Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[NextLevel]

Haven't posted my focus here in a while but I have stopped attending PT for my shoulder but still try to do some exercises with bands at home. I played a rated tournament on the 5th and did decently well, was seeded 3rd and got third place.

I haven't been able to play a lot as I am focusing much more on my search for work and I also have to do stuff for my family. I did compile a list of things I need to work on;

Weight transfer on my forehand topspin as I struggle when pulled to the wide forehand and I also struggle with punches down the line from my opponents.

Getting back after doing a long push off a short serve so I can defend the opening loop.

Shortening my backhand and forehand topspin.

I had a lesson with my coach for the first time in a while and he said that I needed to make my backhand and forehand more compact. Initially I didn't really understand what he meant but after testing a few things, it became cleared that my upper arm usage was excessive compared to what he desired. So I need to play out my my upper body as a unit driven by the legs and give my upper arm less leverage. Since my footwork isn't great this will require a major rebuild but I will get to work on it. I am a bit lost on what I can do to beat the players I want to beat so this idea (making my strokes more compact) is as good as any. Hopefully it will improve my blocking and transitions and my wide forehand play. Probably has an anticipation element as well that needs to be worked on.

Video of the last 6 minutes of a session that show what I am working towards on the forehand side in terms of making it more compact. Still have to work on moving the legs better and most importantly on shortening the backhand when I transition to it.

 

[Tyce]

I mentioned the other day this short pips player I'm going to play this Sunday? Well he was actually at the club last night.
Didn't get around to play singles vs him but we did doubles and I also watched how others faired against him and why.
His quick on the ball I remembered correctly. I did somehow forget he was a lefty, and also forgot how well he flat hits with his inverted FH.
He's also impatient and takes a lot of risk. I'm sure I can leverage some of that knowledge to get me an edge. Deep, well placed balls and low backspin are the main points, and just keep swinging because the balls come back pretty much dead off the pips so a passive reaction ends up in the net.

I also had the opportunity to give my alternate setup a whirl, which is basically the same blade and BH (Korbel, C-1) but instead of H3 neo I put a Euro rubber on FH (boosted Rakza 7 because I had it but it was a bit small)
Adjustment time was minimal. I also felt like I could do more strokes on instinct, because I had been using Euro before going on a Chinese trip for a year.

I'm definitely switching back to Euro FH over the summer.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

got another harsh lesson today.
I was in a round robin tournament, i was the highest ranked player in division 2 (18 players) [div1 was also 18 players], which is a blessing (= chances to win) but scary (= favorite to win, fear of losing points)

first match up 2-0 6-6 i'm doing stupid things and trying YG serve that i've practiced recently but im not mastering yet, and ofc i miss 2 serves, 6-8 and lose the set. I want to smash myself as i lose next game by a wide margin. in G5 i manage to win 11-7 but that was very stupid of me.

2nd match i play a lady (2nd ranked player in our group), i know ive lost some practice matches against her, so im not underestimating her at all. Seesaw game, i thought i had momentum with 11-3 win in G4 where i managed to spin everything. but in G5 with the stress i don't return well again her halflong reverse sidespin to my FH (confused between backspin and no spin + im scared again to loop) as well long fast no spin serve to BH.
7-8 for her she gets a very lucky edge ball and closes 7-11 in G5

3rd match against chopper. hes the 3rd ranked player in the group but easiest match of the day 3-0

4th match against young player. should have been a much easier win but its a see-saw game, i was 2-1 up. but then he served long no spin to my BH and i had again trouble with this serve, no mistake but i was pushing mostly pushing long to his BH but not enough quality he was making loop kill down the line. In G5 im 9-6 but can't close it, i even miss 2 serves in a row. I'm saving match point i think 9-10 then on match point he serves again long to my BH with no spin but i was betting he would and instead of pushing i stepped back and waited the ball below the table to deliver a heavy backspin chop and he missed the 3rd ball kill in the net. should have been much easier if only i got that single serve back and if I used more serves and didn't make that many serve errors !

5th match against 4th ranked players who had 4 wins at that stage. J-Pen with short pip players. serves fast long to BH with or without spin and hits hard 3rd ball. Hes very good at blocking fast ball down the line with RPB. I hate this style and i wasn't confident at all. But i managed to receive good just enough by taking a bit more risk and looping with FH from BH side from time to time. I tried to play with spin as often as i could and fight everyball and scrapped an good (for me) 3-1 win with 14-13 in both G3 & G4 (special rule)

6th match against a young chopper (ranked 6th). he had 2 losses already and wins only against lower rated guys so i was rather confident especially after winning a chopper earlier on, and having practiced the day before with a chopper coach. But I think he played a better match than usual, and I succumbed to pressure with some serve errors or stupid mistakes at key moments. I could have won with my experience , but no tactically i made the error of not using more serve variation, trying instead to find elusively a pattern where i would dominate with consistency, i think with that single change and a bit more focus it was enough to win. But IRL, he won the best points in G5 with both skill and luck, 8-11. the only "positive thing" is that i managed to be more patient in the games i won (G1 and G3) and G5 also by playing slow loops. There were many long rallies.

with 1 loss i would have rated my performance as good. with 2L i'm not happy.
still struggling with the most simple serves (fast no spin to BH) + halflong [even slow] reverse sidespin to FH because im not watching the ball / reading the serve properly.
i feel when under pressure my serve quality is going down too much also. can't get more wins if i don't fix that, but no matter how much or how I practice looks hopeless at this stage ...

 

[blahness]

I have been playing a lot of badminton and also improving a lot recently - the scene is a lot more fun than the TT scene which is just filled with antisocial ppl lol. Tbh maybe I need to change my TT club, the current one just doesn't have a lot of good players to practice with - there are maybe 4 who can reliably block against my topspins from either wing (even the one who plays with tomahawk chopblocks i like to play with him because at least he lands the block and I can continue training). But they don't always come and if I go there i am forced to hit with ppl who can't block properly and just spray topspins wherever.

But the ones with good TT players are quite a bit farther away......

With badminton, it doesn't matter the level of play you can always find something to work on and you can still have quite a bit fun with more rallies.

With TT even at higher levels the games can be incredibly ugly lol.

 

[dingyibvs]

I'm still working to implement my recent learnings, and surprisingly (or perhaps not) I'm making far more progress with my BH. I guess it's because I started from pretty much zero while I have a lot of ingrained habits on the FH side? A few days ago I had a practice session, and for the first time ever I felt completely comfortable on the BH side. Opening brush loop, opening loop drive, over the table, against all sorts of spins, defense, rally, kills. Everything. Even compared to 2 weeks ago it was a sea of change, and I'm already playing with the new technique. Just a couple weeks ago I felt deeply uncomfortable engaging in a BH rally and was only capable of defending or looping, but not anymore. It's the same with looping against various side spin services, but again not anymore. Everything just felt...natural.

It's a different story on the FH side. For one, even in practice videos my FH still looked off. I know I said before that good enough is fine, but I'm just too anal to not want to correct everything. The good thing is I think I discovered the issue, just today! If you look at pros loop, they have a lean to the right, especially the old school FH-dominant players like FB or ML. The thing is, even after they finish the stroke, they still lean to the right, just a bit less. Younger players like FZD have less of a lean to the right, but they nevertheless do not straighten their body much after the contact.

What I've been doing is bringing my body up straight, which is done by kicking up and straightening the right leg, which hurts my ability recover or move for the next shot. See below (got my camera!) for regular practice shots and 100% power burn out.

Besides that, as I work on new things, I'm forgetting old ones, like forgetting to backswing with my arm closer to my body as I work on keeping the racket up higher during the forward swing. In addition, once game starts, I basically revert to my old form most of the time. Rather frustrating, but can't do anything but keep working on it.

 

[latej]

Yesterday while practising a combination: backspin serve, op ret. to FH, open with FH loop, op block to BH, BH loop. I realized my bad habit to keep the hand a bit too low after transition from FH to BH, which results in lot of misses or blade edges (Kante). Just keeping the hand a bit higher on the BH helps. It's obviously obvious. But for me it was a small revelation moment yesterday ;-)

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

I'm still working to implement my recent learnings, and surprisingly (or perhaps not) I'm making far more progress with my BH. I guess it's because I started from pretty much zero while I have a lot of ingrained habits on the FH side? A few days ago I had a practice session, and for the first time ever I felt completely comfortable on the BH side. Opening brush loop, opening loop drive, over the table, against all sorts of spins, defense, rally, kills. Everything. Even compared to 2 weeks ago it was a sea of change, and I'm already playing with the new technique. Just a couple weeks ago I felt deeply uncomfortable engaging in a BH rally and was only capable of defending or looping, but not anymore. It's the same with looping against various side spin services, but again not anymore. Everything just felt...natural.

It's a different story on the FH side. For one, even in practice videos my FH still looked off. I know I said before that good enough is fine, but I'm just too anal to not want to correct everything. The good thing is I think I discovered the issue, just today! If you look at pros loop, they have a lean to the right, especially the old school FH-dominant players like FB or ML. The thing is, even after they finish the stroke, they still lean to the right, just a bit less. Younger players like FZD have less of a lean to the right, but they nevertheless do not straighten their body much after the contact.

What I've been doing is bringing my body up straight, which is done by kicking up and straightening the right leg, which hurts my ability recover or move for the next shot. See below (got my camera!) for regular practice shots and 100% power burn out.

Besides that, as I work on new things, I'm forgetting old ones, like forgetting to backswing with my arm closer to my body as I work on keeping the racket up higher during the forward swing. In addition, once game starts, I basically revert to my old form most of the time. Rather frustrating, but can't do anything but keep working on it.

Oh those FH! Those FH.... H3 / D09C are begging you to use them. Those strokes are made for H3 / D09C.

P/S Oh wait....

 

[backspacer]

The Beast at a big German tournament that took place during the Easter holidays. Second time I saw him at a tournament and didn't say hi. He was third seed iirc.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

The Beast at a big German tournament that took place during the Easter holidays. Second time I saw him at a tournament and didn't say hi. He was third seed iirc.

he should say hi to you!!

and just for interest sake, one of his team mates from Grünwettersbach is here in Taiwan training right now
14 year old kid from Colombia, that has a higher TTR than beast (kid is 3.1, while beast is 3.2 in the team).

I actually didnt know the kid was the same club, and he pitched up wearing the club shirt
and I was like calling over Chang Yu-An and telling him that the kid is in the same club as you.

that kid has a lot of power for 14 years old.
the players told me, they heard he is the next prodigy from South America.

 

[TampaBayTableTennis]

yes, cant wait to see what he can do! glad to hear the report

 

[backspacer]

Beast in the quarter finals of the Easter tournament. Made it into the semi-finals.

 

[dingyibvs]

I tried out the new form, trying to combine it with the backswing closer to the body. Let's just say it doesn't look like it's gonna be a simple transition lol. I was hardly hitting the ball to start, which means it's not gonna be a matter of just remembering to do it during matches.

 

[boretennis]

I played my second tournament yesterday with 30 people in my class (up to 1299 points european rating). Before my first match i had time to watch the others playing and i got a good feeling, already pictured myself going home with a medal. Most of them older players than myself (50+), no attacking styles, no topspins, almost exclusively undangerous backhand side-underspin serves plus the odd weird windscreen-wipe serve.

my first match was against a younger player who was the only one playing a bit like myself, lower intermediate maybe but with a sense for technique, the will to topspin on both wings, trying to open up the game with a flip, those things which make table tennis interesting and fun. i won 3:0 because i was just a bit more advanced and could serve and spin a bit more dangerously. but it was a nice enjoyable match.

my next two games were against older players like described above, with a style cultivated over 50 years of playing in the garage, oblivious to ”proper” technique and quite boring to play against, no risk, no fun. it looked weird and they had this unsympathetic doberman will to keep the ball on the table at any costs, i completely lost my game and confidence and got caught in endless pushing chopping routines, everytime i tried to open up it was more out of annoyance than opportunity which resultet in me netting or overshooting most of my attemps. so i lost game 2 and 3 in the preliminary round and didn’t advance.

i am of course also lacking a lot of technique and better players would have just dominated them. but i still feel that i lost to lesser players, that i was not able to play my game but let them force their shitty play on me. it was a super frustrating experience, something to talk about with my trainer.

not sure, maybe this could have been it's own thread, i hope i am not the only one with such an experience. is it just me, or is that a phenomenon?

 

[Tyce]

Today I had the National vet championships, or to me, a tournament that was conveniently close and an opportunity to play with different people.
I was eligible for two categories, as I was ranked high in 5th class at the moment of entering (I dropped but that's a different story). The upper category with players from 3rd and 4th, and the lower category with players in 5th, 6th and 7th. I opted for the higher category because frankly I'm tired of playing 5th and I want to move up, so I might as well get a bit more familiar with the level above, right? Right.

So as well as entering in a higher cat, I have started my return to Euro FH rubber. It felt so natural that I decided to just play my spare blade with Rakza 7 FH and C-1 BH. Ofc this did mean I was basically making a switch at tournament time, but my confidence in playing with Hurricane 3 on FH has dropped so low that I could use any impulse at this point.

I played 3 guys from 4th, 1 from 3rd (and I honestly don't know which one) and I lost everything in straight sets... But definitely not without a chance. I drew a lot of games to 11-9, 12-10 and had some seriously good and fun plays. It's in there, I know it. Given enough time to adjust to this level, I'm convinced I can get good results.

Once again, the equipment these guys are using is such an eye opener. Almost exclusively allwood, rubbers look easily used for over a year, one guy played a basic allround style with a Butterfly Joo Se Hyuk and Tenergy05 on his FH. It really, really doesn't matter and I should just play what gives me a good feeling and confidence. (we actually swapped bats for a moment because he was interested in my C1 and except for the easy loop, both blade and rubbers didn't feel like anything out of the ordinary) I felt like I would have similar results with Tenergy05 as I would have with Vega Europe. And if I'm not getting enough spin, I should be hitting the ball better.

So while the experience was a bit humbling, it was also extremely good learning. Had a great day and lots to take in.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

yes, cant wait to see what he can do! glad to hear the report

The Taiwanese coaches told me April last year the kid is not bad.
but I didn't really keep too much eye on.

He will probably spend a lot more time (trips) training in Taiwan. So I hope he grows even faster

 

[dingyibvs]

Been working nights, 12+ hours a day, so pretty exhausted when I get home. I usually wouldn't practice at all, but I'm pretty excited about the new technique so managed to get 2 short sessions in. During downtime at work I also visualized the new technique. At least for me, visualization helps a lot with any new movement. After the 2nd short practice, I feel waaaay better about the new technique. It feels really simple and natural, and I guess that's why it's the right technique. It also answers a few questions I never knew needed answering.

First was why maintaining a lean helped my form look better. It's actually not the lean per se, but rather when you lean forward and try to rotate the body like I used to do, then your shoulder will turn downward, thus dragging the racket down. Going downward with the racket is obviously not conducive to looping, so I subconsciously stop rotating my body when I try to loop with a lean.

The second is that I had noticed before that pros really turn their hips when looping, with their knees go from facing right to facing left. When I tried that, it seems the motion was too exaggerated, as I end up with my whole body facing left. Turns out that's because I was turning my hips and my waist at the same time. Take away the waist turn, and I can turn my hip much more aggressively. In fact, I HAVE to turn my hip aggressively to generate the power I used to.

Incidentally, these changes bring my FH motion much more in line with my BH motion. When I try to do a normal power loop on either side, the hip rotation driven by legs and glutes is the primary power initiator. The waist driven by abs/back muscles mostly serve to transmit power from my lower body to my upper body, tensing up in a short burst just before contact. Only when I go for an all out shot do I utilize both the hip and waist maximally. The arm also stays loose in the backswing, and let the body do most of the forward swing until just before contact when my arm explodes forward and brush upward. How much upward varies heavily depending on the ball and is the only highly varying part of the stroke while everything else is relatively consistent provided the footwork is adequate.

I'm not too sure yet, but it kinda feels like the waist movement is a very short burst, starting just before contact and ends right as contact happens, while the arm would accelerate through contact. If that's true then it would kind of be like services, where the arm stops just before contact while the wrist accelerates through contact for maximal whip effect. The leg/hip seems to reach a plateau speed earlier and maintains it throughout the stroke, kind of like how the body rotation reaches a steady speed early during services and maintains it through contact and follow through.

 

[d3nium]

Local league table tennis has finished for the season, I've been playing in 3 leagues, so usually had 2/3 matches a week.

It's now been over a week since I've picked up a bat, and I'm missing it sooo much.

There's a summer league starting next month so i have that to look forward to i guess.

 

[jk1980]

The Beast at a big German tournament that took place during the Easter holidays. Second time I saw him at a tournament and didn't say hi. He was third seed iirc.

That was obviously against a way epweaker opponent.
Here he is playing against one of the best players of the 3rd division iirc

 

[Tyce]

League is coming to an end this week here, too. Can't change a lot anymore so the result is I've lost about 60 points where my goal was to gain about 60 instead.

I have learned a lot this season. I am an ALL player, dragging my FH out of the mud doesn't change that into an OFF player. I can't close matches by attacking more. Instead, I need to sharpen my mind and find the gaps and holes I can put the ball into, just like I always did as a kid.
The game has slowed down too much to do that passively, and when I do it just gives my opponents of similar levels time to attack that slow ball.
Now, I've swung the pendulum the other way and overplayed, putting balls away too sharp, to fast, and making lots of errors on that. It's time to balance out again.

 

[backspacer]

That was obviously against a way epweaker opponent.
Here he is playing against one of the best players of the 3rd division iirc

I forgot to link that in my last post. Kestutis is playing Regionalliga at the moment.