OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Traditional multiball was never a part of my training until my coach started doing it when I was almost 2000 as part of a mild philosophy change and it was never the dominant part of any coaching session except one that happened when I was already 2000. The closest thing I had to multiball was serve and third ball. Just about everything was vs my coach's block, which he varied by surface and technique depending on what we needed to practice. 4th ball counterlooping was limited but I would probably have done that earlier if I wasn't so stubborn about hitting instead of spinning the ball.

I personally believe that for all its limitations in consistency, adjusting to blocked balls help you get better much faster once you are up to the challenge.

The challenge for Cobalt will be his King Kong approach to looping. He wants to loop the ball as hard as he can almost every time, rather than practice different ranges so he can get his understanding and consistency way up. Without higher level blockers around him, no one will be able to give him the reps he needs and he won't get better that way anyways.

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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 might be a struggle to begin with... but with time and repetition his partner will soon learn how to block his best loops.

The guy I play with regularly can now block my hardest loops 19 times out of 20 when I hit them straight at his bat. If I want to practice consistency and form, I just need to make sure I target them correctly for him to block. In a match, if I want to put the ball past him, I have to actually use my brain - I have to aim, I have to use tactics, I have to make the ball HARD for him to block. For me, that's the best practice I can get in a lot of ways and it has made my forehand loop's penetration quite lethal in comparison to the rest of my game.

Multiball is superb for three things, if the feed is good enough:

• Fitness/movement
• General stroke form, e.g. making sure you're playing the same technique over and over again (though in my opinion a robot is just as good as even the best feeder for this purpose)
• Learning to loop consistently against the push

The latter in particular can be hard for attackers to learn if their regular playing partners are also attackers. Even then there are ways round it though - looper serves backspin, opponent returns with a push, looper opens up off it.

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Thanks for all the replies. So much to comment on but i think for now I'll just look to do some placement drills. There's one fella he used to beat me, then when i improved i started beating him, now he beats me again. He's the best blocker in the club and i think note that he's used to me, he's got my 'King Kong' approach under control as i tend to hit the ball to the same spot. Maybe I'll slow down on the technique and go with variety.

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

Not just placement drills or variety but consistency when the ball comes back. One of the issues that the recent match and your practice showed and which the blocker you speak of is clearly taking advantage is your ability to make consecutive loops under pressure or when forced to move. That's one of the things that you don't get in the kind of multiball you practice and the disadvantage of repeatedly looping with a large stroke too close to the table. When you play blockers, you have to take advantage of their relative lack of aggression by using the right kinds of loops to set them up before going for the kill. Otherwise, all they have to do is get back one loop and you fall apart. But with your spin level, I would be surprised if you couldn't do a well placed slow/medium paced spinny loop that would either win the point or get a popup that you could smash or loop drive easily. Like I said, you may not realize it but you already have a good and powerful forehand. If I was coaching you, I would work on other parts of your game which are much further behind or at least get you to practice looping against various kinds of balls and with more kinds of spins and placements. IT just seems that you have become so enamored with its strength that you want to make its strength stronger, rather than work on its weaknesses. I have a theory for why, but that's another story.

When you have a stroke like yours and want to improve your results, simply improving the basic technique usually doesn't do much. It is adapting it to the demands of the point patterns that you play that does. Like I said, I had worse forehand technique than you did for most of my playing time. The difference was that my forehand was adapted to doing specific things that came up in the structure of the point and it did those things well enough to keep me afloat.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if even if after you improve your placement, you still have issues with the blocker because of your backhand. You may not realize it but when they difference in quality between your forehand and backhand is large (I experienced it in the reverse way from you), the disparity is obvious and people start avoiding your weapon and you have to make them pay or continue the pressure with the other side.

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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

I've no doubt this is correct. I've often said that I can hit 2 or 3 in a row but he makes you hit 4, 5..10?


Correct, but more like 2. If I can hit 3 or 4 in a row and still lose the point, usually I'm pretty happy with that.


Against most people yes but against this guy, not usually. I often win the first set fairly easily to him and then he adjusts and I've been losing in 4 or 5.


How do I do this?


To be honest it surprises me when you use words like 'strength' and 'powerful'. When I was hitting with a previous practice partner, he was making comments that should have been able to get past his blocking with my loops. He has a very powerful and spinny loop which most can't get back so I guess I was trying to get to that level. Though perhaps when he said i should be able to get it past him, perhaps he meant placement and I took it as to blast harder.


Righto then, looks like we close this thread and start a new backhand thread. My current practice partner virtually has no backhand and he wants to develop a shot where he can put the ball away, so it might be something we get started on.

By the way, tonight we had a practice session at the club and didn't work on technique at all, we just worked on footwork by doing the side shuffle as per the Brian Pace looping footwork video. Was good practice. I'm a shocker for admiring a good return and being caught out of position.

Thanks for the feedback.

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

IT may sound crazy but it's as simple as someone to feed you a ball with a particular spin (you may use pips or inverted or anti to create the spins) and simply try to loop them and see the results. Your stroke will have to hit a certain point on the ball to stop the spin correctly and have to follow through a certain way to loop the all. Or you could just practice using loops with sidespin like hooks and fades which involve the bent wrist. Both TTEdge and Pingskills have accessible free videos on Youtube on these sidepsin techniques. OF course, always in these sessions recalibrate your loop with loops against pure topspin and backspin, but then do these spins or other kinds of loops in the middle of such loops. In fact, even without working on those loops, like I Said, your countertopspin or loop against topspin in general can be improved as your loop is often upward. I think your first post was supposed to fix this, but other than coming across the body and dropping the shoulder, you were on the right path.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when learning to loop is to be deathly afraid of missing. Your stroke is good, so your goal should be to test it, and to use the misses to learn to loop better, not to avoid situations that will expand your understanding of looping. Now, my understanding of looping is very broad - it just means to swing at the ball in a way that applies an aggressive topspin or side-topspin orientation to the ball. IT all depends on where the racket starts, where the racket contacts the ball and where the racket finishes.




This is one approach to the game, and you can very well take it, but if my observation of your video is true, this guy is taunting you. Yes, you can have powerful loops that are hard to block, but I find that with proper blocking technique, even 2700-level loops are blockable if you know where they are going to be end up consistently. In a match, no one knows where the ball will go, and that is why loops become hard to block. I have opponents who I know that once they can touch the ball, my loop will come back. I don't have weak loops either. So I have to challenge them so that they reach for the ball with bad racket angles. IF your blocker tells you that, work on your racket head speed and timing, or just play him in a match and loop to his elbow and see if he can block your loop then. Or you can improve your blocking technique and then ask him whether his loops are so spinny after that. Whenever you start blocking someone's loops, they get shocked and think their loops are bad, but the truth again is that with proper blocking technique, you should be able to block any ball if you evaluate the spin on it and know where it is going. At the higher levels, it is the fact that their opponents don't touch the ball or have to take risks to return it that usually wins the point.



Backhand technique is the 20th circle in Dante's Hell. Beware of what you ask for...

Ideally, look at how you win or lose points in the first 3 or 4 shots of the match if your focus is on improving your performance level. IT's rarely purely about stroke technique but about bringing in stuff that changes the way you win or lose points. Being able to open with a backhand topspin vs underspin is probably the biggest reason to work on backhand technique - other reasons pale in comparison.

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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

Was training tonight at the club. The last week has been interesting as I've at times been a bit despondent (nothing to do with comments here) as I've not really felt that much improved. But I've also picked up a few tips to take a new direction and got a bit of spark back. Tonight I finally saw a bit of improvement in both me and my recent practice partner. The footwork drills we did earlier helped with our mindset and we're being conscious of moving our feet more to get into position.

Looking at the videos below, recovery appears to be a big issue for me as when I have to hit a forehand and a backhand in consecutive shots, I'm often out of position. My backhand topspin shots on their own were pretty decent but few and far in between. Its funny what started me on this journey was that I'd basically lost all my confidence in forehand and virtually had none, now its the backhand that lacks a bit of confidence although its also improved, just not at the same rate.

I've talked about placement in the last few days and I really felt tonight that I was looking to put the ball in the right areas more by taking more notice of where my opponent was. The other thing I tried to focus on was a better ready position. My playing arm is too tucked in and backhand orientated so I tried to get it out a bit more like BRS.

Of course things aren't going to snap into place immediately for every point however winning an extra couple of points that normally I would have lost actually improves me quite a bit.

All up I'm happy with the result of tonight and feel like I'm heading upwards again.

First video is of a match against a returning player who was club championship material in his younger days. Equipment has change a bit since then and he struggles a little with serve return but the technique is there and I think will be in our top few players when he does come back to competition in a few months.

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

I've gone back and done some stats on the above video. Out of 70 points played, apart from the ones that GM won or lost off his own bat I came up with the following stats.

Winning points
Forehand loop 9
Serve 12
Backhand loop 2
Backhand punch 1

Losing points
Forehand loop 5
Unforced error/dumb shots 9 (6 backhand, 3 forehand) many of these were backhand push trying to keep the ball low
Service error 1
Backhand loop 1
Forehand loop returned 9 which is me making an error the very next shot.

An alarming stat which shocked me a bit was that when my opponent is able to return my opening loop, I won 4 points and my opponent won 14. This is both backhand and forehand. Not a great stat for me and it tells me why that good blocker is getting on top of me. He only needs to return one shot to have a 77% chance of winning the point, if he can return 2 or 3 or 4, its likely to be near 100%.

I've put the points in question below but not sure if the errors are mainly coming from: -
1) Bad footwork
2) Slow recovery
3) Being caught on my heels after the opening loop

Perhaps its all of the above but I think its something that needs urgent addressing however I'm unsure of the best way to target this. Random ball drills will help but what is it that I need to correct.

Also interestingly my success % with backhand loop was better than forehand loop, although from only a few shots.

Video below.

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

That was a lot of points so different things are happening. Sometimes he just made a nice block at your elbow or wide. IMO it is better to know one problem than ten, even if you have ten, because you can fix one thing if you focus on it.

So my vote for the one thing you should fix is stop walking away from the table durng the point. Practice looping vs block multiple times and holding your distance from the table constant. You give up all the angles and the time when you back off.

If your blocker can manage it, try to alternate looping at his fh and bh. You hit two loops in a row to the same place a few times in the video, so you don't want to train that in even more.

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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

Cobalt, it is not unusual for someone with a forehand like yours to lose points after the first loop is returned. Ovtcharov, for example, often loses points after his backhand loop is returned and I as a serve and third ball player tend to do better on shorter points vs peers. That said, I used to be a rally player but improved serving tilted the balance and you can guess why.

My point is that you are in a good place with many avenues for improvement. Don't let the stats overly influence you, but rather, decide how you want to play and take your game there. How good do you want to be? What style do you want to play? Two winged looper or one? Serve and attack on 3rd ball or a broader fifth ball and rally approach?

Knowing how good you want to be sometimes helps as it is easier to get better with some styles than others.

As for what to work on, some people start off trying to blast the ball by their opponents. Others start off with heavy but slow/medium topspin and see how their opponents play that before doing more. I find the latter to be very strong at the lower levels because most players do not have strong counters to opening loops so they tend to block. They do not have as much practice blocking slow heavy topspin so they tend to pop the ball up and this creates an easy fifth ball shot. Even those with good blocks don't put the ball by you and as long as you recover, you can play the point. Placement and recovery are key as is heavy spin. Learn to move the ball around or hold your placement until the blocker is committed. This attitude is hard when you think power is the key, but it gets better fast.

If you want to work on this in multi ball, place targets on the table. Ask your feeder to give you a backspin ball then a topspin ball. The backspin ball will be your first loop, the topspin ball your second. You can have one backspin and then two topspin or three etc. The feeder can put the balls in predictable or unpredictable places at fast or slow speeds to challenge you. Our you can just play the point patterns with a friend.

That said, if the blocker is your primary target, get a match with him. It's better to review what happens against players who trouble you consistently. Sometimes, specific things are at play that are both tactical and technical.

_________________
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

Interesting comment, BRS. Cobalt also seems to enjoy FH chopping. Not sure why. That's one of the reasons I asked him how he wants to play. Mid distance rallying is not my cup of tea either but the question of how to play needs to be answered first.

_________________
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

Does he enjoy fh chopping, or is he doing it because he is too far away and the ball drops before reaching his loop zone?

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

Yoko Ono

I don't know how to chop so I can't tell the difference .

_________________
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

In the past my forehand was so bad that the chop was my safety shot. Now i sometimes do it without thinking due to as Brs said, being out of position or sometimes i tend to do it after someone has blocked say two loops as i don't trust i can do three. I wouldn't say i like to chop, my brain makes me do it.

I can take a bit from each of your posts, thankyou.

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

Let me give you some incentive to do 3/4/5 loops. When you are a looper in a rally, your spin is always unpredictable so as long as you are moving the ball around even a little, that puts as much pressure on the blocker as it does on you, even more on the blocker as if he misreads your spin, he puts the ball into the net usually. IT's part of the reason you should feel comfortable swinging at the ball in more than one way. You can actually do drills where you scramble or loop from off the table with sidespin to give yourself a chance to get back into the rally. Those hooking loops have awkward trajectories for a close to the table blocker as do high-arcing fishes and lobs.

_________________
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