Equipment reviews and choice of equipment

[IB66]

Hi everyone,

Since I started playing again after a 30+ yr absence from the sport, Social media has provided so much information on blades , rubbers, and equipment in general, that it is now even harder to decide what to use, the amount of manufacturers has increased as well as the number and type of rubbers and blades available.
The other issue is that the sport, as far as being able to test equipment is concerned, has apparently not progressed at all.
Obviously this is difficult, because the combinations of rubbers and blades is endless.

So my question is - Can Table Tennis follow the lead of golf?

its certainly easier for golf, swing monitors give a lot of data about a persons swing and the individuals swing can be analysed precisely.

PLUS, AND ITS A BIG PLUS, YOU CAN ACTUALLY TEST THE EQUIPMENT FOR YOURSELF.

AND THIS IS THE ISSUE WITH TABLE TENNIS EQUIPMENT, you can’t really test the equipment yourself unless you buy it.

A good coach can point you in the right direction, but they may be sponsored by a particular company. Reviewers of equipment can give their personnel feelings on the performance.
Manufacturer's must be over the moon with the current proceedings !!!

So, is there need for some independent equipment fitters or shops that have testing tables? Is there enough demand? Sadly I don’t think the demand is there.

something to think on though!!!

 

[zeio]

Golf has the advantage of a stationary player swinging at a stationary ball aiming at a stationary hole. Players start out from a maximum field of play, which slowly shrinks with "checkpoints" as they work towards the end. Each club has a clear function.

Racket sports have a different objective - make the ball cross the net and reach the other side. Table tennis has it even worse than tennis and badminton. Players are essentially playing on a court(table) that is on another court(arena) - 2 totally different surfaces. Unless it gets damaged accidentally, throughout the match players are confined to 1 racket, which has to serve multiple functions.

Overall, table tennis equipment hasn't changed really all that much in the past 30 years, especially blades. Rubbers, more like sponges, have made some progress in the past decade, but still miles away from the vintage with speed glue. The basic principle still applies today. Once you know what fits yourself, stick with it. I know people who still play with setups from the '90s.

 

[Kuba Hajto]

Once you know what fits yourself, stick with it.

Heresy, TT gods bestowed with rules that clearly says otherwise. Rule 20 states `The correct number of blades to own is n + 1 where n is the number you own now.`. One should then keep spending moar money on gear one don't need and EJ for the glory of the gods :rofl:

 

[IB66]

Golf has the advantage of a stationary player swinging at a stationary ball aiming at a stationary hole. Players start out from a maximum field of play, which slowly shrinks with "checkpoints" as they work towards the end. Each club has a clear function.

Racket sports have a different objective - make the ball cross the net and reach the other side. Table tennis has it even worse than tennis and badminton. Players are essentially playing on a court(table) that is on another court(arena) - 2 totally different surfaces. Unless it gets damaged accidentally, throughout the match players are confined to 1 racket, which has to serve multiple functions.

Overall, table tennis equipment hasn't changed really all that much in the past 30 years, especially blades. Rubbers, more like sponges, have made some progress in the past decade, but still miles away from the vintage with speed glue. The basic principle still applies today. Once you know what fits yourself, stick with it. I know people who still play with setups from the '90s.

Cheers for your reply,
I think there has been a few changes since I was playing, materials used within the blades has changed, the carbon layers are different, the original butterfly Tamca carbon has now evolved into maybe 6 To 8 different types of layer that can be used. Rubber top sheet, I agree not so many changes, definitely major changes with the sponges though. Ball size has changed.
regarding speed glue, I sort of missed that and never tried speed glue. But that’s been banned.
also minor things that had major influence, such as red and black rubbers, I remember the U.K.having 2 or 3 good players (high
ly ranked/rated at European level) using anti spin and twiddling, changed because of an unfair advantage being gained. No friction rubbers have been banned. There’s now more use of mid/long pimples at club level, the old style short pimple no sponge, thin sponge combo has completely gone at club level. I suppose these set ups are now closest to the bats used in ‘ping pong’. That’s another development in its own right.
shielding serves has gone.

Now we are told that the top players are having sponge / rubber combos ‘tweaked’ or even designed for their playing style, stroke, strength etc. This means that the players are likely to be analysed using technology similar to the swing monitors that are used in golf.
This was happening in golf for the Pros and has now filtered down so anyone can be analysed and fitted for clubs.
Manufacturers must have this technology, so they can measure ball flight path , arc, amount of spin / ball revolutions, racket speed, angle of attack etc
if they don’t have this tech, then they should !!!
Maybe in the future, there will be ‘fitting’ suites available, where you will be able to be analysed and a set up of a certain ‘grade’ offered, ie certain sponge hardness, rubber hardness, grade of tackiness of the rubber to maximise the spin / speed potential of your personnel strokes.
interesting times ahead !!!!

 

[lasta]

Hi IB66,

The technology does exist. However it is against the interests of TT manufacturers to reveal such information to the public.

1. (IMO) Because absolute performance differences are very low, if empirical testing is released, people will stop believing in marketing.

2. Manufacturing of TT equipment is much less precise than golf (you get what you pay for I suppose), it's easy to find >15% difference in weight between blades of the same model. Same for rubbers. In fact, I'm willing to say the differences between two sheets of the same rubber can be greater than the average difference between rubbers from 2 brands.

Top players do have access to "tailoring". But it's not because (most) manufacturers can custom make rubbers, but because they pick from a pile of 1000+ to find 2-3 of near identical characteristics. And yes, "consumers" sometimes have access to these "hand picked" varieties too, read up on Hurricane 3 National. In fact, they even tried to capitalize on national spec'd rubbers of individual players (ie you can buy "supposedly" identical rubbers as Fan Zhengdong, Ma Long etc).

As for objective "testing", unfortunately no well-backed projects are available. TTGearLab is a good start, but I think they have outliers/manufacturer biases as well. You can try to read reviewer comments skeptically, and try to isolate objective information from a pile of text, but you'll need some personal testing experience yourself to pick up on some elements. Patrick at TT11 is pretty good too, paid reviews of course, but at least his reviews are generally of the same structure.

If you are more inclined towards intellectual curiosity than practical effects on play. Then:

tabletennis-reviews.com has rubber weight and sponge hardness resources.
http://stervinou.net/ttbdb/ has a composition screener for some of the more popular blades
http://www.guoqiuhui.net/ has macro cross section shots of most modern blades and rubbers

Also a user submitted blade frequency indicator:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tnzuhP98Iwl3_ZYIKs770Z4GeEXB1cPaF6xXC3IMLfg/edit?usp=sharing <cite></cite>

 

[lasta]

That being said, if our dear zeio is not inclined to amalgamate such information into something useful, I doubt anyone else can...

 

[igorponger]

[size=+1]
NOBODY ALLOWED TO MISTREAT THE RULES OF THE SPORT.
Back in 2009 ITTF issued a comprehensive Document to discourage all players and manufacturers of flouting the Rules 2.4
WARNING: This Document still continues in force. Those, with no exuses, are bound to obey the Rule 2.4 [/size]

http://umpire2.narod.ru/folder-2/ITTF_Message_Racket_Control_2009.pdf

Sorry to say, a good many players are guilty for taking liberty too much, they're wandering all around saying
- Oh, those damn Rules ...

 

[zeio]

Meant to post this a while ago...

Full-blown kinematic analysis.

For the masses. Still WIP, though.
https://www.atpress.ne.jp/news/214025
https://www.kyocera.co.jp/rd-openinnovation/catalog/q_gyro_system.html
https://www.kyocera.co.jp/social/voice/20200529-1/

As for equipment testing, meet pongbot.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-07/12/c_139207378.htm
https://tv.cctv.com/2020/07/14/VIDE....shtml?spm=C73465.P94515243224.EKU5OEhoJNhP.1
<video style="width: 100%; height: 100%; object-fit: fill" controls="controls" src="https://vodpub2.v.news.cn/publish/20200712/XxjfyxE007048_20200712_CBVFN0A001.mp4" poster="https://vodpub2.v.news.cn/publish/20200712/XxjfyxE007048_20200712_CBVFN0A002.jpg"></video>

<iframe src="//player.bilibili.com/player.html?aid=967521889&bvid=BV1ep4y117Yd&cid=170635800&page=1" width="640" height="360" scrolling="no" border="0" frameborder="no" framespacing="0" allowfullscreen="true"> </iframe>