OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I believe that your main problem is that you have gotten so used to how your premade plays that now the new setup is a bit of a learning and adjustment curve. I would assume the premade is almost dead now and almost plays like a hardbat, or close to it so a brand new grippy rubber with a thicker sponge is a serious change. I don’t think there is any rubber out there with 1.5mm sponge that will play even close to your premade.

So, first off, and this is just my opinion but I would not recommend that you use the old blade anymore, not even with new rubbers. The wood will splinter and peel when you try to change rubbers. I feel the Waldner Allplay is by no means a crazy fast or hard-to-control blade and your coach should be able to tell you how to adjust your strokes so that you start to develop the technique you need to control it. So I don’t really believe that the blade is the problem here.

I believe the same to be true with the rubbers. The rubbers are in the Sriver range – maybe marginally faster – but still pretty good for players to develop their strokes on. So you should be able to manage it as well since you are more advanced than a beginner. Also, I think 1.5mm is thin enough. Any thinner and you run the risk of bottoming out, which will bring the wood into play, which will actually lead to a lack of control on your shots and returns and blocks.
This is my opinion.

I would suggest that you increase your time practicing your technique – a bit more than you already do to speed the process up. Maybe adjust your table tennis time in a way that is skewed bit more in favor of practice and less towards actual games, above what you already do. The reason I am saying this is because in matches when winning is the target we often tend to fall back into old habits and try to get the point “by any means necessary.” In practice, you will do what needs to be done to improve your technique since you won’t be chasing points.

It won’t hurt to try the Gewo rubber too, and you can switch later on when your strokes are developed according to the new setup. But stick with the Donic blade.

If you find the handle is too thin then you can get grip tape for it. They have that for table tennis rackets just like tennis and badminton.
I have seen players at the club where I usually hang out go through similar phases and they have come out brilliantly. I am pretty sure you will too.

Here are some places that sell the Gewo rubber.

https://www.tt-megastore.de/gewo-return-drive.html

http://www.misterping.com/gewo-return-drive.html

http://www.ittfshop.ru/product/gewo-return-drive

http://fletcherstewart.com/view-by-divi ... stewart_gb

1.2 MM SPONGE is the thing to try for.

http://m.eacheng.net/descript-11146.html

Be happy.

Could you explain more about thin sponge losing control to the blade?

Thank you for the links to that rubber.

I played for 15 years with a premade racket casually ('Tibhar Samsonov Top', which has 'Tibhar Norm' rubbers on it, 1mm I think) and recently joined a club, where everyone immediately started to tell me: you need to get better equipment, this won't do!

So I did it. A TT store guy sold and glued me a basic combo for a nice price: Donic Waldner Allplay blade + 2x Donic Vario 1.5mm rubbers.

However, after many months of trying to learn playing with it, I just can't get as good results as with the Tibhar racket. Whenever I prepare for a match or play one, I just use my old premade racket: great control and if I hit and brush hard I got enough gears to make a very spinny serve and kill shots, loop just fine, great blocks, much control, I can push and receive push very well, even sometimes chopping. I just can't adjust to the speed and sensitivity of most modern rubbers I tried (I tried many rackets from clubmates and friends, the tension rubbers are the worst, like the first time shooting a gun with no training lol). And I'm not even bad with the premade racket: I finished my first competitive season with 72% WR (top 5 in the pool), me and the team were 2nd in the pool.

At a point I heard of antispin rubbers and since many people said that premade racket rubbers (especially the old ones) are basically like antispin rubber, I tried a clubmate's antispin (Yasaka Anti 2mm on ALL blade), and it's not the same at all.

So now I wonder: should I replace this anyways, and with what? Even if I still improve, this racket is indeed quite old, the rubbers lost much grip, it's dirty. All I know is I'm at least looking for very thin and I think soft/medium hard sponge, 1mm maximum, and a blade with high control and good feel, but most things I tried yet I feel don't come close to this cheap Tibhar racket I got. I hope you understand my problem.

If you are a push blocker who plays close to the table then a thinner sponge is good. A thinner sponge is usually slower. But if you are a looper you need to generate topspin to get the ball to dip on to the table. A thicker sponge means there is room for the ball to dig in and maintain contact, increasing dwell time - time the ball stays on the rubber - and this increases the amount of topspin you can impart on the ball. This means that even if the sponge is faster, with proper technique it will dip on to the table.

If the sponge is thin, there is more chance that the ball will sink into the rubber, make contact with the wood and rebound faster thus decreasing your dwell time. This results in less spin and less dip on to the table. This is why hard Chinese rubbers are not good for looping unless they have been boosted. They are tacky so they do hold on to the ball longer but being harder they don't let the ball sink in. You usually need flexible blades to make them work better. They can be so tacky at times that they will actually lift the ball off the table and hold it there for a few seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMVs3u0kJXo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkdAxfA_3wE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5BNkWN9s1E

They can be insanely spinny if you get used to them. I use 729 Super FX on my one-play blade.

I believe that your main problem is that you have gotten so used to how your premade plays that now the new setup is a bit of a learning and adjustment curve. I would assume the premade is almost dead now and almost plays like a hardbat, or close to it so a brand new grippy rubber with a thicker sponge is a serious change. I don’t think there is any rubber out there with 1.5mm sponge that will play even close to your premade.

So, first off, and this is just my opinion but I would not recommend that you use the old blade anymore, not even with new rubbers. The wood will splinter and peel when you try to change rubbers. I feel the Waldner Allplay is by no means a crazy fast or hard-to-control blade and your coach should be able to tell you how to adjust your strokes so that you start to develop the technique you need to control it. So I don’t really believe that the blade is the problem here.

I believe the same to be true with the rubbers. The rubbers are in the Sriver range – maybe marginally faster – but still pretty good for players to develop their strokes on. So you should be able to manage it as well since you are more advanced than a beginner. Also, I think 1.5mm is thin enough. Any thinner and you run the risk of bottoming out, which will bring the wood into play, which will actually lead to a lack of control on your shots and returns and blocks.
This is my opinion.

I would suggest that you increase your time practicing your technique – a bit more than you already do to speed the process up. Maybe adjust your table tennis time in a way that is skewed bit more in favor of practice and less towards actual games, above what you already do. The reason I am saying this is because in matches when winning is the target we often tend to fall back into old habits and try to get the point “by any means necessary.” In practice, you will do what needs to be done to improve your technique since you won’t be chasing points.

Originally Adham Sharara said the ban on boosters was a safety and health issue, but of course, one of the main ingredients is the same as baby oil -- something we rub onto the skin of babies."

You know, I don't know what Sharara said or when (he's been quoted as saying that ALL cellulose was bad, when it was actually the nitrate part that made balls flammable; or he might've been misquoted, which is much more likely), but the health concerns actually applied to speed glues rather than boosters. In the 1990s the sort of stuff people were putting on rubbers WAS indeed dangerous - stuff like carbon tetrachloride and halogenated aromatic hydrocarbons in glues. Known carcinogens. You had to apply these every time you wanted to play, because the effect only lasted 2-3 hours if that. People would glue up at indoors at tournaments and gyms where there were kids in attendance. So yes, they were banned, and there was a gigantic uproar about it (I was around at the time and remember). Boosters and Tenergy and Tensors were the result of that ban. There isn't a ban on boosters per se, the ban is on altering the properties of the rubber after it left the factory, and it applies as much to people rubbing epoxy on the tips of long pips as it does to people rubbing baby oil on inverted rubber. Yes, everyone admits it's impossible to police boosting, and "everyone does it", but repealing that rule would have unintended consequences, such as the aforementioned use of epoxy on long pip tips. Which is my guess as to why the rule hasn't been repealed.

Iskandar

This is why hard Chinese rubbers are not good for looping unless they have been boosted. They are tacky so they do hold on to the ball longer but being harder they don't let the ball sink in. You usually need flexible blades to make them work better. They can be so tacky at times that they will actually lift the ball off the table and hold it there for a few seconds.

999T is more a Chinese type rubber no? Hard sponge and tacky surface, will this not be too fast even with the thin sponge? I also read the old Chinese type like Globe rubbers need a boosting to be good, but I may be wrong.