Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[dingyibvs]

Looking back at my recent equipment switches, I'm starting to wonder if playing with an equipment that's worse for the shot you're working on may actually be an advantage for someone working without a coach. It was so difficult to generate quality with the W968's BH that I worked so much on getting every element of the stroke correct from head to toe. When I switched to the Viscaria, I could all of a sudden hit shots with good quality even when I didn't get everything right, which gave me the confidence to just stop thinking about the stroke and just play the BH shot during games. Now that I've switched back to the W968, I've carried that mentality over, able to play my BH in matches like I do in practice.

Yet, the W968 remains very good at telling me when my technique isn't perfect. Even when I land the shot, I'm so acutely aware of when I didn't execute it exactly right, which forces me to continue to seek improvement in practice. With the Vis, I have to really pay attention in order to notice imperfect technique.

On the flip side, one of the main reasons I switched back to the W968 is because of how poor my FH was playing with the Vis. This was especially evident in loop driving backspins. Switching back and forth the past week, I've diagnosed the problem as not concentrating my force enough at the point of contact. In Chinese parlance my stroke was too "dispersed" as opposed to "focused", i.e. I'm not saving all the acceleration, the explosion of power, for that one millisecond of contact. The W968 oftentimes lets me get away with that, the Vis doesn't. A coach probably wouldn't let me get away with that either, but absent of one, I wonder if I should switch back to the Vis in order to force myself to train a better FH?

 

[Tyce]

I get ya. And I do agree, if you can allow yourself to play material that requires you to be meticulous, rather than forgiving, it will teach you so much detail.
The borderline is when the material is so meticulous that you actually can't find the correct way, or if the material is downright wrong.

You have to be really mindful of these things, though. I told myself I can play a decent short game with an outer ALC blade, but really it's not. Yes I can put a ball short, but there's no time for spin variation, good placement, that kind of stuff that really sets a good short game apart from a basic one. So yeah, there are limits

 

[NextLevel]

In the end, i would say that just let the results determine what you play best with. Even with Dignics 80, my short pushing is noticeably worse and I tend to drive more no spin balls long. I also struggle to out spin some lower rated players who would just back off my ball when I used stickier rubber.

But to beat the players I need to beat, the speed enhancement shows up huge. On the blocks, on the counters, on the openers. Even sometimes on serves and pushes. The results so far against the players I need to beat outweigh the struggles against the players I usually beat. Over time I just need to be more creative and find easier ways to beat those guys because being able to compete with the better players is important for my goals. I don't remember ever in the warmup being able to hit a ball past my coach even by accident. Some of it might be technical improvement but the speed of the D80 encourages it, while with the Skyline 3, my arm would have fallen off by now.

These are early days with D80 but I will play with it for the rest of the year and let the results speak for themselves.

For your forehand, I would seek something tackier. You can either use protector sheets to make the H3 tackier or look for a tackier rubber. It seems ball release is not your problem, ball holding is.

 

[blahness]

Looking back at my recent equipment switches, I'm starting to wonder if playing with an equipment that's worse for the shot you're working on may actually be an advantage for someone working without a coach. It was so difficult to generate quality with the W968's BH that I worked so much on getting every element of the stroke correct from head to toe. When I switched to the Viscaria, I could all of a sudden hit shots with good quality even when I didn't get everything right, which gave me the confidence to just stop thinking about the stroke and just play the BH shot during games. Now that I've switched back to the W968, I've carried that mentality over, able to play my BH in matches like I do in practice.

Yet, the W968 remains very good at telling me when my technique isn't perfect. Even when I land the shot, I'm so acutely aware of when I didn't execute it exactly right, which forces me to continue to seek improvement in practice. With the Vis, I have to really pay attention in order to notice imperfect technique.

On the flip side, one of the main reasons I switched back to the W968 is because of how poor my FH was playing with the Vis. This was especially evident in loop driving backspins. Switching back and forth the past week, I've diagnosed the problem as not concentrating my force enough at the point of contact. In Chinese parlance my stroke was too "dispersed" as opposed to "focused", i.e. I'm not saving all the acceleration, the explosion of power, for that one millisecond of contact. The W968 oftentimes lets me get away with that, the Vis doesn't. A coach probably wouldn't let me get away with that either, but absent of one, I wonder if I should switch back to the Vis in order to force myself to train a better FH?

Vis is definitely a different animal than other blades. You're completely right that you cannot afford to have 'low acceleration' otherwise your strokes will be quite flat and you don't have the spin required. It is quite easy to play hard and flat with Viscaria because of how fast the ball shoots out of the blade. But the other side is that because of how fast it shoots out you dont have a long time duration to apply your spin to the ball.

For me I had a real level jump using Vis after I learnt the 2 finger lever arm concept from Ti Long on how to brush the ball with the fingers, it was the secret that allowed me to get a lot of spin with ease on both wings regardless of whether Im in position.

Otherwise you can swing your arm quite fast but the ball spin is not that much with the Vis, but with other inner carbon blades you do get a lot of spin using the same technique even without knowledge of using the fingers because it is just more forgiving.

Of course the finger spin technique can also be applied to other blades, but Viscaria pretty much forced me to use it otherwise i get shitty spin quality on my loops.

Same with short push, with other blades you can get away with not knowing how to rob the ball of momentum to the sides if you're using other blades (because it dampens the momentum on its own) but if you try doing that with Vis and D05 it will be all high opportunity balls for opponents to finish off. It took me quite a while before I could reliably short push sidetopspin serves with my current setup, but once I did Im confident to short push with any other setup.

So imo, slow setups force you to learn how to use body to generate power, fast setups force you to learn how to spin and control the momentum of the ball precisely.

 

[blahness]

Practiced a bit after a long break from TT. I was trying out the PechPong idea about going backwards on the followthrough to give a soft dead block. And it works lol.

So with the paddle you can go with your normal clockwise BH topspin stroke but when that circle goes backwards at the end you can really absorb a lot of momentum and make it quite dead indeed. But if the circle goes forwards and towards the right it will produce a nasty countertopspin. This variation can be quite killer during topspin to topspin rallies especially with those who love 'borrowing power'.

However, this pretty much doesnt work against low energy balls - it will just die into the net. So with low energy or incoming deader balls the alternative is to either counterhit to create a dead ball back, or to go above and over the ball and forwards to create a higher speed topspin, or to go upwards brush only and create a slow offspeed heavier topspin on the ball.

There are just so many cool variations even in a normal BH to BH topspin rally.

 

[dingyibvs]

So I got decent at opening loop on the BH side a while back, then moved on to BH counters, then BH loops. I decided to move back to the BH opening loop this past week, this time focusing on kill shot quality. I was trying a while back, but the form was terrible. I decided it's time to break out the camera again and check on my recent progress. So the FH loop looks good, finally. It took me so long, but I've finally addressed it. BH counters and loops look solid as well. Nobody's gonna confuse me for a pro, but good enough!

The BH drive vs. backspin though still looked terrible. It's kinda interesting actually how different my BH drive vs. topspin is compared to my BH drive vs. backspin. So I'm fixing that now, basically by adapting my drive vs. topspin stroke. After applying all the things I learned against topspin, e.g. pay attention to timing, move to place the ball to my left and closer to my body, body rotation, etc. and now it finally looks good. Feels good too, and very consistent (in practice). I did some against slightly less backspin, and I needed some conscious adjustments to make it work. That's not gonna fly in matches. It'll take a while before I can just instinctively react and perform the stroke, but that's expected.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

No need to say anything at all; we all understand...

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

now you can do the same with
Nittaku >>> Tenergy
Tenergy >>> Dignics

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

now you can do the same with
Nittaku >>> Tenergy
Tenergy >>> Dignics

with the dropping of the Yen and rising of Ringgit, importing goods from Japan start to look very appealing. What was once not affordable becomes otherwise...

 

[dingyibvs]

I've been fine tuning my BH, getting better at leading with my elbow as well as body usage, with the goal of maximizing quality. Every now and then I switch back to a Vis series blade (my Vis, TBALC, or FZDALC) and the consistency improves significantly. The speed too, but probably at the expense of spin so not sure if the overall quality is better. It'll be interesting to see if this strategy pays off, using the equipment less suited for the shot to train for it. It really takes absolute perfection for a BH drive from the W968 to feel great like a FH shot.

On the FH side I'm doing some tinkering too with the racket angle. There's some slight confusion there, I think I'll record some videos to see if I can find the path forward. The perfectionist in me seems to just refuse to leave good enough alone! After I get to a satisfactory point with my BH, I might switch back to a Vis-series blade to see if I can train the same for FH.

Switching between the 3 Vis series blades, I'm finding a significant difference between my 10+ year old TBALC verses the newer Vis and FZDALC. The old blade while being a bit lighter at 85 vs. 89 grams for the other two is a bit bouncier with much, much more flex and woody feel. It really feels more like it's in between the Vis and the W968. On harder FH shots it actually feels kinda like the commercial HL5 in terms of having great flex but lacking in overall power. With less powerful shots though it's a lot more direct, crisp, and faster than HL5. The down side is that the speed extends down to the short game.

 

[NextLevel]

So I got decent at opening loop on the BH side a while back, then moved on to BH counters, then BH loops. I decided to move back to the BH opening loop this past week, this time focusing on kill shot quality. I was trying a while back, but the form was terrible. I decided it's time to break out the camera again and check on my recent progress. So the FH loop looks good, finally. It took me so long, but I've finally addressed it. BH counters and loops look solid as well. Nobody's gonna confuse me for a pro, but good enough!

The BH drive vs. backspin though still looked terrible. It's kinda interesting actually how different my BH drive vs. topspin is compared to my BH drive vs. backspin. So I'm fixing that now, basically by adapting my drive vs. topspin stroke. After applying all the things I learned against topspin, e.g. pay attention to timing, move to place the ball to my left and closer to my body, body rotation, etc. and now it finally looks good. Feels good too, and very consistent (in practice). I did some against slightly less backspin, and I needed some conscious adjustments to make it work. That's not gonna fly in matches. It'll take a while before I can just instinctively react and perform the stroke, but that's expected.

The squat is the biggest difference between looping backspin and topspin on the backhand side. Without it, the technical quality is night and day.

 

[haggisv]

The squat is the biggest difference between looping backspin and topspin on the backhand side. Without it, the technical quality is night and day.

What's the squat refer to?

 

[NextLevel]

What's the squat refer to?

Lowering the body with the legs and sometimes a bow. and then pushing out of it with the legs vs backspin. without it, lowering and lifting the arm doesn't get you good quality driving the ball forward and results in a more upward ball which may not be what you want and it is harder to loop heavy backspin without sufficiently low. Legs also get you more vertical lift easily.

 

[haggisv]

Thank you, that makes sense! I had only heard it the context of gym exercise, which of course is pretty much the same move. Off to the gym now, gotta get those squats done.

 

[Novarac23]

Played local league tonight. Ended up playing against my coach in round robin. Played well, won 1 set, and other two were close-ish. He said I improved a lot and that it was a fun match, which was good to hear. Especially because he i currently rocking long pip / short pip setup. I won against long pips as well for the first time today, but he was pretty new at long pips so I exploited that a lot. Had some very solid rallies. Still need to improve on footwork, not being cemented to the ground after some of my loops and reading spin a bit better (this last one wasn’t too bad but still room for improvement). Very happy with how some of my loops went and the fact that I wasn’t afraid to loop, for the most part

Looking forward to testing out large ST blade when it arrives next week-ish.

 

[netdriver]

729 battle 2 provincial blue sponge..... what a garbage rubber

i lost the local club tourny terribly bc i thought i could still play with the booster effect long gone, what a horrible mistake cuz there is 0 quality on the balls, even when you put in 100% effort

going to try bluegrip c2 to replace the 729

 

[Novarac23]

729 battle 2 provincial blue sponge..... what a garbage rubber

i lost the local club tourny terribly bc i thought i could still play with the booster effect long gone, what a horrible mistake cuz there is 0 quality on the balls, even when you put in 100% effort

going to try bluegrip c2 to replace the 729

I have just coincidentally watched a video yesterday about battle 3 rubber and it seems pretty cool

I never used friendship rubbers but I do like this guy and his reviews

 

[netdriver]

I have just coincidentally watched a video yesterday about battle 3 rubber and it seems pretty cool

I never used friendship rubbers but I do like this guy and his reviews

ppl in TTD are praising b3 as well but this time i am looking towards hybrid rubbers bc i am tired of boosting

if im not wrong you need to boost b3 too to get a good rubber

 

[backspacer]

Wanted to go watch the first Regionalliga match of Oggersheim at home with Gionis, but there is a demonstration going on causing massive delays in public transportation so now I'm back home depressed and watching the ATTC mixed doubles final.

 

[Novarac23]

Wanted to go watch the first Regionalliga match of Oggersheim at home with Gionis, but there is a demonstration going on causing massive delays in public transportation so now I'm back home depressed and watching the ATTC mixed doubles final.

That sucks :/

ppl in TTD are praising b3 as well but this time i am looking towards hybrid rubbers bc i am tired of boosting

if im not wrong you need to boost b3 too to get a good rubber

Hmm yeah, the guy in the vid says you don't need to boost it but again I have 0 experience with these rubbers haha

I've been watching Matthias Falck A LOT recently. Really a joy to watch. Makes me want to switch to short pips on FH even though FH is my strongest weapon