OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Hi,
I was just wondering what the difference in technique is when you loop rally with maximum sponge vs when you loop rally with thin sponge. Or if its even possible

Yes it's possible. But certainly harder, with less room for error on your contact. Here are some vairiables:

Thin soft sponge: ball will bottom out very quickly so you must cushion the ball and graze with a very thing contact. Otherwise it will bottom out and you will experience a sudden sharp decrease in throw angle, usually causing the ball to go into the net.

Thin harder sponge: on this the ball will bottom out less often, but since the sponge is hard, it's got very little dwell. So, it's as if you don't have any dwell, and these tend to have very low throw angle all of the time. The advantage is that you don't experience the sudden change in throw angle as often. The disadvantage is that there is no dwell and it may feel unforgiving.

Both of these will require you to thinly contact the ball and brush loop more, and generally require a more horizontal loop (depends).

All of this is helped by a flexy blade which gives more dwell to all strokes.

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Actually you can loop with thin sponge or even I bet with just inverted rubber if it is grippy enough.

The loop will be more reminiscent of the old slow loops first played when looping was invented. Those loops went up more than forward and the threat was they were so loaded with spin they jumped forward off the table without much of a bounce.

The other poster was right it is very hard to do and with little or no sponge it would have to be a very light brushing of the ball in an almost vertical direction along the back of the ball. This would push the ball upward in a high arc and cross the net a couple of feet in the air. Crossing the table slowly while in the air, with hopefully enough spin from the light but fast contact, that it actually picks up speed when it land as the spin kicks it forward and cannot be returned except by a block or long chop from off the table.

By comparison the horizontal loops we all know today are much newer and rely on the ball dwelling in the rubber longer. They come off with both speed and spin instead of mostly spin and they are indeed horizontal in tendency. I will take the other poster word that this might be possible, but I bet it would be darn hard to do. I know the approach I suggest can be done because in the 1970's that was how it was done and there was very little discussion of dwell. It was all about arm speed and ever so light contact.

I suggest that, at 1.5 mm or thinner, assuming all rounder rubber like BlueFire,

Just drive the ball. More speed rather than brush loop / spin. The difference in speed (thin sponge IS faster) could catch looper of guard.

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