OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Akifumi Hamakawa explaining his reverse pendulum serve. Why do they keep calling it "YG serve", by the way?
The guy once came to BTTC and won the Open event beating Thomas Keinath in the final. He was incredible!
And according to USATT records, fastmover played him once.

I think it means Young or Youth Generation serve because it was new and common with a younger generation of players when it first came out.

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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

Here are a bunch of matches from league today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlUXtayG0t8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apgUKFOScPk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIxSnhPORVA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IuuqEeCtbw

I bet NL will think I'm making another sandbagger type post for this lol.

I won all of them 3-0. You'd think I'd be happy with them but I'm not. I felt like I won because my opponents made lots of mistakes and not because I did the right things. I felt unbalanced, nearly falling over in some points.

I actually think I played better in the match I lost last week.

One thing I did remember this time though: I took some deep breaths between points when I thought I did something poorly. I still showed quite a bit of negative body language, so I need to keep working on that but despite me not playing many points the way I wanted to.. or the way I wanted them to go, I felt a little calmer.

In some sense it was as if I didn't really care about these matches. They were not that enjoyable to me. In the last match it felt like my opponent wasn't playing properly.

Am I being too hard on myself? My coach said I have too high expectations on myself.. but I just felt like I was doing things poorly, particularly not moving well. Watching the footage I see myself stumbling around.

Maybe I'm delusional about my performance and comparing it too much to when I practice and when I'm getting regular balls.. or something.

Btw I love the highlights vid, Fastmover, quite inspiring. I want to do something like that myself when I have more footage. That vid from the camp in Portugal looked amazing too.

It's hard to be focused when your opponents are making errors and not taking advantage of your mistakes.

I think the first 2 games you could have made them spectators and really opened up your game. You still had some really nice shots which they couldn't handle the moment you decided to put quality on them.

The second 2 games were against other developing players and you won by taking on a little less risk. Nothing unreasonable about that since they were going for a lot.

Lastly, it's hard to 3rd ball attack when people don't put the second ball on the table.

MotD https://youtu.be/0h3CkXL1n4k

Weird day at Gunston today. I went early and spent almost an hour with one penhold guy, just warming up and then doing ten minutes or so of 3rd ball drill. Then I waited about 45 minutes and played MotD above. Spoiler alert, the guy is many hundreds of points better than me and he didn't need to try. Then I sat out again for at least 45 minutes, played three matches vs crap opponents, and time to go. I was on a table for more than two hours but it felt like I hardly did anything at all. I don't like to sit out 40% of my club time. But to get matches with good players I have to. And then I hardly get any matches with them anyway. I need to move to Broward.

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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

Yes.

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Tactics Enthusiast

Good match Ben and I liked everything you attempted. The opponent was definitely trying btw. He is a good player who has almost certainly played 2-3 times longer than you.

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Do you guys think that BRS missed the counterloop attempt at 8:23 because of lack of the body fold (as per LTT95)?

I also have a question about counterlooping and folding. I find it quite confusing on when and how much to fold. Should I only fold against slow loop?

I noticed that if a ball has some speed and I fold, the ball goes into the net. I am talking about countering an opener against backspin.

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Tactics Enthusiast

Personally I think I missed that counterloop and hundreds like it bc I don't back up when I see the opp looping, so I get knocked bsvk on my ass and the ball goes off.

Will be interested to hear what others think. And of coirse getting knocked back is the opposite of fold, so in that sense I agree with you. But I think the fix requires managing my playing distance better. Just folding where I am will be very difficult.

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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

Yes Dr. Pivot, BRS missed that because he didn't fold. Folding and manipulating the torso is something that adult learners struggle with.

Faster balls have less spin, so you need to fold less and sometimes not at all. Form follows function.

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Okay Rich, you need to change your perspective a bit. You can't be negative about 4 good wins. Be a little negative about 4 bad losses if you must, but not 4 good wins.

Your last opponent stopped trying in the end because he conceded that you were too good on the day. It's the ultimate compliment. I can tell that your opponent is quite a good player and you crushed his spirit in the 2nd set by threatening to win 11-0.
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You were mentally very stable, so some of the stuff you are doing is probably helping. You weren't LTT56 "too high" and I could tell by your backhand stability and the control/spin on your serve. Practice your slow breathing at home and use it in matches.

Your body isn't always doing the right thing on your forehand and I'll get to that soon. I'm going to superimpose myself shadow swinging over your match and show you how I believe you need to use your back and stomach muscles more. It will make sense when you see it.

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I asked him after the second set, why were his receives so uncomfortable for me. I thought my serves weren't good. He said the serves were fine, but it looked like I was expecting the ball in a certain place or way, and when it didn't come I wasn't ready to adjust.

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

Yoko Ono

It's that obvious. I would personally be happy if I beat all of those guys 3-0. I'm sure I'd find a way to lose a game or two in my current state.

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He reads spin fairly well so he puts some quality on the returns. He can actually serve short (sometimes) and return short. That's a pretty good level in this context.

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ttEDGE.com Professional online coaching

Something tells me that you know something about the level.of the opponents that is affecting your thinking. Or like you pointed out, you are carrying your practice expectations where you don't have to read the ball over to matches where you have to.

You don't give yourself enough credit for being able.to stay in the point. It's an underrated skill. Maybe it is me.being an older scarecrow but some of those shots you brought back would have been automatic points against me. If I play 3 forehands on a point vs an opponent my level, I give myself massive credit as I must have done something right.

Your serve variation in placement just felt much better and I think you may have also felt a bit less comfortable executing behind it. It is necessary for growth though. I still need to do a work of serve practice I haven't done and which will probably hurt me at the worst possible time as I can't deliberately serve short with quality to save my life right now.

You can't always win in the beautiful way you want to. You can't always act in your head as if the ball you played would not have gotten by Timo Boll and the movement would have left you off balance vs Ma Long. You do have to see whether there was something specific you were working on and whether it showed up in your matches. Your post doesn't mention that. It sounds like me when the look of my play disgusts me sometimes. But even then I have to congratulate myself for doing some good things. I really liked BRS's video where he had a highlight reel on a night he felt like garbage. It reminds you that your training and experience still comes out even when you feel like s*** and that something else maybe driving your feelings, most likely expectations that are unstated.

_________________
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