OOAK Table Tennis Forum

It looks like I had better hurry up with my chopping technique video.

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Thanks guys, we shall see next time I play him and I'll experiment with the serves a bit then.

Shame I'm not your actual twin Brett, I'll gladly take all of your TT skills.

Wow, so many 'latent choppers' in here! You guys read my pretty long thread, right? Main takeaway from 4+ years of 'chopping': pips on backhand don't make you a chopper (but they help) - you have to actually play like one as well. That's the part where I failed the most, chopping is my B game at most right now.

But yeah, chopping is fun.

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You don't want to be me today Rich. This episode of Wash Up TT has resulted in an injury. I'm tempted to post a picture of it here, but I'm not sure if it's appropriate?

I've been working on my serve, as mentioned a couple of times. Before I come to Bangkok, I was practicing my serve and my racket caught my little finger on my non playing hand. It made my finger bleed in a bad way, which I was kind of happy about. I was happy because it made me realize that my racket was moving pretty quickly.

After playing 50 games or so in Bangkok, my racket has hit my chest a few too many times on the serve. I now have a lump/bruise the size of a golf ball. There is also a second lump for my less used backspin/no spin and that really hurts too. I've had to cancel all of my upcoming matches.

If anyone is a doctor, can you please let me know if I could potentially have a stroke or heart attack if these blood clots flick off into my bloodstream?

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LOL

I actually have a defensive racket and used to play with it from time to time. Probably it is time to do it again, at least for fun. What I personally found the most difficult with playing this kind of defense is not the chopping itself, but footwork. Against a decent player you have to run back early at the right moment to have a chance to chop, and I am not good at it.

When I play my regular game I actually chop once in a while when I am forced away from the table.

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Sounds like the snake serve bit you.
I get those bruises too sometimes when I practice, it's usually on my topleft ab/rib.. wonder if the location of the bruise could be a good guide for where to contact the ball in relation to the table

Hope you heal up quickly Brett!

Yeah, I should go to the hospital and tell them I have multiple snake bites.

I was in the club the other day and some little kid walked onto my court and said "show me the snake serve". I aced him a bunch of times and he was happy. I'm still trying to work out whether the snake video was a good idea. People play it on their phone in front of me and I cringe every single time.

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I'd actually like to have some meaningful information about how to transition to the away from the table defense in general, which also applies to fishing/lobbing, not only chopping. I tried to talk about it a while ago, and the consensus was "If you did not win the point by playing properly, you lost anyway, go home and practice looping heavy."

At the same time, retrieving can be very effective (just watch the BRS's last match he posted here). I practice lobbing/fishing against beginners, but I want to be able to pull it off against better players. Again, the problem is that I don't know when to run back and how to do it properly.

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Lobbing is not the TTEdge way. But I am not against defensive play, the problem is that you need to be willing to expend time and energy to master it and that for most players that time is better spent elsewhere unless they believe that defense like fishing and lobbing will be their primary style. Most people just do it on the fly and to practice their feeling/touch.

The idea that there is a right time to run back is totally false. Playing distance is almost 100% at your discretion once the game goes long. In fact, a true lobber will deliberately give you a high and back off the table to fish and lob. A lobber also has to be able to come back in for drop shots etc. If you want to practice something like lobbing, you have to be ready to lose points, nothing anyone says is going to prepare you for it against people with good smashes. The main thing is that you have to add sidespin and keep the ball deep. If you have a club you can practice at you are blessed. The shots are really like tennis shots not table tennis shots.

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Lumberjack TT Exponent

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

Like everything else it's probably key to decide early.

There is an actual lobber in that club, lobbing is his A game. He plays around 21 - 2200 that way. Somebody else said to me that lobbing is a much more viable style with the new ball, up to a fairly high level. It slows down so much more that it's harder to put away. He obviously controls the angles of return, anticipates, and keeps the ball deep all the time. And his endurance is way beyond me, so he just wears you down and by the 4th or 5th set you can't keep smashing ten times every point.

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My impressions was that many good players who in general play close to the table may at some point decide that they are not going to make it by staying close (for example, popped up the receive), and it is time to run back and try defending. But I am probably wrong.

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Here's a few of my thoughts on building your own strategy. This is all open for negotiation as it's subjective.

It's very hard to do everything. Very few players have a true mixed strategy of chopping, fishing, looping, blocking etc. At some stage, you need to define what you are doing. If you naturally run back from the table, then it makes sense to choose chopping/fishing. If you are almost standing on the table (like me), perhaps chopping and fishing aren't really for you. You'll be better off attacking and blocking/kick blocking. If you naturally stand 5 feet away from the table, you'll probably be best suited to looping off both sides, like Timo.

When coaching, my tendency is to teach people to stay close. Perhaps there's some bias there because I see the game through my own eyes. It may also have something to do with listening to a lot of Chinese coaches when I was young. The Chinese have always talked about the advantages of staying close to the table and attacking a lot with the forehand.

When you have limited time, I think it's important to define your game more. For example, if a 50 year old guy comes to me to learn TT, I'm just not teaching him to fish. I'll start him off on counterhitting and quickly move onto pushing and opening against backspin. I'll want the guy to stay close so he can cover the table and have greater margin for error. If you hit the ball from 100 feet away from the table, the table is a pretty small target. So the closer you are, the bigger the target. I think staying close is the right way to start people off, at least.

I'll write some more later.

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That is when they feel they have permitted the opponent an attack that they would find hard to defend at the table and they think they can do okay lobbing - they may try out lobbing and if they win one or two points they continue but if they lose enough points, they stop it as they realize it won't pay on that day for that opponent. This judgment Is an instinct based on the power of the opponent and the ability to run the ball down laterally. I used to back off to fish after popping up serves especially if the opponent didn't pivot and if the floor was wood. I just wanted a chance to play the ball back. For some people the distance I would go back to was looping distance but everyone is different and I was roughly 1900 at the time.

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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 how I feel. If you have limited training time, I think it should be used on building the strategy that gives you the best chance of winning matches. If your strategy is to fish, then you obviously should practice it. Fishing isn't really a common strategy though.

Henzell was the worst fisherman in the history of the top 100. It wasn't really an issue though because he had a solid strategy of staying fairly close and playing high quality backhand topspin.

Some very good players fish extremely well but it's just something that has just evolved in their game. These players don't intentionally decide to fish and they only do it when they are caught out.

If you want to have fun fishing and chopping, it's an okay thing to do.

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I often play beginners at the local league and at university, so from time to time I try fishing and lobbing. The reason why I am asking is that following the spirit of TTEdge, I want to do it with the right technique.

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