Looping no spin, or dead balls. Any suggestions.

[gmiller2233]

Any suggestions on looping quick dead ball returns or hit balls from a short pips?

I actually have a good amount experience playing against a type of dead ball. I've played a anti defensive control blocker The past 2 1/2 years or so at my club. But his style is not that aggressive and I'm rather Acustom to his game, i have not lost to him in the last 6 months and I don't have a problem looping his placement over power dead balls. I just need to pick my spots and work ball quality, spin, and placement over speed. Looping his dead ball is closer to looping a underspin ball than a normal forehand to forehand loop. But I the last few months I have been playing a guy that plays short pips. From time to time I will have trouble attacking or looping this guys slap shot dead ball. I don't play many short pips players this guy is the he only regular one. I was hoping someone could give me some pointers or things to think about when looping this ball.




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[Archosaurus]

I think the first thing to ask here would be what your issue is exactly. Does it go out, net etc. ?

 

[NextLevel]

Any suggestions on looping quick dead ball returns or hit balls from a short pips?

I actually have a good amount experience playing against a type of dead ball. I've played a anti defensive control blocker The past 2 1/2 years or so at my club. But his style is not that aggressive and I'm rather Acustom to his game, i have not lost to him in the last 6 months and I don't have a problem looping his placement over power dead balls. I just need to pick my spots and work ball quality, spin, and placement over speed. Looping his dead ball is closer to looping a underspin ball than a normal forehand to forehand loop. But I the last few months I have been playing a guy that plays short pips. From time to time I will have trouble attacking or looping this guys slap shot dead ball. I don't play many short pips players this guy is the he only regular one. I was hoping someone could give me some pointers or things to think about when looping this ball.




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Archo had a good point, but the bottom line is if you really want to loop it, keep trying. And if the ball is fast, realize that yo need to give yourself time to swing so find the right distance from the table to play (not too far or the ball will sink, and not too close or the ball will be on you before you have time to swing). If the ball goes into the net, you should know how to adjust and vice versa if it is going long. There is no magic in table tennis, just experience, technique and adjustments.

I looked at what I wrote above and I realized it would not make sense to a certain kind of player who has been taught to think about every loop or stroke in TT as being special. The truth is that you need only need loop per se, you then need to learn to apply it to different spins and ball speeds. You may make it shorter against fast balls, or larger against slow balls, you may make it more vertical vs backspin or more horizontal vs topspin, you may hit the side for more sidespin or to avoid incoming spin, or you may hit the back to drive a ball harder, you backswing higher the less backspin and more topspin and the higher the ball is. All of these adjustments have to become subconscious with practice.

So when you play a ball that is giving you fits, you have too quickly think about the stroke you used and what the ball must have been like for the result you got to happen and make adjustments. In practice, try to loop different kinds of spins. If you keep the same looping angle and contact point for all your strokes with similar backswing, don't be surprised when you sometimes put balls into the net because you didn't approach the ball the right way.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

For quite some time I had problems on short pips players to do topspin. As you say, the upcoming ball is often dead or little spin and if you don't adjust, your timing may be wrong and you end up often making the ball too long.

Here is my advice. There are several kind of timing. Wait for the ball an extra tenths of second if it's a bit slow. But when you do your swing don't forget to go to the ball a bit more than usual, both arm and body. Don't just use your arm. Close the angle a bit more than usual and learn to do it with a soft touch and slow topspin first but be relaxed and brush the ball. Anyway pips player usually like fast balls. They hate slower and spinnier balls

If the bounce from the upcoming ball is short and you anticipated well you can go also for an agressive counter by taking the ball before the top of the bounce with the bat angle much more horizontal. In this case you have to do a strong swing to put as much spin as possible.

This is a more advanced stroke, more risky and requires good timing and good footwork. I don't try it often.

 

[tropical]

I play long pips as well as short pips so many of my returns are dead and no spin. The folks who can give me a hard time is the ones who can loop or rip the ball fast and spiny. I notice that these players normally can control the incoming ball very well. As the dead ball is normally short and straight forward they contact the ball right off the bounce, don't wait at the top trajectory because doing so their timing may be off.

 

[KM1976]

Wow! Nice question. Something which really caught my attention. So here is what I will do -

1. First just block the ball. Try to see what happens? Does it goes on the net, does it travels fast in one direction or flies off? Just observe.
2. Monitor your position with respect to the ball - are you getting choked? Is the ball hurrying up on you?
3. Try reading the ball when it leaves your opponents racket - try observing his body position, his stance or something which can give you a hint about the incoming ball, keep this knowledge safe It will always help you in future
4. Now once you have figured out the top 3 questions - try loosening your shoulders, arms and traps - there are lots of videos on youtube - Ben Larcombe from expert table tennis has written a beautiful blog on this one - it is important for you to be very relaxed.
5. Now just forget about putting power in your stroke - keep your racket at table level or little higher as a preparatory stance and bend your upper torso forward. Try whipping the ball as relaxed as possible and as close to the top of the bounce as possible. Keep it very simple and try to aim for the table diagonal for which you find it comfortable at first.
6. If you do it right - then always try to remember the feel of the stroke - keep telling yourself how you did it and what good points you adopted in your stroke to make it happen. Be your best friend - Simple.
7. The last point - all of the six points listed above will work only if you remain still and watch the ball till the end - So be very patient. I have seen myself thinking all the right moves but doing them in a hurry - thus loosing on the results. So keep still and relaxed that is the key.

All the best - Keep practicing and keep improving

 

[Garrison]

General advice: Be determined. Do not hesitate like "oh shit how am I gonna do this", just go for it

 

[gmiller2233]

very thoughtful responses, thank you for the feed back!


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[Avenger]

Good question and great advice!

Dead balls blocked back from short or long pips or even smooth rubbers have always given me problems in the past. Unfortunately I couldn't really practice with anyone in my club since all the players there use regular smooth rubbers except one. So I spent a lot of time practicing at home just throwing the ball straight up and having it bounce from the wooden floor a few feet from the table and try looping it to the other side with a return board. Like others have commented, staying relaxed with a soft touch using hand, arm and body were key for me. The feeling of being able to loop dead balls with good heavy spin was a great accomplishment for me.

And believe it or not, just by doing this for about about 3 weeks I was able to beat a 1700+ player with short pips on the forehand and long pips on the backhand in a tournament. Normally I would be crushed by such players.

 

[Lula]

General advice: Be determined. Do not hesitate like "oh shit how am I gonna do this", just go for it

Agree. When you play against short pimple you need to be more determined and maybe brush the ball a little more because short pimle will give the ball some downspin. I play with short pimle and smashing is all about timing so if i get balls with the same pace it is no problem. Change the pace, spin and direction then the short pimple player will have an harder time to smash because the timing will be off. You can also try to serve long or return long against the short pimple, and then you proably will get an almost no spin ball that you can attack first.

 

[gmiller2233]

So I gave everything a second reading this weekend wow great stuff. Thanks again for the thoughtful replies. I my first entry was little vague, And totally agree there is no Magic fixes it just takes repetition and conscious analyzing, But my situation is imperfect and opp's too few. when I have played this particular player in a 5 game singles match I have made adjustments and after a close first game will I have gone on to become comfortable and win easily. But to be honest I've not been particularly good about analyzing what those adjustments were I just kind of felt my way through it as I saw more balls which was good but it's not always easy to replicate. When coming into a something like a doubles game and I getting fewer reps this has been frustrating enough to identified this something that needing attention especially as I go forward seeing more short pips play. I need to just get more reps with some of this in mind but looking back the comments towards timing sounds feel pretty relevant/spot on. Whether I'm conscious of it or not I've probably been caught out slightly on both sides by the skipping on you lower bounce on deep shots and then by the different sinking trajectory when back a step or two. I have found hitting with top or even blocking the ball back a adequate response. But I would like to play spin loop first when It's possible. Btw km76 ben larcombe table tennis blog and podcast is a good one. I have listen to all of the podcasts some of them multiple times. I like the Larry hodge one quite a bit.


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[gmiller2233]

Again limited experience but yes long serves especially an occasional no spin seemed effective to the short pips and even anti player.

 

[Baal]

It may not be available where you are, but this is one of those things you can train with some multiball. You need someone to feed you balls using SP. You kind of need to train your eyes as well as your body.

I had big problems with that at one point, so I used to get two clubmates, one inverted and one SP. Inverted guy feeds me a ball, I loop, SP guy blocks, and I loop again. Go through several buckets. Get to where I am seeing all sorts of SP blocks. In return, after practice I buy all the beer and Chinese food.

Playing against stuff you never see is always hard.

 

[gmiller2233]

That a good idea Baal. I have started training times at our club but I'm the only one really pushing it. Sometimes it's hard to do with space/numbers etc, but it is going. I do have a short pips, medium pips set up at home that my wife pings with. I made it for her because she hates spin lol, she like the set up actually. I'll stick her bat in my bag to mix in with club training. Or who knows maybe I can trade dish duty for a week for a few bucket of balls at home lol.


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[Ilia Minkin]

From my little experience with short pips the safest thing is to make sure you are looping with heavy spin. If you can loop against block with heavy spin, squeezing the ball into the sponge, you may use this stroke against a dead ball with very little adjustment. But if you "guide" the ball, mostly relying on the existing spin to get it back, it requires a lot of adjustment in the stroke, and is more difficult.

 

[gmiller2233]

I got a chance to see some pips today in drills. I got the short pips guy to work with us some (which is rare not usually his type of thing) I temped him over by asking if he wanted to hit a bucket. We use three people server hitters and defender to get more people in. I made sure to be the defender, so I got to defend and see a bucket of sp drives. at first just blocked them back to see/feel what going on. Then looping everything, it was great for me to see, and looping back in drills anyway buy the end felt good. Just good to see to and try to better understand things. Actually straight looping his dead ball is not that diffrent than looping a anti spin just faster and more variation, being loose come from under the ball, brush and if I'm not there then block hit or hit it back. As some suggested reading the shot and understanding the Timing was key since with Very little changes and movements you can efect big changes between speed and type of ball. The biggest difference being hit ball that's flat and skips or a more traditional looking top spin hit. I need to see more but it will as good.


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