Video Footage Safe Thread

[NDH]

I will post the full video of my Men's Doubles Semi-Final as well as Final and you can judge for yourself. Editing for brevity takes some time.

p/s: Somehow I have always have better result in Doubles. I don't know why...

From the very little I saw, your style is suited to doubles.

You seem to block very well, and you can keep the ball on the table.

If you are paired with a player who is comfortable opening up and has good attacking shots (and your partner certainly looked like that), I can imagine it's a good pairing!

 

[Gozo Aruna]

From the very little I saw, your style is suited to doubles.

You seem to block very well, and you can keep the ball on the table.

If you are paired with a player who is comfortable opening up and has good attacking shots (and your partner certainly looked like that), I can imagine it's a good pairing!

How's this? This is my match point in the Semi-Finals. Of course, being cheered on by hundreds of collegiate girls is a big big morale boost!

 

[Gozo Aruna]

MD Semi-Finals: I won 3 vs 2. This was a tough match and both side played a very tight and tactical game. The score was tight; very tight indeed. It was tied at 2-2 and the fifth set at 5:5, one side start to buckle under the pressure and started making unforced errors. The other steadier side then took the opportunity to widen the lead and finally won the match at 11:6. I am glad it was not my partner nor me who caved in to the mental pressure.

Video 1 of 5:

Video 2 of 5:

Video 3 of 5:

Video 4 of 5:

Video 5 of 5:

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

View attachment 24566

How's this? This is my match point in the Semi-Finals. Of course, being cheered on by hundreds of collegiate girls is a big big morale boost!

Your partner set you up well with a nice high ball. You have a good doubles partner.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Men's Double Final. In this match, it was not as tough as the semi because my opponent has a weaker partner and my partner and I knew it and we exploited it to the max. The opponent is too reliant on the alpha. We won 3-1 in this final match and got the gold medal.

Video 1 of 4:

Video 2 of 4:

Video 3 of 4:

Video 4 of 4:

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Next Level & Der,

I agree with your analysis that my FH needs to slow down a little and add more spin rather than speed for future development. I am in agreement that if I continue to only rely on my current smash / drives on FH side, I will stagnate quicker compared with if I learn how to spin more.

NDH,
You have now seen my doubles' video ( semi & finals ), what is your comment? What makes me a better doubles' player compared to singles? Are you able to pigeon hole it?

For your reference, below is my MS match which I lost. How is it compared to my MD?

 

[NextLevel]

Next Level & Der,

I agree with your analysis that my FH needs to slow down a little and add more spin rather than speed for future development. I am in agreement that if I continue to only rely on my current smash / drives on FH side, I will stagnate quicker compared with if I learn how to spin more.

First of all, congrats on winning the title. Winning always feels good and the thrill of performing under pressure should never be underestimated.

For your forehand (and your backhand): try to follow the shape of the ball every time you try to hit it if you want to be consistent - smacking it gets more speed, but requires precise timing, while following the shape of the ball gives you time to hold as you are turning the ball so it doesn't bounce of your racket with a flat trajectory. It is the only way to get good really fast using modern inverted rubbers. You have to read the spin, figure out how to shape the ball in response, and then execute. Following the shape of the ball with a full topspin stroke is ideal, but regardless, as long as you do it and you don't injure yourself, things will generally be fine and get better.

Even your smashes will get better if you use this idea as they will not be as flat and that will improve consistency. If you want to, there is no reason why you can't continue to smash the topspin balls and then focus on softly (but with fast wrist and body action) turning the low balls - though for me, when I started spinning more consistently on the forehand, I just realized it was safer and easier for me mentally to adopt that approach to everything except in specific situations.

I would have also advised a slower racket, but that is not the point here, if you can soften your grip a little and work on trapping the ball using the concept of a soccer player, you might not need a slower racket, you might be able to get good enough with what you are already used to - you make good blocks so you aren't entirely wild with it.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

1. Lim Gaoyan, Dimitri Ovtcharov and Gozo. They all have something in common. What is that? They all have experience CHOKING MOMENT!

2.LGY famously was up 3-0 againts T. Harimoto but lost 3-4 instead ( WTT Budapest 2022 ). Dima choked with a 2-0 lead againt S. Togami in WTT Singapore Smash 2023 and Gozo had a 2-0 lead but lost 2-3 yesterday in a inter-club match. I have now personally feel the super suckish feeling of being choked. It feels bad and I hate this feeling. Make it go away. Maybe if I buy sheet of Dignics 64 I would be happy again. ( Just kidding ).

3. Below video is the first set and I had an easy win. I won the second set again and I was feeling pretty confident. I lost the third set and I was like, OK, maybe he got lucky. I can take him again in the fourth for a 3-1 victory. But no.......
Lady luck was not smiling upon me. I lost the forth and then the fifth with an even worse score line.

YES! I experienced CHOKING.

Set 1:

Set 2 to 5

4. Can you nice people here who are allowed to comment please tell me what did I do in Set 3, 4 & 5 that is different from Set 1 & 2 that caused me to CHOKE?

A little help please.

p/s I hindsight, I remembered I was trying to listen to Next / Der's advice to impart more spin in my game. I tried and failed. My FH loop against underspin mainly either go over the table or does not clear the net. I am not blaming you guys, it is just I was trying to do something that is not in my usual play-book.

 

[cytivrat]

From my unprofessional (and potentially wrong) point of view:
First two sets you won because:
1. You had a nice serves which your opponents had great troubles receiving. Especially fast to his backhand side. And you were varying serves type, speed, placement nicely so he couldn't adjust to them.
2. A lot of attacks of your opponent were provoked by quite high underspin balls which he tried to attack at a first chance and that he mostly missed them, probably he wasn't ready for them or there was a good amount of underspin, or spin was different, not sure.
3. On a contrary you didn't attack that much, waiting for a good balls and not losing that much of them because of that

And then most changes came from your opponent:
1. He stopped attacking every high (or not so high) ball, returning more pushes to you and waiting for a better chance. That was a game changer (on my opinion)
2. That forced you to either attack which were not consistent enough or to push on a not very comfortable balls often resulting in quite a high ball or even over the table. And he was ready for them (maybe your second or third push is more predictable in terms of spin)
3. You changed your serves pattern. Looks like you reduced speed on your fast server to his backhand and he had much less troubles returnig it (or he simply adjusted to it) also you reduced percentage of those fast serves and served backhand to backhand serves regularly which he had no troubles returning at all. And it seems to me that you removed your fast serves to his forehand which worked quite good at the start. And on a contrary you had more mistakes on his serves which seems unforced for me.

 

[NDH]

1. Lim Gaoyan, Dimitri Ovtcharov and Gozo. They all have something in common. What is that? They all have experience CHOKING MOMENT!

2.LGY famously was up 3-0 againts T. Harimoto but lost 3-4 instead ( WTT Budapest 2022 ). Dima choked with a 2-0 lead againt S. Togami in WTT Singapore Smash 2023 and Gozo had a 2-0 lead but lost 2-3 yesterday in a inter-club match. I have now personally feel the super suckish feeling of being choked. It feels bad and I hate this feeling. Make it go away. Maybe if I buy sheet of Dignics 64 I would be happy again. ( Just kidding ).

3. Below video is the first set and I had an easy win. I won the second set again and I was feeling pretty confident. I lost the third set and I was like, OK, maybe he got lucky. I can take him again in the fourth for a 3-1 victory. But no.......
Lady luck was not smiling upon me. I lost the forth and then the fifth with an even worse score line.

YES! I experienced CHOKING.

Set 1:

Set 2 to 5

4. Can you nice people here who are allowed to comment please tell me what did I do in Set 3, 4 & 5 that is different from Set 1 & 2 that caused me to CHOKE?

A little help please.

p/s I hindsight, I remembered I was trying to listen to Next / Der's advice to impart more spin in my game. I tried and failed. My FH loop against underspin mainly either go over the table or does not clear the net. I am not blaming you guys, it is just I was trying to do something that is not in my usual play-book.

Yo yo Gozo.....

You learn more from your losses than you do from your wins.

As a player looking to improve, it's a great position to be able to look back and analyze where you can improve.

However, I think it's very easy to highlight numerous issues, and then the advice just becomes overwhelming, and there is too much to focus on.

I would look at 3 relatively easy things you can improve in the short term that will give you noticeable results.

Because I'm such a cool guy, I did a little video for you below - It's probably easier to see what I mean, rather than having to read it!

But for context.....

1. Forehand loop.

You need to go forward and up, not just up.

2. Your position after serve is bang in the middle of the table which completely neutralizes your forehand attack.

3. You are serving to win the point outright..... Which causes you problems when it comes back.

At the moment, you aren't comfortable attacking a shot with a lot of backspin on it (don't worry, that's completely normal).

But most of your serves are heavy backspin, and therefore your opponent is just pushing them back (long), which gives you an uncomfortable ball to deal with.

It makes more sense to do serves that will give you a more friendly ball to deal with.

Some serves I'd do if I were you.

Short sidespin
Long sidespin
Short top spin
Long top spin
Short no spin (this is surprisingly effective)

You won't win as many points outright, but you'll have WAY more balls to put away on your 2nd shot.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Nice! NDH,

You always come to the rescue of a brother in trouble. This match was not an important match but merely an interclub friendlies with more of a social event flavour really. What was actually at stake was Beer and Chicken Curry with rice and bragging rights.

My train of thoughts:
Back to my game, I was trying out Der / Next's advised to impart more FH topspin into my game. If you recall my previous MS game in the Nationals, FH topspin isn't a strong part of my playbook. But I wish to add arsenal into my playbook for future development. So, in this game it was disastrous. I'll take your advise ( from you video above ) and try to improve my FH topspin against underspin.

 

[NDH]

Nice! NDH,

You always come to the rescue of a brother in trouble. This match was not an important match but merely an interclub friendlies with more of a social event flavour really. What was actually at stake was Beer and Chicken Curry with rice and bragging rights.

My train of thoughts:
Back to my game, I was trying out Der / Next's advised to impart more FH topspin into my game. If you recall my previous MS game in the Nationals, FH topspin isn't a strong part of my playbook. But I wish to add arsenal into my playbook for future development. So, in this game it was disastrous. I'll take your advise ( from you video above ) and try to improve my FH topspin against underspin.

The ability to really hit good loops against backspin is to start low, and explode through the ball at the point of contact.

But that's a very advanced technique really, and not one that many people can do successfully.

I still think you should continue to focus on spin and not raw power.

As the Mandalorian would say..... This is the way.....

In other news, your CHO'ing technique is spot on.

Nice timing, a good crisp CHO followed by a slightly more subtle CHO to really let the opponent know you mean business 😂

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

From my unprofessional (and potentially wrong) point of view:
First two sets you won because:
1. You had a nice serves which your opponents had great troubles receiving. Especially fast to his backhand side. And you were varying serves type, speed, placement nicely so he couldn't adjust to them.
2. A lot of attacks of your opponent were provoked by quite high underspin balls which he tried to attack at a first chance and that he mostly missed them, probably he wasn't ready for them or there was a good amount of underspin, or spin was different, not sure.
3. On a contrary you didn't attack that much, waiting for a good balls and not losing that much of them because of that

And then most changes came from your opponent:
1. He stopped attacking every high (or not so high) ball, returning more pushes to you and waiting for a better chance. That was a game changer (on my opinion)
2. That forced you to either attack which were not consistent enough or to push on a not very comfortable balls often resulting in quite a high ball or even over the table. And he was ready for them (maybe your second or third push is more predictable in terms of spin)
3. You changed your serves pattern. Looks like you reduced speed on your fast server to his backhand and he had much less troubles returnig it (or he simply adjusted to it) also you reduced percentage of those fast serves and served backhand to backhand serves regularly which he had no troubles returning at all. And it seems to me that you removed your fast serves to his forehand which worked quite good at the start. And on a contrary you had more mistakes on his serves which seems unforced for me.

cytivrat, you may want to read the first post of this thread which gives special rules for this thread.

Your post seems okay. So I am not going to delete it. But....you should know that this is a thread where only certain people are allowed to comment on footage.

This thread is for forum members to post footage of yourself. This is different than a regular thread. I will moderate this thread heavily. Anyone can post footage. But the only people who can comment on the footage are people who have been specifically selected because they are players who are able to give useful commentary.

These are the players who can give commentary on video footage:

1) Baal
2) Der_Echte
3) NDH
4) Richie
5) Lula
6) NextLevel
7) Brs
8) Takkyu_wa_inochi
9) Tinykin
10) pingpongpaddy
11) Tony's Table Tennis
12) Victor Moraga


Anyone can post footage. However, if anyone not on the list above tries to post commentary on footage, that commentary will be deleted. If someone presents commentary to me via PM for posting, and I deem it okay to post, I may make exceptions to this every so often. I also am reserving the right to edit the list and add if I decide someone is capable of making good, insightful commentary.

Hopefully, this will make it so people feel comfortable posting footage of themselves for people on the forum to see and get to know each other without feeling like the commentary that happens after posting footage is uncalled for. Also, if you wanted to post footage but would prefer nobody comments on the footage you present, you can ask that. I will help make that happen as well.


Again, comments from people who are not on the list above will get deleted.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

cytivrat is now approved to post commentary on footage in this thread.

 

[Der_Echte]

...p/s I hindsight, I remembered I was trying to listen to Next / Der's advice to impart more spin in my game. I tried and failed. My FH loop against underspin mainly either go over the table or does not clear the net. I am not blaming you guys, it is just I was trying to do something that is not in my usual play-book...

You cannot expect to execute a major change in your stroke and impact and have it transfer well to your match play on the first day... often, improvements in training transfer to match play only after 6 to 12 months...

Maybe something you already know can adjust and transfer right away, like say crouching after serve, but stuff you need to train and improve will take a long time to transfer to match play improvement.

Often, you try to use in a match what you are training, you will perform WORSE.

This is something difficult to accept and a big reason why developing players give up training with a long term plan.

 

[Der_Echte]

I just read NDH say to Gozo that there is more useful data to be gained by experiencing and analyzing failures in competition.

He should send you a coaching billing invoice for even this one sentence. That advice is worth many months of training lessons.

 

[Der_Echte]

NDH is also telling something to Gozo I attempted to articulate reasons for...but the opposite wing... (I had scolded Gozo for staying on fh corner after a serve when trying to look for a bh opener. Ironically he would have been well positioned if he was in center.)

...that Gozo is not positioned for his FH after a serve. Position and leverage are huge. Particularly if you try a strong shot out of position and leverage... just asking for failure, loss of confidence, plus free points for opponents and boost their confidence.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

NDH is also telling something to Gozo I attempted to articulate reasons for...but the opposite wing... (I had scolded Gozo for staying on fh corner after a serve when trying to look for a bh opener. Ironically he would have been well positioned if he was in center.)

...that Gozo is not positioned for his FH after a serve. Position and leverage are huge. Particularly if you try a strong shot out of position and leverage... just asking for failure, loss of confidence, plus free points for opponents and boost their confidence.

I am confuse on this post. To center or not to center? This is the question.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

You cannot expect to execute a major change in your stroke and impact and have it transfer well to your match play on the first day... often, improvements in training transfer to match play only after 6 to 12 months...

Maybe something you already know can adjust and transfer right away, like say crouching after serve, but stuff you need to train and improve will take a long time to transfer to match play improvement.

Often, you try to use in a match what you are training, you will perform WORSE.

This is something difficult to accept and a big reason why developing players give up training with a long term plan.

1. I know very well to suddenly rewrite my play-book is not gunna happen overnight. But I shall persevere.

2. I hope to be able to show you guys a new me in a month's time and not 6 mths, coz, I'm feelin lucky.

3. Coincidently my next tourney is on the 3rd weekend of April, so I have about five weeks to make the adjustment.

4. Until then, keep em' pongin. Peace out.

5. No more video from me until then.

 

[Der_Echte]

I am confuse on this post. To center or not to center? This is the question.

What NDH was meaning is after you serve (and want to maximize the use of your fh) that you should be at your bh corner... so you have more table ready to open with your fh.

What I was saying months ago that if you serve fh corner and want to use your bh (or fh with a slide step) that you should take a step to wards your bh corner after the serve... this gives you 60 percent of the table for your bh, and more for your fh if you do a slide step.

Staying in the fh corner after your serve gives you a bad low percentage chance for a bh if ball is returned to bh corner... it is way out of your zone so you get a miss or just push ball back, which is not to your advantage.