Video Footage Safe Thread

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Hi Gozo, imo this guy is the perfect opponent for you to get better quickly. Defensive players aren't going to make a lot of mistakes. You will have to develop your shot selection, consistency and tactics to beat him. When you play against junk rubbers you also have to think more about the opponent, why does he use LP and what does it buy him, and also cost. LP are generically good at returning serves, pathetically bad at attacking, and demand a very stable playing position. They win mostly by getting errors from you. Respond accordingly.This guy is playing blocks at the table, not a chopper. Does he return serve with his backhand over almost the entire table? If so then forget serving sidespin. It will bother you way more than him. He wants to inject more spin into the point early, to mess you up with the LP reversal. You can serve backspin and no-spin, that's great if you have a heavy enough backspin to make him net one. If not then various speeds and locations of dead serve are your best option.He is not going to be able to block well on his backhand if he has to move for the ball. LPs are not magic. Try playing with them sometime, it's freaking hard to put a ball on the table. And he can't attack much with pips, only if you give him a shortish, highish ball he can push hard. So you are in a fight for table position. If you can stay close and move him off his backhand spot you will win, if he forces you away from the table he will. It's much easier to drop the ball short with 0X LP than with inverted, so he will jerk you in-and-out like a puppet if you let him.Your compensating advantage ought to be that he is giving you control early in the point. What you do with it is the challenge. In this one game your shot selection improved over the course of it. At first you tried to attack the balls you should play safe, spinny, awkward ones, and played soft vs balls you could attack. Think about how confident you are on each ball - do you know the spin? is your body in good position? If you aren't sure, play a deep, safe ball to his pips and start over from there. When you do feel confident about a ball, play a more attacking shot, trying to MOVE him. LP blockers don't want to move far, it's just very bad with their equipment.None of this is easy. But ALL of it translates 100% into matches with regular double-inverted players. Reading spin, shot selection, table position are important in every table tennis match. It's just against a weird junk rubber game that you really have to think about them because you are unfamiliar, and going on auto-pilot will get you killed. The "I hate pips!" crowd who avoid LP guys as much as they can will never get these benefits.PS.Here is a post about spin to supplement Gregg Letts' stuff. http://masatenisi.org/english/spin.htmServing what Hodges calls right corkscrewspin can be very effective against one specific play. Many LP guys receive short backspin serves to their middle or bh course by touching the right side of the ball (their right side) and dropping it very short to your fh. If the ball is straight backspin they are touching the side of the ball and avoiding the axis of spin (like NL always talks about for looping vs backspin). But if the serve is right corkscrewspin the axis of spin is perpendicular to the table and that receive goes directly into it. And the ball goes directly down into their side of the table until they figure it out. This is fun.

Hello Brs and other responders to my previous video,

Yesterday I had the opportunity to play with the same long pip player again. I tried to incorporate the various advises given here to make my game better and they included:

1. Serve dead ball to various placement. 50-50 chance success rate. He will block with his pips side on both wing. He is no pushover and is able to adjust accordingly. I mean, those dead ball are not his Waterloo so to speak.

2. Be more aware of the incoming spin. I still get very confused with the incoming spin because I am thinking too much and many a times, my brain froze as it could not process the incoming spin fast enough. However, there were a few successful instances where I read the spin correctly and apply a suitable shot selection and won the point.

3. He twiddles his bat and will LP bump / punch if the ball is near table and chopping if the ball is far table.

He has a versatile game play and not the passive defensive type. He will also attack with his inverted side if given a chance. Did I mention he twiddles? Yes he twiddles and that makes the game even more confusing for me.

All in all, we played ten sets and alas I managed to win one set off him.p/s somehow I am his punching bag of choice, as not many players in the club want to play with him. Many recreational player will avoid these pips player. Too much hassle and too much work. Many are just recreational players and they just want to sweat it out. Not many are masochist like me.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Hello Brs and other responders to my previous video,

1. Serve dead ball to various placement. 50-50 chance success rate. He will block with his pips side on both wing. He is no pushover and is able to adjust accordingly. I mean, those dead ball are not his Waterloo so to speak.

The serve is not to make him miss. If it is a dead ball serve, and he uses the pips, YOU KNOW THE BALL CANNOT HAVE MUCH SPIN ON IT. So you use his return to attack on a ball you know does not have much spin of any kind.

Serving in general is about setting yourself up. That statement above shows that you need to learn that. If you are trying to win points on your serve, you are not using good strategy. And against LP, the LP makes it so the player can return serves easily. It is unlikely you will be successful with that idea for long.

All in all, we played ten sets and alas I managed to win one set off him.p/s somehow I am his punching bag of choice, as not many players in the club want to play with him. Many recreational player will avoid these pips player. Too much hassle and too much work. Many are just recreational players and they just want to sweat it out. Not many are masochist like me.

You should feel lucky that he is willing to play game after game with you. This is how you will learn and actually improve faster. And when a LP player twiddles, you just have to keep watching his racket and the ball. Most decent LP players will twiddle. This is part of what you need to learn to play them. And I guarantee, if you play vs LP players a lot, it will help improve most of your particular weaknesses in table tennis.

 

[NextLevel]

To follow up on Carl's comment - the true weapon of long pips is not really spin inversion, it is that any hit returns a largely dead ball if the pips are on no sponge. Sponge changes things a little but the key is to be able to get a feel for Joe much grip the pips have not seeing the effect of your stroke and adjusting to what you see the pips player doing.

So the biggest thing that makes you a good player against pups is the ability to loop the dead ball confidently. Sometimes even push it. Because most people do not know how to take an incoming deadball and spin it. Topspin sure, backspin cool but no spin they treat it like topspin and it goes into the net. They treat it like backspin and it goes off the table. Learning to catch or brush a no spin ball takes practice but it improves your topspin quality immeasurably and truly makes spin a weapon for you.

In fact my first coach felt that the best way for a beginner to develop a heavy loop was to practice against pips (short or long it didn't matter). The major result was that his students didn't loop on autopilot so when we saw pips players, we could actually adjust to them in ways that 2200 players who never practiced against pips could not. Because if you are not forced to adapt in TT, you play one speed all the time. But you can really do well if you learn to read and play the pips ball with technical adjustments so you dont give up easy wins to those players. Don't get me wrong, I lost to pips players but they were usually at or above my level. It was never about the pips.

 

[Wrighty67]

To follow up on Carl's comment - the true weapon of long pips is not really spin inversion, it is that any hit returns a largely dead ball if the pips are on no sponge. Sponge changes things a little but the key is to be able to get a feel for Joe much grip the pips have not seeing the effect of your stroke and adjusting to what you see the pips player doing.

So the biggest thing that makes you a good player against pups is the ability to loop the dead ball confidently. Sometimes even push it. Because most people do not know how to take an incoming deadball and spin it. Topspin sure, backspin cool but no spin they treat it like topspin and it goes into the net. They treat it like backspin and it goes off the table. Learning to catch or brush a no spin ball takes practice but it improves your topspin quality immeasurably and truly makes spin a weapon for you.

In fact my first coach felt that the best way for a beginner to develop a heavy loop was to practice against pips (short or long it didn't matter). The major result was that his students didn't loop on autopilot so when we saw pips players, we could actually adjust to them in ways that 2200 players who never practiced against pips could not. Because if you are not forced to adapt in TT, you play one speed all the time. But you can really do well if you learn to read and play the pips ball with technical adjustments so you dont give up easy wins to those players. Don't get me wrong, I lost to pips players but they were usually at or above my level. It was never about the pips.

Can you please expand a little on what a topspin vs float/dead ball looks like - instinct tells me it’s a more closed bat angle and less lift? It’s something I really struggle with.

I’m also keen to explore continual looping vs pips (vs 1 x loop/1 x push) I see many higher level players do this really well vs pips/chop but it is really challenging from the loopers perspective - any tips or thoughts?

 

[NextLevel]

Can you please expand a little on what a topspin vs float/dead ball looks like - instinct tells me it’s a more closed bat angle and less lift? It’s something I really struggle with.

I’m also keen to explore continual looping vs pips (vs 1 x loop/1 x push) I see many higher level players do this really well vs pips/chop but it is really challenging from the loopers perspective - any tips or thoughts?

There are many alternatives, it really depends on getting good grip/friction on the ball so you catch it, and then there are alternatives as long as you know how to generate toout own spin with your racket head speed and choice of contact point. A bit easier to do with tacky rubbers but that is not a big deal either. The most important thing is to practice against such players, anything I tell you is pretty useless vs hitting with those players for 30 minutes to 1 hours a practice session which I got to do in Philly. Just serve a relatively flat ball, let them return it and your first loop is always against a flat ball. The second loop may be a lot of things depending on their equipment and your spin but the first loop of a return of a dead serve with pips is always against a relatively dead ball.

 

[NextLevel]

As for the ease of thr one loop, one push or even two loops and one push or three loops and one push dynamic that tou see with pushblockers/choppers and advanced loopers, it is really a matter of practice and your ability to regulate and control your own spin.

The first idea is usually yo try to get the pips player to block off the end. But it isn't the only one, if you know your own spin and the pips player isn't teeing off on your ball, you can play at a tempo you find comfortable, just loop one ball with light spin, and of the ball is kept low by the push blocker, push the next one back.

My principle is always to build up sufficient defense that you dont fear your opponent's attack like the plague. Then you can then choose when to attack. It is when you play like your opponent is Timo Boll all the time that mistakes occur. Because opponents who are not Timo Boll make mistakes when attacking too, you have to give them a chance to make mistakes by not giving them easy balls to attack.

 

[Brs]

I’m also keen to explore continual looping vs pips (vs 1 x loop/1 x push) I see many higher level players do this really well vs pips/chop but it is really challenging from the loopers perspective - any tips or thoughts?

Very good players can do this because they move to perfect position to play all forehands vs the chops. There is plenty of time as a chop floats in from far back. Whenever they are not in great position for a fh they push, maybe three pushes in a row. It's not based on a pattern, it's situational like everything else.

At least that's how it is in the women's game, I don't know from the men's game. Like I've seen Schlager backhand loopkill a series of chops, but I don't think that means much for us normal humans.

 

[NextLevel]

Very good players can do this because they move to perfect position to play all forehands vs the chops. There is plenty of time as a chop floats in from far back. Whenever they are not in great position for a fh they push, maybe three pushes in a row. It's not based on a pattern, it's situational like everything else.

At least that's how it is in the women's game, I don't know from the men's game. Like I've seen Schlager backhand loopkill a series of chops, but I don't think that means much for us normal humans.

Well I remember one NA Teams many years back , maybe 2013-2014, where I played a team that had a high level coach and two of his junior students. I was the strongest player on my team at the time. I had a teammate who had a really powerful forehand stroke. Decent defense but crappy strategy. The high level coach went undefeated in our crappy group and came out 2200 but I wouldn't be surprised if he was really 2500.

When I played the junior chopper girl, I established pretty quickly that she has no attack worth my losing my mind and I decided that I would push and attack on my own terms and block her down if necessary. Won 3‐0 hardly breaking a sweat

My teammate (and I cant remember why I couldn't watch the match), got into loop vs chop rallies with the girl and lost 2‐3.

I agree with you that top players loop and reloop because of advanced skills, but there is also a tacit agreement that the chopper is not a better attacker than the attacker (not always true) and that if the attacker pushes too much, the chopper has an attack worth fearing. This is the unstated part of what happens in those matches.

Unfortunately, many amateurs watch those matches and don't realize how these assumptions drive what they are watching and think looping and relooping is some automatic default way to play chop. This is what I was trying to explain in a somewhat confusing way. Many choppers are crappy at attacking don't give them free points by attacking on their terms if you can push reasonably well and block them down if they do attack. If they prove their attacks put you under pressure, then I think it makes sense to start attacking consistently. But there are other ways to play choppers, not just what what the top level games where the choppers have great forehands show.

 

[NextLevel]

Oh, short pips and inverted chop is a really different animal. Completely different animal.

 

[Brs]

Hi Gozo, I am sorry all the advices didn't allow you to win more than one game. That's not really how it works, alas. I still think you are very lucky (and also very, very smart) to be the one who will play with this clearly quite strong partner. My suggestion to calm your mental anguish is to think of him as a training partner and not an opponent. So don't measure your happiness by games won. Doing that is looking for the effect and skipping over the cause. Try to play better in small ways each time. Play one more ball on the table. Don't get bamboozled by a pips ball that boozled you the time before. Learn to follow his twiddling and just react without needing to think. Know which of his balls you can do something good with, and which to carefully touch and pray. These small things are the cause of winning games. Take care of them and the effect will come.

I don't care much for the term punching bag. I had a friend who sounds like your guy. His name was Tony, Tony the Rasta I called him. When I was ~ 1500 he would hit with me for hours, switch bats from long short, short-short, inverted long, and block, chop, whatever. Because nobody his level (1900+) wanted to hit with him. He didn't have a "normal" game or "play right." Think for a moment about how that must feel. You are a very solid and experienced player, thousands of hours invested learning this sport, and people who aren't even close to your level won't hit with you because your equipment is too complicated for them? WTF?

Imo "opportunity to play with the same long pip player again" is a more true and useful way of viewing the situation. If it were me, I would tell him how much fun it is to train against his unusual style, and ask if he would like to get together for extra training. From your description of the club he doesn't hear that too often. Then both of you would win.

 

[Brs]

I agree with you that top players loop and reloop because of advanced skills, but there is also a tacit agreement that the chopper is not a better attacker than the attacker (not always true) and that if the attacker pushes too much, the chopper has an attack worth fearing. This is the unstated part of what happens in those matches.

Unfortunately, many amateurs watch those matches and don't realize how these assumptions drive what they are watching and think looping and relooping is some automatic default way to play chop. This is what I was trying to explain in a somewhat confusing way. Many choppers are crappy at attacking don't give them free points by attacking on their terms if you can push reasonably well and block them down if they do attack. If they prove their attacks put you under pressure, then I think it makes sense to start attacking consistently. But there are other ways to play choppers, not just what what the top level games where the choppers have great forehands show.

I agree with you 100%. I was simply responding to wrighty's stated desire to start re-looping against choppers, that there is a pre-requisite there to be in great position for every loop, even if you are WR pros.

Loops are what choppers crave, so when you decide to go strength v strength you better feel pretty damn strong.

 

[NextLevel]

An ancient video for Dominik that hopefully shows why I think he is doing too much in his practice.

https://youtu.be/Q5ZwTYRBXM8

 

[Dominikk85]

First time hitting after like 10 days of Christmas break.

Hit against loop and focused on hitting the ball more at the tip of the triangle and also more towards the end of the swing. Felt ball quality and speed was quite a bit better

https://youtube.com/shorts/5y1vQK2Aq3E?feature=share

​​​​​
Felt that round was even better but it was getting dark and my battery led lighting is a bit limited

https://youtube.com/shorts/rwEPuWgjdew?feature=share
Also a round against backspin, focus on getting lower, also not following through so high and sitting down more instead of bending to the side. Didn't go as low as it felt though

https://youtube.com/shorts/W7QdHgaR6e8?feature=share

 

[Lula]

First time hitting after like 10 days of Christmas break.

Hit against loop and focused on hitting the ball more at the tip of the triangle and also more towards the end of the swing. Felt ball quality and speed was quite a bit better

https://youtube.com/shorts/5y1vQK2Aq3E?feature=share

​​​​​
Felt that round was even better but it was getting dark and my battery led lighting is a bit limited

https://youtube.com/shorts/rwEPuWgjdew?feature=share
Also a round against backspin, focus on getting lower, also not following through so high and sitting down more instead of bending to the side. Didn't go as low as it felt though

https://youtube.com/shorts/W7QdHgaR6e8?feature=share

Just watched two videos. Could not open one video.

Great motivation to play outside! impressive.

When watching the one and one exercise i would say you are standing a bit to close the table. This forces you to play backhand more upwards.
When watching the video with opening against backspin i think you need to start the opening backhand loop much earlier, so you stop the motion when you hit the ball. Now you almost starts when the ball sits on the racket, which is basically like trying to block a backspin.

Good luck!

 

[OldUser]

UP this thread, too much spams

 

[Dominikk85]

Just watched two videos. Could not open one video.

Great motivation to play outside! impressive.

When watching the one and one exercise i would say you are standing a bit to close the table. This forces you to play backhand more upwards.
When watching the video with opening against backspin i think you need to start the opening backhand loop much earlier, so you stop the motion when you hit the ball. Now you almost starts when the ball sits on the racket, which is basically like trying to block a backspin.

Good luck!

Thanks. So should I generally stand farther away from table against topspin than against backspin? How far back should I stand?

 

[VictorMoraga]

Thanks. So should I generally stand farther away from table against topspin than against backspin? How far back should I stand?

I normally stand one arm from the table, but....
The ball from your video, hit the table in the middle of your side. But if the ball goes near to the bottom line you will be in trouble if you stand too close.
You can touch the ball in any position you want, but is recommended "Top of the Bounce" so your distance from the table will change depending of the Bounce on your side.
Sometimes, I like to let the ball fall a little bit to make a heavy topspin or sidespin.
But my Coach will tell me "Top of the Bounce Victor 😄"

 

[NextLevel]

First time hitting after like 10 days of Christmas break.

Hit against loop and focused on hitting the ball more at the tip of the triangle and also more towards the end of the swing. Felt ball quality and speed was quite a bit better

https://youtube.com/shorts/5y1vQK2Aq3E?feature=share

​​​​​
Felt that round was even better but it was getting dark and my battery led lighting is a bit limited

https://youtube.com/shorts/rwEPuWgjdew?feature=share
Also a round against backspin, focus on getting lower, also not following through so high and sitting down more instead of bending to the side. Didn't go as low as it felt though

https://youtube.com/shorts/W7QdHgaR6e8?feature=share

Everything is good, everything can be better. The hitting stroke still finishes too high and you are still trying a but too hard to play the ball over the net rather than just hit it flat. Part of it is not staying now but part of it I suspect is tied to how you think about the stroke vs how most players use it.

You have received feedback on the other strokes - those things for me are harder to judge without a human opponent and I am not sure you are entirely at the stage to be doing even the backspin stroke but if you enjoy it keep doing it. You are doing it relatively well.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Greetings fellow Pongiste / Pongers!

I wish you a very Happy New Year.

It has been a year since I took proper coaching lesson and I will take this opportunity to showcase side by side my stroke one year ago versus now.

This is my FH when I started my Ping-Pong lesson.

And the second video is my latest FH topspin.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

This is a video of my BH when I first started my coaching lesson ( one year ago ):

And below is my latest BH.