Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

This user has no status.
This user has no status.
🏆 Top 1% Commenter
Well-Known Member
Jan 2015
1,022
1,356
4,826
Read 8 reviews
the key is that be it of long or short serve
1) the swing should be fast
2) brush the ball
3) the elbow should go up while you swing
4) close your wrist (hand going perpendicular to the arm) and contact the ball (for rightie) on the right side and under the ball (over for topspin)
5) if you are afraid of making the swing too large it must be compensated by a higher throw
6) aiming a bit on the right, and letting the sidespin do its job will help to keep the serve short
7) posture (for righties): left foot in front. stomp the RIGHT foot as you serve for balance and recovering

if you try to make a shorter swing for more control, you will end up with a no-spin, and high ball too easy to attack for the opponent.
Thanks, what do you mean by close the wrist? what angle of bat do you impact the ball?

I tried doing that today actually, with larger swing but didn't raise my elbow. Maybe that is why.. I raised my bat but not the elbow
 
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
🏆 Top 1% Commenter
Well-Known Member
Jan 2015
1,022
1,356
4,826
Read 8 reviews
I played today with my double's partner.

It wasn't a bad one session but it just shows I am not in form. I don't feel my forehand loops as confident as they were a month ago, and I think alot of it is due to the lack of practice.

We practiced fhs and bhs, then serve receive as he specifically requested that, and then I practiced some serves too.

In the end, we played a match to finish it off. I made so many serving errors it must be a record for me. 3 serve faults in 1 set. I won first 2 sets, and then 3rd set, i went 0-9, and i tried to do a comeback but failed at 6-11. Won the fourth set with 3 serve faults.

Tomorrow I will play casually with my friends. Then competition on Sunday.
Looking forward to it!
 
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
Active Member
Feb 2023
672
709
2,086
Trying to play ay the same level in matches that you do in training is dangerous. Unless in training your coach is trying to make you play worse, it is not like a match at all. In a match the opponent is trying to win too, all he needs to find is one thing you do not like and you cannot avoid, and if it is his service you have a long night ahead of you.

Many players play fearfully in matches, they don't realize that missing is as much about gathering information as it is about winning the point. When I serve backspin and get a push, if I miss the third ball, I need to diagnose what I did to miss and whether I needed to add more or less spin or loop more or less forward. The score and how well you are playing should not concern you so much because it never changes the goal from your perspective. You need to just focus on adapting to the opponent and deploying your weapons to frustrate the opponent. Sometimes you serve they push, you push to the side they are not standing at to challenge them and see whether they do well iif forced to move a little, it isn't always about who plays the ball better. Looking good in practice doesnt matter unless the practice ball is designed to frustrate you.

The most important service combination is backspin and no spin, it is the most fundamental and simple deception technique, and it is the one that consistently scores at every level if you have a good third ball. You can even score with just no spin if it looks like backspin as long as the opponent doesn't adjust. Service is the most creative part of the sport. Reverse pendulum is the most difficult technical service, Waldner never developed a good one, it is not worth discussing to be honest.

I could be wrong but you need to talk to someone who focuses on fighting and match strategy, not on your results. Fighting is s mentality, it has very little to do with how well you feel, you just have to accept who you are and figure out how to keep your problem solving mindset throughout the match. Letting misses upset you or the score annoy you doesn't let you focus on what you need to do to win.

All that said, the Video safe footage thread is there if you want technical advice. In the end though, if you won a game off those players you are a good player player, the real question is whether you are justified in letting the result make you feel that something is wrong with your service. Service can always be better, but the service that works against an opponent can be anything. Even my current coach is teaching me to Steve fast long with forehand and then block the return (relying on the fact that the stroke will put tha teruener out of position).
Today will have a training session with my coach. I will take phone tripod and will try to record it today and upload it here. :)
 
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
🏆 Top 1% Commenter
Well-Known Member
Oct 2010
2,859
2,798
10,527
I have a question,
how do i deal with returns to to my extreme fh when i serve side-under to my oponent’s short fh?
i know one thing i can do is mix them up with no spin, what are the other things i can do to deal with these returns?
I usually like to FH flick the ball down to their middle or deep BH from this position. The other good thing to do is to do a deep tomahawk style spinny push or sideswipe to the same placements. If they prove they can deal with these well then you can do deep pushes to their wide FH or return it back short.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mikey_TT
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
🏆 Top 1% Commenter
Well-Known Member
Jan 2016
5,310
6,815
27,595
Thanks, what do you mean by close the wrist? what angle of bat do you impact the ball?

I tried doing that today actually, with larger swing but didn't raise my elbow. Maybe that is why.. I raised my bat but not the elbow
if you're right handed then the angle between your hand and arm is close to 90 degrees (you turn your hand on the left)

seen from above there is a 45 degrees angle between the table lines and the bat.

for more deception the bat is almost inside a vertical plane. but in reality at impact you go a little bit under the ball to put backspin. but you'll figure out you don't need to have the racket very flat.
the quicker your swing is, the more it is difficult for the opponent to see whether your serve is topspin / backspin / nospin

for the fast nospin serve the swing is a bit more forward while for both underspin / topspin serve the swing is more lateral.

again, i think its important to think more about sidespin before topspin or backspin. Once you know how to put sidespin its easy to do everything. my friends also like to serve BH short in doubles, they manage to put quite some pure backspin (without sidespin) on it but i think their serve is a bit too obvious and its easier to fail its execution especially under pressure because their swing is forward, more chance to put the ball in the net or too serve too long, or to choke and serve it high without spin.

try to watch pros doing it. Dima/Jorgic do that serve quite often. Else all the choppers, Filus, the Japanese girls Sato, Hashimoto, Suh Hyowon to name a few. Many tutorials on YT too
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: blahness and JeffM
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
Active Member
Feb 2023
672
709
2,086
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
Member
Apr 2020
217
256
2,030
Read 1 reviews
Last edited:
says preparing for a tournament
says preparing for a tournament
Member
Sep 2023
50
26
160
I have already posted some of my video footage here

Post in thread 'Video Footage Safe Thread'
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/video-footage-safe-thread.26467/post-428112

Discussion is limited to authorized ppls there but anyone comments are welcome too of course in this thread.
Your form is great and the technique looks nice. Even though I am not that qualified to comment since i am quite young but one thing I will say is you should use the free arm more..
Here is a video of ti long he explained it great-

You use it in your fh but not so much on your backhand i think it will help 😄
 
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
🏆 Top 1% Commenter
Well-Known Member
Oct 2010
2,859
2,798
10,527
I have already posted some of my video footage here

Post in thread 'Video Footage Safe Thread'
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/video-footage-safe-thread.26467/post-428112

Discussion is limited to authorized ppls there but anyone comments are welcome too of course in this thread.
Your topspins look good especially FH. Bh is a bit too much upwards brushing and not enough drive imo - which will cause quite a lot of error prone thin brush contacts.

I suspect it is because you haven't figured out how to use the fingers to brush the ball. Once you have that you can go forward with the rest of the stroke easily. There is a tutorial by Ti Long here. This was a huge gamechanger for me when I started to adopt it because now I can create massive spin even when out of position. It's all about using the lever arm between the index finger and the thumb.


The Achilles heel in your game really is serve/receive. I saw a lot of BH pushing, even from the FH corner, and when you do that you're not recovering back to the middle. I probably would use a lot more FH pushes/sideswipes/flicks to avoid this imbalance. Otherwise it's a bit too simple to target your FH short area to get you out of position, then go long to your middle or BH.
 
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
🏆 Top 1% Commenter
Well-Known Member
Moderator
Oct 2014
19,971
26,531
70,870
Read 17 reviews
Got out to play today mostly to test some blades that I had bought recently. I tried The Szocs 1 Signature. Blade with Rakza Z EH on both sides and I am really tempted to switch to that. But I played almost as well with the Inspira CCF with Butterfly handle clone that SDC built for me with really old Golden Tango on both sides. I want to play a bit more on Sunday with coaching but I might have to prioritize a family outing. We will see how it goes.
 
says preparing for a tournament
says preparing for a tournament
Member
Sep 2023
50
26
160
Got out to play today mostly to test some blades that I had bought recently. I tried The Szocs 1 Signature. Blade with Rakza Z EH on both sides and I am really tempted to switch to that. But I played almost as well with the Inspira CCF with Butterfly handle clone that SDC built for me with really old Golden Tango on both sides. I want to play a bit more on Sunday with coaching but I might have to prioritize a family outing. We will see how it goes.
btw have u posted footage on a thread i can watch, wondering how you play 😁
 
says EJ time has finally ended, what a relief!
says EJ time has finally ended, what a relief!
Member
Oct 2022
275
198
773
Read 1 reviews
Got out to play today mostly to test some blades that I had bought recently. I tried The Szocs 1 Signature. Blade with Rakza Z EH on both sides and I am really tempted to switch to that. But I played almost as well with the Inspira CCF with Butterfly handle clone that SDC built for me with really old Golden Tango on both sides. I want to play a bit more on Sunday with coaching but I might have to prioritize a family outing. We will see how it goes.
How do you find the balance of the racket? Rakza Z EH should be pretty heavy rubber, and you are using on both fh and bh
 
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
🏆 Top 1% Commenter
Well-Known Member
Oct 2010
2,859
2,798
10,527
I have already posted some of my video footage here

Post in thread 'Video Footage Safe Thread'
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/video-footage-safe-thread.26467/post-428112

Discussion is limited to authorized ppls there but anyone comments are welcome too of course in this thread.
I had another look at the match video and I understand why you were always forced to use BH receive instead of FH receive, when you used the FH receive you pretty much missed all the balls with a huge % being direct mistakes. I think your coach was basically targeting that area all the time and he was saying something about it in the beginning too.

Imo there's a few issues at play. First is the concept - the FH receive cannot be played with a primarily arm action otherwise you can't control the ball at all. You gotta minimise all arm movement (similar to your BH receive). The most important part is the footwork to get close to the ball (I always use 3 steps, right, left and then right foot for max adjustability). You cannot have good control over the ball when it's too far from your body. Then you have to lean forward with your upper body to get close to it and control the ball with the whole upper body - not that dissimilar to looping. When you contact the ball it's important that you use the fingers to do the minute control of the ball - the fingers can never be passive. With aggressive shots like flicks or sideswipes, the important mechanism for FH is snapping the forearm towards yourself like in a hug, and using upper body rotation to power it. Similar to all other strokes in TT, service and over the table shots (such as pushes, chiquita, flicks, sideswipes) have to be all powered by the body for max effectiveness.
 
says preparing for a tournament
says preparing for a tournament
Member
Sep 2023
50
26
160
I had another look at the match video and I understand why you were always forced to use BH receive instead of FH receive, when you used the FH receive you pretty much missed all the balls with a huge % being direct mistakes. I think your coach was basically targeting that area all the time and he was saying something about it in the beginning too.

Imo there's a few issues at play. First is the concept - the FH receive cannot be played with a primarily arm action otherwise you can't control the ball at all. You gotta minimise all arm movement (similar to your BH receive). The most important part is the footwork to get close to the ball (I always use 3 steps, right, left and then right foot for max adjustability). You cannot have good control over the ball when it's too far from your body. Then you have to lean forward with your upper body to get close to it and control the ball with the whole upper body - not that dissimilar to looping. When you contact the ball it's important that you use the fingers to do the minute control of the ball - the fingers can never be passive. With aggressive shots like flicks or sideswipes, the important mechanism for FH is snapping the forearm towards yourself like in a hug, and using upper body rotation to power it. Similar to all other strokes in TT, service and over the table shots (such as pushes, chiquita, flicks, sideswipes) have to be all powered by the body for max effectiveness.
the 3 steps before hitting a ball, are you talking about the split step? how can u make those 3 steps quickly in a close to the table quick rally?
 
Top