OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Those are last week's videos, so you have one due tomorrow.

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

Okay, so they didn't buy us 5 minutes.

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ttEDGE.com Professional online coaching
YouTube table tennis videos by Brett Clarke

NL should change his screen name to OCD.

Whatever. You want more videos too you are just too scared to admit it. Boo hoo.

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

I haven't fixed stuff from videos a year ago, so while I want more, there's plenty to work on in the old ones.

LTT 65 is great. I am trying to conpletely fix the horrible serve recovery featured in ETTS 06. It was sort of half fixed, but if I think about (or visualize) being set by the second bounce then I am.

I also need to fix a problem of my body not knowing what i served. Like I serve no spin and my opponent tries to push it, and seeing his push I react like it's heavy backspin and go long. So for special ed I guess I should visualize everything -- my recovery, the poor receive, and my third ball. I'll probably be warned for time-wasting.

I need the same thing for receives with pips, to picture the correct response to my spin being reversed.

DTT 01 is a good idea too. I've been training with a lot of different people lately and it seems very random how drills are selected. Some people have a coach and try to replicate their lessons, but others copy what they saw a coach do with someone else, or drills they saw WR top ten players doing on youtube.

The opening voiceover saying who and what the drill is for is really good. If you end up with 100 of these the titles may need to be more descriptive or they could be hard to find. Like Adapting FH Topspin to Varying Spin. So it's clear that it isn't about fades or hooks or placement or adapting to incoming speeds or landing spot on your side.

LTT66 is too similar to ETTS06. I just think it's a super important lesson and most players aren't doing it.

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ttEDGE.com Professional online coaching
YouTube table tennis videos by Brett Clarke

I like how we're going back to the basics. I've got so much to work on and this is perfect. It gives me some drills to work on with guys at the club too.

So I went to a club for the first time last night, in Potomac Maryland. It was great, with plenty of tables, good conditions for a gym, a range of levels, and lots of different styles. They have choppers and lobbers, and sp hitters, and lots and lots of penholders. So it was fun. But in my second match I had the kind of problem that costs me many matches. I was playing a ph sp sponge guy. He took the first two sets before I got used to his long serves to my bh and the weird spin off the sponged sp in general. Once I started receiving better I won two sets, and pivoted on his last two serves in the 4th for winners.

So I shouldn't have been too surprised when he came out serving no spin short to my fh in the 5th. When I patty-caked the receives he hit long and I was on the defensive immediately. This is a situation I have practiced a lot recently, not in the 5 weeks of this trip, but for two or three months before that at least once or twice a week. And I said to myself in the middle of the set, you have to take an active stroke to those serves. But I still didn't. I just tried to place the pattycakes better and lost 11-7. The result doesn't matter at all and I played some really good TT later on. But the process failure happens a lot and costs me matches that are important to me in my small way.

I've actually made some progress in this area. I used to not think at all during a match. Like I'd be riding home from a tournament and suddenly realize what adjustment I should have made in a match that ended six hours earlier. Now I think of it after I've fallen behind but at least the match is still on. But most of the time I don't actually make the adjustment, only think about it. But I am pretty sure if Brett had been there coaching me and called timeout and said "I don't know what the Hell you think you're doing with those receives but he's killing you, so do a proper flip." then I would have at least tried to do it. Probably I would still lose, but in a much better way.

I doubt you can make a video to fix stupidity, so just venting really. Maybe I should post this in a new thread called "Not executing table tennis strokes when you need them, even though you practiced them 1,000 times for this exact situation, you f***ing dumbass."

The body is a system. More over, not all the parts learn at the same speed or at the same time. Daniel Dennett listed a lot of examples in his philosophy book on the mind of why the mind is not one harmonious entity and this is true for the human body as well (If it isn't the mind). I bring this up because it is part of the reason it us easy to understand something without fully embracing it, or your conscious mind may realize something your subconscious finds risky to execute or vice versa. Given that he was using pips, it's quite possible that his serve motion created a conflict with your evaluation of the ball and that since you were putting the ball on the table. You took that as a success criterion instead of focusing on the bigger goal. My point is that this is all natural stuff.

It's part of the reason why you need to lie to yourself sometimes to succeed and the reason why I repeatedly ask paddle throwers like you and Dan whether it helps you play better. Being too realistic about your game does not make you a better player if your realism makes you too conscientious of what you cannot do and blinds you to what you can. There is the story of the chess coach who used to explain to his student how each opponent would defeat the student and was right every time. The student fired the coach and the coach asked why, and the student responded, I don't care if you are right, I care whether you are helping me win.

That for me was the value of LTT 65 when Brett first taught it in the earlier lessons on visualization. Of course, he applies it specifically to serves in LTT 65 but it applies generally to your game. When you go around saying these things, do they make you play better?

Inquiring minds what to know.

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

I will give one last example. I lost to a good server a couple of times in 1994 to the point he started getting excited when he knew we were going to play. This was well before the TTEdge app. My serves were largely basic back then.

I lost to him at the NA Teams. I got more and more frustrated with each game and was annoyed that so I could not play better. I then went home and watched the match to note how badly I returned his serves. To my surprised, I noticed that I returned his serves better and better with every game but that I missed more and more of my attacks with every game because I was frustrated by the earlier misses.

The next month, I went to a tournament where I would have played him but unfortunately I forgot my paddle. My club mate, about 150 points or so higher than me at the time, played him. Like me, my clubmate lost the first game. Unlike me, my club mate won a close second game and then pasted the server in the last two games, winning game 4 at love. I even saw a 2700 player miss a few serves.

Then I played the guy at Nationals. We warmed up a day or 2 earlier and he blamed the video I had for my returning his serves better. But when we played the rated match, again, I lost the first game. But I knew better than to let my frustration get the better of me. In fact, you would not have known I had lost the first game from my poker face. I won 3-1.

Ever since then, I have had many matches where I looked stupid returning serves in the first game (thanks to the TTEdge App, this is not as bad as it used to be). And after every game, I tell myself it will get better. I would be lying if I said it always did. But sometimes it did, and I have the video to prove it.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

I'm not sure if by "saying these things" you mean calling myself a dumbass for not making adjustments or visualizing executing a successful fh flip because I practiced it enough, but either way the answer is Yes. Both those things make me play better. I want to switch from verbal abuse to visualization as my primary mode of behavior correction because I think that will be faster, more effective, and less painful.

Throwing my paddle also makes me play better, if the paddle is still playable, due to releasing tension, and I think the example from Dan shows that for him also. You should try it sometime, you have enough equipment.

I have a question about LTT29 (forehand pivot). Is there any way for us amateurs to do it effectively by jumping with both legs without bringing them together (i.e. a large sidestep)? I used to pivot using this step a long time ago, and it works fine if the ball does not come too widely in my backhand. However, when the ball is wide I get cramped as I can't jump far enough with both legs. I also feel that I don't have time to make a shuffle step in game situations, especially against a fast push (I try to pivot on the third ball). So I wonder what should I do: relearn to do pivot as in LTT29 or wait until I become strong enough to jump far with sidestep.

To illustrate what I mean: look at Lin Gaoyuan's pivot at 6:58 in the match below. He jumps with both legs simultaneously without bringing them together. If I try to do that I jump for 1/3 of the distance he jumps in this movement at most. Which is no surprise of course.

I think you are meant to be striking the ball as your left foot lands (if right-handed), so jumping with both feet at once wouldn't get that. Also, waiting until you are as fit as a CNT player could be a long wait. So my two cents is try the LTT way.