TT Myth Busters

[Der_Echte]

Richard Dewitt is a 2200+ player who has beaten a 2500+ player before. He has been playing serious table tennis since he was a child (he was once a part of a world record setting team for the longest rally).

I'm a 2000+ player who has been playing tournament table tennis for less than 4 years. I also coach semi-professionally and am one of the few adults that has made substantial improvement in my play in my area.

Hopefully, that puts into context the ridiculous point you are trying to make. Dewitt also does things with his equipment that make his game trickier but I won't get into that.

Richard D. is simply 2+ levels better player than Next Level and that is the largest reason why Richard wins. That doesn't mean Next Level doesn't have opportunities to win points, he will have plenty of opportunity.

Rich is simply next to impossible to read where he will send the ball. The few times I can see where it is going, I can rip it or make a real heavy spin and win the point. I can hit his serves for winners (if i can read where they go) Problem is the times you correctly read his ball are very few. This puts you under pressure and he can punish a weak return like anyone else, so you got that to consider as you try to make a quality shot from a bad position - not a winning formula.

While I was in Korea 4 yrs I kept hearing how Rich would have super slick Mark V rubbers and when I came back from Korea, I played vs him the first week in a tourney. His topsheets are continuous the same consistency both sides. His "old" rubber might make it easier for him to make certain shots, but it isn't like his rubber is doing different things to the same balls.

Rich has an innate ability to control HAND PRESSURE at impact and that is an invisible force you do not see at impact. If you are really good you can tell by sound and flight characteristics, otherwise, you gotta see it bounce and often that is too late to determine the pace and spin to react.

 

[NextLevel]

Richard D. is simply 2+ levels better player than Next Level and that is the largest reason why Richard wins. That doesn't mean Next Level doesn't have opportunities to win points, he will have plenty of opportunity.

Rich is simply next to impossible to read where he will send the ball. The few times I can see where it is going, I can rip it or make a real heavy spin and win the point. I can hit his serves for winners (if i can read where they go) Problem is the times you correctly read his ball are very few. This puts you under pressure and he can punish a weak return like anyone else, so you got that to consider as you try to make a quality shot from a bad position - not a winning formula.

While I was in Korea 4 yrs I kept hearing how Rich would have super slick Mark V rubbers and when I came back from Korea, I played vs him the first week in a tourney. His topsheets are continuous the same consistency both sides. His "old" rubber might make it easier for him to make certain shots, but it isn't like his rubber is doing different things to the same balls.

Rich has an innate ability to control HAND PRESSURE at impact and that is an invisible force you do not see at impact. If you are really good you can tell by sound and flight characteristics, otherwise, you gotta see it bounce and often that is too late to determine the pace and spin to react.

I wouldn't go that far as 2+ levels - I play dead ball players more often than I play topspin players so Rich's game is not as alien to me as heavy topspin is. It's just that in the general scheme of things, heavy topspin is a bigger issue for me that Rich's game is. So I won't focus on it until I see it as something to worry about. In fact, my dead ball game gives Rich more fits than my topspin game. If you watch the match in question, you can see it, but I came into the match with a topspin mindset and I ended up taking too much time to adjust. I've finally embraced the fact that whenever I play Rich, it's not going to be a topspin game. It's going to be pushes, hits, blocks, smashes and smash topspins even when off the table.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

We play a very technical sport that attracts many smart and intelligent people. Unfortunately, intelligent people can be asinine as well when they choose to be.

Hahaha. I love it.

This Discussion is entertaining but will it help anyone? I doubt it.

By the way, when Timo Boll came to SPiN NYC to do a promotional thing, my friend Edmund Suen made a funny comment. He said: "Let's have Timo play, JP Kadzinski, Rich Dewitt and Tahl Leibovitz and show him what NYC PING PONG is all about.


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[Jay Turberville]

Hey - we got Dimitri Ovtcharov to play clipboard TT for a bit at the 2013 LA Open. ;^)

 

[Der_Echte]

OK, I can accept that Next Level can play Rich tougher than the average player at Next Level's playing level. There are some 2100 level players in Boston who will tear through some other 2000-2200 brain dead loopers, but I give them a real tough time. (and have problems with some of the ones they tear through) TT can work like that and NL is correct.

NL in his posts certainly DOES say his local area is a have for all manner of alternate surface players, so it makes sense he gets a heavy dose of "Slow it down" and "Dead".

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

I teach yoga and there is an awful lot of stuff that is really off base that people say and think in yoga that is just ridiculous. Maybe I will get into some of that later. But for now, this is about functional language. And not getting too hung up on being technically accurate.

This was a long time ago. I was helping teach part of a teacher training program and the woman I was co-teaching with was slated as the "anatomy" teacher for the training. Towards the end of the session, one of the trainees was teaching a segment and the trainee said something like: "okay everyone, come down and lie on your stomach."

The menopausal anatomy chick blew a gasket and freaked out on the trainee: "They are not lying on their stomach. The stomach is an internal organ that is inside your body and mostly on the left side of the abdominal cavity. And when it is empty it is pretty small. If you want to be accurate, you should say 'come lie on the anterior aspect of your thoracic and abdominal cavities!!'"

Now I didn't say anything but I was thinking, if that was supposed to be an anatomy lesson it was sort of off base because people don't learn well by being screamed at and generally don't like it when they are scolded which decreases retention of information. But she didn't mean it as an anatomy lesson. This old bat really wanted the people in the course to actually say to normal human beings not currently studying anatomy to come to lie on the anterior aspect of their thoracic and abdominal cavities.

So, being the person I am, to prove to myself that this really made no sense and was absolutely not effective language for leading a group, for the next few months I did an experiment.

I figured out every possible way of saying "lie facing down" that I could come up with. "Lie on your abdomen,"
"lie facing down," I came up with a few funny ones which I can't remember because this is at least 12 years ago and I have obviously lost my sense of humor since then. One day I will find it again.

Anyway, from those tests, I can say with confidence that nothing works to get a room full of people to lie facing down as well as saying "Lie on your stomach!" NOTHING. Let me say that again: NOTHING.

If I said "Lie facing down, a few would get it instantly but most people would get confused for a moment or two which is actually too long when you are trying to keep people moving.

By the way, "lower down," was 2nd best, provided people were in a plank position ready to lower to the ground. But lie on your stomach still worked better.

Nobody ever knew what the heck I was saying when I said "come to lie on the anterior aspect of your thoracic and abdominal cavities." Even people who knew anatomy pretty well were thrown but the oddness of that direction. Even if they were in a plank ready to just lower into the position.

Is it technically accurate? Sure is. Is it effective at getting people to understand what you want them to do? Not even close.

Now we can talk about dingbats saying that when you breath into the lowest part of your abdomen the air goes to the lowest part of your lungs where there is more blood! False. First off, your lungs are not in your abdomen and if your abdomen changed shape when you inhale, it doesn't change the fact that your lungs are inside your ribcage and pretty high up in there. The second thing is, regardless of how your body changes shape when you inhale, the air that goes in fills your lungs 3 dimensionally and goes to all parts of your lungs.

Just like you can't blow air into a balloon and decide to have more air go to one side of the balloon than the other. The air goes in and fills the balloon 3 dimensionally.

So when someone says, breath into your belly, they don't actually mean your lungs are in your abdominal cavity. And explaining how, as the lungs fill with air, if you don't let the ribcage expand, the diaphragm will push down on the abdominal cavity and cause it to bulge out. When you inhale and your abdomen bulges, the thoracic cavity changes volume (the volume increases) and the abdominal cavity changes shape but does not change volume.

The normal way to change to volume of the abdominal cavity is to eat, drink or go to the bathroom.

But is it worth explaining this stuff to someone who just wants to use their breath to make themselves more relaxed?

I would say NO!


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[NextLevel]

Great stuff, UpSideDownCarl. The slavish attitude to the idea that communication is more than an attempt to convey an idea and that words have objective meanings that are scientific is ludicrous. Words and sentences are largely what we agree that they mean. And it is more important to understand what the other person is trying to say than to impute one's own meaning on what the other person is trying to say.

Personally, I have always felt that some very smart people can be borderline Asperger. I think we have a candidate here, but I am not a professional psychologist so I cannot pretend to diagnose.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Yep. That's right NextLevel. And no matter how you slice it, words are metaphors. They are symbols that refer to something else. They are not the actual thing they refer to. So that, even though one may know that the term "dog" refers to an animal, whether a specific one or the species, the word (dog) is not actually the animal or the species of animals. It is a symbol that the refers to something. A metaphor that helps us understand something.

And the way language works is that it develops and changes over time. Words take on different meaning as language develops AND AS PEOPLE USE THE SAME WORDS TO MEAN DIFFERENT THINGS.

Can you imagine if the English language was still spoken the way it was in Elizabethan times. Or in Chaucer's days. This development of language is based on people understanding and using words to mean things. If you look up the etymology of a word it is interesting how the meaning changes over time until we get to the common usage of that word in our era. So the meaning that a word like control takes on when used in the context of a person talking about the qualities of a rubber is different than what Pnatchway means when he is saying "rubbers don't have control".

Look at all those metaphors. Control is a complex concept and the meaning of the word when referring to a rubber is completely different than the original meaning. But we all instantly understand, without having to think about it, that in this context, "control" means, "easily controled". This is a beautiful example of how language changes and develops over time.

Lets look: host, hospital, hospitable, hostage and hostile; interesting that, etymologically speaking, they all come from the same source!

 

[Tinykin]

If you think that sports people use words beyond their true meaning, try religion. That's a whole new ballgame

 

[Jay Turberville]

And why is that the best direction? Well because the yoga instructor was using the word "stomach" correctly, sensibly and in the right context. Anatomy gal was having a problem with context and was simply wrong in her correction.


From the Merriam Webster online dictionary:
c : the part of the body that contains the stomach : belly, abdomen

BTW, my bet is that asking people to lay down on their belly would have been about as effective as "stomach."

 

[Jay Turberville]

Personally, I have always felt that some very smart people can be borderline Asperger. I think we have a candidate here, but I am not a professional psychologist so I cannot pretend to diagnose.

I know I have inclinitations in that direction that I have to work on to keep in check to this day. It may not have anything to do with being "smart" so much as the way a person organizes their thoughts. Who knows? But it was called to my attention years ago as a kid when my cousin, Theresa, laughingly called me "professor poop" when I was explaining something to her. I took note and began making adjustments. ;^)

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

If you think that sports people use words beyond their true meaning, try religion. That's a whole new ballgame

Part of the meaning of what I wrote is that words have the meaning that people collectively understand them to mean. If there is enough momentum behind the way the word control is being used when it is used to describe a rubber, the word begins to contain that meaning as one of its various meanings which all depend on context.

In writing, when someone uses to to mean two or too, we figure it out almost instantly. In spoken word we don't need the spelling to sort out which meaning of the sound "to" is being used. It happens instantaneously without us knowing our brain processed the meaning.

As language changes and develops and words accumulate new meanings, the process doesn't generally slow down and wait for the people who are saying, "stop! don't say that! it is incorrect usage of that word!" You can dislike it. But when enough people use a word in a specific manner, the word begins to actually be accepted as having that meaning.

But I still like that song from the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. Oh, wait, your telling me that song is about different pronunciations not different usages....."Let's Call The Whole Thing Off!"



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[cakezxc280]

What the heck is going on here.....?

Oh and TS, the things you stated might be useful if we're robots playing table tennis in a game with a physics engine that can be exploited through perfect executions of micro mechanics based off perfect knowledge of the game, but that simply isnt the case is it?

So what if from a theoretical stance LPs dont generate wobble force on it's own? The fact of the matter is the balls that comes off LPs usually do have a wobbling effect and chances are youre more likely going to be forced into a mistake because of that even if you know that "it doesnt generate a wobble force". So why bother with them at all?

Are you gonna create an article on the correlation between knowledge of physics and a player's table tennis proficiency level next? If you arent gonna do that, I simply dont see a point in busting these myths using physics.

 

[izra]

can someone, ANYONE please post a video of a table tennis ball wobbling mid game? surely there must be something out there from the time akerstrom played with frictionless or maybe a video of chopblocker?

 

[Killerspintt]

can someone, ANYONE please post a video of a table tennis ball wobbling mid game? surely there must be something out there from the time akerstrom played with frictionless or maybe a video of chopblocker?

From 4:35 in the following video :

This is what tt players are calling "wobbling", once again it's not strictly wobbling of course (the OP is right here), but it's just how we tt players are calling this type of LP's balls.

 

[NextLevel]

Are you gonna create an article on the correlation between knowledge of physics and a player's table tennis proficiency level next? If you arent gonna do that, I simply dont see a point in busting these myths using physics.

I think this should be used to respond to everyone who continually posts on the misconceptions of table tennis players - how will understanding these misconceptions improve how I play? If they do, then please share. If not, stop wasting our time with interesting nonsense other than presenting it as trivia.

 

[cakezxc280]

can someone, ANYONE please post a video of a table tennis ball wobbling mid game? surely there must be something out there from the time akerstrom played with frictionless or maybe a video of chopblocker?

The thing is, there isnt enough words in the english language to perfectly describe the ball movement we call "wobbling"
Its basically the result of using a LP surfaced rubber to "push" (again, i cant think of an appropriate word here) a ball over to the other side, generating an arc that is not what you usually get from a normal inverted rubber, which is much slower and sometimes you get the feeling that its shaking in midair (therefore, wobbly). Kinda like the trajectory of the ball when you accidentally hit it with your fingers mid-stroke.
Personally, I find chinese much more effective when it comes to TT terminology. But that might just be me.

 

[Pnachtwey]

I missed that, my evidence is experimentation of course, COR is an experimental value, not something you can "caluculate", just like the young module or friction coeficient, there is correlation between wood density and it's COR.

[/quote]
I agree that COR is determined experimentally. So? I agree that the wood density has a lot to do with COR. That is why I use a cutting board to mount rubbers on before I test them. The cutting board absorbs little if any energy but the mass is MUCH greater than that of the paddle..

I used to have up to 10 YEO, I made a static measure for various impact speeds ( ball thown at 1m, then 2m, you can evalute the impact speed with 1/2gt² to find t and then calculate gt to have the approximative speed ), the denser the wood (since all blades had same composition, same tickness and shape), the higher the COR.

So how did you do your tests? I don't see what 1/2gt^2 has to do with anything unless your were dropping the balls on the paddles.

But I know, 10 is not enough and is not a statistical valulable sample, but its better than nothing.

It is good enough if the rest of your testing methods are valid.

To be done correctly (the evidence you are asking for), yeah it requires far more sample, enough to approximate COR as a random variable :

- take about 1000 of YEO of given weight (for example 84-85gr), do expérimentations, then we have to use the law of large numbers and normal distribution to evaluate the standard deviation of the COR and the average COR, we call the average COR, CORa.

OK, now you are saying that there is a lot of variance between different YEOs. So does that explain why different people have different opinions?

- Then we have to do it again for an other given weight, for example we take again 1000 YEO of 92-93gr), redo the experimentations, evaluate the average COR and standard deviation again, we call the average COR, CORb.

- and only then, and if there is more than 3% differences between average CORa and CORb, we can consider that wood density as impact on the COR, and only for only one given blade : the YEO.

Do you understand why asking for "evidence" here makes no sense ? Because here is the path to provide the evidence, and I won't do that for anyone and certainly not for someone assuming the COR remains unchaged with wood density.

The difference is that you are equating density with mass and they are not the same although I agree that if all YEOs are the same shape then those with higher density will have higher mass. Mass is taken into account in the speed after impact formula. Therefore it takes into account the density.

But, anyways, assuming that the COR is unchanged while the wood density changes, your entire point............makes no sense at all, and if you have made some scientifics studies, you should know it. But if COR remains unchanged, man, you deserve Nobel of physics.

If the density changes the mass changes. That is taken into account by the speed after impact formula.

 

[Der_Echte]

After that mini-rant, I would have immediately went into a coughing spasm and quickly/slyly uttered "Buffalo Butt" or "Azzhole" in between coughs.

After the initial shock wore off and order waz restored, I would have pulled out a chance dead mouse found on the stairs and dropped it behind the one with the mouth of an azz, and asked her to sit down and demonstrate a certain stretch that would spread her legs, like say a straddle hamstring seated stretch. She would of course immediate sit down a certain way I anticipated to result in the mouse sitting inches from one of her other important female organs. She of course would not notice it right away and that would be the perfect time to intercede and coyly exclaim, "Excuse me, you seem to have a mouse trying to sniff your V***XX!" That ought to get the job done. If not... well, then

If the obnoxious sociopath who waz acting like she were on a long continued regimen of the wrong transgender hormones didn't get it that it waz wrong to act like that, then there would of course be many other chances to train her in the error of her ways.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Yep. I would say, OCD on estrogen therapy is dangerous thing for everyone including the OCD on estrogen therapy. If you add Aspergers into the equation things will start to get kaaaarazy! [emoji2]

I think we need another jumping off the bridge contest to restore some form of order.


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