What is the most important area to jump from 1900 to 2100?

[TensorBackhand]

Don't care about sidespin.
Grayzone 45 degrees, you have to pay attention to how much they override the toss. Look for how forward and down they brush and how fast they brush.

Just loop Victor's serve. It's easy to read and he doesn't protect the forehand corner

On those greyzone 45 degree serves, should you be looking for whether they strike the ball during the downward pendulum motion or during the upward pendulum motion?

 

[songdavid98]

i know what spin it is. im saying racquet brush up isn’t always topspin
and if that doesn’t convince you, look up Schlager serve. hes a decent player who can beat 99% people here including you

you didn't read what i wrote. i never talked about racket brush up at all. and everyone watched that Schlager video.

 

[songdavid98]

On those greyzone 45 degree serves, should you be looking for whether they strike the ball during the downward pendulum motion or during the upward pendulum motion?

I keep telling you: you look at how downward and forward they brush and how fast they go to override the toss.

I can totally use the downward motion and do it slowly, so the ball is still topspin.
I can totally use the downward motion and do it a bit faster, so the ball is no spin sidespin.
I can totally use the downward motion and do it really fast, so the ball is backspin.
I can totally also toss the ball super high and now the toss is even harder to override.

Upward with a 45 degree angle doesn't override the toss at all. Definitely topspin.

An extra fun fact: the ball bounces on the table twice, so even the bounces has some influence too. They can turn a no spin serve into a light topspin serve.

 

[SleepyMaster]

yeah, Schlager kinda “decent” just an ex word champion, I think we can call him decent player 😁

 

[ThePongCommenter]

I feel my weaknesses are very balanced all around. haha

Fitness and Stamina 4/10

Serve, 6.5/10

Receive 5/10

Footwork 6/10

Topspin 8/10

So I think fitness and footwork are pretty weak. However, as many people pointed out, in TT fitness and footwork probably play a smaller role in actually the winning and losing of points.

I think my serve is decent, but not great. I can't really disguise my serve at all, but the basic spin and placement is decent.

I think receive is my weakness, especially against the strong servers. If anybody remembers my warm up practice game with Victor, I think I missed 4 or 5 receives in just 10 of his serves. Yeah I counted 4 misses receives, and at least a few more receives that just set him up for the followup shot. His serve is fast, and also hard to read for me.

Even when I go back now and watch each of his serves, I still can't identify if his serves are sidespin, sidetop, or sideunder or deadball. They all look the same to me.

Your issue with receiving the serves was not really that you didn't read the spin correctly, it is that you didn't read the depth correctly and were not able to cover the fast serves to the middle and backhand.

Your topspin game is not an 8/10 - you don't recover at all after the first topspin, possibly because when you loop you are shifting your entire weight vertically rather than forwards and directing it into the ball, even against topspin. Could be other reasons for it too. You see this at 00:27 where he basically lobs the ball back and yet you are still late and miss the next shot. Even the point at 0:08 which you probably consider a highlight, if the opponent had returned that even softly you likely would have missed the next ball. On the counterloop attempt at 00:20 you are given a slow high topspin to the forehand and you wait late on the ball and then swing way upwards - basically the exact opposite of what you want to do there.

Why are you playing in boots?

 

[TensorBackhand]

Your issue with receiving the serves was not really that you didn't read the spin correctly, it is that you didn't read the depth correctly and were not able to cover the fast serves to the middle and backhand.

Your topspin game is not an 8/10 - you don't recover at all after the first topspin, possibly because when you loop you are shifting your entire weight vertically rather than forwards and directing it into the ball, even against topspin. Could be other reasons for it too. You see this at 00:27 where he basically lobs the ball back and yet you are still late and miss the next shot. Even the point at 0:08 which you probably consider a highlight, if the opponent had returned that even softly you likely would have missed the next ball. On the counterloop attempt at 00:20 you are given a slow high topspin to the forehand and you wait late on the ball and then swing way upwards - basically the exact opposite of what you want to do there.

Why are you playing in boots?

Thanks. I'll work on shifting weight forward instead of upward, and recovering faster.

Also, that's why I listed counterloop as one of the options to focus on. I feel counterloop is an area where I have quite a few chances to win points, but am not converting them at a high rate yet.

I'm playing in boots because I was not planning on playing this day. I was just walking around the gym in boots and watching other players. Victor saw me and said "wanna have a quick hit?". So I just started playing a for fun game and didn't have time to change shoes or warm up or anything.

 

[TensorBackhand]

Your issue with receiving the serves was not really that you didn't read the spin correctly, it is that you didn't read the depth correctly and were not able to cover the fast serves to the middle and backhand.

Your topspin game is not an 8/10 - you don't recover at all after the first topspin, possibly because when you loop you are shifting your entire weight vertically rather than forwards and directing it into the ball, even against topspin. Could be other reasons for it too. You see this at 00:27 where he basically lobs the ball back and yet you are still late and miss the next shot. Even the point at 0:08 which you probably consider a highlight, if the opponent had returned that even softly you likely would have missed the next ball. On the counterloop attempt at 00:20 you are given a slow high topspin to the forehand and you wait late on the ball and then swing way upwards - basically the exact opposite of what you want to do there.

Why are you playing in boots?

Given all the misses opportunities for potential counterloop points that you saw me miss, you still think that serve and receive should be the main focus?

You don't think focus on counterlooping would win a lot of points?

 

[ThePongCommenter]

Given all the misses opportunities for potential counterloop points that you saw me miss, you still think that serve and receive should be the main focus?

You don't think focus on counterlooping would win a lot of points?

I can't really conclude much from a 2 minute video where your opponent is much better than you but I'll try to take a look if you post more against people your level.

No, focusing on counterlooping wouldn't win you a lot of points at the 1900 level and improving isn't as simple as "focusing on counterlooping" even if you were better - from what I saw you have other things you need to fix before you'll be able to counterloop consistently but again a video against someone your level would probably be more useful.

 

[lightspin]

Fairies Wear Boots is a great Black Sabbath tune. Table tennis players do not wear boots when playing. You also look like you are wearing knee braces, so wearing boots while playing is doing even more damage to your knees as well.

He served wide to your forehand and fast to your backhand. Why didn't you try the same?
Certain patterns worked really well for you then you abandoned them. I am not sure why.
You think very little before you serve. Wait, formulate a plan and execute.

But here is the bottom line: Your basics are not bad and you have a lot of potential if you keep practicing. Take some time and think about what you want to do. Think about what your opponent is going to do or wants to do and counter that.

 

[TensorBackhand]

Fairies Wear Boots is a great Black Sabbath tune. Table tennis players do not wear boots when playing. You also look like you are wearing knee braces, so wearing boots while playing is doing even more damage to your knees as well.

He served wide to your forehand and fast to your backhand. Why didn't you try the same?
Certain patterns worked really well for you then you abandoned them. I am not sure why.
You think very little before you serve. Wait, formulate a plan and execute.

But here is the bottom line: Your basics are not bad and you have a lot of potential if you keep practicing. Take some time and think about what you want to do. Think about what your opponent is going to do or wants to do and counter that.

Which patterns worked well?

 

[lightspin]

When the ball was placed to your forehand with underspin you pushed down the line once and you looped down the line once and you won both of those points. Unfortunately when the ball came to your backhand, you hit the ball cross court where he was waiting for you. Go down the line more, especially against lefties.

Here is a pro tip from Robert Gardos: during the early parts of a match, the first ball pushed to his backhand he will loop down the line. He does this for two reasons: one it tells the other player expecting the ball to go cross court is a bad idea, they have to cover both sides and two he wants to see if they can counterloop it. If they cannot, he knows he will be able to dictate what happens in a match.

 

[TensorBackhand]

When the ball was placed to your forehand with underspin you pushed down the line once and you looped down the line once and you won both of those points. Unfortunately when the ball came to your backhand, you hit the ball cross court where he was waiting for you. Go down the line more, especially against lefties.

Here is a pro tip from Robert Gardos: during the early parts of a match, the first ball pushed to his backhand he will loop down the line. He does this for two reasons: one it tells the other player expecting the ball to go cross court is a bad idea, they have to cover both sides and two he wants to see if they can counterloop it. If they cannot, he knows he will be able to dictate what happens in a match.

Ok i'll practive this shot more. My bh just naturally goes cross court. Although I can loop down the line as well, it doesn't feel as comfortable for me.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

My coach does a similar multiball for me on both wings. Definitely builds confidence on my openers. I'm having issues if it's short/half-long side under to the FH side and it's a much lower conversion rate vs regular backspin.

yeah, these are always not fun. Do you go in and push, or do you attack.
Attacking requires very good judgement and skill.
Most of the time, we just do BH flicks (since BH flicks is the solution to 99% of the serves today), but I'm still old school and if there is just some chance of that ball landing the second bounce on that white line/edge, it is long enough for me to top spin over the table.

So either top spin over the table, or wait for it to go past the table and top spin.

But the 1st one.... you could need to buy new rubbers if your judgement is out

Short game and positioning are two key areas that I'm trying to focus right now. Played a 2000 player that had incredible touch on the short game and my only response was to push long and get the rally started.

most people have no idea how important short game and pushing is.

Return serve with short push, or deep long push are some times one of the best serve return techniques and I often have to tell players not to over complicate matters.

Your decision of pushing long to get the rally going is perfect, because you are taking away the advantage from his serves and making it open play and equal chance for both of you to win the point - very very good decision. Better than risking a bad service return and giving the points away.

This is chess - if you tame your opponent long enough, especially not allowing him to have his way of serve and 3rd ball, and if he gets agitated, then that is perfect strategy and hopefully it suits your narrative more.
Now this is more like court side coaching now - something I'm guessing tb has never experience before. There is so much to learn from coach side coaching that I think he is missing out.

 

[allencorn]

I raised the OP's question at the club tonight and it spawned an interesting discussion. Much of it echoed the suggestions already made here, but one person commented that the leap from 1900 to 2100 means you would now be defeating your current 1900 comrades about 90%- 95% of the time, and occasionally defeating 2300 rated players. That's a huge leap in skills. Consensus was that to achieve this level of improvement, you'd have to raise pretty much all aspects of your game, as you would have to consistently beat lots of different styles (choppers, anti, long pips, blockers, counter loopers, etc). Having struggles against one or two of these styles would inhibit your progress to 2100 without a rounded set of skills.

It also was pointed out it depends a lot on current strengths and weaknesses. At a 1900 level, there are probably lots of areas to work on, and probably just picking one or two to develop every six months or so might be best. May not matter the order in which you focus on aspects.

 

[SleepyMaster]

Why are you playing in boots?

Because TB is like Blade Runner mane character - just playing table tennis in between chasing other androids for $

 

[RefereeNumber2]

My response is going to be so long and all over the place, it should be its own thread.

Let's start with an exercise.

We all toss the ball when we serve right?
Don't move the racket.
What spin happens when the ball falls on to a nearly vertical racket?
What spin happens when the ball falls on to a 45 degree angle racket?
What spin happens when the ball falls on to a flat racket?

You learn the toss itself makes some topspin.
The more vertical racket angle, the more topspin.

Now do another exercise.
You can move the racket, but don't change the angles.
How do you cancel out this topspin with a nearly vertical racket?
How do you cancel out this topspin with a 45 degree angle racket?

You learn that it takes some forward and downward motion to simply cancel out the topspin.
The more vertical racket angle, the harder to cancel the topspin.

As for making backspin, you have to do even more work. Flatter racket angle, faster forward and/or downward motion.
/////////////////////////

backspin is the hardest spin to serve. topspin is the easiest spin to serve.
the strategy is to looks for signs of backspin and if there are little to no signs, it is topspin or nospin.
also, i will ignore sidespin since there's no question about that.

the sign of backspin is quickly brushing the ball forward/downward while touching the bottom half of the ball.

1. quickly
2. brushing the ball forward/downward
3. bottom half

It is pretty easy to see if they are touching the bottom half or top half of the ball. that is just racket angle.
Serving while touching the top half of the ball is easy to read. It is topspin.

It is also pretty easy to see how fast they touch the ball.
More importantly, slow touch means they cannot override the influence of the toss, which means topspin or no spin.

The tricky part is seeing if they brush forward or brush sideways or both.
if they brush to the side, they aren't overriding the toss: it's topspin.
if they brush forward, you need to guess how much they are overriding the toss.

Perfect breakdown of topspin vs backspin.

And if we bring sidespin into it, OP should be aware of corkscrew action on the ball which makes one side of the ball behave like topspin and the other side behave like backspin (relatively speaking). This could be how OP doesn’t understand what spin is on his serve. When you’re serving this kind of spin you’ve gotta be especially aware of how your opponent is touching the ball. Fortunately it’s fairly easy to read corkscrew bc it makes the ball jump sideways on the table (depending on how grippy the surface is).

But from OP’s comments and questions I think his primary problem is worrying too much about reading the spin and not enough about other aspects of the serve like length and placement. If you’re fixated on figuring out backspin vs topspin, it’s easy to be late to realize the serve is drifting long (for example). And it’s more important to read length/height early because you need more time to prepare to loop/flick than to adjust for whatever spin is on the ball.

 

[TensorBackhand]

I raised the OP's question at the club tonight and it spawned an interesting discussion. Much of it echoed the suggestions already made here, but one person commented that the leap from 1900 to 2100 means you would now be defeating your current 1900 comrades about 90%- 95% of the time, and occasionally defeating 2300 rated players. That's a huge leap in skills. Consensus was that to achieve this level of improvement, you'd have to raise pretty much all aspects of your game, as you would have to consistently beat lots of different styles (choppers, anti, long pips, blockers, counter loopers, etc). Having struggles against one or two of these styles would inhibit your progress to 2100 without a rounded set of skills.

It also was pointed out it depends a lot on current strengths and weaknesses. At a 1900 level, there are probably lots of areas to work on, and probably just picking one or two to develop every six months or so might be best. May not matter the order in which you focus on aspects.

Yes, I listed several areas where I feel like I can win more points.

I think my fitness and speed can be better. Someone mentioned recovery time, which I think is related as well.

As most people have said, serve and receive are most important.

Then I mentioned counter attack, where I feel I have it in me to win more points in this area.

 

[andzejgolot]

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[Gozo Zyreruna]

For Gozo who have just discovered the wonderful toy called spin:

1. Counter-looping
2. On the table loop against push / backspin

Gozo is like a toddler who has just discovered chocolate milkshake.

 

[Grumms]

I feel my weaknesses are very balanced all around. haha

Fitness and Stamina 4/10

Serve, 6.5/10

Receive 5/10

Footwork 6/10

Topspin 8/10

Your weakness is that you can't evaluate yourself I think. Serves : no direct win on this, at best your serve is 3/10. Topspin : 8/10 would be a very very skilled player, maybe 2400. You are at 5/10 at best. Footwork also (and what are those shoes ? Look like work site shoes). But we all estimate ourselves poorly, I myself cried when I saw me play on video.

You also have to change your attitude. You often play "victim". You send very gentle balls and you step back, allowing your opponent to pressure you immediately and preventing you to have any chance in the rally.