good reversed rubber for bh (coming from short pimples)

[MOG]

 

[Haito]

I am aware you've been playing for very very long time. I know that you are a very well established player. But since you've been to hell and back maybe it's time to face EJ's worst enemy, namely `The Coach`. He has your answers. Face your enemy. It's been hard for me too, but it helped me, it might help you too.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Have you thought about the soft versions of H3 that some of the CNT guys use on BH or the Skyline version of the soft sponge that is more easily available to the public (Skyline 3-60 Soft)?

 

[Lula]

If i would go from short pimple to inverted i would start with some kind of tacky china rubber first. In my opinion inverted rubbers is sooo much faster than short pimple, so with a tacky, bit slower rubber i Think it would be an easier transition. But harder to generate Power with china rubber on bh since they are slower, but that is good if you have been using short pimples.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

They would still be thick. I wonder whether a 1.8 Nittaku Orange turbo might be quite quick and relatively soft, but the thinner rubber might make it a bit easier to drive with on that type of shot!! And maybe a better to push with when required.

The problem is Carl, the spin insensitivity of short pimples compensates a little for me and gives me confidence.
So maybe a thin evolution fx-s or soft andro hexer might be not too sensitive too spin incoming, but would allow me to impart backspin and more importantly give me arc to topspin the ball, so I could take ball later. But I prefer to impart lots and lots of spin with my bh which I can do better with Hurricane. It is a merry go round.

But I like having contrast form bh to fh which I think is why I like Hurricane on bh. But when I struggle with monkey players (only joking, I know I am being rude) my brain explodes and melts and it messes up my whole game and I do not enjoy it.

Monkey players are players that I am technically and in almost always better than in every way and at every shot if we get to a rally (I realize I am being horribly arrogant) but they have really good serves (legal or illegal) and they beat me easily just because I return badly and then collapse.

It is ruining my life at the moment quite literally!!

1) Can't you just get whatever thickness of whichever rubber? So if you got Skyline 3-60 in a thinner sponge, it would be.....THINNER....RIGHT?

2) If you play against someone and your rally skills are better and their serve and receive skills are better, I KNOW THIS IS HARD TO HEAR, but THEY are BETTER than YOU. I am continually saying this to a friend who says the same kinds of things. But no rally can start without the serve and the return of serve. If you are weak in those two areas, it just means you need to spend MUCH MORE time working on them. Because no point in TT starts except with a serve. Practicing serve and receive will help you improve those skills. And nothing can replace DOING THE WORK.

If you loose to someone whose serve and receive skills are enough better than yours that you lose to them, they are actually better than you. Getting it so that you understand that will help you. I do also think this is why you are driving yourself crazy with equipment. The equipment does not do the return of serve. There is no quick fix here.

You have to do that work. By trying to "fix" your return of serve by changing equipment, you are actually avoiding the real issue. And getting angry in an irrational way is also helping you avoid the actual issue. Take return of serve as a learning opportunity. Play around with trying to return serves in a variety of ways. Throw away the idea of winning for a while and really work on your serve and your return of serve.

And your serve really needs as much work as your return of serve from the footage I have seen. And when you improve those two skills, your level will become much higher. So it will be well worth the work, well worth the work.

You do have good rally skills. You simply need to work on serve and receive skills, (game skills). I wish you good luck.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

I think I want to tell a story. Okay, I know, I tell stories sometimes.

So, I played as a kid and loved TT. But I did not really play. It was recreational TT. I loved it. I was addicted to it. But I had no idea there could be a forum for playing TT with people who really played TT. I played when there was a table and someone willing to play with me.

The sport I really played as a kid was baseball. I played baseball from age 4 straight through high school and I played every year, starting months before the baseball season started, despite it being kind of cold out, and played as late into November or December as possible....till the cold temperature forced me and my friends to switch to playing football.

As a teenager, in the summers there was a Tennis club my father played at that had a table and I used to go and play TT with the Tennis kids from the tennis club. Some of them are still friends of mine 40+ years later. They played TT as though it was Tennis. They would laugh at me when I tried to play tennis and told me I played Tennis as though I was playing TT.

The point of this is, we played all TOPSPIN, no deception, blasting the ball and the player who could overpower the other was the player who would win. No backspin serves. No pushing. All topspin. One summer, I played all summer. Every day I could. As much as I could. When I came back from summer vacation and played in my little league baseball team, NOBODY could strike me out. Nobody. I am sure it had a lot to do with playing TT all summer. But it was only topspin attacking shots.

In my late 20s between jobs, I found a real TT club. Amazing. In my mind it was the best club I have ever seen. It is still larger than life. I joined. While I was off work I played every day for about 3 months. They had a robot. I improved my strokes with the robot. But I could not beat any of the players from the club because I had no idea how to handle backspin. I had never faced real backspin. Or deception on serves.

Then I did not play again from when I was 27 till I was 44 years old. At the time, as a yoga teacher, there were only a few things that still really got under my skin and got me angry. The big ones were my wife. And boy she knew how to get under my skin. And my parents. Not much else would really get me into a deep unshakable anger, rage.

And then I saw these TT tables near one of the studios I was teaching at. This was outdoor tables at Bryant Park NYC. One day I decided to jump in and try. I had not played in 17 years. Now, at that point in my life, I probably would not have gotten hooked back in to TT if there had not been something. And there was.

So I was playing all these guys who did cheap defensive stuff. They just chopped or pushed and hoped you missed. They were playing hoping you would lose the point rather than trying to win the points. And at the time it made me enraged that I would lose to these guys I was sure I was better than.

And, for me, that was actually the hook. I realized this was the perfect opportunity for me to watch what actually gets me angry and under my skin and to use it to see if I could figure that out better. For me, it was the feeling of not being in control. Having the ball go into the net without me knowing why or what to do to change it.

Now the interesting thing for me was, when I realized the issue for me was control, it made it so there were a lot fewer things that got me mad outside of TT. For years, my parents no longer got me mad. These days, my mom can get me mad again because she can't freakin' hear and refuses to accept that she can't hear. But it is not a big deal.

I never did get it so my wife stopped being able to push my buttons. But I got it so I responded a lot less to it and did not let it get out of hand. Well, when she had cancer and I knew there was only one way things would go, then she couldn't get me angry any more. But not till then.

And for me, the big thing that helped me with getting upset in TT with these guys who were beating me with cheapo defensive play, pips or crapy illegal serves was, I realized that, in some way they were actually better than me and that, the thing to do, if that was the case, was work on my TT skills so that those things did not mess me up any more.

The first step is to acknowledge that they are actually better than you (at least in some sense). The next step is to take the steps to improve so that these players cannot take advantage of those weaknesses because they are no longer weaknesses.

All good players deal with borderline, questionable or downright illegal serves. Good players learn how to handle returning them.

These things should not make you upset. They should make you want to improve your skills so you can get the best revenge on those guys with the questionable serves: you return them and beat them. That will only happen if you do the work and stop blaming things outside of your control.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

If you cannot return the serves, the person is better at you, at least in some way that causes you to lose.

Blaming things the way you do will only cause you more grief. But you are an adult. You get to choose how you respond to this. The mindset of accepting that they are better at you at something and taking the challenge to change that would help you.

But you are an adult. So you can do what you want.

 

[The Pong Professor]

Short pips are low-throw and low-spin sensitivity rubbers. If you want to transition back to smooth rubbers, I would suggest to try out the Stiga Calibra LT (i.e., the hardest in their range), which also is low throw and spin insensitive. It has less grip than top-end modern smooth rubbers, but still offers a decent amount. It is particularly good for a blocking and driving game.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Carl

it has been suggested that I should try and get a girlfriend!!

Too many headaches; new things to be angry about; trouble.

You are a good player. I am sure you can solve the problems receiving. And I am confident you could work on your serves and make them much better. They look so predictable and easy to read. And they don't seem to set you up for good third balls to destroy. You can sort that out pretty easily. You don't even need to be at a table to do a lot of the serve practice. So much of it is about how you touch the ball. And the interesting thing is, improving your serves almost invariably improves how you receive because that is also about how you touch the ball.

With return of serves you do want a short stroke and a delicate touch on BH even when you are attacking. Then you can use the opponent's spin against them. If you swing too hard, you make it harder on yourself.

 

[yogi_bear]

Xiom Vega Japan, Stiga Mantra M

 

[Brs]

This may be the funniest thread of all time, after the one where Tommy Zai, the unstoppable EJ madman, gave ten reasons why he is the world's biggest ej. That thread will never be topped. But this one is very funny.

So Carl and Patrick had very different suggestions. Here is a third option. I got this idea from a guy at NL's club. So you lose seven times to some guy, and when you put LP on you win 3-0. Why don't you have a bunch of different setups and use them for different opponents according to need. If you can return the serves play inverted. If you need to hit through spin short pips, and if you can't receive against them at all long pips.

You aren't going to improve your serve and receive skills since you can't afford a coach. So there is zero benefit in always using the same setup. You are a serious ej so you wouldn't do that anyway even if you settled on double inverted. So why settle?

 

[Eric_Wan]

I have been using Short pimples for 12 months+, Long pimples for 12 months before that, but reversed for most of my time before that.
Initially I switched to lp out of boredom and frustration, I then switched to SP as it allowed me to still play attacking and open, which lp do not.

So Sp is great for hitting through spin, great against lp, gives a different paced ball which gives contrast to the fh (something I like), however my feet are not always the best and I have a tendency to want to spin up and play up through the back of the ball.

I prefer a bh rubber that really grips the ball and have a very wristy bh if I need it.

So i think my problem with tensors is they are just too fast and dont hold the ball long enough when opponent is playing fast so when I used reversed both sides I actually used Hurricane Neo on bh.

This is bad from the point of view it is too sensitive to incoming spin for me.
But it is good for spinny pushes which means I can often get a spinny push back which I can loop or a spinny topspin (slower) which I can attack.

I find modern rubbers like Tenergy, Evolution are easier to flip and drive with though on bh but they are too bouncy for me if the game gets faster and opponent likes this game.

Does anyone think that for example playing with Mark 5 on bh might allow me to play similar to short pimples with a bit of spin in sensitivity but still allow me to apply spin myself, which I need to lift the ball, especially when I am a little late taking the ball.

My fh seems to be better when I play a meter back off table (close to mid distance). This is not a good place to play with short pimples.

I wondered whether maybe an orange Nittaku Hurricane in 1.8mm might be a good idea or maybe a tensor in 1.7 or 1.8 for a bit less bounce.

Baal, would be interested in what you have to say, as you have been there and back again.

When I use Sp I have more confidence in attacking serves, the trick is finding a way to transfer this back to reversed rubbers, obviously short pimples are a bit spin resistant which helps with hitting through spin.

At the other extreme I am thinking of trying Mid pimples (spinlord Keiler) and trying to learn to twiddle.

Maybe you could try Hurricane 3, if has great control and spin, and if you like it you can get the provincial version

 

[tropical]

I keep telling this to people who keep switching rubbers/paddles with the hope they can improve faster. Equiments can only help you to a point. The key is skill and experience which probably contribute > 90% in wining the game.

If you are poor at receiving you can only go that far with either LP or inverted. It means you are poor at judging coming spin. If you lost to this guy because he served so spinny (leave the illegal serve out as I think that is a weak defense) then beat him with LP then that guy lacked experience to play with LP. If I trained him for couple months he would probably beat you 7X straight again. He must improve his skill to deal with LP and you must improve your skill as well. Get a friend to serve similarly like this guy to you and adapt. I play LP and not comfortable when people serve flat to the LP then smash kill. I have to learn how to change spin, location, pace of the ball with such opponents. TT is a difficult game to play.

Some folks are good at switching to different setups depends on certain opponents. That requires skill, too, and not easy at all. You may lose many points then the match before feeling comfortable after switching!

 

[Haito]

BTW how are you receiving? Are you trying to attack, push or drop?

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

BTW how are you receiving? Are you trying to attack, push or drop?

Search threads by MOG and look for video footage. There are loads of them. It will be easy to find.

 

[Haito]

Search threads by MOG and look for video footage. There are loads of them. It will be easy to find.

There are quite a lot of those threads, but I've only managed to find video in this thread (https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...tting-with-Long-Pimples-or-should-I-use-short) and the video itself has been deleted by the user.

 

[Ioiettino]

I will not accept that someone with good serves that beats me but loses to anyone that returns there serves, never. I can't do it.
Just like I do not respect players that just whack everything but don't know what spin they were hitting through.
[...]
I do not accept they are better than me.

I will not accept that someone with good rallying skills but poor serves and returns beats me but loses to everyone who can stay in the rally, etc.
You need a mirror, not a rubber.

 

[Haito]

I will not accept that someone with good rallying skills but poor serves and returns beats me but loses to everyone who can stay in the rally, etc.
You need a mirror, not a rubber.

I respect you Mr. MOG, but the quoted expression is...

 

[RidTheKid]

Everyday a new thread about equipment is started when the real issue is not enough practice. Practice everything, and the weaknesses most of all. Period.

 

[Sedis]

A lesson from a good coach on service/receiving would cost less than most rubbers and probably help you more, but if you are dead set on changing back to inverted and want something controllable without too much catapult, then some of the Spinlord rubbers might be worth a look. The Marder line range from slow to medium speed (which will still seem fairly fast coming from short pips), have a slightly tacky topsheet and are available in different thickness. Tanuki also looks like it might be a good controlled backhand rubber, being slightly faster with a grippy rather than tacky top sheet.