OOAK Table Tennis Forum

There is some difference between playing aggressively and rotating correctly. If the ball goes into your middle and you are late, you should still try to lean and rotate as much as possible. It may only be 1 inch, but you should take it. The result of a 1 inch leaning rotation will be a slower shot. It means that you'll almost always have much less power and spin on balls you are late for.

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Thanks, Brett. Marriage is also taking up a lot of time so it is not all bad.

I agree part of the problem is words. It's just that beginners/learners are sometimes trying to whack the ball so hard that they don't swing the racket through a path and the quality of the contact/vibration has zero meaning to them. That's all I mean when I tell people to feel the ball. The concept may have its issues, but it was one way I quickly realized that I was using equipment that was too fast.

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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

Interesting club day today. I played at first with some weaker players than me, seven matches. I used them to work on a simple serve pattern. I serve fh pendulum pure sidespin, short to the fh or middle, they receive to my bh, and I topspin with the SP at their middle. The sidespin stays on the ball if they push, so my bh goes straight over the ball, but it still moves sideways after the bounce. If that comes back it's almost always an easy fh. Whichever way they moved on the ball to the middle, I go the other way. So that was good practice.

And warming up with one guy I got reminded of the golden point. Haven't thought about it in ages, and it is a super-fundamental mistake I still make. He kept mistiming the bh-bh warmup and sending balls to my elbow. Needing to turn quickly to the fh forced me to keep my elbow up and out, so I could turn from bh to fh in good ready position. The interesting part was doing that made my bh hit way better. I also have to move for every ball to keep my forearm horizontal. Something to watch in training.

After all that I wanted to play someone better than me. One guy was waiting winners so he hit with me fh counterlooping for maybe ten minutes. And then a guy I have seen but never played came into the club. He wanted to play the guy I was hitting with, but ended up having to play me. It was obvious in the warmup he is a lot stronger than me, and I knew it from seeing him play. But I wasn't sure by how much. I fell behind early in the first set but ended up getting to 9. Then the next two sets I blew him out, up 9-3 in each set. But in the third he rallied all the way back to 10-9, before missing a receive on a long fast dead serve to his bh, one Brett showed me. Thank you Brett.

So I was up 2-1, but his comeback to 9 in the third was preying on my mind. I was winning but felt like I was losing. Does that happen to anyone else? In the fourth I fell behind 0-3 but came back to lead and he served at 6-8. I remember very clearly thinking about the score and how important those two points were going to be. This is a bad regression to my weakest mental weakness, choking when I have a chance for an upset. If it wasn't horribly bad form in a meaningless practice match, I should have taken timeout right then before he served. As my coach I would have told myself "You're winning, you effing idiot. Play like you're winning. Don't think about the score, just play the ball." But I didn't. So I made two feeble returns into his ridiculously powerful fh, 8-8. I lost at 9. Then in the fifth set he relaxed and I tensed up, with predictably poor results for me.

That loss felt bad, even though I was 7-2 on the day and my losses were 11-9 and 12-10 in the fifth. I know he is better than me and if we played five more matches I probably wouldn't win two sets again. But I had him reeling for two-plus sets. And I felt like it was only that mental breakdown up 2-1 and 8-6 that cost me a real opportunity to close it out. Which was sad.

I was talking to another guy about all this as I was packing up, and he said "Yes, you kind of fell apart and beat yourself at the end. But he is a very good player. His rating is 2250."

I had no idea he was quite that high. Now that I know it, should I feel better, worse, or the same?

And what did I do that messed with a 2250 player? There is no video, and I'm clueless. I feel like I just did the same stuff I always do.

Oh well, this is one of the many times I wish I had a proper coach. Then I could pay him to listen to all this crap and tell me what to do, instead of boring people to death on the Internet.

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Not boring at all. This is real talk. Sounds like you had a good day you you're enjoying your TT. That's a huge win right there.

The reason you felt like you were losing, even though you were winning, is the guy plays better than you, and you know it. I've experienced this thousands of time. The guy is 2250 so he has better shots, anticipation and he's more experienced. Even though you winning on the scoreboard, you can feel the quality of the opponent. That said, there are lots of positives to be taken away from almost beating a highly rated opponent. It says you must be on the right track.

You've said that you've been playing a bunch of training games lately. This is probably key. Somewhere inside me, I believe that you should only play matches, unless you are specifically working on changing or cementing something. Doing drills with the same old shots is boring and you might as well be having fun playing matches whilst using your regular stuff. Matches are best for training anticipation too. You are probably seeing things pretty early after coming off months of just games.

I'm personally just working on things and playing no matches at the moment. I'm using the LTT content to try and improve my technique. I haven't really played for 12 years so I've had a good amount of time to think about what I need . Making videos has forced me to understand better mechanics and I'm trying to apply that knowledge. Although I realize that playing matches is key, I'm having too much fun trying to apply new stuff and I don't want to give that up just yet.

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When I played table tennis before, I couldn't really counter topspin so I just blocked everything on my forehand like some kind of return-board. It impacted me horribly at international level. It wasn't so bad with the 38mm ball however it would be a complete joke with a 40mm poly.

So now I'm trying to learn the shot. I'm using LTT95 knowledge, trying to combine rotation and fold. It is beyond sad that I didn't know this stuff when I actually played.

The results is below. The speed is coming from the torso rotation and I'm really not trying to hit the ball hard. My arm is just going with flow. I'm using T05 boosted on a Viscaria blade and the hall is hot, meaning my racket plays like a rocket.

Here's where it's going to get funny. I'm going to have the challenge of implementing this shot into match play in a couple of months. It's exactly the same challenge that you guys have. My plan is to start using it in matches against 2200 types where I can afford to miss a few. I'll also start visualizing match scenarios where I use the shot instead of my well cemented and useless block. My intention is to almost never block a ball with my forehand in a match.

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For fastmover. Here's me pivoting and a Bruce Lee video explaining the weakness of this type of training. If I look big, slow and ugly, please keep in mind that it was near the end of my 3rd session. There is nothing I can do about the big and ugly part but I will get faster at some stage. I was moving a bit early too, but I need the time at this stage.

I was trying to combine the footwork from LTT29 and the body work from LTT99. Watch the logo on the front of my shirt.

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Wow, you get an impressive amount of speed!

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Thanks. Boards don't hit back!

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And I'm impressed: the kid feeds just as well with his left hand as his right!!!

That "kid" is 28 years of age and is a father Yes, we are both ambidextrous.

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ETTS52 & 53 are now available on ttEDGE.com

52 is a follow up on the fast flat serve (Bombe) and 53 is a response to fastmover's question about his backhand which he posted a few pages ago.

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Today I tried for good ETTS53 from close to the table and at a distance. I really tried to the restrict the size of the shot, especially when I was close.

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Who is your coach? This is very interesting to see you going back to playing and working on things that we can all learn from.

Are we going to see you make a splash on the veterans scene soon?

The coach is a local guy in Udon Thani, Thailand. To ruin a good story, he's just training me and offers no technical advice. He's a great guy though and his real job is to coach children and locals to play TT.

You will never see me play in a veterans event. But, if you are prepared to travel to unheard of places, you may see me try to beat up on some unsuspecting Asia guys. I'm going to train for a few months to build a foundation of better technique. Then I'll go through the humbling experience of trying to compete against 21 years olds in tough Asian conditions. You can't just take 12 years off and maintain any semblance of match toughness, so I'll take it easy on myself.

A benefit of this project is I'll get to record myself and share with you guys. It may not be for everyone so I'll keep my footage short and half watchable. I'll always try to relate it to the lessons I've presented you. It will also give me endless footage for the PTTP series once I start playing matches.

Above all, I'm playing for the following reasons:
- I believe that getting your heart rate up 4 times per week has extreme health benefits
- I want to implement LTT and ETTS things into my game, just because it's fun and I sure need it
- It's amazing how many friends you make if you play TT at a reasonable level. You can make friends at all levels of course however playing better has additional social benefits
- I'm taking a break from live coaching for a while, though I'll work some for the ITTF and other minor project. ttEDGE will benefit from this enormously
- I'm 46 years of age and I'm still in reasonable condition. Who knows how I'll be in 5 years. This could be my last chance to play at a reasonably high level
- I can hire a trainer here and do exactly what I want, when I want. It's quite liberating.

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So how would you solve the boards don't hit back problem in training? Let your partner randomly feed a ball to your fh? Or have him try to block one of your shots?

Or would you stop the training here, and take the new, improved pivot to matches next?

Also, about the counterloop - is there any technique difference between your counter vs his opening off backspin, and the kind of loop v loop from farther back that I did yesterday?

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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