OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I don't understand the concept of a "training rubber". It really makes no sense from a motor learning perspective. You should train with what you play with! Otherwise you are training for one thing and then using something else, so now all your motor patterns you have learned are not inappropriate or at least not quite right.

Now if the thread was called "cheap rubbers you might like" it would make sense to me.

I just got back from a couple of weeks in China. I am not knocking cheap rubbers, I saw some people there who were really effective with cheap rubbers, or in some cases, very very very very old and worn expensive ones. In the cities I was in (a bit off the beaten track) I saw table tennis shops that pretty much only sold Chinese stuff at prices people living on a few hundred US dollars a month could afford. The only European or Japanese rubber I saw at those shops was Donic F1 Desto, a first generation tensor probably not many people would use now.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

Very well put.

Your first point is at the crux of the issue I have with the way TT is taught, at least in the UK.

If you have a notion that you might like to be a (modern) defender, you might as well start using Lp from day one. You've got a long road ahead of you as you learn to use them, especially if you're not one of the fortunate few with a coach who uses or specialises in LP. But it's common to hear coaches say: just start with inverted and learn your strokes. Bollocks. LP strokes and touch and feel and timing and even footwork to a degree are radically different from inverted. See also tactics and strategy. Learn on the tools you'll be using. If you're a trainee carpenter, don't train with a soldering iron.

Similarly, and I'll grant that this is less easy to argue, with "allround" rubbers. As you argued on a different thread, now more than ever, the game is being homogenised. Allround players are very rare, and setting out to be one, using thinish sponge and slower than current average rubbers seems like a strange thing to recommend to a newcomer.

An allround modern rubber with max or near max sponge, either from China or, if you have money to burn, Europe or Japan, is the obvious choice. There's clearly value and point in other rubbers, pips, anti, slower, thin etc, but these are for specialist use. If a player knows they want to pursue a specialist course, then yes, they should try or even start here, but the notion of asking a beginning player to start with something that very likely is not the setup they will use as a more experienced player, and won't be what their peers are using, if they have a coach or go on camps, seems counterintuitive.


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Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!

But sometimes supplies can run out right ? So if you find 2 rubbers that are almost exact match of each other with very minimal differences ( weight ? or grip/tacky ? ) it does help with saving brand new expensive rubbers while you continue to practice with your "training" version ? If needed the "training" setup can be a backup in case of problem with the main racket. I always carry at least 4 bats And maybe one Pips-out setup too you know just in case the pips scares the opponent into surrendering

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__________________________________________________________
Backup C-pen blades:

• TSP Black Balsa 7.0 :
  1. FH/BH-YRakza9/XOmegaVT
  2. FH/BH-TSP Spectol/Yinhe Qing OX
• 729 Bomb C-P : FH/BH-DHS H2 Orig/DHS H3 Orig
• TSP Versal :
  1. FH/BH-XOmegaVA/YJupiter-II
  2. FH/BH-*blank*

Fun blades:

• Yasaka Battle Balsa(ST) : FH/BH- DHS TG2Neo/Gewo HypeXT 47
• Dr. Neubauer
  High Technology
  Cypress-Carbon(ST)
  ***************************** : FH/BH-YRakza7/YRakza7

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As far as I understand it these 'training-rubbers' are just cheap because of quality-issues and/or faultive production, I don't think it is meant to be used for training only. If you're low-level, learner, recreational or whatever these rubbers may be totally sufficient. Who cares if you'd use them for competition, too? Noone.
In pre-internet times I usually went miles to a TT-shop for new rubbers and I had to pick what is in stock. I often made use of bargains at -30% or so and therefore it was quite rare to buy the same rubber a 2nd time. Sriver, Tackiness, MarkV etc. rarely were 'on sale'.
Today people are changing their rubbers for different reasons (EJing) while they're often stuck technically on amateur-level. If these very people had obtained cheap training rubbers instead using the free extra bucks on a trainer or workshop they'd be better off hands down.

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Red is blogging here >> http://ooakforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=30522

It's not what's used for training that is being referred to here. It's what's SOLD as "training rubber". Or what the Chinese market calls "training rubber" (their term, not mine). I remember expounding on this somewhere in the beginning of the thread - there's two types. The first is very cheap rubber, often sold two to a pack. Batwings, Corbor, 868, some kinds of 999, these are examples. The second kind is blems or other surplus sheets in plain packaging sold at a discount. A good example of this type is those sheets of Haifu Whale and Shark Eacheng used to sell (have not seen any recently). More examples would be the Yinhe 9000 in the transparent two packs, and those USD4 sheets of Palio Dragon from ttnpp.

Who is the target market? Chinese schoolkids, I think. There is a Chinese bookstore not too far from here that carries some rubber and it's mostly Batwings. Kids can afford that saving lunch money. Players with better means probably turn their noses up at it and buy the likes of Target and Big Dipper and Faster and Higher and whatnot. Some of the surplus Whale and Shark supposedly get used by club players looking for something cheaper, or in club development programs (someone posted that coaches buy these sheets a couple dozen at a time).

Iskandar

Wow.. maybe I should unpack my "Corbor Professional" sheets and see if they're like this... They've been sitting in the pile for a few months, now!



I've looked, so far, at the contents of several kinds of packaging, they all look about the same to me.. Same-looking topsheet and sponge, anyway, though there may be invisible differences. (The XiYing version does have an extra "XiYing" crest added to the topsheet ID strip, though..) They do sell different hardnesses of sponge, but you have to ask them before you order, sometime they have what you want, sometimes they don't. Anyhow, it does look like it's on sale - $10.90 for two sheets, even though you get them in separate packets.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-sh ... 67919.html

Looks like there's at least 2 other kinds offered in 2X packs or deals. Heck, get them all! Buy over $35 and get a sheet of Kangaroo free... Careful - lots of 999 topsheets being sold as well. And there's the Globe items (these are more expensive).

Iskandar

Iskandar,

For the 999 rubbers, do they have softer sponge? The ones I bought recently (XiYing version) 44-45 deg feels pretty soft compared to other "training rubbers". Eg. Mercury II Soft (33 - 35) and Carbor Med-soft. Maybe they mislabel them or are they suppose to play that way. I am quite impressed with the control you get out of these rubbers. Thanks.

Al

Is the 999 above different to Globe 999, I assume it is.

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Donic Waldner Senso V1,FH Baracuda Big Slam 2.0mm ,BH Victas Triple Regular 2.0mm

Different company. By all accounts it's similar - slow, and VERY sticky. The sponge (of the 999 Brand stuff) is pretty hard, almost leathery, but the topsheet is quite soft.

If you want to use soft sponge, there are 999T topsheets available. 61 Second sells sponge (available on AliExpress also), don't know if any of it is "soft", though. Much softer and you might end up with something like Reactor Ckylin (the only Chinese rubber I've found slower than 999 - MUCH slower!).

The Globe 999 supposedly works well when it's too humid for other rubbers, and I can verify that the 999T is the same - there was once when it was raining cats and dogs and I was playing where there was no air conditioning. It was humid enough that the 729 I had on one bat actually had water condensing on it, and it became useless. The 999 continued to work. If you play where it's humid you might want to consider making an "emergency bat".

Iskandar

Got some Galaxy 9000 now and if someone is puzzled wether to buy Friendship 729 or Galaxy 9000: It doesn't matter, really.
Sponge may get a little softer over time but at the very moment these rubbers play and feel identical to 729.

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Red is blogging here >> http://ooakforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=30522

Have you figured out the difference between 9000D and 9000E yet?

To be honest, I usually can't tell the difference between 729, 868 (perhaps a LITTLE slower, since the sponge is actually 2.0mm), 9000, Corbor, and quite a few others. You'd have to stop and THINK about it if you have one on one side and another on the other. It doesn't really matter which you use. 999, though, is quite different, and Ckylin is VERY different.

Iskandar

Oh, the Corbor is somewhat different due to the softer sponge and the somewhat less sticky topsheet; amount of spin to generate is similar. Better for slow-loops etc.

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Red is blogging here >> http://ooakforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=30522

Can't say I've noticed. The only way to tell, really, is to mount it on the same blade with something else to compare it with. When things are so close it doesn't make much practical difference. I do remember the last sheet of Corbor I played with was initially VERY, VERY tacky - I found myself pushing balls into the net, trying for short pushes to first time I used it. It got better after that. Since I'd bought ten sheets of the stuff I weighed it all, and found that half the sheets were "normal" in weight, the other five were decidedly porky. A bimodal distribution.

Reactor Corbor (pink packet)
red 58.75g 164x168mm 0.213 g/cm^2
black 59.45g 172x169mm 0.205 g/cm^2
red 69.96g 167x162mm 0.259 g/cm^2
black 70.29g 165x166mm 0.257 g/cm^2
red 58.81g 169x165.5mm 0.210 g/cm^2
black 68.46g 166x165.5mm 0.249 g/cm^2
black 70.36g 166.5x165mm 0.256 g/cm^2
red 68.19g 165x167mm 0.247 g/cm^2
black 68.76g 165x165mm 0.253 g/cm^2
black 67.65g 165x167mm 0.246 g/cm^2
red 65.51g 169x166mm 0.234 g/cm^2
black 65.07g 168x165mm 0.235 g/cm^2

The last two were from a different batch. All the heavy sheets went to other people..

Iskandar

Im trying out different rubbers from Friendship 729 just to get an idea on what properties will help improve my stroke comfort. To compare everything I have MarkV on my initial BB7.0 that I use as backup.

What I found was 729 SuperFX (FH + BH ) ---> plays similar to more expensive H3N/TG2N. ( Boosted 729 FX blows away the DHS stuff )

Old DHS H3N / TG2N ... newer H3-50 / TG3-60 dont play well if boosted ... instead they need to "rest" for a long period of time for the booster effect to wear off and the rubber returns to its original state. Tackiness and spin are increased even more but the speed is back to the original level.

729 General OEM rubbers are only slightly tacky but very grippy ---> plays similar to more expensive Yasaka Rising Dragon ( Boosted 729 OEM is SAME ! as YRD ) The 729 OEM has a much harder sponge and suffers from the same initial lack of spin as the YRD due to the hard sponge even if boosted. I was just lucky to find this by mistake, as I had intended to order 729 SuperFX but ended up with 729 OEM and I thought "wat the heck all Chinese rubbers are alike" Glad I found this

729-5 are rubbers I am trying out to see if they are comparable to MarkV. First thing out of the packet these stink to high heaven. And the smell hasnt worn off after nearly a week ! Initially I am having problems with this rubber bottoming out soooo easily on the BB7.0 hard fiberglass+wood top veneer. This is similar to MarkV in that same happens on medium power shots or quick smashes with the MarkV. But MarkV still allows soft touches and loop-drives while only bottoming significantly if you "crack the whip". I have boosted one rubber and left the other normal to see if the rubber will play better or worse due to the booster. More updates as I test this 729-5

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__________________________________________________________
Backup C-pen blades:

• TSP Black Balsa 7.0 :
  1. FH/BH-YRakza9/XOmegaVT
  2. FH/BH-TSP Spectol/Yinhe Qing OX
• 729 Bomb C-P : FH/BH-DHS H2 Orig/DHS H3 Orig
• TSP Versal :
  1. FH/BH-XOmegaVA/YJupiter-II
  2. FH/BH-*blank*

Fun blades:

• Yasaka Battle Balsa(ST) : FH/BH- DHS TG2Neo/Gewo HypeXT 47
• Dr. Neubauer
  High Technology
  Cypress-Carbon(ST)
  ***************************** : FH/BH-YRakza7/YRakza7

==========================================================

Hadn't heard of Yasaka Rising Dragon, so I looked it up.

http://www.tabletennis11.com/other_eng/ ... ing-dragon

40 Euro - about the price of some Tensors. Says Made in China. Hopefully not related to Yasaka ZAP and New Era (which are OEMed by Palio). ZAP had major dish problems, like CJ8000. Not surprising, when you consider who makes it.

The problem with 729-x rubbers is there are so many of them... Beginning with 729-2 and ending with.. what, 729-9? 729-10? Why choose 729-5 in particular? I've still got a sheet of 729-2 (has "Sensor" technology.. People were actually discussing this some years ago, you can still find the posts... Maybe it's just supposed to SOUND like "Tensor".) and a sheet of 729-8 with the European sponge, have yet to do anything with them. Better packaging than the cheaper rubbers.

Iskandar