OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Thanks reb, always happy to get feedback from you. Several people have commented on my ready position. I agree it looks weird, but I don't see how it hampers my game at all, or what I would do to make it look prettier. I want my arm out away from my side, and my back is just a problem in general. I'm happy as long as I am able to play at all. Pain forced me to stop playing tennis and to stop running. And I really loved running.

I do need to have a relaxed grip and be ready to loop long serves, but that's all mental as you say, and won't change the look much.

And I'm flattered that you see patches of brilliance amidst the dreck. It used to be all dreck and no brilliance.

The video NL posted is interesting in that the kid is crazy aggressive. Of course he was playing up 400 points so why not, but I'd guess he plays that way all the time. That's the direction I want to go, but it's not very natural for me. I don't play up enough to where passive play gets punished instead of rewarded. And it's mentally hard to lose points/games/matches almost deliberately by being aggressive. That has real consequences in getting less table time, and I'm spending a lot of money/time/effort to get match play. The club all these recent matches are from is a 75-90 minute drive one way. So I have to decide if I'm doing this to improve or to have fun.

The robot isn't great. Brett says I need to play much more to improve. Unfortunately McC canceled our practice again this week. It's his lowest priority and we have skipped four weeks out of six. I don't think I can keep calling him a practice partner when he doesn't show for practice. I have VS, a learning player ~1350 coming over tomorrow. We'll see how that works out. MD is only here during the school year, but I'm going to start training with him as well. If I only hit with humans one day a week I'm not going to get far above 1700. But IMO as long as I train with ~1400s I won't get far either. There's a reason no one in this county is over 1800, including 30 year players and one who trained seriously and competed as kid. I can only travel one day a week to play, and I don't think 5 hours on one day produces the same learning as an hour a day five days a week. But I'm not moving so that's what it is.

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Yesterday I did some FH flicking over the table against moderate backspin. I started out by flicking every ball in the net over and over again and I was getting pretty frustrated. Then I remembered what NL said about contacting the ball on the side, and I started flicking these balls harder with good dwell time. It was the first time I understood how to generate dwell time on a FH flick.

So in my opinion, it may be easier to appreciate what NL is saying with the forehand over the table than with the BH. The BH banana is complex enough that I'm not always sure where on the ball I'm making contact.

If you hit with 1400s, you can get much better pretty quickly but given your mindset, you may not. If you hit with me everyday, you may not get much better either unless you are doing the right things. I play a 1400 guy all the time and he is still stuck at 1400 because he never learns to attack and all he does is block. 1400s can feed you multiball. They can learn to return your serves. They also can serve the serves that you want to practice attacking. You can practice new serves on them and get an idea how to handle passive responses.

You have been asked to slow down all this time. Maybe part of the problem is that you don't want to play the players that give you time to learn to relax?

Reb and I are trying to tell you how better players approach this game. You need to take a relaxed perspective to the match. You need to become extremely consistent against the easy ball. You need to practice serving your heaviest backspin serve, let your partner push or heavy to any point on the table, then loop it calmly with the backhand or the forehand. 1300s can do this. I play a 1300 player whose push is as heavy as anyone.

Reb is telling you miss a lot of shots. No one gets more consistent by playing players at their level most of the time. No one. You can only experiment if you play players that let you experiment while you have time to think. You can always make them give you a higher quality ball. I will give you an example.

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

It's always easier to learn a stroke or concept on the side of your game that has better feel. For me, I would feel the reverse of what you are saying but I get it.

Spin avoidance is a critical concept if you want to get better in table tennis. At the higher levels, there is too much spin on the ball for you to not find a safe point to contact the ball

That said, this is something that you can practice very easily on both sides with ball drops. But BRS at this point thinks ball drops are probably for 1400 players.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Very true. No argument here.



Let me start off by saying that I agree that he could improve this with ball drops. But here's the thing: one has to come to appreciate the power of a concept, IMO, before one is motivated to practice it. With ball drops, there is no incoming spin on the ball, so a player does not come to appreciate the contrast between the different contact points on the ball and it's effects on how the stroke feels.

I've been reading everything you've been writing about spin avoidance for quite some time now, but for me, it's mostly just been words. Yesterday was the first time that I felt an appreciation for what you're saying. I had always assumed that your theory about spin avoidance was just a safer way to play. And I am not a guy that likes to play it safe. I didn't understand that by hitting the ball where the spin was less intense, it would be easier for me to impart my own spin on the ball and play a more aggressive stroke.

So what I'm saying is that it may be quite some time before BRS appreciates the concept, and that's perfectly fine.

Ringer,

So did you try it out because you appreciated the importance of the concept or try it out because I had been bugging you (or rather BRS) for a while now to give it a shot?

Let's apply what you said to looping, which I refused to do for a long time:

"I've been reading everything you've been writing about looping for quite some time now, but for me, it's mostly just been words. Yesterday was the first time that I felt an appreciation for what you're saying. I had always assumed that your theory about looping was just a safer way to play. And I am not a guy that likes to play it safe. I didn't understand that by looping, it would be easier for me to consistently hit the ball harder and faster and play a more aggressive stroke."

Remember, my coach told me that I needed to spin. I told him I wanted to hit the ball harder. He told me that he knows of no way to hit the ball harder consistently other than to spin it or to get good at spinning it. IT ended up being a combination of being tired of losing and seeing other people get better that made me try it and then I become a convert. I can't say I appreciated the importance of spinning before I started doing it, but after I did it, I just started timing the ball better, even when I didn't spin.

Everything starts out slow. That's the mistake everyone makes. They want to run before they walk and complain about why they don't get better running all the time. They wouldn't try to learn calculus before learning algebra but it shows how much respect they have for TT. With the exception of one video which I never showed you, I have never illustrated spin avoidance to BRS with slow strokes. In fact, the balls I have hit have been quite powerful. Just like looping in general, the safety comes from the nature of what you are doing, not what it becomes once it is sufficiently advanced. The key is to learn to play at a pace that lets you read the game.

And just like looping, spin avoidance is something people stubbornly refuse to get it. Just like looping, spin avoidance some people think introduces risk and is too slow. Just like looping, the gains are incredible once mastered.

So I have no illusions that it will be an immediate thing for BRS. But he needs to be reminded to try it enough until he sees the point. Hopefully, he will have an epiphany like you.

These things are so much easier to do in person. And even in person, it took me months of talking to Big D before he finally got it. Eventually, you too will see that you can't attack every ball hard and that unless you put some margin and recovery in your game, you will struggle as better players are equipped with all the tools to make you play more shots. Setting up the opponent becomes key and this is what playing "safely" teaches you to do.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

A player who is advanced enough should appreciate the contrast in what happens when you hit the ball in different ways during ball drops and take it back to his regular stroke practice. Ideally, one should be able to do multiball and BRS has a robot. I can't blame BRS too much, but the whole point of going side and over is not just spin avoidance in some cases, but a longer trajectory. You trade the directness of a fast topspin sometimes for having a longer arc on the ball and this can be safer depending on context. You can see this on your ball drops.

But I guess this kind of thing is not necessary or useful to many players. And I guess it might not address your question of motivation. The truth is that in the end, I am just trying to tell people the thing that I learned that made it easier for me to play at my current level. IF BRS isn't motivated enough by the idea that he can play a consistent attack vs heavy backspin using the stroke after hitting lots of backspins into the net in every match, I can't do anything about that.

What I do need to see is that BRS is consistently trying to avoid the main spin axis and get the ball over the net. If he is, then the stroke gets better and faster over time as you get practice aiming at that point on the ball and read the play faster. This is the secret to relatively rapid and stressless table tennis improvement. Learn to play slow/medium spinny topspins so you can get better while playing matches and improve your shot selection in real time. A ball comes to BRS at 5mph and BRS's first instinct is to hit it hard rather than just make the right contact. No one gets better that way.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

OK, the thing with your stiffness is it hampers how you take the first ball. You're trying to be low with your arms out, I get that, and its cool. But you're not truly ready because there's a moment of breaking from stiff to moving that hampers you. You're not bouncing on your feet and your arm is looking like it expects a loop forthcoming every time (and even when it does come yur strike is inconsistent because its set for that robotic response. NL is certainly right about 1400 training partners, there is heaps you can do to use what they can give you. And even if they don't want to drill and only play a game, there's plenty you can experiment with in the game (and if they win the odd game cos of it it'll keep them keen ). Thing is, you don't look too stiff in the rest of your game, so maybe just focus on loosening up, drop your free hand a bit, bounce on your feet some more and watch the indications of the server as to where you'll need to meet the ball so you have more time to do so....I think this will "unstiffen" you some and pay dividends over time....just my advice take it or leave it.

You are a lot more mobiie than I am despite your own niggles, and so I'm keen to see you use that to your best advantage. Let me relate my matches tonight (one in particular) to demonstrate what and why I'm keen abut this. I played my first match against a guy who serves short and long, pushes around waiting for his moment and then attacks fairly well from either side with a medium pace shot that he hides direction on fairly well (so its more effective than the pace may suggest). I was beating him easily out of the blocks (like 6-1). I played him 5 or 6 weeks ago and won 4-0, so I was now looking for same. Suddenly he began reading my game better (I think memory kicked in on how to play me). Anyway, he came at me hard and got to 7 all. From there though I pulled a few tricks and beat him 11-7. In the next set, he pushed again and I won 12-10. Then he pushed the boundary and beat me 11-9. Once again, I got back on top (just) and won the next set 13-11. So I was 3-1 up and comfortable. Now my mobility with an arthritic knee isn't great, but I move little amounts just to position my feet and make my shots. In the 5th set though, I was 2-1 down to start and I got a pop-up from him in an awkward spot in my BH side, but it was at a point I figured I could smash with my FH just by getting around it a bit. I tried to push off on my right foot to move around as I committed to the FH shot. Knee power just didn't let the push off happen, so I ended up going ahead with the smash anyway and made a heck of a clanger shot. Little bit of twinge in the knee. Then 2 points later I twinged the knee again and I lost the little mobility I had almost altogether. I lost this set 11-2!! In the 6th set, I tried to pull out all stops to close out the match and ended up losing it 11-9. So we went to a 7th set and now I was seeking all the tricks I could find to outsmart him without having (or being able) to move. And bear in mind, when I can't move at all, my FH becomes next to completely useless as I rely on feet positioning to make a good shot. So I danced pip spin all around the guy in some very long rallies where I allowed him very few attacking shots and took this set 11-2. Phew! Sorry for the long description, but what I hope you get from it, is how much is gained or lost by just being able to make tiny positioning adjustments or not. Your ability to move is way better than mine, but your game style is also more demanding on movement. But you still need to make the "right" movements to fit with your game and be making them at the right times. Positioning yourself well makes this game so much easier and let's your strokes flow more naturally.

Its 8 weeks into the 10 week season btw and I'm leading player by 1 match, so I couldn't stomach losing this. So, the second think (besides taking max advantage from the movement you have), to take from this is adapting your game and shots to whatever is going on on the table can have a big impact on match outcomes. Oh, and I had a rest and came back for my second match and won it 4-0 with a lot of FH smashes on the guy cos I had that slight movement back. There are going to be times though when you get caught out on the movement thing, and that's where having the ability to adapt, outsmart and improvise your shots to your opponent will be needed to maintain your dominance.

Hope this (not so) mini Reb Report helps you to see where I'm coming from.

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

Training is not just doing drills but playing matches as well. If you only have access to lower level players, then you need to get creative with your training. Some things you can do are
- try to beat your opponent by not allowing him to score more than 4, 5, or 6 points. If he does, you lose the game. It's not as easy as it sounds.
- give your partner handicap points. Increase the handicap points every time you win a game, decrease the handicap points when you lose. This helps you to maintain intensity thru the entire game/match.
- play games where you focus on something that needs improving. For example, if you need to work on 3rd ball attack, only serve half-long backspin and if you don't attack his return, you lose the point. Try working on placement. One thing that I like to do and is a lot of fun is forcing my opponent to move. I hit the ball to very wide angles from side to side, not so hard to win the point, and watch as he struggles to keep up.
- lower level players can be your training partner without them knowing it. For example, I'm trying to perfect my BH flick so I try to BH flick every single one of their serves. If they serve to my FH, I have to move to execute it properly so I'm getting practice with my footwork as well. There's this guy at my club who's maybe 300 points below me but who has decent short serves for his level. He wins an occasional match and he's thrilled and I get to work on my BH flick. Win - win.

I practice with Japsican, who's about 300 points below me. He's a decent chopper so I get practice against a chopper, which I badly need.

Exactly. Developing solid strokes at a manageable pace is key. You can't just throttle the engine and expect to get traction from the word go. And this is why positioning correctly is also key, because that successful stroke won't come from just anywhere you decide to be.

_________________
I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

So you don't have to watch these videos as they are too long - just move around within them and get an idea of what is happening.

Andy is probably not even 1200, though he is getting good coaching. So I practice looping to his block for a long time while in England. I am looping to his backhand block and he can put it anywhere on the table. I am practicing being relaxed and consistent. I miss quite a few loops and he misses quite a few blocks but the goal is just to practice being relaxed and consistent after we finish the warm up. I block for him for a while. We could experiment as well if necessary. For someone like BRS who hits the ball too hard and can't vary contact points on slow long pushes, this is valuable practice at just keeping the ball on the table with topspin. If his partner can't block but learns the right technique, this is valuable as well. Andy and I play a few matches, but he has a good coach so I don't try to do much with him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzfwsNnlIWU

Since I play this next guy often but not always in the same week/month, I am trying to figure out how to play behind my punch serve when people push it as the sidespin messes me up. He has a good push. In the beginning, he is netting the ball. I didn't record the beginning so you don't see it. But later, he stops missing it almost entirely because he has picked up something after seeing it so often. So he wins the first game after I start recording. I then win all the rest of the games. He has been playing against my heavy topspin for almost a year now and has not gotten that much better at dealing with it because he won't learn to do proper TT strokes and partly because my topspin is getting heavier - he is getting better on the whole as a player. We played about an hour to an hour 15 minutes in total I think of which I recorded about 35 mins. Playing marathons makes it harder to do lame stuff and win.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJyp0UVRlms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FntZD-QJ3lU

This is my experience with most lower rated players if they play you often enough - over time, they just get used to your serve and serve return game and you now have to actually play better strokes to get the ball by them. They learn your spin level, so they learn to block your ball unless your spin is way beyond what they are used (in which case if they learn to block properly, that goes away as well). They learn where you like the ball and try to avoid putting it there and learn where to wait for the 4th ball, so getting them to put it there consistently or moving around the ball is a sign of progress or a high quality serve. You don't have to coach them (it helps though) but you can serve to them often enough to enable them to get an idea of your spin and then start playing them so that they start giving you good returns. If you know their strengths, play against their strengths to get better if the gap is huge. IF they don''t have strengths, get them to feed you multiball if you think they suck that much.

But given that Andy can block my control loops with practice, I think it makes no sense to me that say that a 1400 player can't help you get much better with simply learning to loop with control. You should know and learn how to raise their level or know what you need to do to make them improve your game. Ask the question the right way and you will find the answers.

In fact, I know one guy who went from 1300- 1800 mostly by hitting with one practice partner who is now lower rated than him. They both have strong topspin games - the guy's practice consistency is easily at my level if not higher - but of course, their games suffer because they don't work on all the other stuff that I do that is required to win matches.

Brett has given BRS enough information on how to improve to play anyone and improve. Yes, it will happen faster if you play better players a bit more often, but once a week is enough - that's how often I play better players these days - I go to a league or play at my club. But not so often that you don't play worse players. In fact, if you don't get extremely good at beating worse players, you will likely have major consistency gaps in your offensive game and be liable to getting upset at tournaments because you don't know how to attack easy balls consistently.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Yes. It all ties in together. When you have the manageable stroke, you realize how much time you have to get into position. Get there early and you can be more aggressive. Get there later and you can play the manageable stroke. Practice then becomes about raising the level of that manageable stroke, and not about freestyling. Footwork/movement becomes the glue that ties together the ability to get there early on time as well as anticipation. But if you don't have a stroke, you will lack confidence moving to and playing the ball. Slow topspins start out that way but don't remain that way per se unless you like that style.

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

The other thing that helps a lot is watching videotape of yourself doing the right thing. You just ignore the mistakes and replay what you did well repeatedly. Many guys with limited training time, including prior versions of myself, review their best shots or best footwork displays.

Table tennis requires you to raise the level.of your average shots, not to raise the quality of your best shots. You don't make your average shots better by trying to hit every shot as hard as possible. You make your average shot better by making it as relaxed and consistently good as possible.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Even at my level I can attest to this! Low level soft players give me fits, even at 200 points lower. I'm better now though.

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We have a 60+ year old lady in my club who is extremely ratings conscious. She never plays in her events on Saturday claiming she doesn't have time and often plays and loses all her matches on Sunday. She gets the occasional upset because she uses LP on the backhand but her game is destroyed by her ratings conscious play. And she can't get better because she is always practicing against better players and lacks experience beating weaker players at her level who adapt to her pips. It's dealing with such people as well as myself that informs a lot of the stuff I tell BRS.

I used to be ratings conscious myself. Then I learned to loop on both sides and I miraculously managed to rally better with pips. Then I learned to hit better and that helped even more. But the big breakthrough that made my game more consistent was fixing my serve game. After that, I just stopped having real 50 pt losses. With one exception, every bad loss I had was to a player who either got adjusted or a player who got to my level a few tournaments later. But it was continuing to play those players and seeing how my serve game improvements started modifying my results profile that helped. When I was 1500, I could still lose to people using premades. But since my loops and ball reads have improved, it is much harder now. I play them and beat them easily.

It was a process. I remember when I used to think it was bad to be the top seed. Then after breaking 1900, I fell to 1750 and played an U1750 as the top seed. The top two seeds made the final and I beat the #2 seed in a 5 set match where he won every game he won at 13 and I won mine at 2,2, and 8. That changed my attitude to being the top seed and I have enthusiastically repeated that quite a few times. I don't play U2000s anymore at some clubs because.I have won those too often. I still would like to win Westchester though.

You can develop serves that 1400 players cannot return by playing 1400 players. Brett has already given you the template. Playing higher players once a week is largely enough. But it.is easier to know this when you.are not TT starved. There are still people in the US who would kill to be where.BRS is.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus