OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I took a few min of video of me chopping vs a robot. I have it set to send a pretty heavy topspin ball. In matches, all too often, I pop that ball up. Maybe its in my stroke or positioning, but it seems worst when the ball drops early, but any very heavy topspin causes me trouble.



Thanks for any suggestions...

_________________
--- Push/Chop or Attack ---
USATT 1684 left, Lost it all by playing sick and hurt.
No legs left, no more backing up, just smash it!
Blade: TTPiet OFF-/ALL custom
FH: Spinlord Waran Short Pips
BH: Joola Badman Reloaded 0X

Cheers
Geddk

There are many days I wish I could understand Japanese....

I see the movies, but why don't I look like that when I do it?

Not sure what is the easiest, non-expensive way to get there, either. I almost need to find a way to see what I'm doing WHILE I do it so I can try to do it with a better form. Its so sad and frustrating to watch myself do things all wrong. What's amazing is that it lands on the table a lot...

_________________
--- Push/Chop or Attack ---
USATT 1684 left, Lost it all by playing sick and hurt.
No legs left, no more backing up, just smash it!
Blade: TTPiet OFF-/ALL custom
FH: Spinlord Waran Short Pips
BH: Joola Badman Reloaded 0X

Your stroke appears to be just an arm motion with no focus on your body/weight transference. Try to get your weight flowing FORWARDS from your left leg to your right leg as you play the shot. At present you can see that there is usually no weight on your right leg at the end of the stroke (your right foot often even pulls slightly backwards). Try to link your stroke with your body/legs and in this way you increase uniformity of your technique.

In relation to this, your stroke should flow forwards and you should follow thru more towards your right knee. Currently you hook around the ball and follow thru towards your stomach.

Finally, when you are chopping heavy topspin you need to be quite aggressive and chop fast and forwards thru the ball with an degree of fine contact which is appropriate to the oncoming ball. It sounds like your contact is way to solid. I suspect this is largely due to your hooking motion.

I hope this makes sense and is of some help.

Thanks, I will read that again in the morning while doing it. But I do understand that I should be using all my body, not just the arm. I really don't know why I do it that way.

Yes, its sort of a left handed half sidespin chop. But it sure would be nice to be able to go straight, LOL. It never occurred to me that it wasn't supposed to be that way. I bet an occasional sidespin chop would be a lot more effective if I was also sending them straight, with or without heavy underspin.

Being a techie, I may see if I can figure a way to use the webcam so I can watch what I'm doing while I do it. THEN I might even be able to change what I'm doing and still get the ball on the table, and hopefully do it better.

I learned to chop at age 4 or 5 with hardbat short pips probably, but I was so young that I don't remember learning, and my Dad (who I was told taught me) wasn't a chopper, so today I just do whatever I learned to do then, adjusted the past 3 years to work with inverted, and that's why its so ugly.

Thanks for responding

_________________
--- Push/Chop or Attack ---
USATT 1684 left, Lost it all by playing sick and hurt.
No legs left, no more backing up, just smash it!
Blade: TTPiet OFF-/ALL custom
FH: Spinlord Waran Short Pips
BH: Joola Badman Reloaded 0X

Hi Southy, watched your vid and I can make a few observations.

Firstly, I assume your rubber is inverted type.

Your contact point is quite high which means you contact the back of ball and a lot of blade contact is used. This is essentially a chop block - the ball has a lot of forward motion and not much spin, hence floats high and long.

If you adjust your contact point so that it is lower to the ground you will be forced to lift the ball. To do this you will quickly realise you need to contact the ball more on the underside and scoop it upwards and forwards. I can see you already have a scooping motion at the end of your swing so this will come easily.

Also, by scooping the underside of the ball you will be using almost all rubber and very little blade giving you more speed control and a lot more spin. The flight will be lower as will the bounce.

Carbonman's body weight transfer advice will give you better body mechanics and stroke recovery.

Let us know how you get on.

Hmmm, high and not much spin...

That doesn't sound good to me, and yes, it gets looped hard all too often on me when I do that.

Yes, the red Rakza 7 Soft 1.8 is what you see me chopping with, on a blade that is probably OFF- on the forehand side. Its sad to be a chopper that doesn't know how to chop, LOL. I really need to watch closely how these other people take the heavy topspin balls and find a way to mimic it. I plan to also give this a try with the Victas 401 1.8 I have mounted on a duplicate blade, which might help also, but I can see the rubber is not the REAL problem.

Thanks again for the helpful comments...

_________________
--- Push/Chop or Attack ---
USATT 1684 left, Lost it all by playing sick and hurt.
No legs left, no more backing up, just smash it!
Blade: TTPiet OFF-/ALL custom
FH: Spinlord Waran Short Pips
BH: Joola Badman Reloaded 0X

Got a copy of CamDesk and CamStudio, both open source free programs to be able to run a web cam and feed it to the screen and also save it to a file.

I'm hoping I'll be able to hook it up down on the table with a screen big enough that I can watch what I'm doing well enough to see if I'm playing how I am TRYING to play. Not sure if it will work, but its worth a try.

_________________
--- Push/Chop or Attack ---
USATT 1684 left, Lost it all by playing sick and hurt.
No legs left, no more backing up, just smash it!
Blade: TTPiet OFF-/ALL custom
FH: Spinlord Waran Short Pips
BH: Joola Badman Reloaded 0X

Hows it going with recording?
If it dint work out for you, try just getting a good webcam ..then get freeware . DEbut Video capture
http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/

_________________
Blade 1 Ross Leidy Rapscallion/Custom: Victas VS>401: Tibhar Grass D.Tecs LP 1.2mm
Blade 2 Fiber Andro Def Blade : Xiom Vega Europe : Tibhar Grass D.tecs LP 1.2 sponge
Blade 3 Fiber Andro Def Blade : Adidas R6: Spinlord Dornenglaz OX
Experimental Blade : Victas Koji Matushista Def : TSP Curl P1r LP .6 sponge : Giant Dragon Submarine Chop



My Blog
viewtopic.php?f=58&t=25085

I was looking for some cheap mirror doors, didn't find any, and then eventually put a laptop with webcam and 22" scrren on the ping pong table to record and watch myself swing. It did work, but wasn't great. Yesterday, I picked up a couple of mirror doors, and I'll see if I can record again doing the same thing to see if I'm doing it any better.

I am testing a change of the forehand side to make it better for chopping. I've noticed that with the Rakza 7 soft 1.8, I'm still typically chopping the hard loops a foot or two too long, and so I'm trying Globe 999T, Juic 999 Turbo, and Tibhar Grip-S Europe, all with 1.8 sponge, trying to find a setup that gives me a somewhat slower chop that will have a higher probability of landing. So far, I only have the Globe rubber, but it is working at least to some degree. But it is a tradeoff, because my forehand hitting is no longer rocket fast, and so I need to be much more careful about placing the ball well to be able to use that to win points, and to be honest, at least so far I'm playing a much more defensive game, doing a lot more chopping till I really have what I'd call a "sure shot" to an open area on the table before I try to attack, rather than risking attacking on just any ball.

I tried to tape myself playing that way last night, but the video doesn't show it well because of where the camera was relative to my forehand during the game I had more opportunity to play that way. I also didn't get the chance to play the looper that I wanted to play that has been beating me by looping off wide to my forehand. One thing I did notice is that I did a lot better at practicing the shot than trying to use it in a real match situation, but I guess if I don't practice it a lot, its never going to improve. At this point, I also think that I need to learn to spot the super spinny ones and block them back or use the pips on them to avoid the pop ups.

_________________
--- Push/Chop or Attack ---
USATT 1684 left, Lost it all by playing sick and hurt.
No legs left, no more backing up, just smash it!
Blade: TTPiet OFF-/ALL custom
FH: Spinlord Waran Short Pips
BH: Joola Badman Reloaded 0X

Well, I'm going to have to give up on Globe 999t. At under $10 a sheet, it would have been great if I could switch to it. I can serve and chop real well with it, but when I play someone that is good at attacking my chops, I need to attack, and even with the 1.8 thick 40 degree sponge it just wasn't fast enough when I'd get an opportunity to attack with it, and every ball came back, resulting in a dismal 3-0 loss to someone I almost never lose to at all.

I guess I should have placed the ball harder to get to, but I just don't have that good of a forehand in the first place, and its difficult to hit it hard and get it on the table at all. I've totally lost all confidence in it and myself, and am totally demoralized. My chops were landing too, even the ones that were missing with the Rakza 7 Soft 1.8, but too many came back, and all attempts at attacking failed.

_________________
--- Push/Chop or Attack ---
USATT 1684 left, Lost it all by playing sick and hurt.
No legs left, no more backing up, just smash it!
Blade: TTPiet OFF-/ALL custom
FH: Spinlord Waran Short Pips
BH: Joola Badman Reloaded 0X

What sort of steps are you taking to improve your game? Do you have a coach? If not, are you studying clips (eg pingskills) to improve your technique? It is great that you have your own table and robot, and you seem very focussed when you practice. However it is very important that when you do use the robot that you are working hard at improving your technique. Robot training is not going to help if all it does is reinforce and groove suspect technique. You have to try to have an idea of how to play the shot you are practicing and then try to be self-aware of what you are doing whilst practicing (analysing your stroke via video camera is good).

What you have written focusses on equipment but I dont think that is where you should be looking for solutions. Whilst I havent seen your FH attack, the problem with your FH chop is definitely a technical one. Also, a US2100ish guy I used to coach (and who reads this forum but never contributes ) used 999 successfully (on a JSH blade) for quite a while. Its not terribly fast but its good to chop with and has decent control for attacking.

Well, lately I haven't been practicing with the robot, as I've been having troubles with the knees and achilles tendons, and now feet, as well as the elbow, and I've been playing 7 or 8 times a week, basically at least once every day for 2 or 3 hrs, with one or two days off per month, and some days doing drills in the morning and then going to the gym and playing at night. with exception of one day of drills, its mostly practice matches, but some players are willing to hit the ball a while too, when things aren't too crowded, and I try to get as much of that in as I can.

My main focus with the forehand has been to get the harder loops back on the table without popping them up. I know that sounds like a low aspiration, but I've had many problems with them going long and popping up using the Rakza 7 Soft 1.8, and so the 999t idea was to get things a bit slower, just enough that most of those balls that were going long less than one foot, generally do hit the table when using the 999t. but now I have a new problem as a result. Those balls get hit back, too, and if they loop it down the line at my backhand quickly, I don't seem to get over there to even try to chop it back. That was what happened last night, and that guy wasn't that highly rated of a player, but I think he is underrated for the shots he is hitting and landing.

As for coaching, yes, I'm trying to get what help I can given my financial constraints, and have had a few good coaches in the past year or two.

One was at a TT camp, and helped me get a forehand chop working with rubber. Soon afterwards I hurt the elbow though, from trying to put so much into the chops. But at least after this I had some sort of decent chop working.

The second coach was smart enough to see the holes in my game, and basically said I needed to have a shot ready as a response to whatever ball came over the net. He said I need to learn to fish or counterloop or chop those balls back. Right again. I keep trying to learn to counterloop, but just don't seem to have the timing or control to do it against the big loopers, LOL, if I could get there in time, even. I have successfully fished a few times, and practiced it one day with a guy nice enough to loop to my forehand side, but of course most of those balls come back again and again, and I don't usually win those exchanges unless I can get a good chop in. I learned that it takes a perfect chop to chop them back with the inverted without popping up badly, and that to chop them I need perfect timing and tremendous racket speed, combining the body, arm and wrist, and the only other way is with a no spin chop, which is as difficult or more so to do. I guess the big problem is getting anyone to help me practice it. My regular drilling partner isn't good at it, so getting practice time is difficult. Maybe I need to be playing less matches and using the robot to get to where the shots are at least useful.

The latest coach seems to be watching and commenting on how I'm playing, and that's a good change, IMO. At this point I'm owed some lessons, but am trying to get adjusted to and stable on equipment capable of playing the way I'm able to, before I use up what few hours of lesson time I've got, because I can't afford to buy more.

His comments from last week are accurate.

I need to attack the high, easy point balls and learn to make them hit the table well in locations that make my opponent least comfortable. Currently, my confidence attacking is very low, because I almost always go into the net or off the back, and what someone else might see as an automatic point, to me is almost an automatic lost point if I try to attack. I lose at least 80% to 90% of those points vs better players would be my guess. Its totally demoralizing to lose the automatic point balls, so the result is I have pretty much given up attacking them and usually just chop or push or drop shot, sometimes with pips, or sometimes with inverted, and many times I win the point doing that, but as he said, if I don't attack them, I'll never get any better at attacking them, and that's what practice matches are for. I guess part of the problem there is that I play so few tournaments (because I can't afford to), that I tend to play practice matches as matches, not practice, and so I play all out, and take it hard when I'm not playing really well, even when its just practice. Somehow I need to get myself to try, and to not get demoralized when it fails, but to somehow find it in myself to keep trying till it improves, and not worry about losing all the points, games and matches.

I need to move better. I need to be in position and in balance to make good shots. Again, true. I'm way too slow to react, and if my body doesn't think I can get to the ball or doesn't expect it to land, it doesn't want to try. Maybe I'm just too tired many times. I'm also sore, putting icy hot on before playing and needing otc pain meds all the time, and icing afterwards, and still hurting.

I suppose I need to try taping it again to see if its any better. I found a couple good Japanese and Chinese instructional videos for choppers, but I have no clue what they are saying, unfortunately. I have watched the ping skills ones too, but they aren't much help.

I know I can chop better with the 999t, but the price tag of losing what little offense I had hurts pretty badly against players that can return the chops well.

PS: I uploaded a video of me playing a 2100 level looper. Its game 3 and he is just crushing me. Nothing I can do works against him, and I can't tell where he is going to hit the ball to. He is way too good for me to be trying to play, but at least he's willing to play with me because he needs practice vs choppers with pips, and there aren't many around.

_________________
--- Push/Chop or Attack ---
USATT 1684 left, Lost it all by playing sick and hurt.
No legs left, no more backing up, just smash it!
Blade: TTPiet OFF-/ALL custom
FH: Spinlord Waran Short Pips
BH: Joola Badman Reloaded 0X

Thanks for posting the clip. Your opponent is a pretty handy player and it was no disgrace losing to him. You actually hit a number of very good backhands.

I completely understand how difficult it can be playing with injuries (I'm always working with 4 or 5 separate complaints). It can be very frustrating but at the end of the day you have to work out a system of play and movement which optimises what you are able to work with.

The good news is that both your FH chop and FH hit can be greatly improved by improving your technique. Your technique for both shots is very shaky and erratic. You need to develop sound uniform technique. I have written about your FH chop above and that Matsushita clip is excellent. Your FH attack technique is all over the place and you are extremely unbalanced. Check out the pingskills clip on FH counterhit and pay particular attention to the follow thru, feet placement and weight transference. Your issues have nothing to do with equipment. If you changed to the fastest rubber available you might be able to improve your power a few percentage points. However if you improved your balance and weight transference you could get 50-60% more power.

I would also do a lot of side to side practice, focussing on getting into the correct position for each shot. Knuckle down and work hard for 3-6 months and you can definitely make a lot of progress. Good luck!

Yes, its true in general that my unusual spin backhand shots probably win most of my points by getting my opponents to make a mistake before I do, and either missing somehow or setting up my forehand, if I can make it count. People tell me I am moving and chopping better, but maybe they are just being kind.

After reading your comment, and going and looking at the tape, and then looking at the tape Geddk posted, I would have to say I haven't made much progress compared to what I would have hoped for. My chops might be landing more often and with more spin, but my form still is completely off the mark. I wish I had a program for my son's WII Fit thing so I could attach sensors to my paddle and legs and shoulder with an annoying buzzer that would go off if I wasn't close enough to the correct stroke and body movements, LOL. But I don't and doubt such a thing exists in my financially constrained world.

I guess I need to make use of the robot more, and maybe take some sequences out of that video to play on a screen while I practice to remind me what my movements are SUPPOSED to look like when I chop or hit, and do that for 20 or 30 minutes a day, and play a little less at the clubs if I'm hurting.

Its amazing that I'm doing as well as I am, considering, and yes, that's an opportunity to do better if I'd put more consistent effort into it. Thanks for bringing this up again to remind me. Gotta try harder, I guess. Maybe I can improve it and get it worked into my game for next spring.

_________________
--- Push/Chop or Attack ---
USATT 1684 left, Lost it all by playing sick and hurt.
No legs left, no more backing up, just smash it!
Blade: TTPiet OFF-/ALL custom
FH: Spinlord Waran Short Pips
BH: Joola Badman Reloaded 0X