How Did I Win or Lose a Match?

[NextLevel]

Got it - I need to consider this but think I understand. Certainly for FH I need to work that lower body and circular/swing type of movement. BH however feels very dependent on simply having moved across further to the BH side so I am behind the ball rather than reaching to my left for it. I have tendency to stay planted after a serve or return on FH rather than move across to be ready for BH or have space for FH - it's a habit that is exacerbated when I am nervous.

You can reach to the left, just need to make the elbow positioning stable by carrying your backswing to the ball. This is one of my favorite videos on backhand topspin. One can quibble with the specific technique and whether you should let the wrist whip "all the way through", but the point he makes about the versatility of good technique with elbow positioning still stands to this day for me at least - if you position your elbow properly relative to any ball, you should be able to play a reasonably powerful stroke.

 

[NextLevel]

Posting this here as I think it has info that might help people.

 

[Wrighty67]

Here's a couple of videos continuing to work on FH vs underspin - shorter swing/compact/more forearm and wrist spin, and also BH vs underspin and then both alternating - let me know if you see any progress!

 

[NextLevel]

Amazing work, Wrighty67. There is lots of great change and adaptation in there and I am truly impressed. I think you are hitting the shots better than I do in these videos. I loved the backhand loop drive cross court and think you should adjust your body/timing to hit it down the line rather than soften the stroke to go down the line. That stroke shows me you have figured it out because I don't think I have seen you hit that before ( around 1:45 in the backhand topspin only video). The one thing I will say is that you can hit a spinnier version of exactly the same shot if you focus on turning the ball more (with the appropriate backswing) and driving the ball less.

I am so impressed by it all that I really don't have much substantive to say. There are some swings look at the video that you may want to select more and others you may want to use less but it was an amazing display. When the balls goes into the net, try to adjust and turn around the ball more from like in the Ti Long video, but more around the side, for me it makes my life easier.

If you can alternative between hitting backspin, topspin and no spin balls with this technique so that you make the adaptations and selections in real time, then your journey will be largely complete and the rest will just be about subtle changes with finger usage to get better feel and as you get better at using body, the quality will get better as well.

Again, amazing work. It's obvious you have put a lot of work and thought into this and I think the results are all there.

 

[IB66]

Hey Wrighty,

Nice work, FH looks very stable and consistent,
BH has improved as well, a little upper arm movement creeps in, but has been reduced.
Sweet!!

 

[Wrighty67]

Amazing work, Wrighty67. There is lots of great change and adaptation in there and I am truly impressed. I think you are hitting the shots better than I do in these videos. I loved the backhand loop drive cross court and think you should adjust your body/timing to hit it down the line rather than soften the stroke to go down the line. That stroke shows me you have figured it out because I don't think I have seen you hit that before ( around 1:45 in the backhand topspin only video). The one thing I will say is that you can hit a spinnier version of exactly the same shot if you focus on turning the ball more (with the appropriate backswing) and driving the ball less.

I am so impressed by it all that I really don't have much substantive to say. There are some swings look at the video that you may want to select more and others you may want to use less but it was an amazing display. When the balls goes into the net, try to adjust and turn around the ball more from like in the Ti Long video, but more around the side, for me it makes my life easier.

If you can alternative between hitting backspin, topspin and no spin balls with this technique so that you make the adaptations and selections in real time, then your journey will be largely complete and the rest will just be about subtle changes with finger usage to get better feel and as you get better at using body, the quality will get better as well.

Again, amazing work. It's obvious you have put a lot of work and thought into this and I think the results are all there.

Thanks NL - that's great feedback and very encouraging. So many of the changes are small, that it's difficult to quantify or measure if things are getting better so it helps a lot to know you think the direction of travel is upwards. As always, your help along the way is greatly appreciated.

I will be tested tonight - we play the top team in the league and all three are pimple players

 

[Wrighty67]

Hey Wrighty,

Nice work, FH looks very stable and consistent,
BH has improved as well, a little upper arm movement creeps in, but has been reduced.
Sweet!!

Thanks IB - appreciate the words of encouragement.

 

[NextLevel]

Thanks NL - that's great feedback and very encouraging. So many of the changes are small, that it's difficult to quantify or measure if things are getting better so it helps a lot to know you think the direction of travel is upwards. As always, your help along the way is greatly appreciated.

I will be tested tonight - we play the top team in the league and all three are pimple players

Good luck! Matches are matches, feel no pressure to adapt in matches so soon, just play your game and whatever happens happens. Training can take time to get into matches (as long as many months/years)- your body/mind needs to feel that your shot selection is really your best option and it will inevitably happen over time, but not always on your schedule (demanding it on your schedule can cause problems).

The changes are small to you, but trust me whipping the ball and lining up with the ball more consistently, as well as swinging towards the ball has long term positive effects on consistency. You have now built into your game the ability to do more things with a steadier base, but it will take time (if you are like most people) to take full advantage of it.

 

[Wrighty67]

Good luck! Matches are matches, feel no pressure to adapt in matches so soon, just play your game and whatever happens happens. Training can take time to get into matches (as long as many months/years)- your body/mind needs to feel that your shot selection is really your best option and it will inevitably happen over time, but not always on your schedule (demanding it on your schedule can cause problems).

The changes are small to you, but trust me whipping the ball and lining up with the ball more consistently, as well as swinging towards the ball has long term positive effects on consistency. You have now built into your game the ability to do more things with a steadier base, but it will take time (if you are like most people) to take full advantage of it.

Thanks - I am looking forward to the challenge...

 

[IB66]

Thanks NL - that's great feedback and very encouraging. So many of the changes are small, that it's difficult to quantify or measure if things are getting better so it helps a lot to know you think the direction of travel is upwards. As always, your help along the way is greatly appreciated.

I will be tested tonight - we play the top team in the league and all three are pimple players

Hope you play well tonight!!!
3x pimple players!!! Nice!!!

 

[Wrighty67]

Hope you play well tonight!!!
3x pimple players!!! Nice!!!

It wasn’t, and I didn’t

We drew 5-5 but I lost all 3 and just played horribly against those pimples - I know what I should do, plan it carefully and then simply don’t execute. There seems to be no short cut to practicing for hours against a pimples player.

 

[DukeGaGa]

It wasn’t, and I didn’t

We drew 5-5 but I lost all 3 and just played horribly against those pimples - I know what I should do, plan it carefully and then simply don’t execute. There seems to be no short cut to practicing for hours against a pimples player.

You need to train and achieve ultra instinct 😉 Thinking too much usually leads to slow reactions

 

[NextLevel]

It wasn’t, and I didn’t

We drew 5-5 but I lost all 3 and just played horribly against those pimples - I know what I should do, plan it carefully and then simply don’t execute. There seems to be no short cut to practicing for hours against a pimples player.

My new training partner asked me how I played against pimples and I told him that my TT is from Philly, the only way you don't learn to play pips in Philly is that you refused to do so since we had a couple of coaches who played with them and taught how to play against them.

The thing about table tennis is that consciously thinking about what you are doing is a recipe for choking and disaster. The more stuff you can do on autopilot the better. But with your new technique, we can discuss what you need to think of how to arc and contact the ball, and that changes in response to the perceived incoming spin and the stroke you want to play. So at a point, it becomes less about playing the pips, and more about adjusting to the ball based on what you learn about it. This becomes valuable for all your TT, not just pips players. But this all comes with experience and playing lots of situations to widen your stroke range.

 

[Wrighty67]

My new training partner asked me how I played against pimples and I told him that my TT is from Philly, the only way you don't learn to play pips in Philly is that you refused to do so since we had a couple of coaches who played with them and taught how to play against them.

The thing about table tennis is that consciously thinking about what you are doing is a recipe for choking and disaster. The more stuff you can do on autopilot the better. But with your new technique, we can discuss what you need to think of how to arc and contact the ball, and that changes in response to the perceived incoming spin and the stroke you want to play. So at a point, it becomes less about playing the pips, and more about adjusting to the ball based on what you learn about it. This becomes valuable for all your TT, not just pips players. But this all comes with experience and playing lots of situations to widen your stroke range.

I can totally relate to that - as my instinct and feel for regular spin improves, so does my ability to read and play the ball back over the net. I don’t have that ability developed for the counter intuitive balls I’m getting back from long pips, and so my reactions are just too slow.

I also think I haven’t developed the flatter hit required sometimes to just get the ball back over the net and on the table when returning a pimples ball - I overshoot a lot, either pushing or top spinning or offer up a very easy attack ball for my opponent.

Much much to do..

 

[IB66]

It wasn’t, and I didn’t

We drew 5-5 but I lost all 3 and just played horribly against those pimples - I know what I should do, plan it carefully and then simply don’t execute. There seems to be no short cut to practicing for hours against a pimples player.

Hey Wrighty, don't get down on yourself, they are top of the league for a reason, so they must be a good standard.
I've played a few LP players this season, and maybe I've got a 50 - 50 win lose ratio, but against the better LP players it's a 0% win ratio, but I've upped my game against the better players, losing, but getting more points, taking a game or two sometimes.

Talking of results, I've been on a bad run myself, even though I've generally been playing well, played 18 singles, lost 16 won 2!!!! I was getting a bit p####d off to say the least. A couple of matches I played badly, or did I? perhaps the opponents played better?? this is something that we get lost in, blaming ourselves, rather than standing back and taking a more objective view.
I lost to a player (I have helped coach now and again) I've never lost to him before, lost 2-3. I wasn't on my game that night, but I could see where he has improved.
Because I was getting down on myself, I spoke to another coach, asking what he thought, I was spouting off win %'s etc, He told me to ignore the %'s and focus on WHO you played, so 18 singles = 6 matches over 3 leagues.
4 matches were against teams that are top or close second in their respective leagues, 2 matches were against teams just below us, these 2 matches I picked up 1 game in each match and lost a couple 2-3.
So he commented that actually I was doing well, as I had pushed 3 or 4 of the higher ranked players well, losing a couple of close matches.

Just stick to it, try and take an objective view on results. ALWAYS look for positives, rather than negatives.

 

[Der_Echte]

The thing about table tennis is that consciously thinking about what you are doing is a recipe for choking and disaster.

Such truth.

You try to consciously think in a point beyond something like ... wait... Now.... then you in big doo doo trouble and spend the week in Carl's basement septic tank with the Goonies for company.

 

[Wrighty67]

Hey Wrighty, don't get down on yourself, they are top of the league for a reason, so they must be a good standard.
I've played a few LP players this season, and maybe I've got a 50 - 50 win lose ratio, but against the better LP players it's a 0% win ratio, but I've upped my game against the better players, losing, but getting more points, taking a game or two sometimes.

Talking of results, I've been on a bad run myself, even though I've generally been playing well, played 18 singles, lost 16 won 2!!!! I was getting a bit p####d off to say the least. A couple of matches I played badly, or did I? perhaps the opponents played better?? this is something that we get lost in, blaming ourselves, rather than standing back and taking a more objective view.
I lost to a player (I have helped coach now and again) I've never lost to him before, lost 2-3. I wasn't on my game that night, but I could see where he has improved.
Because I was getting down on myself, I spoke to another coach, asking what he thought, I was spouting off win %'s etc, He told me to ignore the %'s and focus on WHO you played, so 18 singles = 6 matches over 3 leagues.
4 matches were against teams that are top or close second in their respective leagues, 2 matches were against teams just below us, these 2 matches I picked up 1 game in each match and lost a couple 2-3.
So he commented that actually I was doing well, as I had pushed 3 or 4 of the higher ranked players well, losing a couple of close matches.

Just stick to it, try and take an objective view on results. ALWAYS look for positives, rather than negatives.

Thanks IB - it's hard not to get down when the same shit happens whenever I play these guys (This is the 3rd round of playing each team)

The best player I tend to play better against and in fact beat him last time out 3-2 but he has closed down those gaps. He is a 40 year veteran and plays a lot of ranking tournaments so he is improving still.

The guy I seem to struggle against is the weaker and less offensive player - he's pretty slow, hasn't got an attacking FH but is very consistent. I struggle with his service but also just landing the balls he plays off pimples in a way that isn't pat a ball - truly awful play from my side.

I just feel that this is a monkey on my back and I need to get it sorted or the problem gets bigger - I guess I need to find a practice partner with pimples and make it a more regular occurrence.

That's a tough run you've had - tough to deal with that, but as you say - people are also developing and getting better - we don't improve in isolation

Cheers for the support and reminder to stay positive.

Peter

 

[NextLevel]

Thanks IB - it's hard not to get down when the same shit happens whenever I play these guys (This is the 3rd round of playing each team)

The best player I tend to play better against and in fact beat him last time out 3-2 but he has closed down those gaps. He is a 40 year veteran and plays a lot of ranking tournaments so he is improving still.

The guy I seem to struggle against is the weaker and less offensive player - he's pretty slow, hasn't got an attacking FH but is very consistent. I struggle with his service but also just landing the balls he plays off pimples in a way that isn't pat a ball - truly awful play from my side.

I just feel that this is a monkey on my back and I need to get it sorted or the problem gets bigger - I guess I need to find a practice partner with pimples and make it a more regular occurrence.

That's a tough run you've had - tough to deal with that, but as you say - people are also developing and getting better - we don't improve in isolation

Cheers for the support and reminder to stay positive.

Peter

There are lots of things you can do to practice against pimples but it is hard to get them natural until you actually hit with someone. Tom Lodziak always has good videos on just about every topic and I am sure you have watched them. But for me, I am not sure why a good coach doesn't hit with his students with pimples at least once a week. Pimples are very good for testing your ability to generate and control your own spin, in fact from my experience learning to play against pimples, I think many of you guys wouldn't be buying and using all these extremely fast rackets if you trained against pimples on a regular basis because you would see how much easier it is to loop with a slower racket and say consistent and you would stick with it until your consistency improved. Or you would find a better balance. Whenever I got seduced by fast racket, all it took was for me to have bad match against someone using pimples and I just looked for my trustworthy wooden blades again .

Probably doesn't have to be wood, but a lot of the things people are using are too fast for where they have gotten their strokes to.

 

[NextLevel]

For me, the most important strategy when playing a backhand pimples player is to force him to use the backhand on the forehand side. usually this is done with a serve into the forehand. You have to find the right depth and be able to move to attack the next ball or float/push it back into the backhand corner. But you can't serve the ball to them all the time, you need to get them out of the backhand corner and make them demonstrate some footwork and see what weapons they have built up to defend points when they don't receive serve with the pimples..

It is best to use largely the same serve during the match, mostly backspin and no spin combinations. That said, rotate through *all* your serves in game 1. Use game 1 to learn about the material and the player, do not care about winning game 1 as you need to give yourself freedom to read and attack the ball and adjust to the pace. Game one is usually good when you close strong, even if you go down badly early, and sometimes you may close strong enough to win.

After game 1, usually, most of the rest of the game will be backspin/no spin combinations unless the opponent has show extreme weakness against a serve that you can toss in every once in a while. Again, the serves ideally should force the pips player out of the backhand corner and give you a chance to demonstrate your ability to topspin the nospin ball or to loop backspin.

Learning to serve extremely heavy backspin and no spin combinations with similar motions can be a game changer vs pips players, they rely very often on the fact that most players serves can be easily returned with a chop block or pips push. Making the backspin spin heavy creates a wider degree of variation that means they can't return the ball mindlessly anymore because when the ball goes into the net, they actually have to be active, and being too active against no-spin balls will put the ball off the table.

 

[Wrighty67]

There are lots of things you can do to practice against pimples but it is hard to get them natural until you actually hit with someone. Tom Lodziak always has good videos on just about every topic and I am sure you have watched them. But for me, I am not sure why a good coach doesn't hit with his students with pimples at least once a week. Pimples are very good for testing your ability to generate and control your own spin, in fact from my experience learning to play against pimples, I think many of you guys wouldn't be buying and using all these extremely fast rackets if you trained against pimples on a regular basis because you would see how much easier it is to loop with a slower racket and say consistent and you would stick with it until your consistency improved. Or you would find a better balance. Whenever I got seduced by fast racket, all it took was for me to have bad match against someone using pimples and I just looked for my trustworthy wooden blades again .

Probably doesn't have to be wood, but a lot of the things people are using are too fast for where they have gotten their strokes to.

That's very funny you should say that - I spent last night (when I couldn't get to sleep and was reliving the pain) considering speed of rubbers and blades and this morning dug out my 5 ply blade to use!

I am interested in your thoughts on whether I should continue with my T05 on FH as I am allowing the blade down or dig out a tacky hybrid (I have a sheet of D09c a Dragon Grip and some K3 - all harder hybrids)I already use a softer T80FX on my BH and feel this seems to fit my developing strokes quite well but welcome thoughts here too as I have some harder sheets (R7 for example) tucked away...