OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Stroke length on return of serve.

I am making inordinate amount of errors on long serves, which is most serves at my level. I am trying to loop everything long but main issues as I see it are those I previously mentioned regarding the forward Vs vertical components and lack of rotation.

A very strong player ( probably 2400+ US) told me I was trying too hard taking big swings Vs these on the forehand side and it should be short and sharp. I can't square this with form follows function. I am not missing because of mistiming the ball, or rushing, I make contact with the ball fine, these are usually not fast serves. But I am overlooping constantly especially against no spin or topspin, sometimes even against backspin. I often loop backspin into the net also. I want to loop everything long because that's what strong players do, I don't really want to prod it back. How can I adjust to this?

I almost feel like the best thing to do is get someone good at serving to feed me long serves for hours on end for practice. Against certain opponents with a good long side spin serve I am getting it back on the table less than half the time vs their serves. I am winning more points than them on my serve...yet getting beaten easily 3-0. It feels like my level will jump a lot if I can sort this because I estimate my win % is about 15-20% below what it should be based on rallying game and my open ups are actually better than most in terms of speed, spin technique. The thing just doesn't land. I have so e success keeping 'forward' as a mental note before each point, but it's success is limited.

I watch other people play the same people and just do passive pokey returns and have so much more success than me. It's frustrating.

I think I'm that guy - I can occasionally beat a 1900 player and lose to... well, whoever.
How do I set up my state of mind so that I always play my best?

Video would be worth 1000 words here. Maybe what the very strong player meant is that your swing is long and slow, so you aren't getting enough spin to bring your shot down on the table? Did he want you to swing faster, and that's what "sharp" meant? That sounds reasonable to me, but without video it's only guessing.

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Yoko Ono

I'll get him to clarify if I can but I think he does want it to be fast with a lot of forearm snap. He didn't emphasise rotation or anything much it seemed to be all about that forearm snap.

I'll get a video to Brett soon (have a straight backspin serve one) but I unfortunately don't have any from matches.

You can't. Nobody always plays their best. Brett just posted about himself playing in a 400 point range in the same day.

To me this is all about acceptance. That goes for richfs' post too. Some days you will play like crap. Much of it is related to physical stuff we purposely ignore in daily life, like not enough sleep, eating poorly, or being stressed out from work or life. For TT purposes you just need to realize, Hey, I'm not on today. Then think avout what you can do. It helps if you have a crap game designed for crap days, stuff you can still do on your worst day. For me, I can usually give up all the attacks, and serve, push and block well enough to beat anyone 250 points or more lower rated than me. So in the situation richfs described, if I was losing a league match to an 1100 usatt, I would revert back to that game.

I'm a broken record about this, but this is a completely fixable thing if you separate your emotions from the results of the point/game/match. The symptoms richfs is describing are symptoms of depression. And it is depressing to train so hard and see it all fall apart. But if you can look at the match as an outsider would, and see it as a set of problems to be solved, it engages a different part of your brain, a more analytical than emotional part. It takes practice, but it really helps.

That's why framing is so important. Richfs' coach saying before a match that they should all beat that guy was a complete own goal of coaching. I had a similar experience at a league night a few weeks ago. The club owner who is a many time US age group champion said "Why did you put pips on your bh? Pips are for people with bad bhs, yours was better before. i think it was a mistake" I proceeded to lose to some players I would have beaten 3 - 0 if my mind hadn't been framed like that. I was so pissed off and discouraged, thinking Did I waste all these months trying the SP? Do I have to go back to the inverted bh that I failed at for years?

I really wish she hadn't said that, but it's on me to control my own mind. I should have re-framed it. And I think that's what Brett is getting at with his visualization of a really good result, it's a less verbal, more direct form of my mental problem-solving.

If your dominant thought is "I'm playing like s***. I can't believe I'm going to lose to this guy, he sucks." the thought is the problem. You can't go anywhere with that. You just have to find a way to accept the situation and deal with it, so your mind will stop pumping out fear adrenaline and your body can relax. If visualizing works, great. If problem solving works, fine. It doesn't matter how you get off it, you just have to free your mind.

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

Yoko Ono

I can respond for days on the issue of playing players you are supposed to beat for whatever reason. The USATT or any ranking/ratings systems sometimes feeds that view. In the end though, the specific things that match you up with a specific opponent are the things you need to focus on. Even Cheng Yinghua said that he needed to play semi seriously to beat 1600 players. So I consider a 1600 player a player that has something that can threaten you if you allow them to do it repeatedly. This is especially important for those of us who do not have complete games (I have limitations with movement and reading spin that make it haeder for me to adapt to people who can play flat balls or who can vary spin when I am stuck at the table, amongst other playing styles).

Coaching can also make a big difference. I could use the story of Brett coaching me in NY but I will use another one. I am playing at the NA teams last year and I am killing.a guy and up 2-0. Suddenly balls start coming back and I get nervous and the score is 2-2. His teammate told him something at the end of game 2 but I didn't care or know what he told him. I tried really hard the last game and won 3-2.

At the end of the match, the teammate told me to stop looping to the forehand all the time. I had gotten so locked into winning points doing so that I didn't notice he had started cheating on that and being balls back and I wasn't recovering because the earlier balls were winners.

Don't pretend it is all about you in table tennis unless that is how you play your best table tennis.

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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

AC04 https://ttedge.com/videos/ac04-long-fast-serves is a good video about that. The biggest challenge I found is that people are very reluctant to let you practice against their serves over and over. I once hired a 2400 guy to practice with me and he refused to do this service return training.

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Tactics Enthusiast

I'm looking forward to seeing the video. It's super hard to comment without footage.

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That stinks that you paid a guy to train you and he refused to serve to you. What was he worried about, that you would take 50 points from him at a tournament someday? Pretty weak coming from a 2400.

I was only able to get down to Broward for two or three lessons in 2018, but the coach I chose there was fine with serving at me for an hour. It was really helpful.

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

Yoko Ono

I'm not sure why, but I really like this post. It's the post of someone in the trenches and not an office chair. When BRS and NextLevel post, it's based on real world experience from playing thousands of games.

If you play enough TT, you'll see it all. I watched myself beat a 63 year old guy 6-2 tonight. Yep, I lost 2 sets to a 63 year old guy and I was giving 110%. He last played for Thailand in 1988. I followed it up with a really good match against a high quality player. It's all possible on a given day.

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Yeah, it's pretty bad.

I strongly recommend paying someone to serve long so you can just make some loops. Sometimes I think it's all a player really needs. If the coach doesn't want to do it, find someone who will.

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Brett, do you meditate?

Let me help you square it with form follows function. Video is important and definitive but I find that learners confuse service return with rallies.

When you are close to the table, which is usually the case on serve return, strokes that are too vertical or powerful without extremely precise timing will overshoot the table if they are not against high weak returns. High weak returns give you a direct angle into the table so speed helps but relatively low balls where you need spin yo make the ball dip need more delicate timing or a perfect read of the spin to use hulk blooded strokes.

A similar argument applies to flicking. If you play a flick like rally loop, you will more often than not overshoot the table. You can't salute and stuff like that. You need to play a more direct and less lifting stroke.

Practice is important. But the 2400 player is telling you something in that he thinks you are trying to kill the ball when you should just play a basic stroke and then get ready to rally.

I like to describe killing serves with perfect loops as something that should be done when you have a perfect read of the ball. It is not something that you should expect to do against a level opponent who has the degree of spin variation you do. Looping long topspin definitely requires a smaller stroke that looping long backspin relative to the same incoming energy as topspin is going to rebound upwards and backspin wants to go down, allowing you to out more energy into the loop against the spin.

The above is general. But to finalize, a 2600 coach once told me that looping too aggressively on serve return was generally not a good thing. You could argue form over function and not understand her point. But her point was simple when I reflected on it and is part of what I am saying above: serve return is not the same as rally looping or looping into block. The variations in possible spin and placement and the incoming energy of the ball make it a more calculated endeavor than general looping.

People who refuse to realize this and both specifically practice serve and serve return as well as looping serves vs rally looping are usually unable to make the transition to aggressive serve return.

_________________
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

About FFF, it depends how early you pick up that the serve is long. If you are a little late, or the serve is half-long, then your stroke must be short because you are pressed for time.

If your opponent can't serve short, so you only need to pick up the direction, maybe you have time for a longer swing.

But to NL's post above, at least how I took it, what is the function of receive? It isn't to win the point outright. It's to get into the rally with the initiative, or at least not set up the server for a strong attack.

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

Yoko Ono

I've been working on a transition to the inverted C motion from my old upside down L motion.

A guy I haven't played a while just told me that my backhand stroke is a pips stroke.
I think he means it is too open for an inverted stroke at contact, which okay right now. I'll need to compile some video when I get the chance.

I'm just happy someone noticed that I'm doing something different.