OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I would recommend working with a practice partner/coach/robot who can deliver very spinny topspins to you, potentially also/or multiball.

In all seriousness, when I am training with others, because I/we sometimes don't want to use pips, I will pick up whatever bat is lying around with inverted on to control an exercise. I have a wide range from very fast to slow, with chinese rubbers or tensors. Sometimes I'll just borrow something from someone. After about 2 mins I've dialled in the feeling/touch, and I can control the blocks as well as with any other blade.

If you can control very heavy topspin in an exercise, you can do it in a match. Not doing it in a match is usually a function of bad movement, bad anticipation/reading, or tension/nerves destroying touch. Movement and anticipation can't be fixed with blade choice. As a general rule of thumb from my own experience, there's a direct correlation between lack of control in touch in a rally and speed of equipment (rubbers and blade), so I would say use the slowest blade you can get away with without feeling you are making too much of a sacrifice in the rest of your game.

We could speculate on hard vs soft, ply construction, ply numbers etc, but it's probably moot. If you can change and adapt in 2-3 mins in an exercise (and you definitely can), then it's not much of a big deal.

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