Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[Gozo Aruna]

my question is more about the LONG serve down the line. basically not surprisingly my ball ends up flying over the table most of the time.

Friend Inochi,

Long fast long serve usually is either topspin or no spin. Duraibo it back but pay attention to blade contact, close the blade as parallel to the table as possible. You must press the ball down as you drive: 押し下げるよう努める / 求 要 壓 落 去.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

This is just a short sample of one the drill that I do with my coach very often. He emphasizes this drill for me actually. It is a BH transition to FH drive ( random practice ).

How has this drill benefited me?
Nowadays, I can hit FH / BH efficiently in games. By this I mean sometimes I amazed myself that I did not use my brain / cognitive function and my body just move automatically. This is an amazing effect of doing such a drill.

 

[JeffM]

Comp tmr.. I am feeling quite nervous/restless.
Anyone has any tips how to stay calm / perform the best?
I am trying to maintain a more neutral attitude and not put too much pressure on myself. I feel I have the ability to win it but depends on my performance as well, since it will be best of 3s, so things can swing quick.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Comp tmr.. I am feeling quite nervous/restless.
Anyone has any tips how to stay calm / perform the best?
I am trying to maintain a more neutral attitude and not put too much pressure on myself. I feel I have the ability to win it but depends on my performance as well, since it will be best of 3s, so things can swing quick.

Do this:

 

[NextLevel]

Comp tmr.. I am feeling quite nervous/restless.
Anyone has any tips how to stay calm / perform the best?
I am trying to maintain a more neutral attitude and not put too much pressure on myself. I feel I have the ability to win it but depends on my performance as well, since it will be best of 3s, so things can swing quick.

Control your breathing. Look up breathing exercises on youtube from someone you trust, there are a lot and most of them are reasonable.

 

[NextLevel]

my question is more about the LONG serve down the line. basically not surprisingly my ball ends up flying over the table most of the time.

The high elbow position helps sidespin, so the ball will curve into the table. So you need to adjust your direction when you contact the ball so that the ball curves more down the line (or really outside the table and bends back in), or take off the sidespin and just fast serve down the line, But if your chest isn't facing more towards the table/down the line, it is hard to serve down the line with high elbow. See the video below.

 

[Ghostzen]

Comp tmr.. I am feeling quite nervous/restless.
Anyone has any tips how to stay calm / perform the best?
I am trying to maintain a more neutral attitude and not put too much pressure on myself. I feel I have the ability to win it but depends on my performance as well, since it will be best of 3s, so things can swing quick.

These are some of the things that have worked for me over time.

Try to stay level headed and grounded in the now. Try not to over expect an amazing performace. It's not the world championships...
Work the problems that are presented in the game not how you would like to play. Sometimes winning "ugly" is needed instead of playing like Ma Long style of play.
Try and stay aware of the points that are now and not that have gone.
Breathing and taking time. It's easy to get into over thinking mode when you are playing this and that and whatever but in fact aren't doing any of these....

There are others but start with that and fingers crossed it helps. Cheers

 

[turbozed]

View attachment 25338
This is just a short sample of one the drill that I do with my coach very often. He emphasizes this drill for me actually. It is a BH transition to FH drive ( random practice ).

How has this drill benefited me?
Nowadays, I can hit FH / BH efficiently in games. By this I mean sometimes I amazed myself that I did not use my brain / cognitive function and my body just move automatically. This is an amazing effect of doing such a drill.

I just posted some videos of me doing this same drill in the "Bounce with the ball" thread. In about a month I made a lot of improvement by adding in a recovery bounce/step after every shot. It's made a huge difference for me so I can wholeheartedly recommend that you implement something similar!

 

[turbozed]

Comp tmr.. I am feeling quite nervous/restless.
Anyone has any tips how to stay calm / perform the best?
I am trying to maintain a more neutral attitude and not put too much pressure on myself. I feel I have the ability to win it but depends on my performance as well, since it will be best of 3s, so things can swing quick.

I've been reading some books on sport psychology and they all advocate trying to achieve a 'neutral' or even 'zen' state of mind. Part of this is eliminating any negative self talk or thinking. It's also not about overly-positive thinking and trying to force a particular result.

So instead of "I need to figure out this serve or I'm going to lose" or "I am definitely going to win this point no matter what," you train your mind to focus instead on specific things at specific times.

I've been thinking of implementing a simple focus routine that I would force myself to go through for each point. For instance for service, it'd be spending at least 5 seconds thinking of which serve to do (maybe counting down in my head). Then when I've chosen, switch to focusing on my breathing, then focusing on loosening the grip, and then visually focusing on the ball and then the contact point on the rubber and table.

For receiving it'd be breath first, then stance (knees bent, forward lean, feet wide), then taking a snapshot of the ball contacting your opponent's racket. I find that once the ball is in play you really don't have any time to think. It's just about setting yourself up optimally so that there's nothing getting in the way of your body doing what you've already trained it to do.

 

[Der_Echte]

Comp tmr.. I am feeling quite nervous/restless.
Anyone has any tips how to stay calm / perform the best?
I am trying to maintain a more neutral attitude and not put too much pressure on myself. I feel I have the ability to win it but depends on my performance as well, since it will be best of 3s, so things can swing quick.

BELIEVE that you will place pressure on the opponent and BELIEVE that you will stand under pressure while opponent might fold like a paper napkin.

 

[blahness]

Friend Inochi,

Long fast long serve usually is either topspin or no spin. Duraibo it back but pay attention to blade contact, close the blade as parallel to the table as possible. You must press the ball down as you drive: 押し下げるよう努める / 求 要 壓 落 去.

You can do long fast serves with any kind of spin you want. One of my deadliest serves is the hook sideunderspin long serve designed to jam bad BHs. If they can't loop this, I will definitely get an easy ball to loop on the 3rd ball because ain't no way they can push this long fast serve short.

If you watch some WRM serve videos, they show plenty of examples of these serves.

 

[blahness]

my question is more about the LONG serve down the line. basically not surprisingly my ball ends up flying over the table most of the time.

What I found is that the FH pendulum down the line is not very effective against right handed players because it will curve right into their ideal FH looping zone, and worse, it is the natural blade angle for FH looping to cancel out the sidespin. It's way more effective against left handers especially if it curves towards the middle (see how lefties like Wang Chuqin and Lin Yun Ju abuse this serve to the max).

Furthermore, the standard pendulum sidespin always curves in a way to reduce the angle that they need to cover.

This is why I always use a hook movement to serve down the line fast. Firstly, the hook serve produces the opposite sidespin, which curves away from the opponent and increases the angle they have to cover. Furthermore, to FH loop this serve they have to use a more unnatural angle which causes problems for many ppl, and makes it really hard to go down the line. After this long serve you can kinda prepare for a loop to your FH which you can counter or fade it to their BH (the most devastating combo).

 

[Syed Karar Haider]

So i thought id open up a thread where we can talk about our everyday tabletennis.
This goes as follows

Today i hit the club at 18:15 or 6:15 PM as you would call it . From 6:15 to 7:45 the kiddys have their training and I help coaching them, as good as i can .
At 7:45 the grown up training starts, well its not rly a training more like playing with each other as we have no coach or good players.

Anyways i start hitting with my trainingspartner first some standart drills like counter on counter and then topspin on block for FH and BH. After that some third ball attacks on long backspin pushes. Today i really felt the training i have been doing over the last weeks, i have accustomed myself with the new bat and I can keep the new grip up for longer

Then we did down the line topspins on block and inside out FH from the BH corner with some footwork exercises.

Ah jea i almost forgot i finally got a decent forehandflick, a little note of my trainings partner helped me and it made Click It was such an easy shot all along and i have been over thinking it way too much. So that made me happy for today!

For the last 30 minutes i played two matches. One against a sort of chopper, blocker. For the first time in along time my fh ingame felt very natural and i could attack the third balls and long balls! Yay! Btw NL post on the mind of an attacker helped me big deal! I won in three straight games as my opponent couldnt block my topspins on the table.

The last game i played against a LP player who also likes to attack. He switched to LP recently and has gotten better with them. At first i was leading by a great deal and thought i migth try out some stuff, typicaly i overestimated myself and lost in the end. However we only played one game as we had to leave the club before 10 PM. Otheriwse the janitor will get tantrums.

I also wanted to play with a new girl who joined today. She plays very well and i will try to get a match with her next time

I took the tram home and made myself some delicious croque monsieurs

So how was your tabletennis day? I am eager to know

Cheers

Nice to see you using Stiga Mantra on your forehand. I am also using Stiga Mantra M on both sides on FZD ALC. I like the rubber for its dwell time, heavy spiny top spins and Arc. Anything you can further say on Stiga Mantra.

I also used Rakza rubbers like 7, X but didn't like it

 

[JeffM]

Firstly, I want to thank everyone who has given me tips on how to stay focus on the matches.

What a competition!
We had a maximum turnout of 16!

So we ran with the format of randomly allocating 4 players to 4 groups for round robin, and then top 2 players from each group proceed to the knockout ladder. The captain misunderstood what the meaning of best of 3 is, and he thought that it meant whoever gets to 3 games first (meaning best of 5). This really made it hard to keep the time correct, as each group has then had to play an additional of 1-2 games!

I was grouped with 3 other players, all I have never played against before. 2 were from outside the club that saw the poster, and 1 from the club but never came on the singles night and only plays doubles. I first played the club member who is elderly (in his 80s). I had no trouble, 3-0.

Then I played against a guy from outside the club, he uses inverted rubbers. It wasn't much difficulty, so another 3-0.

The last match, I played against a guy who uses a hard bat! It was a bit of a change, but luckily he didn't capitalise on my unfamiliarity, so I won 3-0.

I successfully proceeded into the knockout ladder.

Some groups took alot longer to finish, so the cap and I were really scared that we would run out of time. So he has set the first match in the ladder to be a best of 3 instead of best of 5.

This made it very scary for me. I played against the founder of the club (who is 84). He has a great stable backhand despite him not able to move as agile as before. He has coached loads of juniors when he was young and ran training camps etc for kids. In fact, quite a few of the adult players in the competition were trained by him previously! He obviously has seen me play before on multiple occasions, so he knew where to hit to hurt me.
The first set, he got up on a great lead, perhaps it was the first match that I turned on my camera to record my match, I hit quite a few top edges on my blade and he was like 5-1 in lead. I did my best to chase it. but it was 10-6 in his favour. I kept not giving up, but he won it 11-9. He mainly served backhand reverse top spin to my backhand, and I was not too confident, so he took advantage of my weak block and punished me.
2nd set, I knew he was going to keep doing that until I can adjust, so I became more active. I actively attacked that serve, and I got some good success, coupled with my own serve variation, I took it rather easy. Then third set, I knew I had to get a good start as it is the final set, and so I did, and won it. Due to the nature of it being best of 3, I did feel at some points that perhaps this is the end for me but luckily I kept it going.

Then semis, I played against captain (who was previously trained by the founder) I was in competition mode and not mucking around. So I stomped through him 3-0. It wasn't as easy as the score shows, he did block my fh loop quite a few occasions but it wasn't enough. I was also doing alot more bh attacks and open ups as my training in the city was not in vain.

Then finals, it was against a guy from a nearby town (who also was previously trained by the founder when he was young). I stayed positive in the attacking game, and adjusted to his serves rather well I thought. I tried pushing some serves (that didn't have much spin and was punished), so I turned to using banana which worked well. I did some pivoting and also some serve + bh open ups. I took it 3-0.

I have to say I am very happy to have finally won it! It wasn't all easy and smooth, and looking at the ladder, I definitely was in the harder half of the ladder but I got there in the end. I was feeling very tired just going into the finals, perhaps lack of food and long day, so next time I have to factor that in and have some food.

The above is just words, but I have captured videos of my games in the ladder, so you guys can expect to see them at some point later in the week when I can find the wire to transfer to my pc for uploading.

Thanks for reading.

 

[JeffM]

 

[OvrChkn]

Had a pretty good session last night. Turns out that getting as low as possible solved some issues, as well as switching my forehand to XVE and backhand to R7. I'm like one of two people that plays with a wood blade in my club, so getting a lot lower has really helped my timing to deal with the pace.

 

[Wrighty67]

Firstly, I want to thank everyone who has given me tips on how to stay focus on the matches.

What a competition!
We had a maximum turnout of 16!

So we ran with the format of randomly allocating 4 players to 4 groups for round robin, and then top 2 players from each group proceed to the knockout ladder. The captain misunderstood what the meaning of best of 3 is, and he thought that it meant whoever gets to 3 games first (meaning best of 5). This really made it hard to keep the time correct, as each group has then had to play an additional of 1-2 games!

I was grouped with 3 other players, all I have never played against before. 2 were from outside the club that saw the poster, and 1 from the club but never came on the singles night and only plays doubles. I first played the club member who is elderly (in his 80s). I had no trouble, 3-0.

Then I played against a guy from outside the club, he uses inverted rubbers. It wasn't much difficulty, so another 3-0.

The last match, I played against a guy who uses a hard bat! It was a bit of a change, but luckily he didn't capitalise on my unfamiliarity, so I won 3-0.

I successfully proceeded into the knockout ladder.

Some groups took alot longer to finish, so the cap and I were really scared that we would run out of time. So he has set the first match in the ladder to be a best of 3 instead of best of 5.

This made it very scary for me. I played against the founder of the club (who is 84). He has a great stable backhand despite him not able to move as agile as before. He has coached loads of juniors when he was young and ran training camps etc for kids. In fact, quite a few of the adult players in the competition were trained by him previously! He obviously has seen me play before on multiple occasions, so he knew where to hit to hurt me.
The first set, he got up on a great lead, perhaps it was the first match that I turned on my camera to record my match, I hit quite a few top edges on my blade and he was like 5-1 in lead. I did my best to chase it. but it was 10-6 in his favour. I kept not giving up, but he won it 11-9. He mainly served backhand reverse top spin to my backhand, and I was not too confident, so he took advantage of my weak block and punished me.
2nd set, I knew he was going to keep doing that until I can adjust, so I became more active. I actively attacked that serve, and I got some good success, coupled with my own serve variation, I took it rather easy. Then third set, I knew I had to get a good start as it is the final set, and so I did, and won it. Due to the nature of it being best of 3, I did feel at some points that perhaps this is the end for me but luckily I kept it going.

Then semis, I played against captain (who was previously trained by the founder) I was in competition mode and not mucking around. So I stomped through him 3-0. It wasn't as easy as the score shows, he did block my fh loop quite a few occasions but it wasn't enough. I was also doing alot more bh attacks and open ups as my training in the city was not in vain.

Then finals, it was against a guy from a nearby town (who also was previously trained by the founder when he was young). I stayed positive in the attacking game, and adjusted to his serves rather well I thought. I tried pushing some serves (that didn't have much spin and was punished), so I turned to using banana which worked well. I did some pivoting and also some serve + bh open ups. I took it 3-0.

I have to say I am very happy to have finally won it! It wasn't all easy and smooth, and looking at the ladder, I definitely was in the harder half of the ladder but I got there in the end. I was feeling very tired just going into the finals, perhaps lack of food and long day, so next time I have to factor that in and have some food.

The above is just words, but I have captured videos of my games in the ladder, so you guys can expect to see them at some point later in the week when I can find the wire to transfer to my pc for uploading.

Thanks for reading.

Congratulations, what a great win - sounds like you had to fight for it but got through.

 

[NextLevel]

You can do long fast serves with any kind of spin you want. One of my deadliest serves is the hook sideunderspin long serve designed to jam bad BHs. If they can't loop this, I will definitely get an easy ball to loop on the 3rd ball because ain't no way they can push this long fast serve short.

If you watch some WRM serve videos, they show plenty of examples of these serves.

I used this serve a lot, and now, I serve a lot of backhand long into the backhand for the same reason. In general, if you want to go long to start a long, it is best to go to the backhand.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

I used this serve a lot, and now, I serve a lot of backhand long into the backhand for the same reason. In general, if you want to go long to start a long, it is best to go to the backhand.

Long to BH serve and coincidentally in my coaching session my coach emphasizes a lot of aggressively attack ( open-up or drive ) using BH against these serves.

It seems he knows that these serves are a useful tactics and he prepares his students against such serve.

 

[Der_Echte]

@Jslick89

I mentioned two things about your stance to coach to relay to you, should add points to your total.