OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Thanks. I know what to work on for next season (still 1 match to go but practically the season is over)

I have to wonder though, would I be better suited to play further from the table (provided I work on my movement & looping) than close to the table?

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

also have a look at how Alexander Shibaev plays

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my youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/decoyla?feature=mhum

Main: / secondary / LP
Blade: DHS Hurricane hao/ Blade- Hurricane Hao 2
FH: Skyline 3(Blue Sponge)/ FH- Nittaku H3 pro
BH: Omega Asia/ BH- Calibra Tour H

Final match of the season yesterday.

It ended 5-5. Could've been 7-3 or even 9-1 for us though. Our 3rd player lost all his matches and 2 of them he didn't need to lose. I lost against their best player where I could've won as well. I was 2-1 behind in games but I had a 10-6 lead. However I was too conservative and didn't attack anymore, ultimately costing me the game and the match. Very disappointed I didn't pull through there..
And in the doubles I kinda ruined the match as well. It was a 5-game match and it was 7-7, and the last 4 points were all mistakes by me.
However, the matches I won went more easily than the last time I played these players. Looping also went better, really tried to stay low, step in nice and early and try to brush the ball instead of flat-hitting, especially on my FH. My BH loop is somehow easier for me to perform properly...
My goal before the season was winning 40% of the matches, I finished at 42% so for me it was a good season.

We still have training until june and then there is a 'summer stop' until mid august. Then training starts again until competition begin september. Next goal is 60% win next season. Most important goal is to improve looping even more. Especially FH loop. I have the feeling this will become my most important weapon if I get the technique under control.

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

i think the way you might wanna go about this is...

in order of importance 1) practice consistency with FH/BH counter hit ( the general warm up bit all pros do at the start of every match)
2) learn how to loop ( properly)
3) the practice looping consistently
4) once the above 3 are at a decent level switch to footwork and the above 3 will kinda be tied into that. but main focus is footwork practices

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my youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/decoyla?feature=mhum

Main: / secondary / LP
Blade: DHS Hurricane hao/ Blade- Hurricane Hao 2
FH: Skyline 3(Blue Sponge)/ FH- Nittaku H3 pro
BH: Omega Asia/ BH- Calibra Tour H

That's pretty much how we always train. FH/BH counterhitting. Then training excersises with looping, certain types of service and service-return, etc etc. We have good coaches. I'm just not a fast learner. Slow steady progress, also shows in my results.

So pretty much you tell me to keep doing what we do in training. I will!

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

Long time no update.

Which is logical, we had our summer break and in september competition started again (training in august).
So far we are doing far better than expected.

Our team leader has gone to a higher placed team within our club (logical). And as a replacement we got a player who just started training this summer So we expected a big struggle to not finish last. After all, the other player in my team only won 4 matches last year, I myself 15, adds to 19 points which would mean...not much
However, 3 matches in and we're... 3rd out of 9.

To recap, our first match we played a team where the first match I played a good player, very similar to myself, but he was just a level higher. We played 3 close sets but he was better in each one. Fine. My second and third matches I won with 3-0 each. And one of my teammates won one match and lost the other two. Our newest addition played well sometimes and ofcourse not so well other times. Ofcourse we don't expect anything from him but to do his best and try to learn as much as possible, no pressure there. I can see he is still struggling to process all the things you have to do at one time in a match setting. What to do against different types of spin, how to do a proper counter-hit, watch the footing, etcetera....But we'll get him there eventually.
We lost that match 3-7 due to a lousy double match which we should have won.

Second match was against a team that was previously strong, but now lost 2 of their best players to a higher team, so it turned out to be a much easier match than expected. On top of that, we had a substitute for our new player who couldn't play that day. And that substitute is an old experienced player who also gives training on thursday to us. He won his 3 matches (albeit with some difficulty against 2). And our 2nd player won 2 of his matches playing extremely well. I myself had a total off-day, still managed to win one and lose another game 2-3, but I never had a good feeling. We also lost the double 2-3 due to my errors.

Third match was last saturday. Against one of the teams I knew we could stand a chance winning even with our new player (who lost his 3 matches)... And we did! First match I won easily 3-0, didn't had problems with this player, they all play a very open game, but all are weak on bh and they don't generate much spin. My BH loop goes extremely well this season for some reason I cannot yet explain and a lot of opponents have no idea how to deal with that, especially if aimed at elbow or sharp in their backhand (many players in this class have no BH). So I took advantage of that. In the double we struggled again but this time we managed to pull off a win. My second match was even easier than the first even though I dropped a set due to playing unconcentrated (first 2 sets were too easy). In the final match I again lost 1 set due to concentration issues. Then I pulled myself together and told myself I wouldn't let that happen the next one, and I won 11-0... whoops. Our 2nd player won 2 of his matches and unfortunately lost the third one in a very close game (11-8, 16-18, 9-11, 11,-13). So we scored another 6-4 win, putting us were we are now.

Realistically we can't hold this, I think we'll finish 4th or 5th. Next week we play the number 1 team, a new team from my home town who have pretty much crushed everyone so far. So we're in for a real challenge.

As for my own game so far this season, I'm really struggling with my forehand at the moment, especially a thing such as simple as a smash. I was a pure FH player in the beginning, and my fh smash was my only weapon. Now I've become a lot more complete and worked a lot on improving my game, tactical thinking and technique, and everything is improved... but my FH seems to be missing this season. If i hit controlled I can still do a lot with it, controlled spinning, controlled counterhitting and controlled pushing. But if I try to put any sort of speed into it I often miss.. Where this problem originates I'm not quite sure, at the moment my bh-smash/spin are far more reliable, but if I could combine that with a good forehand like in the past I would have had far more options. I still try to set up my FH attacks and that usually works out well, except the finishing part. Either I hit it too gently and get countered viciously... or I try to overcompensate and put more power into it and obviously lack control. So far I won a lot of my games purely on control and tactics and my backhand...

Any tips on things to watch for on while I'm trying to do a fast loop or a fast smash with my FH? What happens the most is that I hit it over the table...

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

2 seasons further... yeah, been gone a while (busy with work between table tennis).

I'll put it short, last season of 2012 won 63% of my games and we finished 6th/8th as a team. Teammate finished at 42%, other teammate 0% (logical, he's completely new)..
First season 2013, we did pretty well, I was injured for 1.5 month though and had a few poor games as a result, still managed to finish with a 71% winning rate tho, so happy with that.
We had a new teammate, which is actually one of my trainers, he finished below me though with 58%. Other teammate 50% and the new kid in town still 0%, but at least he managed to win games now! And we finished 4th/6th but not far behind nrs 3 and 2.

I also managed to beat 5 out of the 6 best players in our league. The reason I didn't finish on top is because I also lost a few matches against very poor players.. lack of concentration, underestimating them, not doing anything myself instead of playing my normal game... it was new to me to handle the favorite role for those games...
Proudest moment was beating all 3 playesr of the league champions. They all went nearly unbeaten, but only me and one other in the league beat them this season

As for technique, again major improvements made especially in looping both backhand and forehand. And a lot of time went into footwork. Still don't have a serve that works as a weapon though. Something major to focus on for next season. I know from videos and from teammates how lethal serves work, just can't perform them myself, don't seem to have the proper motor skills for that. Maybe more practice needed... I especially want some good sidespin+topspin and sidespin+backspin serves to set up attacks (both fh and bh)

Also, I've read something about all-year-round trainingcamps in Eger, Hungary. I might try and go there for 8 days in the beginning of June when I have 2 weeks off from work. What do you think? Anyone have experience with them?

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

Well let's keep this going regardless of the reactions.
Season 8 already (2010 x2, 2011 x2, 2012 x2 2013 x2). Finally seemed to have out-learned this division (well it's the lowest, what you expect).

Won 17/21 (81%), the 4 matches I lost could've gone either way (all 5 games, all 2 points difference in final game), and 2 of them I should've never lost (30% players, but I didn't play my own game). Only goal left now in this division is to try and win all of my matches. Which would be unprecedented in the last 7 years for that division
As team we finished 3rd, just out of the promotion spots, but we could've reached that easily if my teammates were a bit more consistent in the beginning of the season. The summer break really hit them hard in form. Especially our 2nd best player (experienced 63yo allrounder), who lost 6 matches against players he normally would win easily. But that's ok, I can live with another year 5e klasse regionaal (5th division regional).

On the progress in technique, we had a new trainer on the club this season who focusses a lot on attacking excersises, especially forehand looping and footwork. This helped me improve immensely. Especially compared to the video I posted in this topic earlier it's a huge difference. I've become a bit worse at flat-hitting but the ability to do a proper topspin compensates that more than enough. Most players in the 5th, and I think also in the 4th division, can't handle a good topspin if I throw it at them. Especially because of my long arms, if I do a proper loop from 1/2m behind the table they are unable to return it properly. Either it flies over the table or I can smash the 2nd ball easily. Only problem is I'm still far from consistent enough with it, so when the looping doesn't go well, I revert a bit to my old habits of slow non-spinny loops that can easily get countered. That's how I lost at least 2 of the 4 matches I did lose in the end.
Also start to feel my backhand is actually more reliable than my forehand, but FH is more dangerous with looping.

As for material. Played with Tenergy rubbers this season. Holy s*** these are fast. But still controllable enough. It's really amazing to play with but probably still too fast for me at the current moment. So now looking again for a more controllable setup.
Thinking Mark V on the forehand, doubting what to do at backhand, maybe Desto F3 Big Slam or Donic Backside D

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

http://ttkaart.nl/player_details.asp?text=3847320

Here you can see my progress season to season (each season is 3/4 months)..
Now a license class higher

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

Excellent improvement! so is class H the lowest? What is a rating of 202?

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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!

Yep H is the lowest regional ranking. A the highest obviously, but contains only (semi)pro's.
The rating is something more difficult to explain. But it's not really important at this rate.

For next year I might look at doing a training camp somewhere..That should get me ready for 4e klasse (4th division regional league).

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

Man... did our competition start disappointingly..

One of the teams in our class shouldn't be in there. One of their players had a break of a year but was 3rd division before that (and won 60% in that). One of their other players took a break of one year and had 70% in the 4th division. The 3rd player played 3rd and 4th division and at best was 50% 4th division.. Why our regional board placed them in the 5th division.. no idea.
Needless to say we lost 9-1. But it wasn't deserved. I lost two matches in 5 games (losing the last game in 9-11 ofcourse)... and we lost the double in 9-11 in the 5th game as well. Should've been at least 4-6.

Although I lost all of my single matches it was good to know I can compete and with a bit more luck win from players that good. One player even had long pips which I've never played against. Thanks to reading on this board I at least had an idea what to do and that worked very well. I had no problems with her pips side and tried to pin her down on that side. But unfortunately she was just a bit more consistent (30+years experience helps..) and I lost the final 2 gamse 9-11 after being 2-1 up... damn.
The other match i lost in 5 games was against your typical female counter-specialist. But i have myself to blame for giving up another 2-1 lead. I just stop taking risks and stopped looping (which always works well against this type of player), and just started blocking. Too conservative and again 11-13, 9-11 in the final 2 games.
The double was most sour of all, because we came back pretty nicely and I played together with a 13-year old teammate who was substituting because 2 of our normal players couldn't. He's talented though and also the youth champion of our club. But we just didn't make it..

Other match this season ended 5-5, also with 1 player who didn't belong there, a player who didn't play for 5 years, but before that he played top class and 1st regional class. That's a D/C license you're looking at. I'm an G.... Yeah real fair. He won all his matches otherwise we'd had crushed them
Anyway, since the team we lost to also won their other match 9-1, we're still competing for 2nd. Which could earn a play-off for promotion.

Also switched to another setup now. Adidas C300 with Adidas P7 rubbers at 2.0mm on both sides. Trained with it today and i really love it. Still have 6 trainings to get used to it before our next match. Because we have a big gap in the scheduling this season. Suits me tho.

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

There's a good chance you will face more strong teams this season as they shifted many teams around because of the way the eredivisie is set up now. Hoofdklasse has many 3e divisie teams, 1e klasse has many hoofdklasse teams etc.

You remind me of a player I started training about 3 years ago. He never had any proper training, just recreational play. A while later he started in 6e klasse, 100%. Then 5e klasse, again 100%. 4e klasse was around 80% and he started this season in 3e klasse. Initially he improved quickly, then there was not much progress and since he started training against (much) better players he started improving again. I think he will end up being a decent 1e klasse player in a year or so.

Still he hardly ever does regular training, mostly picking up hints along the way. I'd guess he plays around 8 hours a week.

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Competition bats:
Win-tec power def Tibhar 5Q sound Power Update 1.8 * Spinlord Agenda ox
TSP Balsa 3.5 Tibhar Genius+Optimium sound 1.8 * Grass D-tecs ox

Put to rest:
Galaxy T10 Bluefire M2 2.0 Palio Ck531a ox
Victas Koji Matsushita Tibhar Genius+Optimium sound MAX * Spinlord Dornenglanz ox
Donic Defplay Senso Tibhar Aurus Sound Black max * Grass D-tecs ox

Check out my quest for my new blade here: http://ooakforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=23241
Current standings:
Butterfly Matshushita powerdefence * Joola Chen Weixing * Nittaku KVU * Nittaku Shake defense* Tibhar stratus power defense * Victas Koji Matsushita * Yasaka Sweeper * Win-Tec power defence

Haha good to know there's hope
My goal was 100% in 5e klasse this season, but that's out of the window now. Yeah, I guess the nttb did shift things around...
To be fair I don't think I'll ever be much more than a 3e klasse player in a few years. But I can always try

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX

So. Yesterday evening I had my second training with my new all-adidas setup.
Man do I love it. A little summary of my training:

1st exercise: parallel backhand backspin serve, return goes to centre (pushed back) then open with a loop to centre. Gets blocked in BH, loop to centre, blocked to FH, loop to centre etc.
I think the block BH/block FH was overdoing it. Especially because the player I trained against has a bit of an active block and can't really block well passively, so the speed of her blocks became to fast for me. Yet I also noticed she had a lot of trouble with my opening loops.. Which is really surprising because she is a national 2nd division player at the womens division.
Turn the exercise around and I had no trouble at all blocking. I felt in control the whole time. And even when blocking further away from the table, which I tend to do because of my length, the speed didn't drop too much.

2nd exercise: same but loop opening to backhand side.. Went very easily, loops had plenty of power and spin, this time played against a player with short pips on his BH side. He had plenty of trouble blocking my initial loops with both inverted and pips side. This is normally his strong point so I was surprised again. My biggest problem is normally to keep spinning on the 3rd/4th ball (normally I'd smash/drive it by then). But now I had no problems. Just took a step back and kept doing my loops. Loved the feel. I don't know if it's the blade or the rubber or the combination but it makes a nice sound which gives a lot of feedback. If I flat-hit it too much I could hear it and know immediately. When I tried to do slow very spinny loops I'd usually always fail, now they went almost effortlessly. My training partner had huge troubles with those especially.
On the receiving end I again had no big troubles blocking his shots. Especially with his pip side you get a pretty fast almost no-spin ball, so I had to adjust a little but it was no big problem. With his inverted side he tried a couple of times as well and they are very spinny but again blocking went very well. Only in the beginning I made some errors because when they loop to my middle I tend to block with my BH, while the goal of the exercise was to block with FH (which you should normally). And blocking with FH in the middle I tend to have the racket angle too open and my blocks go over to the table. So it was a good exercise to get that right.

3rd exercise: This was a weird one... FH backspin serve (short or long) parallel.. returned with a push OR loop to BH side. Then finish with backhand loop parallel. Now I can definitely open up with my BH side, but not that aggressively. So when he returned it with backspin i couldn't open it up fast enough, usually resulting in a devastating counter from his FH with pip side. Or he twiddled and immediately attacked the backspin serve with pipside. In which case I could only counter and again his FH would kill it. After a few tries I got the hang of it and managed a BH loop with a lot more spin on it and he couldn't take over so easily anymore.
Turn the exercise around and most of the time the rally would already be over when I returned his serve. When I used a lot of backspin he'd just loop it into the net. When I looped it up he'd counterloop it over the table. So yeah.

Overall had the best feeling in a long while in training. So looking forward to next week when I have 2 matches in the recreational league. I call it the fool around league because there's basically no competition for me there. I did lose some matches when fooling around too much though but as the nr1 has ran away too much already it doesn't really matter. We're more of a fun team there.
Next normal competition league match is 8 march so still far away..

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Setup 1: S&T Unicorn / Secret Flow Chop 1.5 / Hellfire X OX
Setup 2: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Defence Master 1.5 / Desperado Reloaded OX
Setup 3: Dr. Neubauer Barricade DEF / Butterfly Tackiness Chop 1.5 / Palio CK531a OX