of a lean. Turns out it's because I do my regular practices standing fairly upright. I'm gonna focus on maintaining a lean when I practice as well. In fact I'm trying to incorporate a bit more of a lean on all my strokes, FH and BH, loops and blocks. Without it I find it much more difficult to go forward with the stroke when the rally gets fast.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

147 reactions · 15 comments | #Reels #คลิปReels #pingpong #tabletennis #sports #500K #ปิงปอง #เทเบิลเทนนิส #กีฬา #ออกกำลังกาย | พลากร วิจิตรธรรม

#Reels #คลิปReels #pingpong #tabletennis #sports #500K #ปิงปอง #เทเบิลเทนนิส #กีฬา #ออกกำลังกาย.

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I found gozo’s account

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

147 reactions · 15 comments | #Reels #คลิปReels #pingpong #tabletennis #sports #500K #ปิงปอง #เทเบิลเทนนิส #กีฬา #ออกกำลังกาย | พลากร วิจิตรธรรม

#Reels #คลิปReels #pingpong #tabletennis #sports #500K #ปิงปอง #เทเบิลเทนนิส #กีฬา #ออกกำลังกาย.

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I found gozo’s account

this dude looks too soft
Gozo is the mean machine

 

[suds79]

I feel like I know the answer to this. But as you look at this, is there really much difference between a curved handle and the pistol grip? Essentially both blades are trying to point the head down for you correct?

Now the grip on the Sanwei pistol grip I'm pretty sure I get.

But on the NIttaku here, you wouldn't want to choke up on the blade putting your finger across the back side like normal right? Then it'd be like holding the normal blade (ex: red line)

The point of the blade on the backhand side would be to put your index figure somewhere around the green angle right? This way you're doing basically what the blade is designed for in keeping the head down. (ex: green line)

I know they're weird grips but fundamentally bear with me in does this line of thinking make sense?