OOAK Table Tennis Forum

freeagent, I believe that you could achieve anything in TT with the right coaching and training. You move better than most players and I can easily imagine you playing at a very high level.

Both you and NL seem to understand the immediate areas where you can improve. We also talked about the same issues in Philly. You have good control which is another way of saying you lack dynamic and explosive spin/power. Control is an import element however you need to improve your timing and patterns on every stroke that you play. You could be getting a lot more spin and power without increasing your effort.

I think of every stroke as a pattern and I feel you don't make the optimal pattern on your backhand punch. If you make the right pattern, then the timing will almost always be correct. It is however possible to have the timing right and make the wrong pattern. You start the stroke too early and you don't use a small whip-type pattern. I will make ETTS video and publish in a few days.

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Get your 3 wishes here today!
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Here is a followup video I made from the last series of BH loop training I posted on here.
I'm trying to make the changes with the swing that Brett suggested earlier in the thread.
Comments most certainly appreciated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tdu7yj-yR4

Backswing definitely looks better. Not sure what your full technique is like since the ball puts you under pressure and you are cutting the follow through short. There are a couple of circular swings in there that I really like.

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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

My mind had never settled on what to do with how important punch blocking should be as a part of my stroke repertoire. I find it hard to seamlessly transition from a punch block mindset to a looping mindset and can stick with one or the other for months. And my punch is not always a true punch and can be a wipe sometimes.

How should one fit punch blocking into their game? Any strategic considerations?

_________________
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

Until we get Brett to return to making TTEdge great again, I would like others to comment on this:

So I have a friend who is USATT 877 or so, but has an advanced forehand stroke - here is video of his counterloop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LVuKvxNAec

He is still struggling with the 800-1200 crowd. Initially, I used to think it was spin reading, but I realized a good part of it was that he wasn't looping with enough spin to raise his consistency. But I remember when I was like him and I felt I was looping with spin but people kept on telling me I was driving the ball, even when I felt I was trying to spin.

I think I have found a way around this conceptual dilemma. When I watched his matches, he kept looping to put the ball past his opponent and the opponent often stepped back and blocked him down. Sometimes, he would loop the ball too hard and miss. But what rarely ever happened was a loop that was slow and into the net. Or a loop that was slow enough that his opponent had to wait for it. Or that the loop was fast and dropped short. He often won the point when he produced these shots, but his default shot was based on looping the ball past the opponent, not on looping the ball on the table and seeing what the opponent did to it.

I know looping the ball deep is essential to trouble some opponents and drive them back so they don't take the ball early. That said, for players at the lower levels, I think the real issue is often that they do not know how to loop the ball short with quality. For them, looping hard, means looping the ball fast and with pace, not looping the ball onto the middle of the table. So combining a few concepts from the coaches I have worked with and myself, I will pace some emphasis on looping the ball short in my coaching and practice. MY instruction is that you can loop the ball as hard as you want to and ideally with as much spin as you want, but you need to keep it 6 to 12 inches and if possible more from the endline. Try to keep it low, try to make it fast, but keep it from the endline. If you can loop powerfully and hard with this kind of margin, your consistency will go up at the lower levels immediately and you can start looking at other placements seriously.

So how do you do this? IF you have a good loop, just work on it. It will usually require a slight adjustment to your usual contact point on the ball, but over time, with practice, you will get used to it. It pays off as you will be able to produce powerful shots under pressure.

_________________
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 am almost 1800, not 800, and I am working on the same thing. I remember when you used to look at my BH loop and tell me that I wasn't really spinning the ball, even though I felt like I was. My shots would come off the paddle extremely fast and would always land deep on the table.

But In my opinion, being able to hit a ball fast that still lands short on the table is the ultimate indicator of whether or not someone knows how to loop. If someone can hit a fast loop that lands short on the table, then it's an easy adjustment to be able to hit a fast loop that lands deep on the table. Doing it the other way around is the real challenge.

So I don't really have anything to add, other to say I agree with the concept completely.

In other words, someone who loops like this doesn't really know how to loop:



With the exception of around 8 or 9 seconds, none of the balls land on the table in view of the camera. They all land too deep. I felt like I was spinning the ball in this video (and maybe if you could somehow measure the RPM of the shot I was), but it is obvious that I could not possibly get the ball to land short with this type of swing.

One more post, and I promise I'll get off this topic:

If you look at the shots in this video, I think the last shot proves that I am finally learning how to BH loop. I consider it the best BH loop I've ever hit in training. Why? Because the ball lands very short on the table. The funny thing is that the 2nd shot, the one that I missed into the net, felt the spinniest out of all of them (and maybe it was).

Duplicate.

_________________
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

Some this takes me back in part to this video here where BRS upon seeing the loops called them loopy loops. To be fair to him, the first few were extremely loopy though they remained mostly high spin for the session with a few loop drives thrown in. But to be clear, I really think loopy looping is was an important part of feeling better at the table as it kept me consistent under pressure vs many types of opponents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQqzyW2o-uQ

So part of the reason why this issue comes to mind is because I play a player who counters my loopy loops extremely well and I think I sometimes lose my balance unnecessarily when looping. Sometimes, it helps to rush the opponent but other times, I would be better off heeding the advice of Brett in ETTS34 and having the standard finish/ready position.

But I am thinking that this ability to train to loop extremely hard but keep the ball short with good recovery may be the best answer to my combination of demanding consistency and power/speed. So I want to get lots of opinions on this.

Brett might just tell me a Zen koan or something to make me mind trip. But I need to know whether I am really on to something here or just misguidedly using an inferior version of the importance of variety and placement and keeping the ball low.

_________________
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 get your student past the 1200s faster if you put a 15" high barrier at the net and said loop over that and onto the table. That would force the emphasis to be on spin instead of speed.

Long-term you don't want to loop that high, but you always want a margin of safety over the net.

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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

He is not my student but I guess that is besides the point.

I know people who did/do what you suggested with the net and I find it excessive because it promotes extremely unrealistic contact points if the net gets too high. I find being able to loop balls below table height to be a more practicall exercise as the skill is needed in matches.

It's just that too many players keep trying to hit the ball past the opponent with deep drives and get frustrated when they miss the table. I am trying to see if this is really a better approach or I am just proposing a bad habit. And maybe some good players train like this already?

_________________
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 don't see why it should be harder to lower the trajectory of the ball after practicing with a higher net than to aim deeper on the table after training short. Maybe try some of both and see if one makes more sense to him.

Another way of doing this is to play games of loop v block where the looper only gets a point when a block goes long off the table. No reward for blocks in the net or hitting past someone.

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

Yoko Ono

But those are all valid ways of scoring points and should not be discouraged. That's why I prefer this approach as I am not discouraging hitting the ball hard, I am advocating giving yourself margin and wondering if there are side-effects I am missing.

_________________
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