Shuki Development and Questions

[Shuki]

Wow, it's a great achievement to beat 2000+ rated players in practice after justing playing for 3 years. Hats off!

I think it's a good idea to play U1700. I have managed to give players who are much stronger than me a good fight in my own club but a large part of that was knowing their games and being insensitive to their serves. If I had met them for the first time in a tournament, I would be destroyed.

In any case, you can get used to the tournament setting during the U1700 and then everything will feel more comfortable during the U1900. If you are able to bring your practice form to the table, I don't think that U1700 should be a problem at all and I think you can at least reach a good stage during the U1900.

unfortunately I'll have to do the opposite. get used to the tournament setting at U1900 which is starting at 9:30am and then reach a good stage in U1700. or possibly reach good stage in both, who knows.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Have fun in the tournament. That is the most important part.


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

 

[darnner123]

Have fun in the tournament. That is the most important part.


Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

ye thats tru
but some ppl are like super tryhards and get rlly pissed when they lose :/
hate playing against those ppl

 

[ttmonster]

If you can beat them , its more fun actually. I was playing this kid and after barely winning the first game, she goes back to his parents and then comes back and complains about my serve being hidden. I just called for the referee and had an umpire for the rest of the match. Beat her 3-1 and the umpire never called my serve and she got called twice on her serve , it was so much fun to shake her parents's and coaches hands after that match . And, no the umpire was not my personal friend

ye thats tru
but some ppl are like super tryhards and get rlly pissed when they lose :/
hate playing against those ppl

 

[Der_Echte]

EDIT: at the current moment, my game FEELS to have no major holes and I'm happy to say I can finally focus more on tactics and placement instead of focusing on my form.

Sounds great Shuki, hope you are not peaking too soon, or it is just a warm-up to your "peak" for this tourney. Give us a round by round mate.

 

[Der_Echte]

Update:

I'll be getting my camera on the 24th of this month to record footage of my play for critique and advice.

Played today, amazingly compared to usual. Keep in mind these are all player's I've played against before, some on numerous occasions so by no means does it reflect my playing level. I am definitely worse than these players.

I played 4 players that are rated over 2000, none over 2100. And won against them all. Also I am assuming that I'm not getting their best game obviously because I'm not at their level I don't need it.

The first went to the 4th game and was the penholder I struggle the most against and have NEVER beaten. This was a moral victory in so many ways. What I did differently was play much more patient. I kept pushing until there was an EXCELLENT ball because he knew how capable I am at looping over the table and was waiting for it. I learned from what nextlevel said and when I looped the ball made sure to put enough spin on it so that he couldn't just block it off the bounce. I also found that when he realized he was going to lose by playing his normal game against me he started attacking. His attacks were loops though which suprised me because I thought penholders usually hit more flat for their attacks. I blocked the loops back with ease since touch against spin is really my specialty.

Second set of games was against yet another penholder. This one is much more aggressive and I played my regular game which I discovered consists of blocks that slow the game down back to the table. He would attack hard and I would graze the ball in such a way that really slowed the game back down to my pace. He got frustrated and started smacking everything really hard so I wouldn't be able to slow it down. But this was detrimental to him and it caused him to miss more than he hit.

Third player, again penholder. This one was known for his serves which were almost always long but once attacked, played right into his game of moving you around. I honestly thing this game was all luck for me, I was running around everywhere just not missing and swinging with all I had. Waited longer for his serves to drop a bit before attacking them, but couldn't play a short game with him because his serves often prevented that. I wish I could have played a short game because I'm stronger there, than off the table even though I'm technically a "two winged looper"

5th game was a shakehander who focused on third ball attacks and served a lot of his serves long. For whatever reason he doesn't have much of a short backhand so I serve there a LOT to him. Now he used to just return it short to my forehand because he knew I had no answer to short forehands. But just 2 days prior to today me and my coach worked HARD on fixing that. I RIPPED those short forehands back at him, it took him trying it quite a few times to be convinced that such a big weakness of mine could be gone so quickly. I was astounded myself that they somehow got better than when I was playing on sunday. I think it may have been having higher energy level tonight that helped. After the first game he went with his normal style of spinny loops with good pace on them. My block messed his timing up a few times and he got pretty angry talking about "me having dead rubber" (which I just replaced with new sheets on saturday haha.) He then went for more spinny loops instead of the ones that had good pace on them. This was a mistake that he never encountered from me. These are were I shine with my blocks. He made one quite high and spinny and I did my "passive block", he moved back to follow up with a stronger loop off the ball that would surely come long. But my "passive block bounced twice." I think this is the point where he broke down.

I'm playing extremely well lately and I have a lot of you to thank for helping with the development so far. Can't wait for the tournament here April 16th. Which I'll be in the U1700 and U1900. I was told by the tournament committee I'll be able to proceed out of the round robin even though I have no rating yet. Although today I was told by a few players I shouldn't be in the U1700. I assured them that I only played well tonight because I've played these players before and am actually not very good.


EDIT: at the current moment, my game FEELS to have no major holes and I'm happy to say I can finally focus more on tactics and placement instead of focusing on my form.

unfortunately I'll have to do the opposite. get used to the tournament setting at U1900 which is starting at 9:30am and then reach a good stage in U1700. or possibly reach good stage in both, who knows.

Shuki, you will likely do a lot of waiting as many people enter many events and they never finish as scheduled. Just know it is coming and be mentally prepared for it. You can rest, work out, or space out depending on how it benefits you, but pls do not remain seated for 1-3 hrs, you will hate life afterwards.

 

[Shuki]

Sounds great Shuki, hope you are not peaking too soon, or it is just a warm-up to your "peak" for this tourney. Give us a round by round mate.

Wooooops, went down a bit today, now I'm in a rut haha, time to get back to the peak within 10 days haha.

Der_Echte you are quite psychic

 

[Shuki]

Update: Played poorly tonight, then again, I only played one player in a match. It wasn't that I played that poorly, just missed more shots and my form felt a lot worse than usual. I won 3-0 quite easily, but the player is also only around 1525ish. After the game I mostly did drills for the rest of the night to attempt to get myself back up to where I was a couple days ago.

BEST PART: GOT CAMERA EARLY, RECOREDED THE SET, youtube is rendering now.

so you can all see, I'm putting myself out there with game footage, open for critique, but you'll probably notice my reactions are already critique as I'm pretty frustrated with myself.

 

[Shuki]

There it is, first uploaded set with the camera, (if you're watching it close to when I posted, Quality will increase soon. its only 360p at the moment but in about an hour or two it will be 1080p.) Open to all advice, criticism, compliments. Though I'm sure the compliments one there isn't much.

What I noticed first that I hate, is in the fh-fh warm up, my left arm is held up but its stationary in front of me. Drives me crazy and coach has mentioned it in the past but it's just not something I think about when I'm working on my stroke. working on that. takes about halfway through the first game that I adjust a bit to him.

IM THE TALLER LANKY ONE


Glad to get video gameplay of myself, I see so many aspects of my form and gameplay that need adjusting.

 

[NextLevel]

This is a lower rated player so you got away with a lot of stuff, like long serves and high pushes. But that happens all the time.

You are playing with a very interesting grip to say the least and because of how it limits your play, I can't stop focusing on it when I watch every stroke. Since you are still relatively young, consider fixing it. The grip is forcing your forearm and wrist to act mostly as one piece rather than as separate links in a chain or whip. It's probably why you cock your forehand as you would get no wrist action without it. Your arm should be functioning more like this if you want to have advanced arm mechanics.

IT's like you are putting lot of effort into throwing your forearm but getting limited results relative to your level because you have put a lock on your racket that stops it from moving. People underestimate the contribution of whip mechanics to racket head speed but it is not trivial. Understanding the science of whips helps you appreciate how silly people are when they trivialize the importance of learning how to correctly use the arm.

I'm curious what your coach thinks of your grip.

 

[Shuki]

Yes the grip issue puts a lot of limits on my game. Here is a thread where we talked about my grip. Coach hates it but has worked around it quite a bit.

http://www.tabletennisdaily.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?12387-Cocked-Wrist-issue

 

[NextLevel]

Yes the grip issue puts a lot of limits on my game. Here is a thread where we talked about my grip. Coach hates it but has worked around it quite a bit.

http://www.tabletennisdaily.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?12387-Cocked-Wrist-issue

I remember that thread - we focused on all the wrong things. What is really wrong with your grip is how high the indexfinger and thumb are on the blade. The cocked wrist thing is minor. You need to get your finger and thumb lower to a truly neutral grip like the ones we displayed in the TTmonster thread. Of course, you can raise the index finger for forehands or the thumb for backhands, but I find that in that neutral grip, I can apply pressure with those fingers without consciously changing anything.

If your coach hates it, get good value for your money and fix it. It takes a week or so to fix a grip and another month before it sticks. All you have to is lots of drills off and on the table, from ball bouncing to wall hitting to shadow play to match play with it until your body accepts it. You will play at the same level fairly quickly and then the benefits will outweigh the negatives over time, even as your current grip has some benefits. But the benefits are going to keep you from super easy high level topspin for a while, especially on the backhand side. You will continue to struggle to loop backspin with that action.

Do it after the tournament obviously, but it should be done ASAP. It's not as big a change as some people think, but it is a big change in terms of effect on long term growth. Grip affects the racket angles you can create, the ways you can use your wrist, the degree to which you have to move to play certain shots etc. It's no wonder you were struggling with serves to your forehand because your grip will limit the racket angles you can create to touch the inside and outside of the ball comfortably with your forehand.

One of the things I was lucky to have was a good attitude to grip change. I used a grip up until I was 1700 that kept the racket mostly in my palm with my index finger up on my blade. It was a forehand grip, but I had a good backhand with it. A coach in Nigeria told me that grip was wrong. I tried to understand what he meant, probably never really did, but spent the next year or two repeatedly experimenting, with little changes to my level other than whatever I did to improve my shot play. So I learned pretty quickly that adjusting to grips is a matter of practice so I am never scared to change my grip. I've seen people who would rather quit table tennis than stop using their inferior grips.

 

[Shuki]

here's one much shorter thread where I posted a video of myself explaining my grip. and how I'm choked up pretty high. Never saw you in this one, wish you had seen it at the time now. Explaining all the reasons I should change at the time probably could have helped

http://www.tabletennisdaily.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?12257-My-unorthodox-Shakehand-hold

 

[NextLevel]

here's one much shorter thread where I posted a video of myself explaining my grip. and how I'm choked up pretty high. Never saw you in this one, wish you had seen it at the time now. Explaining all the reasons I should change at the time probably could have helped

http://www.tabletennisdaily.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?12257-My-unorthodox-Shakehand-hold

Ahhh... maybe there was something else taking up my brain space and the problem with threads is that because of the notifications, you usually post where you last posted - it takes a lot for new topics to attract me.

The transition from service logic, I fully get. It's one of my struggles with my current grip. In fact, it is the primary reason I went back to flare blades as I found it easier to locate where on the handle I want to be with a flare.

The other stuff, I am not really sold on. Racket head speed is king in this sport. Anything that limits your ability to generate it easily is a step backwards. The main reason why your grip hurts on flat hits and drives is that your positioning your finger and thumb so high on the blade limits your ability to change the direction of your wrist motion relative to the plane of movement of your lower arm. So your finger and thumb make it harder for your wrist to wave the paddle back and forth.

I would strongly recommend that you try out the traditional shakehand grip with the handle seated in the fingers (not the palm, the fingers) with most of the pressure in the thumb and index finger and the other fingers mostly for stability. It should look from the side like what Brett is showing and it doesn't matter whether your index finger comes off the paddle or not - that is a personal choice. Mine does and I can curl it up sometimes and I really don't care. In the long term, the increased wrist flexibility and relaxation will do a lot for your game and you will learn ways to control topspin with it that you currently can't do as easily with your current grip. Because with your current grip, you mostly move the racket back and forth in one plane, while with the regular shakehands, you can actually turn your wrist around the side and over the ball to shape or avoid incoming spin. In other words, you can cheat sometimes with just your wrist doing things you currently do with your whole body. Or you can use your whole body and just let the relaxed wrist add extra speed and spin as the focal point of the whip motion in your stroke.

Since you have a good coach, she can fix all that easily if you change the grip so that she can show you how to use it. I would actually ask her to tell me what grip to use and just use that - I am paying her for a reason. It's no accident that some coaches don't coach grips they don't play with, and the biggest hurdle to improving with an unorthodox grip is that a coach cannot easily transfer knowledge about their TT to you because a lot of stuff is in their grip!

 

[NextLevel]

That said, it's not always easy to see someone with a grip and know how that grip expresses itself with play. There are some no-brainers (high fore finger, high thumb on face of paddle) and you interesting sometimes combine both. There are worse grips, but it is a huge credit to you to play that well with those limitations saddle on you by your grip and I only hope what you will lose in the short term will not have to thinking to hard about what is obviously the right direction to me. Goodness is sometimes the enemy of greatness.

Finally, I have not exhausted the benefits of changing your grip. As you become a better player, your arm needs multi-segmented action in order to have good last second power and deception. Right now. I am 95% sure that you transmit where you are going with your stroke early because your wrist cannot change the body's transition with ease at the last second. Those things become more important when you need to outplay people who will always get to the ball if they know where you are going with it. If you play the TTEdge App, it is like comparing Henzell's FH to his BH. His FH is much easier to read than his backhand because his forehand tells you everything from the beginning, while his backhand holds the information until the last few moments.

 

[Shuki]

Glad you came in and watched the video, I had a lot of doubts about my grip restricting my play but in the various threads I talked about it, I only got positive feedback for it.

I had a feeling it was something that needed to be fixed but when so many people tell me the grip is fine as long as it's comfortable and consistent I tended to just agree and decided to keep it.

Grip is in my opinion the most uncomfortable aspect of the game to change but if you fight through that uncomfort for a while it truly pays off.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Shuki]

If you can look past the overwhelmingly atrocious grip issue, can you find anything else I should be working on in terms of general form?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[NextLevel]

If you can look past the overwhelmingly atrocious grip issue, can you find anything else I should be working on in terms of general form?


Sent from my iPhon using Tapatalk

You pushed the ball way too much and got lucky that the long serves were not looped back at you. But you were playing someone who didn't threaten you so I guess you were relaxed. At one time, you served, got a long ball above net height, then pushed it. IF you do that against me, you probably won't see the next ball if I am in decent form.

Your body rotation is often pretty good and you play in a low and wide stance, which are good things. Your lateral movement wasn't seriously tested but you did block well usually.

In other words, bring a match against better opposition that will reveal your problems because beating up on you in a match you won but didn't feel threatened would be like me asking for serious comments based on the set I posted recently. We are adult learners, so not everything is equally important or should be discussed as such.

 

[ttmonster]

The most important thing in table tennis is to relax and focus at the same time. This is the key.

 

[Der_Echte]

You played really soft and did push a lot, maybe it was that the opponent wasn't gunna attack you much and you didn't need to take much risk to win points.