OOAK Table Tennis Forum

This pips guy has a brutal inverted BH. For some perverse reason he wants to learn to use junk rubbers. He wants to twiddle eventually and really mess with people. But right now it's more of a mess for him as he's learning the pips. Yesterday he brought in a new fast/slow combination blade and some frictionless antispin, and was experimenting with that. I FH looped to his block for nearly an hour. Here's some not-very-exciting video of that.

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Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Hopefully, you can do this more often. It might be your camera angle but the finishing position didn't look great. You didn't put enough effort into staying consistently low at the beginning but it got better later.

I think you experimented a little with coming round the side of the ball but because you didn't come over the ball, the ball came up high.

You camped out on your right foot quite a bit. You have to work on staying level and being fairly balanced on both feet or transferring the weight.

Drills like this raise your spin level a ton if you loop topspin pretty soon after and modify your stroke. I would have asked for some reps on the backhand as well as this is where you really need this practice.

If he becomes your buddy, ask him to twiddle more. Like two shots inverted, two shots anti. That will make your ability to read and switch strokes monstrous.

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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

My first week of all people practice and no robot is done. I played about 16 hours, around 5 hours drills and the rest practice matches. I also clocked 400 miles and about 8-9 hours of TT driving. I'm exhausted and will take the next two days completely off from TT. Then, assuming people show up and plans are kept, another 15 hours over five days in a row Tues-Sat. It's pretty much a second job, but quite a lot more fun.

I didn't start this mainly to improve, but more because I thought the daily robot training was causing a repetitive stress injury to my shoulder. Still it's hard not to get caught up in the random ups and downs when playing matches, even for practice.

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Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

How do you feel your form is at the moment BRS? Are you playing well? Sense any improvement in any areas? You deserve some reward, sometimes its hard to see but it has to be there somewhere.

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Donic Waldner Senso V1,FH Baracuda Big Slam 2.0mm ,BH Victas Triple Regular 2.0mm

My form is exactly what reb says, moments of brilliance with loads of dreck in between. When I relax and stay down and move and concentrate I'm competitive with 1900s in a non-tournament setting. That means very little, but it's nicer than getting my ass kicked.

I wouldn't expect any changes after one week. Maybe eight weeks, or sixteen. Brett showed me something that improved my blocking and long pushes, but I did several weeks of robot practice on those. It's starting to show up in games now. What I am hoping will benefit from all the people practice is my receive and third ball. I'm serving 80-100% no-spin right now so the only ways my serve can improve are to be lower, or precisely half-long.

Really the reward is just getting to play. The driving is a big mental and physical hurdle to get over. But after a couple years of six days a week robot practice it's such a joyful process to just roll up at a club and hit with anybody.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

What did Brett show you?

It's interesting that you like robot use potentially to repetitive stress/strain injury. I can't be conclusive but I suspect something similar.

_________________
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 was one of his throwaways, like something super obvious. I asked him about pushes and he moved his arm about one inch back and forth, just far enough to get his wrist to move. Then he turned it vertical and did the same thing and said block, then flipped all the way over and said backspin serve. That was news to me.

About the robot - no proof - I'm just observing that really long periods of play don't seem to cause the same problems. Even an hour straight fh looping to that guy's anti didn't bother me.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Sure it means very little. I am happy we have videotape or I swear you would say nothing has changed.

Reb is largely pointing out, just as I keep trying to impress upon you, that you are working much harder than you need to and would benefit from an attitude adjustment that focuses more on spin and less on speed. Most importantly, learn to play the ball on your schedule, not your opponent's. Speed in TT is about getting into position. The stroke itself should be pure relaxation.

_________________
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

This is what my beloved former practice partner said to me more than any other advice/correction. Her version was "Wait for it."

I'm continually reaching for the ball when I am ready early, thereby turni g a strength into a weakness. At least I recognize it in real-time now. Other than hitting with players who change pace (and just being more relaxed overall) I'm not sure what I can do to train that away. Brett did a etts video about this same problem but I don't remember if there was a drill.with it. There hasn't been a follow-up.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Stand in one spot and loop the ball at different heights without scooping it - in other words, make your strokes largely similar. I posted a video of myself looping to a guy with short pips. Take the ball late but don't lift it - loop it with a forwards stroke over the ball. I will find the video here and repost and give you an idea.

_________________
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

Etts 12 kiran elbow position. It's less on loops and more on blocks pushes and hits, blocks are the worst. I wull ask Brett about it too.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Watch about 2 minutes of strokes in here. Note that the ball is varying in height and depth and I even step back to take the ball but my stroke may get larger but doesn't change- I never lift or scoop the ball to compensate for the lower height - I trust the topspin to make the ball dip. This is how you learn the difference between looping and flat hitting.

https://youtu.be/Ty9vvMlNyuU?t=718

Brett's answer was elbow positioning. Keep your elbow largely in the same place and you will reach less.

_________________
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

Hopefuly BRS won't mind me posting my GIF in this thread, but since he's always being accused of hitting the ball too hard, I wanted to post this here and get some opinions on what happened. This is the type of point that I can imagine happening to BRS also. So let's do a poll. What did the server do incorrectly in this point sequence?

A) He hit the ball too hard for his own good, the ball came back fast, and he could not recover.

B) He did NOT hit the ball too hard, but the ball placement was poor.

C) He did NOT hit the ball too hard. Rather, he did not recover properly and did not move his feet.

D) Something Else.




I understand the server won the point, but it was obviously luck. The receiver gave up on the point since he thought the ball was out.

A combination. The opening BH was right to the blocker - it was always going to be easy to block. It was hit fairly hard, so was going to come back hard, which meant getting into a ready position for the next ball was diffcult, because of the short amount of time. It's a trickier shot, as there's less table length, but I think the BH opener could have gone to the other side, where the receiver is exposed. The return would likely be easy to attack from the FH for a ball 5 topspin winner.

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Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!

You didn't do anything wrong. If you watch the receiver he had to reach outside his body for the block. He got lucky or good and blocked it right at your hip. That caused you to lean back a little making your response float higher than you intended. It's a nice point all around.

I disagree that you only won hecause he thought your ball was long. How could he have put away a high ball landing on the white line in his bh corner?

And you can post here anytime. Always happy to see your input.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono