For those over 30yo, what could you have done differently?

[lodro]

I used to be a nimble, fast, and agile guy. But now I look like a slow lumbering oaf.

ME TOO, ME TOO !!!! 😁😁😁

The problem with loosing muscle mass is closely related with the decreasing production of Testosterone as we age. Of course i am not suggesting that players start to add testosterone to their
regime of training and nutrition ........................but I definitely take some daily. 😇

 

[brokenball]

Lodro, it is time for LPs. I play with LP 0X, but everyone says I play better with double inverted. I haven't figure out you whether they are serious or they just don't want to play against LP 0X.

Getting back on topic. I was pretty good in college, but studies and life got in the way until about 35 years later. I "majored" in TT my freshman year. 35 years+ later I am at the point where I can afford to buy whatever rubber or blade every week and not notice but with age comes wisdom and I know it won't help.

I am 70 now with no joint problems so I can still move but like Lodro says, it is getting harder and harder.
Anyway, my TT playing partners agree to play until we drop. We play TT for the health of it.

The reality is that many medications that are prescribed for old fuddy duddies are muscle killers like statins. If I want to play serious TT I would need to stop taking some meds for up to a week before I was able give it my all again. Now the doctors just want to keep me alive whether I play TT or not.

 

[jammmail]

I would have not listened to as may different people/coaches and try to be more focused and selective (difficult without hindsight) but less people and more time.

Not bothered trying Chinese style rubbers - unless you are a kid or brought up with that style - the focus needed to be enough to take that approach is massive - it really is a rabbit hole.

 

[Jslick89]

I just wanna reply to +1 this comment as it's an overlooked bit of all of kneesovertoesguy's content. He preaches the importance of your starting point being a spot where you don't experience pain and building from there. When I first saw his stuff I just thought he was another social media grifter, but I no longer think of it that way. The content might not be ground breaking, maybe it is. But I've found it helpful and personally rewarding. I also just want to reply to the thread OP in general with my own life experience and things I've learned that I wish I could go back and tell my 19 year old self about - that guy was OBSESSED with table tennis.

Obviously this is all just anecdotal and I'm not a doctor. As someone who has taken my knees from an absolute garbage fire (thinking I just had 'bad' knees) to generally fine and still improving, I can't recommend those exercises enough. I would take it farther and say that once you can improve your mobility and reduce the pain level to do some of these things, that general strength training supplemented with some kind of mobility training (don't have to go crazy) will improve your life tremendously as well even if you only have time for a couple hours a week. I've made these things a non-negotiable in SOME way for the past 8 or 9 months and without trying to sound corny, it's literally saved my life.

I've strength trained on and off a lot of my adult life. Used to care more about my power lifting numbers than I do now, but after I got to the point in my life of having a desk job it was hard to keep pain away completely in some way even while I was still strong. Lower back, knees, whatever. It would then get even worse when I stopped strength training. Then I'd get depressed, gain weight, get weaker, and pain would just get worse. Felt helpless. Try to start doing something, hurt too much. Gave up. Just thought the ONLY cure was strength training the way I knew how paired w/ dealing with certain pain levels. And eventually didn't want to do this anymore. While experiencing this when I hadn't left the sport yet, I really started listening to the attitude of people around me telling me I can only be so good, to be realistic, to set realistic expectations, some people just 'are' a certain level, and certain people aren't, etc. Eventually just stopped playing table tennis altogether. Would show up once every few months at first, then just stopped that too. I don't think like that anymore.

I'm 33 years old. I started table tennis when I was 18. recently off of a 5 year break from competitive play, 2-3 year break from just general club goer levels of play. Started playing table tennis again back in December as a way to start losing weight (I got big AF boiii), and ended up finding a practice partner. In part, I've learned some lessons dealing with ailments/injuries (shoulder dislocation, severe piriformis syndrome, etc) but while a year ago I would have thought my best table tennis level was way behind me, I now think it's still in front of me. Improving my knees allowed me to handle my body when playing table tennis and training at home. Playing more table tennis gave me more confidence and conditioning, and those things allowed me to be successful in other parts of my life. It helped me lose more weight. I'm now down 70lbs and climbing, and I can attribute the start of all this to simply learning I can actually improve things I'd written off as things I'm stuck with, like my 'bad' knees or my 'bad' shoulder.

Now I treat table tennis as if I'm a professional athlete (lol I'm obviously not): I take a dedicated time to warm my body/muscles up properly before I get on the table - I'm usually sweating before I pick up my racket. I put my work in on the table, and the first thing I do after just taking some general FH/FH or BH/BH to warm up my eyes and feeling is immediately into footwork to get my legs and core pumping before moving onto more table time. The session is a success as long as I pushed myself in some way. I (not as consistently) cool down/get a recovery session after I'm done. I static stretch before I go to bed. I do mobility work, a bit of yoga, and while I haven't been able to do general strength training the past couple months for home reasons, I plan to start back at that very very soon as I can tell the difference in performance not doing that compared to doing it. Overall it sounds like way too much for an adult with a full time job and family - It makes me sick typing it, but my thinking has adjusted to taking these things incredibly seriously because it really does enable me to be a completely different person and enables me to actually enjoy table tennis and handle practicing more than I ever have in my life. Even if I can only dedicate a little bit of time during the week, I make sure to get some of this done, for no other reason that to do something for ME.

That is awesome to hear about the transformation your knees have gone through. Thankfully, I never had any serious knee issues, but as a soccer player for 15+ years, one of my worst fears was incurring a serious injury to my knees so i discovered kneesovertoesguy as a way to proactively fortify my knees.

And although I thankfully never had any knee problems, I did deal with chronic lower back pain for 4+ years (starting from age 27) due to a series of more and more debilitating lower back injuries. The first injury was from coaching toddlers in soccer. A little kiddo was on the ground crying and I picked him up and lifted him up to try and cheer him up. In the process of the lift, I twisted and that was the first time I blew out my back. Was bedridden for 3 days after that. The final straw was a few years later. At the time, I was a highly active boulderer. I was at my gym trying out a new route at a higher difficulty level than I had ever done. I was one hold from the top. All i had to do was step on a tiny foothold and then grab on a tiny little hand crimp and i would be at the top. But i slipped and fell......approx 17 feet. I landed on both my feet with my knees bent, as you are supposed to, but I had clearly injured my back on the way down. I felt it instantly. But because I was young and dumb, I thought it would be a good idea to try the climb one more time. I got to the same spot, and I fell the exact same way, compounding the injury.

I thought my back was broken. Some how I drove home 30 minutes on pure adrenaline, but the next day was horrible. I couldn't move at all. I took the ambulance to the hospital because I thought I broke my back. Turns out it was just serious soft tissue injury. I did a lot of physical therapy and maybe got to 85% until I got over confident in the gym and reinjured my back doing an overhead shoulder press with too heavy of a weight. All of a sudden I was back at square one.

I continued to rehab but dealt with chronic pain consistently. I was also a tennis player, and I remember I tried to play tennis one day, and afterwards I had extremely bad back pain for over a week.

I was desperate and didn't know what to do. I reached out to a trainer at my gym, and he showed me this page by Dr. Alan Horschig (Squat University) about the McGil Big 3 isometric exercises. I started doing these exercises every day...and slowly and surely the back pain started to fade away as my core strength grew. At that point, I became a firm believer in the power of self-rehab and the amazing recovery power of the human body designed by our Good Lord. I still deal with back pain here and there (especially if I get lazy on my core exercises) but I'm in my mid 30s now, and in better shape than I have been for my whole adult life.

So yeah, just to echo what you say, our ailments can be improved with dedication and hardwork. Maybe not 100% resolved, but you can definitely be in a much better place than you are today 3 months from now if you have a proper recovery plan and are prepared to put in the work to do so (I have found that many people just don't want to put in the work).

Cheers.

 

[JJ Ng]

I would have not listened to as may different people/coaches and try to be more focused and selective (difficult without hindsight) but less people and more time.

Not bothered trying Chinese style rubbers - unless you are a kid or brought up with that style - the focus needed to be enough to take that approach is massive - it really is a rabbit hole.

I have played Chinese rubbers growing up so I don't find it hard at all. But it is not like I did not experiment with other things when I was a kid. I was playing with 729, Juic 999, Sriver and Mark V.

However, I do find most adult beginners should start with non-sticky rubber such as Mark V or Sriver and then upgrade to tensor later on. I mean, we have to enjoy the sport after all. If you put in too much work and it stops being fun, then why playing?

I have EJ'ed a lot of blades and rubbers by now. I think there is a rubber and blade combination that fits your body and your stroke mechanics. But it is important not to have a set-up that is too fast. And when you try equipment, you should know generally what you want and you won't break your bank as a result. For example, I would say there are three categories of blades: ALL+/OFF- 5-ply wood, inner carbon and outer carbon. That's it. You don't need to buy ten blades to figure out what you like.

There are five main types of rubber: non-tensor (I think Neottec rubbers offer much much better value than Mark V or Sriver in this category), Chinese rubber, soft tensor (Xiom Vega Europe, Rakza 7 soft, C-1), medium hard tensor (Rakza 7, Rasanter 47, EL-S), and finally hard tensor/hybrid (Rakza Z very hard, C53).

Find something in those categories and work on your stroke.

So what I am saying is, it is good to figure out what works for you with the combination of those categories and then stick with it to train your body and upgrade later. I think finding the right equipment at the moment is also an important part of letting you enjoy the sport and get better faster, and accommodate whatever pre-existing injuries you have as you get older.

 

[Der_Echte]

There are few in this world who would moar regret than I did as I was in my 30s living in Germany a total of ten years and did not know TT...

What a missed opportunity to ball out on an epic level.

Fortunately, I discovered TT in my 40s and got to be in Korea for 4 years... so I made up for it.

 

[turbozed]

There are few in this world who would moar regret than I did as I was in my 30s living in Germany a total of ten years and did not know TT...

What a missed opportunity to ball out on an epic level.

Fortunately, I discovered TT in my 40s and got to be in Korea for 4 years... so I made up for it.

I've been living right next to ICC in Milpitas for about 20 years now (literally less than 1 km away). I just started playing TT less than a year ago in my 40s too, and just stepped foot into that place just this week. So I'm in the same boat when it comes to missed opportunity.

 

[SFF_lib]

There are few in this world who would moar regret than I did as I was in my 30s living in Germany a total of ten years and did not know TT...

What a missed opportunity to ball out on an epic level.

Fortunately, I discovered TT in my 40s and got to be in Korea for 4 years... so I made up for it.

I know some people become serious in TT training when other responsibilities disappeared (children grown up, financially more stable etc). They often trained in their 40s or even 50s and become very competent in a short time.

 

[SFF_lib]

I've been living right next to ICC in Milpitas for about 20 years now (literally less than 1 km away). I just started playing TT less than a year ago in my 40s too, and just stepped foot into that place just this week. So I'm in the same boat when it comes to missed opportunity.

Never too late!! Well done for starting one of the toughest sport 😁

 

[lightspin]

I am around 6'1 and when I went to China to train they rarely encountered anyone my size. My coach insisted I play as low as possible with my knees bent at almost 90 degrees. This was painful. My legs at the time were ridiculously strong as I could rack most leg machines and lift as much as the roided out bodybuilders at my local gym for leg exercises. So I tried to do what they said and was able to because of my leg strength. However, the more I played in China, the more my knees killed me and whenever I straightened up the coach would freak out.

Now that I am older my knees are really paying the prince. I can no longer play like I want to and can only do simple drills. In retrospect I should have told the coach to go "f" himself and flown home but I didn't know any better and really wanted to get better. Live and learn.

 

[NextLevel]

I am around 6'1 and when I went to China to train they rarely encountered anyone my size. My coach insisted I play as low as possible with my knees bent at almost 90 degrees. This was painful. My legs at the time were ridiculously strong as I could rack most leg machines and lift as much as the roided out bodybuilders at my local gym for leg exercises. So I tried to do what they said and was able to because of my leg strength. However, the more I played in China, the more my knees killed me and whenever I straightened up the coach would freak out.

Now that I am older my knees are really paying the prince. I can no longer play like I want to and can only do simple drills. In retrospect I should have told the coach to go "f" himself and flown home but I didn't know any better and really wanted to get better. Live and learn.

To be fair, you might have ended up in a similar place just by playing TT - lots of people end up with knee issues playing TT even if they didnt get particularly low. And even players like Ma long have had surgery despite being professional athletes.

 

[Der_Echte]

To be fair, you might have ended up in a similar place just by playing TT - lots of people end up with knee issues playing TT even if they didnt get particularly low. And even players like Ma long have had surgery despite being professional athletes.

Ironically, I cannot remember getting a knee injury ever playing TT in 10+ years in the sport... and in my first 1.5 years of playing tennis to augment my muscle balance for TT, I got THREE Grade II MCL injuries and 5-6 Grade I MCL injuries...

I FINALLY figured out how to explode and step and not tear my knees in tennis, so it may be helping my TT now.

 

[Der_Echte]

I've been living right next to ICC in Milpitas for about 20 years now (literally less than 1 km away). I just started playing TT less than a year ago in my 40s too, and just stepped foot into that place just this week. So I'm in the same boat when it comes to missed opportunity.

Do you plan on playing the U1500 or U1900 Teams at Swan TT this Sep 2023?

 

[longle]

I recently have to wear both 2 in matches, my knees are starting to get tired -
Are you using knee straps ? which brand are you using ? I only know of this brand since I saw ZJK and Wang Hao wore this, it works well and last very long (the red one is 8 years old and is starting to wearoff)

 

[SFF_lib]

I recently have to wear both 2 in matches, my knees are starting to get tired -
Are you using knee straps ? which brand are you using ? I only know of this brand since I saw ZJK and Wang Hao wore this, it works well and last very long (the red one is 8 years old and is starting to wearoff)

View attachment 26490

I've tried these ones, but they seem not working. I've been using the large one that wraps around your whole knee. That gives you a lot of support. The only downside is sweat.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

As I close in on 60, what would I have done differently? Catch more air:

 

[lodro]

As I close in on 60, what would I have done differently? Catch more air:

View attachment 26492

............and now we finally find out why they call you "Up Side Down Carl"

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

............and now we finally find out why they call you "Up Side Down Carl"

Nah, it is more, because I see things upside down and backwards.

But.....

I am fully capable of being upside down as well.

Also, long time members of the forum will have seen photos like these plenty of times before. I was in the circus and I am a yoga teacher.

But I guess the point was: in life you may as well go for it and enjoy your life. No need for regrets. By doing what I did in the circus, I dislocated my right shoulder several times, I partially dislocated my left hip, my right hip has arthritis from landing on it repeatedly from upwards of 25 feet in the air, I broke my ribs a few times....I do do things that make my body work for me and most people, if they saw me in every day life would not be able to understand how I banged my body up so much and so badly and how it still works really well for me.

And all that is because, even though I took risks, and did fun and crazy things, I also did things that enabled me to take care of my body and heal from those injuries.

So, play hard. But, perhaps, also do some of the work that will help you maintain a healthy and functioning body.

 

[TensorBackhand]

I recently have to wear both 2 in matches, my knees are starting to get tired -
Are you using knee straps ? which brand are you using ? I only know of this brand since I saw ZJK and Wang Hao wore this, it works well and last very long (the red one is 8 years old and is starting to wearoff)

View attachment 26490

Do these prevent knee dislocation?

 

[longle]

Do these prevent knee dislocation?

I don't think it is capable of such thing, just help with the knee movement