OOAK Table Tennis Forum

If we include Europe, then consider Portugal (TTPOR at Setubal) as well - it's more of 1-1 training than camp. Just got back from there and loved it.

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

At Weekend Social Doubles, a bunch of people started playing with long pips this last year or so. I watched that EmRatThich video about how to beat people using long pips - his advice was serve long topspin into the pips. True enough, if I'm playing singles the return is usually easy to loop. Problem is when I'm playing doubles, my doubles partner either can't loop the return or ends up hitting a high return into the net. So plan B. Normal short serves work OK, but what I find works (against this particular left hander) is to serve really short and really wide so the ball drops off the side of the table. This guy usually stands way back because he's expecting a long serve, and misses a surprising number of the short ones. If he gets the ball back it's a short push so my doubles partner can easily push it back (often wide in the other direction).

Iskandar

At club level, the majority of serves are either long or half-long. You just have to be ready to make a loop. At elite the level, the majority of serves are short or half-long. Elite players always overestimate their opponent's ability to serve short too.

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Bit of a revelation and what to do next.

My play recently has been extremely poor especially against any sort of defensive player, blocker, chopper, pusher etc.

A team mate told me I was brushing up on the ball as a component too much and not forward enough. Next league match I won so easily, after massively struggling with my results, with the subtle change of subconscious thought of forward. My weight transfer, rotation, everything just worked better. My best shots are counter looping and loop against backspin. In one case because I was forced to go forward, in the other perhaps because more upward component is actually ok.

Now what to do with this revelation? I want to ingrain the more forward looping and get rid of my bad habit of always brushing up the back of the ball. The difference in quality and consistency was amazing. I hope it wasn't just an abberation.

If I knew this 2 months ago my results would be so much better. Frustrating but exciting to get on the right track again.

LTT99 was a revelation to me, at least on my forehand. I'm still thinking to myself: that's not backspin, use more rotation and less up.

Still doing heavy top spin with less power has a ton of value as it seems to be consistent under pressure and often buys me that little bit of time to recover. Slow spin is still king for me, but it's nice to have the power I was lacking that NL mentioned many moons ago.

This is Brett just about to start his swing towards the ball. It's more shallow than I was doing. This side on shot was key for me.

https://i.imgur.com/aACLzUZ.png

Interesting discussion. What I was told on this was that as soon as the play changes to topspin, never let your bat go below table height. If you don't put the bat down you can't swing up. That way I don't have to think about the swing itself. Just keep my hand up.

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Yoko Ono

This could be very useful... I'll try and see. Although have to be careful not to overthink it and it cannot apply literally 100% of the time obviously.

I watched this before but it didn't have that revelatory feeling until now when I could directly correspond it with what I have been experiencing!

I am not sure about the exact torso thoughts though, I don't think about torso and so I think I could be muddled. I think it's more like thinking simply up vs forward for me and my torso does what it wants but I will experiment in training.

Thanks guys. Looking forward to progressing on this to carry me hopefully out of my slump.

The reason my racket is above the table is I'm haven't dipped my torso down and around. In training, try to think about the body before the arm. It's actually very difficult (and wrong) to place your racket below the table when you've turned your body straight back, as per the attached picture.

LTT99 should tell you a lot about TT. The angle of your torso should be dynamic and adjust to every situation. The torso shapes the arm, not the other way.

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When a coach says "come forward on the fh topspin", you should translate that to "stop dipping your torso and spin it directly back and forward".

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It seems to me that tttedge.com has a big focus on using the body to support the arm movement. In training I can make reasonably good strokes based on the correct body movement in forehand and backhand. However the correct body movement usually falls apart in real matches and that is pretty frustrating. In matches i just try to hit the ball with power and placement. Perhaps for me this is the wrong focus or intention in a match situation. Perhaps I should have a focus on how I can use my footwork first then get the body in the correct position to allow full rotation or bow position and just let the arm follow with good racket speed. So a lot more focus on how my body is supporting the arm compared to a winning focus. I will try shadow swings for 20 minutes each day with footwork with this intention and with more body awareness and see if it can follow more into training then into a match situation. Any tips from others about this area would be helpful. The book the inner game of tennis could be a help I think???

Thanks Brett, I never think about my torso so maybe I need to give this a try.

In Ep 3 of the "Reasons Why Timo Boll Is So Good", Timo is showing how he puts his left leg in front of the right leg and even below the table when performing a topspin against backspin.
I'd always thought that the "normal" position of the legs during a topspin stroke was the opposite, i.e. his left leg would have been (slightly) behind the right one. Is Timo's technique somewhat unorthodox, or have I been missing something important? Thanks!

Inner Game of Tennis is a good read. It doesn't recommend consciously focusing on what your body is supposed to do. Just tell your body what you want it to make happen with the ball. That's my 14-word summary of Inner Game.

Be careful using matches to focus on your technique. If you can separate training from matches it's much better imo. If all you have is matches, then try to draw a mental line between times when you are playing to practice and playing to win. Winning is also a skill that must be practiced.

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

Yoko Ono

He's going after a half long ball and has made the adjustment with his feet to get closer to the table, that's all.
In fact watch the whole practice point here: https://youtu.be/nayFk8Cfuag?t=725

You can see the second shot has his foot in the more traditional stance.