Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

tomorrow I'm participating in a Team Event, (happens 2x a year in our league).
Of course, I'd like us to win our division (2nd from bottom), but its not gonna be easy, we finished 2nd last time.

Personally I've skipped running for more than 2 weeks and i can feel my condition is not great. But i felt a huge improvement yesterday in my 1:1 session compared to 1 week ago, so the worst is behind I believe.

I hope there will be some good matches but the more important is that the team wins

 

[NextLevel]

NL, you at Vegas? You seen MyTT member Emilhet?

Nah. Just youtube viewing.

 

[42andbackpains]

Just spent 6 days in Florida doing the family thing at Disney and Universal Studios. Promptly got sick after i returned on the 4th of July and started to feel better today. The coaches from my club did pretty well at the U.S Nationals. They took the womens doubles 1st place, Mixed doubles 1st place and Over 40s 1st and 2nd place, Mens doubles 2nd place and Qtrs of the womens singles. Wanted to play today but still felt drained of energy. Hopefully i can play next week.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

Team Tournament today in our local league.
We play in division 4 (div 1 strongest div6 weakest). We finish 3rd out of 5 teams in our block.
I have not been playing well for one month but this week was a bit better than last week so i had some hope.
The team performed better as a whole as we were playing in div5 last time, and we managed to keep our place in div4

I played all 4 doubles, won 3, lost only 1-3 (12-14 in the 4th) to the strongest team. We played quite well all those matches
In singles, i won a tense decisive match where i was the favourite but lost the 1st set. I managed to stay calm and win it despite the pressure
The next singles i played, was against a veteran player i've played a few times at training, but never in competition. I beat him only a very few times but I knew how to play him, and hadn't played him for a while , so i was not afraid. I had a good lead in the 1st set, but i wasted it 10-12, and my chance was gone, i lost 8 the next 2 if my memory is good. I played positively through the match but i was a bit slow, and my serves weren't very good. I'd say a mix of lack of confidence and good training, and i skipped running 2 weeks in a row, i could feel it. But despite a 0-3 loss, it wasn't a poor match from my side. There were good things

For the last singles, i played a guy who I believe i should/could win, but i lost 0-3. That was a poor performance from me. I couldn't even return his long underspin serves. There wasn't a real match. Maybe i was tired. i was lacking confidence and fighting spirit as well.

Overall not a very good competition, but not a bad one. I wasn't in form lately, so compared to my level in the last month, the result is rather normal or even better than expected if we take into account the doubles.

A few other competitions are coming but this one was the most important for us.

 

[Richie]

I'm visiting my dad in Stockholm at the moment and visited Spårvägen BTK which is the club where Waldner and Mikael Appelgren came from. The standard in Sweden seems much higher than England, at least than the city I was studying in.

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The first session I met the head coach Robert Svanberg. After we hit a few loops he gave me a few serves which were so difficult to read, I had no chance haha. I hadn't played for about three weeks though - that's my excuse . I'm hoping to get to play him a bit more when he's back from holiday so I can get a better read of his serves as it got me quite down. I've never struggled so much with someone's serves other than when Craig Bryant showed me his jab serve.

Later on when a few others showed up I felt a bit better though as I was told even Waldner himself had struggled and even lost a set to Robert because of his deceptive serves!

In other news I found out I'm ranked 584 in England after having played the Bath open I posted here a while ago. If I had the chance to play more tournaments I'd estimate myself to be around 400 considering I've beaten players in the top 300 before and given players in the top 150 the occasional good game too. The reason this is special to me is because three years ago when I started university and got a taste of what real table tennis was like my goal was to make the top 600 list. I'm glad this forum and youtube exists because there's no way I would've done it without these resources.

I've also thankfully got over the phase of wanting to get a new blade. My acoustic suits me fine, I get plenty of power with it when I need to.. I can load the ball with spin thanks to its soft feeling plus it makes it easier for serving, serve receive and the short game which is what I struggle with the most when I play better players. This game is so much more than just looping or hitting the ball fast (at least if you want to do well and win ).

 

[Der_Echte]

Hey, Is that Falkenberg standing next to J.O. Waldner with Rick Flair and his harem???

Gotta go !!!

Don't blame U Richie.

 

[Richie]

Hey, Is that Falkenberg standing next to J.O. Waldner with Rick Flair and his harem???

Gotta go !!!

Don't blame U Richie.

Haha, Sadly not! I don't know how often Waldner comes back but Mikael Appelgren is one of the coaches here so he's bound to be there often during the league season.

My dad is friend with an ex pro golfer who's friends with Waldner, the golfer told me I was gonna get to meet him but I feel its all words . Would be a dream come true to get to meet Waldner.

 

[Der_Echte]

Richie, I wasn't seriously stating any of that, I was making fun of some of the exit excuses the characters in Greg Lett's vid parodies do...

One of them said in a sticky situation to get out of there said : "Hey ! Is that Per Gerell over there? Gotta go !!! "

 

[Archosaurus]

A personal favorite.

 

[Richie]

Richie, I wasn't seriously stating any of that, I was making fun of some of the exit excuses the characters in Greg Lett's vid parodies do...

One of them said in a sticky situation to get out of there said : "Hey ! Is that Per Gerell over there? Gotta go !!! "

I'm embarrassed because I've read of enough of your posts that I should know that you're not being serious in this case .

 

[ajtatosmano2]

I just found a match video where our club's coach beats Seo Hyun Deok. It's so strange to see him choo! that much.
Enjoy these BH loops:

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

went to the club today. After seeing my video from the tournament, i tried to make that extra effort to keep the upper body low in all circumstances and to become aware when i don't do it.

i knocked a few balls and then started to play matches.

1st guy, never played him before, he looked really good, a leftie quite younger than me, very good touch, his pushes were loaded with backspin, very spinny serves, and a good FH drive. He won the 1st set easily, notably i had difficulties returning his long underspin serves to my FH. i tried to fight, but after losing the 1st set 7-11, I thought he would crush me.

But i kept fighting, and to my surprise, staying the upper body low i managed to return with spinny drives his serves to my FH. I surprised myself. I was also surprised that he didn't try to serve more to my BH side. On the other hand i started getting confident and landed more and more 3rd ball attacks, and managed to do some nice winning blocks too. It was a hard fight but i won 9 the 2nd set, and deuce the 3rd set, saving set points. It affected him mentally as he gave away a few free points with serve miss in the 4th and i won this last one with a wide margin. A very encouraging and unexpected win for me given my form of late

Then i played a usual partner, the LP PH blocking guy, that i never won he must be 2300s? . But I'm getting closer and closer to him, and gave him a very good game during the first 3 sets. 1st i lost 7-11 but i had a big lead in the 2nd 6-0 then 10-5 and 11-7 for me. very unusual. I had game point 10-9 in the 3rd with my serve but I shit in my pants and lost my chance (again). and he won the 4th easily, mentally i wasn't there anymore. But i played really well in the first 3 sets, and I thought i would win but.. it didn't happen

Then i played with a teenager, whom i've beaten a few times in the past, i was like winning 25%-30% until a few months ago, but he seems to have improved another notch and today was 0-3 (last week 1-3 but a tight score in set 3). I played quite well against him, but he was too good, making very few mistakes, it was a real fight to win every point. So I'm not too disappointed with the score.

I wish I had played like this last Sunday because probably i would have won one or two more matches.

 

[Shifu]

That moment when you just browse the internet and find your blade on discount so you have a spare one, especially in exactly the same weight. =) <3 Clipper CR Master

 

[ajtatosmano2]

That moment when you just browse the internet and find your blade on discount so you have a spare one, especially in exactly the same weight. =) <3 Clipper CR Master

Now you mentioned the Clipper CR, I remember that I have a Clipper CR without handle. I should make one.

 

[suds79]

Really need to get a new camera so no footage for a while.

But you know how you stay at a certain level for a while and then hit a jump. Either your play simply goes up or something clicks in your head allowing you to do something much better than you did before? Kinda feel like I had one of those moments.

bog to read if you want:
https://penholdpips.blogspot.com/

title:
Penhold RPB Chiquita Flip Made Easy

Okay if you don't go to the blog to read the long post (sorry), then here's the cliff notes version. Basically I copied my friends technique in the BH flip in making my starting point completely perpendicular to the table vs angled down as you might see the top pros do a la FZD.

This has made flipping backspin, and other spins also, so much easier for me. It just simplified the process and even if it's a poor mans version of the shot or doesn't have the potential power of executing it like a FZD might, I'll take just being able to get the shot going for now and I can try to work on improving it or adding more power in time.

Anyways, always fun when you have those a ha moments. Check out the blog if you want to see in more detail how it works for me... BTW my training partner is a shakehander so the concepts I'm talking about apply to penhold and shakehand. Doesn't matter really.

 

[OldschoolPenholder]

Haven't been able to post here for so long... because my shoulder issue still hasn't resolved :/
The ultrasound came back, all the muscles were fine, but there is mild subacromial bursitis... If anyone has any experience or any advice regarding this, please feel free to enlighten me.

Starting to go crazy after not able to play for so long!

Si-hing,

A Like for luck as well as a speedy and healthy recovery.

 

[OldschoolPenholder]

Hello TTD CCers,

Been busy with RL ... eldest daughter taking driving lessons, been practicing with her, etc. ... haven't played in 2 weeks if not a little more

Short family camping trip, got a cold , boss on vacation all week and i work in a 2-man dept ... have to come to work

Hope this post finds TTD CCers hitting their shots for winners!

~osph

 

[OldschoolPenholder]

A Like for luck Sir!

Have been training much less, but I will probably need to try to see a doctor again at some point to address chronic injuries and reevaluate the possibilities. Just too lazy procrastinating...

I will be playing less for a while though. Travelling a bit in July with my siblings.

Safe sojourns!

 

[Michal_Z]

I envy you so much guys!
So many different tournaments there and there, its like you never stop playing!
Here..?
NOTHING!

Damn, this tuesday when I came to training, we were 2!!!
Okay, we gave us a pretty good training session, but still it was just two of us..
Tournament?
Never heared about any around here..
And last tournament I was at, was 5 hours waiting for my first match since registration..
Well.. sucks around here..

 

[JeffM]

Si-hing,

A Like for luck as well as a speedy and healthy recovery.

OSP,

Thank you very much.

A like for luck as well as a speedy and healthy recovery for your cold too!
I am also having a cold at the moment, and I'm coughing so much!