OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Hi everyone,

I'm currently finishing my first year at UCLA having played casually (at school and occasionally at the Berkeley Table Tennis Club's weekly Round Robin) for three years prior. I am in UCLA's Table Tennis club, but due to the combination of my engineering workload and the club's lacking a coach, I've not found many chances lately to get advice on my technique. We just had our first annual "Bruin Open", in which I placed 2nd out of 13 players in Division B and received a $20 JOOLA Gift Certificate . I took the opportunity to have my colleagues record my games and have attached a link to one of them at the bottom of this post (I am in the blue shirt and shorts, playing in the foreground at the beginning of the video). I eventually win this semifinal match 3-2 after falling behind 2-1. I hope that I'll get lots of advice on my play and learn ways in which I perform well or could improve.

To describe my style, I enjoy playing close to the table and using a combination of pushes and compact drives (unless I'm smashing, which I also enjoy very much) as it helps me conserve energy while engaging with the opponent in a battle of reactions. My goal is to induce pop-ups with my serves (I used more topspin serves during this game for this purpose) so I can control pace early in the point. When I'm not serving, I'm not afraid to engage in a push rally until the opponent makes the first attack (my opponent in this game does this quite often). Indeed it is a risky approach - in this game, when I did not keep the ball low enough, I found myself watching the ball speed by me. When I am on my game, my strengths include sending fast drives and blocks to the body or down the sideline nearest to where I am standing. Overall, although my style may not be particularly exciting compared to others' (except for the smashes and line drives, of course), I find that I'm able to grind out wins through improvisation, serves, and patience.

As for my weaknesses, I believe from watching this video that I need to primarily work on using my legs/knees more, shortening my follow-through, countering loops, and getting more of an arc on my shots while keeping them low (as in, not letting them float on the other side of the table). Perhaps my low, linear arc is caused by my standing up instead of bending my knees more - can someone confirm this?

So again, I'd welcome any advice on how I can get better, with additional comments or equipment suggestions if you have any based on what you see - I'll work hard to improve my game!



Thanks in advance,
Chumbucket

I understand that your team does not have a coach, however you do have some very good and knowledgeable players on your team. I think David's level and experience is enough that he could be very helpful for you.

He has helped us with some of our classes and camps and has some very good wins under his belt. He beat the U.S. national champion in 2012, and I think he beat Rasvan Cretu at the recent 2015 Collegiate Championships.

If you are back in the Bay for the summer, we have a number of Camps in Alameda run by 12 year Dutch National team coach Pieke Franssen.

I think you can get some good advice on the forums, however having someone who can work with you on the table is likely to be more fruitful.

If you approach David, You could try the following, "David someone in Alameda said that even though you hit like a girl, you might be able to give me some help with my game."

BTW, who won your Bruin Open tournament?

I don't remember names - there were two divisions A and B with about a dozen players in each. Most players were from UCLA or the surrounding area.

Does anyone have comments based on the video? I'd love to get some tips.

- Chumbucket

are you in red?

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My advice would be to get some more coaching if you are keen to improve that way and become more technically correct in the techniques. It will help you to move and perform the strokes more cleanly and improve all aspects of your game technically.

Otherwise I think that your serves are too long, against a better looper they will be hit back for a winner or at least a very difficult 3rd ball. You would be better to serve a shorter more spiny serve to induce a popup return, either using some form if side spin and a mix of top spin and back spin. Even a short no spin serve can produce popup receives.

Also I would look for doing a 3rd ball attack or at the least opening the attack first. When you allow your opponent to always attack first it puts you at a disadvantage most times. A few times I see a ball that you should of attacked, instead you push allowing the opponent to get a good spinny loop in that you found hard to control.

These points aside I guess the biggest thing is do you have the time and funds available for coaching? Or is there someone of good skill and technique able to provide you with some free or bartered for coaching to improve your game?

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David is the kid playing behind you in the pink/peach shirt at 15:00 in your video. His current level is around 2300.

Thanks for all the comments so far!

@ rodderz - I am in the blue shirt and shorts closest to the camera at the beginning of the video

@ apophis - due to my engineering workload, involvement in other extracurricular activities, and the club's lacking a coach, I don't have much of an opportunity to get training. Hopefully I can approach others in the club as alphapong mentioned, but even then attendance is inconsistent. Thanks for your advice though, I'll experiment with shorter serves to see if I can induce a good third ball. I think that when I can't get in a third ball smash, i begin playing the point more passively until the opponent makes a move. From the video, what do you perceive as my possible strengths or things that I should try to exploit?

@ alphapong - thanks for the tip, I'll see about approaching him for help!

Yeah, you seem to have only the long serve and the whole "serve type" you do is not the kind I would recommend.

I think you should first learn to do pure sidespin serves. Easiest to begin are the (1) pendulum serve, where your tip of the blade should be pointing down on the contact. Now your blade is horizontal, and that's good blade position to get sidespin. Other useful serve is (2) backhand serve. Just brush the ball from left right as fast as you can. You can find serve tutorials on the youtube.

Thanks Roy! I use a pure sidespin serve to finish off the games I win (games 1, 4, and 5). Perhaps if I can do something to keep those heavy sidespin serves short as apophis mentioned, I'll get more pop ups to attack. I think in this match, especially later on in games 4 and 5, I noticed that my opponent was having trouble with the same topspin serve if I slightly varied location across the back line so I used that serve more.

Thanks again for your advice!
- Chumbucket

Bump - any more ideas for me to work on?

- Chumbucket

I think that your main strengths are the fact that you fight all the way through and have a thirst for more skill.

You will need some coaching at some point to improve your fundamental techniques. There is only so far one can go without any form of coaching. I have had the benefit of always having a coach around as a junior player so I have a semi decent technique, still years later the old coach is still about able to help out from time to time when I need it. Without the instruction I received I would have significantly worse technique

To focus on now, I would try to be more aggressive, try to generate more spin with all your shots, push, loop and serve and improve your techniques. Its hard to do this, but this I believe will give you the best results without coaching.

I have recently had to forget about winning all my matches and focus on getting my techniques more correct and on generating higher spin and not speed. It has been yielding good results in matches and I am now winning more balls and not being put under as much pressure by unforced errors.

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I play around the same level (around 1300 ratings-wise). Sort of like the other guy - I try to loop a lot but tend to miss a lot of them. I see a couple of things to work on immediately, the first is serve returns. You tend to push a lot of them into the net. The second is, your serves are way too long, though at this level this isn't a deadly problem (at a higher level you'll have people looping the heck out of those serves, and they won't miss). Develop some short serves, mix them up with the long ones.

A lot of rallies at this level center around pushing, one piece of advice I was given a long time ago was to push more aggressively - don't just push to the middle of the table, push to different points, change the direction of the ball, make use of angles, and vary the amount of spin. If you can develop a very heavy backspin push you'll find people pushing a lot of them into the net, while popping up the ones on which you don't put heavy backspin. Make the pushes look the same - you can even put slight topspin on them (same motion you use for topspin pendulum serves). Most of all, keep them low - a lot of your pushes are pretty high and lack spin, those invite kills.

You don't seem to have a good backspin attack, that's something to work on, too. I don't mean loops, I mean a backhand flat hit or topspin drive. Mine used to be terrible, I've recently learned to do them properly so it's sorta middling now, and I can hit them pretty hard, even against moderate backspin.

You already do things I didn't start doing until a few months ago (mainly after reading about them on this forum) - the ready position with the elbow away from the body, for instance, serving with the right foot back, and the wide stance (could be a lot wider, though).

The main thing holding us perpetual 1300-level players back is lack of consistency. Many of us have been playing around this level for many, many years and there isn't much hope because we're already in our 50s... There's something lacking - lack of hand-eye coordination, lack of athletic ability, perhaps. In your case there's plenty of time to progress, and if you don't lack the things we do then you'll get a lot further than I have.

Get some coaching! (I'm glad no one's suggested you change your equipment yet... )

Iskandar

Thanks Apophis and Iskandar for your comments!

@ Apophis: I agree that coaching definitely helps! Perhaps I'll get some in over the summer? We'll see. I got some practice in on Thursday and focused on trying to add more topspin to every shot by using my knees / legs more - thanks for the advice, and hopefully I'll gain the confidence needed to be more aggressive.

@ Iskandar: As a result of your comments and those of others, I've been working on emphasizing more tangential speed at contact to get more spin on my serves while keeping them a tad shorter. Thanks also for recommending work on aggressive pushing and backspin attacks. There's definitely room to go before I find consistency, but recognizing that will at least put me on the right direction.

Thanks again to Apophis and Iskandar for your help - any other ideas?

- Chumbucket

i watched about 3 mins...one tactical piece of advice: you put too little thought into why you are doing something...for e.g: why chop to his forehand constantly? oplaying to the forehand is a constant invitation for him to attack..thereby you make the outcome dependant on whether he gets his loop accomplished or not...you should aim to play at his weaker side or more passive side and then attack when the opportunity is there..

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Hi AA,

Thank you for your comment, although I disagree with your statement that I gave little thought to my tactics. In fact from watching his previous matches, I knew that he would often go for the forehand loop if given the chance but that he was inconsistent from that side. Therefore I repeatedly gave the ball to his forehand to force him to rely mostly on a single inconsistent play to win points.

Here were his forehand attack statistics by game:

Game 1 (W): 4 winners, 4 misses, 1 blocked by me for my point
Game 2 (L): 5 winners, 1 miss, 1 blocked by me to continue the rally
Game 3 (L): 6 winners, 3 misses, 3 blocked by me for my point, 1 blocked by me to continue the rally
Game 4 (W): 3 winners, 6 misses, 2 blocked by me for my point
Game 5 (W): 5 winners, 4 misses, 1 blocked by me to continue the rally - I won more points via smashes this game

Total (50 attempts): 23 winners, 18 misses, 6 blocked by me for my point, 3 blocked by me to continue the rally

So out of 50 forehand attacks, he had winners on fewer than half of them while in fact losing one more point than he gained. Indeed in this match there was a general correlation between his consistency on the forehand side and whether he won the game; he was on fire in games 2 and 3, he lulled in games 1 and 4, and he was relatively even in game 5, a game decided instead by my attacks. Seeing my opponent whiff on a forehand made me more inclined to force the ball to that side, thus pressuring him to make the shot. It was definitely a risk, but it paid off in the end.

If I see that my opponent has a more consistent forehand attack, then I'll be sure to mix up my shot location so as to not repeatedly target that side. I do agree with your tip that I should consider playing toward his weaker side and attacking when possible - your sentiment seems to be in keeping with the trend thus far on this thread that I could play more aggressively. Indeed I won game 5 via a combination of his misses and my attacking with greater frequency. Nevertheless I had a strategy going into the match of forcing his forehand side that eventually contributed to my win that night.

- Chumbucket