OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Why it is better to use different rubbers on FH and BH:
1. FH stroke is different than BH stroke. That is, the way we hit the ball is different.
2. BH stroke is not as strong as FH stroke.
3. BH range is very limited compare to FH.
4. With different rubbers, we have more options to change our style of play.
5. Our opponent has to think which rubber we use to hit the ball.
6. Every each rubber affects the performance of the ruber on the other side and vise versa. So, we have to find the best combination that suit to our style of play. Believe me it's true. Just remove the rubber of any side of your paddle and play with it, either BH or FH. You will feel the rubber has a big differences than when you have rubber on both sides. Mostly worse.
7. It is better to use close range rubber on our BH, and middle to far range rubber on our FH. As we can see today table tennis is BH close range counter blocks, and then FH middle to far range spinnier loops.
8. If you want to play defensively in midle to far range, use long pips on your BH.

While the only disanvantage is we have to remember what rubber in our BH/FH and how to hit the ball with that rubber.
I came to this conclusions because I have six blades and 6 pairs of rubbers, any kind of rubbers, pimps and inverted, tension, tacky etc and I used to interchange of them all the time.

Solid points, but im guessing on higher tier if you got both BH and FH techniques down, it matters less, and might as well go straight up both tenergy 05 on both sides for maximum gameplay potential. (I myself get different rubbers for both bh and fh most of the time, but occasionally change my fh bh side in games to practice on handling different rubbers that comes with different gameplan/strokes/force used, which is inherent when mastering the rubbers.)

Forehand clearly has more potential for speed than the backhand on attacks. Some back hands might just be for more defensive play.

Each side should indeed have it's own reason for having a specific rubber. One could even argue that having different wood on each side might even help (I know a couple players with pips on the BH who do).

Of course ending up with the same rubber (Tenergy 05 as said above) might happen too but each side still has a specific reason for this.