Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[dingyibvs]

I don't have any specific service receive videos, but I have a recent BH opening loop practice video which probably demonstrates some of the same issues. I have a few questions and observations. Sry for all the bad serves, I was trying out a new grip so got a lot of bad contact.

First, at the start of the video I tried out two different BH forms. The first one is a more back to front stroke, more like SYS's, while the second is a bit bigger, more left back to front right, more like FZD's. I'm not sure which one I should make my default, do you guys have any idea? There's some refining to do with both strokes, but I need to stick to one to get that done. I'm thinking that since I'm trying to emulate women's game more that I should adopt a more SYS-like approach.

Second, onto the opening loops, I see that my stroke is too big, starting with too big of a backswing that goes too low. That's probably OK if the ball is slow and spinny, but when it's fast and/or less spinny I get into trouble. I think I do the same thing with service receives, and I wonder if that's a major contributor to my problems.

During that session my main goal was to go forward more with my stroke, including stepping up more and stepping back less. I think overall I made some improvements there, but perhaps I should add smaller backswing to my practice at least to start?

 

[jk1980]

While using hips to rotate and a slight left to right movement of the bat is surely not bad on itself, you have to make sure that this "left to right" movement of the bat is not during the range where you hit the ball.
Let's say the full range of your backswing to swingthrough is roughly a quarter circle. If the 10cm of range where you hit the ball (depending on your timing and position) does have too more "lateral rotation" the direction of your ball and hence your final placement will vary greatly. So let's say you hit it at the first cm of your striking range where your bat still faces "down the line" the ball will go down the line, while if you are a little later and hit it after 9cm of the beginning of your strike zone the bat will already have changed to facing more to the middle or even diagonal, so the shot will go down the middle.
If you deliberately use this to outposition your opponent by using different timings to hit the ball to different positions on the table while using the same motion, then thats great. How realistic is that in a match situation ? for me it is not, but for you it might be ok. In the end that stroke has to give you control over the placement in the match, so judging the stroke on an regular exercise might be a good indicator of which stroke types get the ball "over" and dont hit the net, but in terms of quality and how good you can position a robot spreading the balls to your backhand corner (let's say a 70cm wide band) from middle to wide backhand will show you if you can hit any position (down the line and cross court) reliably with that approach.

 

[blahness]

I don't have any specific service receive videos, but I have a recent BH opening loop practice video which probably demonstrates some of the same issues. I have a few questions and observations. Sry for all the bad serves, I was trying out a new grip so got a lot of bad contact.

First, at the start of the video I tried out two different BH forms. The first one is a more back to front stroke, more like SYS's, while the second is a bit bigger, more left back to front right, more like FZD's. I'm not sure which one I should make my default, do you guys have any idea? There's some refining to do with both strokes, but I need to stick to one to get that done. I'm thinking that since I'm trying to emulate women's game more that I should adopt a more SYS-like approach.

Second, onto the opening loops, I see that my stroke is too big, starting with too big of a backswing that goes too low. That's probably OK if the ball is slow and spinny, but when it's fast and/or less spinny I get into trouble. I think I do the same thing with service receives, and I wonder if that's a major contributor to my problems.

During that session my main goal was to go forward more with my stroke, including stepping up more and stepping back less. I think overall I made some improvements there, but perhaps I should add smaller backswing to my practice at least to start?

Imo it is situational, you need larger body rotation against slower balls and smaller against faster balls.

But imo even the 'small body rotation' opening stroke is quite full on which is not a bad thing at all, but maybe having an abbreviated swing would add more gears to your game and would prove very useful when ppl are trying to jam you.

With this my feeling is that the bat should still be basically quite close to the right hip even after the followthrough, and not way too much to the right (which is correct if you want power but can have slower recovery). It is a bit like FH loop, salute vs finishing to the left. With a smaller salute type finish you can recover faster, if you finish with bat to a lot more left of your left shoulder you get more power but recover slower. Imo basically, vs slow balls you would finish to the side and vs fast jamming balls you have to do the more abbreviated stroke.

But some people can do big stroke against fast jamming shots too but for me that is too hard for me. Even against slower shots sometimes i also do the abbreviated shot which is not so strong but is a bit more reliable and just focus more on placement.

i quite like Fang Yinchi's movements here.

Notice how his bat doesnt really go too much to the right.

But, in a demo where he wants power, you see he does finish way too the right. So it is quite situational

 

[Archosaurus]

Really great session today, no real comments other than it's the 2nd day in a row now and things are starting to fall in place. Maybe it will show in the practice videos.


Also, based on some analysis of the path of the ball after I make winning killshots, I think I can safely go down to a 40A sponge with no downside whatsoever. Even against players who are much better than I am, there's a quite large gap between the endline and the ball path. So any theoretical extra quality I'm getting from the 41A sponge is probably not useful. I'm sure on average the 40A would give me more quality and stability in most shots without sacrificing any scoring potential against the opponents I would ever play against.

So with that in mind once I've used my 41A sheets I will move down to 40A and go from there as a strategic choice. After some time I'll re-evaluate if I wanna even use H3 at all but for now I'm gonna use the same equipment for consistency sake.

 

[kindof99]

I don't have any specific service receive videos, but I have a recent BH opening loop practice video which probably demonstrates some of the same issues. I have a few questions and observations. Sry for all the bad serves, I was trying out a new grip so got a lot of bad contact.

First, at the start of the video I tried out two different BH forms. The first one is a more back to front stroke, more like SYS's, while the second is a bit bigger, more left back to front right, more like FZD's. I'm not sure which one I should make my default, do you guys have any idea? There's some refining to do with both strokes, but I need to stick to one to get that done. I'm thinking that since I'm trying to emulate women's game more that I should adopt a more SYS-like approach.

Second, onto the opening loops, I see that my stroke is too big, starting with too big of a backswing that goes too low. That's probably OK if the ball is slow and spinny, but when it's fast and/or less spinny I get into trouble. I think I do the same thing with service receives, and I wonder if that's a major contributor to my problems.

During that session my main goal was to go forward more with my stroke, including stepping up more and stepping back less. I think overall I made some improvements there, but perhaps I should add smaller backswing to my practice at least to start?

I think your serving errors were mainly due to turning your body too early before your finger griping the ball.

For more consistency on the backhand loop, you would like to bring your body to the ball and your finger/wrist grip (bite) the ball first before turning/extending your forearm for power.

 

[kindof99]

I don't have any specific service receive videos, but I have a recent BH opening loop practice video which probably demonstrates some of the same issues. I have a few questions and observations. Sry for all the bad serves, I was trying out a new grip so got a lot of bad contact.

First, at the start of the video I tried out two different BH forms. The first one is a more back to front stroke, more like SYS's, while the second is a bit bigger, more left back to front right, more like FZD's. I'm not sure which one I should make my default, do you guys have any idea? There's some refining to do with both strokes, but I need to stick to one to get that done. I'm thinking that since I'm trying to emulate women's game more that I should adopt a more SYS-like approach.

Second, onto the opening loops, I see that my stroke is too big, starting with too big of a backswing that goes too low. That's probably OK if the ball is slow and spinny, but when it's fast and/or less spinny I get into trouble. I think I do the same thing with service receives, and I wonder if that's a major contributor to my problems.

During that session my main goal was to go forward more with my stroke, including stepping up more and stepping back less. I think overall I made some improvements there, but perhaps I should add smaller backswing to my practice at least to start?

Also, it appears that your backhand opening was good for certain pace/height ball, but more error for low and high balls. I think adjusting backswing height/timing might help a little.

 

[jk1980]

It's one of these days: playing a youth player and a veteran which we brushed away in doubles 3-0, but then they cause unexpected trouble in singles against me. I even lose to the youth player in the fifth set, while i comfortably was "unchallenged" in the first set with him blocking every spinny opening of mine out of the table. He had not chance top spinning either because his success rate was like 20% (usually not passing the net on my backspin pushes). Suddenly he learns how to block me opening loops with sidespin and earns himself some net and edge balls outplacing me to me very wide forehand and then he turns into grandpa (realizing he cant beat me if he tries to attack) only pushing and pushing and pushing and not attacking at all. Me being the cocky cock looping too often or rather two predictable getting outblocked. It is really a smart decision by him and the only solace that i can find is that he's gonna stay worse at attacking if he turns to old grandpa pushing style to win.

The other guy is the best example of "this can only happen in the lowest league", basically every serve is illegal thrown about 10 cm and hit straight out of the hand hence causing some timing troubles because this way he can serve very short and very quick. Beat that guy 3-0 in the end, but it was harder than would have needed, because his illegal serves with seemingly drilled patterns when i returned the ball expectedly did cause some trouble. Again, opponent could not loop my pushes if his life depended on it, but hey. He will probably stay like that and never improve.