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PostPosted: 03 Mar 2020, 14:34 
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Blade: SOULSPIN DEFENSE
FH: Spinny stuff
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azv wrote:
skilless_slapper wrote:
I've been using spectol blue 1.5 for chopping now, which is a bit less spinny than the ssc you have. I think those are easier to float/push low spin than with the spinnier stuff, but harder to add more spin with smaller movements.


How is the spectol blue compared with other versions of spectol for chopping? I think Hang Ying used spectol blue aswell


I bought a ton of the other spectols a good while ago... 21, soft, red and all that. But never chopped with them too much, aside from the spectol red as a forehand rubber on an offensive setup.

To me, the blue topsheet feels a bit more grippy than the old spectols. I don't have any trouble generating spin with it, in fact it seems easier for me to create spin with blue than the older versions. I also got it because of Han Ying!

I've used LP mainly over the last 2 years now, so the muscle memory kinks are as to be expected. I like the harder sponge on spectol blue, coming from OX LP. Scrubs off a good bit of spin, but will send balls sailing long and all that good stuff if you're not careful. I think the blue has less bounce to it than the red, and is similar to the spectol regular version. However, I use it on a slow and fairly flexible 5.0mm blade... so that does affect the rubber's characteristics quite a bit.

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PostPosted: 03 Mar 2020, 23:59 
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Lorre wrote:
How does the control compare between P1-R and SSPC I when it comes to heavy slow loops and fast spinny ones? In the sens of absorbing the power of the ball?


Obviously everything I say comes with a big grain of salt since my level is much lower than yours, but here's what I've found in these early days:

So far control against heavy slow loops hasn't degraded as much as I expected. When I was practicing against the higher level player on Saturday, he was doing a lot of medium to fast but very spinny shots and I think most of my misses were to the side when I didn't get the racket all the way around for the stroke. The sponge on SSPC1 is the same as the sponge on P1r, I think (same bright yellow color, package says it's 55 degrees which is the same as the package for P1r says), and the sensation of the ball impacting when chopping a hard spinny loop is pretty similar. With a decent stroke I find it surprisingly easy to keep chops low and put them about where I want them, though as practice rallies went on and my partner dialed up the spin as high as he could keeping the ball low became trickier. The one thing I don't get is the sensation of pips kind of 'flinging' the ball that I'd get with a really thin slice with P1r at certain angles.

_________________
Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )


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PostPosted: 26 Feb 2021, 03:23 
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Just wanted to post a quick update: while the league at work is still shut down for the time being, a club just reopened about two weeks ago and I've been able to play there twice. Yowsers, I feel like a beginner again! Some quick notes:

  • Timing on my serves is utterly gone. The only one where I'm completely unafraid of missing the ball entirely is the backhand serve, and even there the spin is a fraction of what it was (I used to generate a good number of net returns with this, even from guys probably 300 rating points better than me) and the depth and height are not well controlled and forget about disguising the level of backspin. I can occasionally do a good side/top pendulum serve, but the hook serve is too bad to use and same with the reverse pendulum that I had been trying to develop.
  • My ability to read an incoming serve, decide what the response should be, and move my body/execute the return I decided on is degraded, mostly because the whole thing takes too long. This is a killer weakness against opponents with good long serves!
  • Controlling BH chops is harder than I remember, but I think this will come back pretty quickly (more on this later).
  • Controlling pushes with either the BH or the FH is not nearly as difficult as I expected, though I'm sure I'm missing some touch.
  • When attacking weak pushes, I'm missing long a lot. Not sure whether this is a racket angle thing, a problem reading the level of spin, or a lack of topspin on my loop against pushes.
  • The instinct for FH chops is there, but the control isn't. Also, my footwork/distance management are entirely gone so I frequently end up doing stupid stuff like taking the ball in front of the body or doing a sort of fishing shot instead of a chop or chopping from way too close to the table.
  • Even during warm-ups, I find basic counter-topspin awkward, like I'm always out of place and trying to take the ball too low or something.

When I went to the club Tuesday night, I did get an excellent opportunity to just practice BH chops for about 20-30 minutes with a guy who was rated ~2050 from his last tournament before the pandemic. I think it really helped, I was able to get into a bit of a groove and work on control and variation.

I should note that I'm using SSPC1 on the backhand like I had been for a little while before the pandemic closed everything down. I figure I'm better off sticking with one thing, though I haven't taken the sheet of P1r off my other racket "just in case".

Oh and also, I learned last week that my previous club had actually re-opened for a while from about september-december (before closing for good) but I hadn't been notified due to a snafu with their phone number list, which is why almost everyone else was way less rusty than me.

_________________
Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )


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PostPosted: 17 Apr 2021, 04:04 
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I've been making pretty decent progress, playing probably 4 hours a week on average. It's not ideal, but I'm getting the feel for things again. Apparently there is something wrong with my stroke for the forehand slow-loop and fast-loop, as several other players have commented after hit-ups or matches that I have the opposite sidespin of a typical right-handed player, which did not used to be the case before the yearlong layoff due to the pandemic.

Last night I really tried to focus on posture and footwork. Stepping sideways to take the ball to my side (rather than in front of my body) for a BH chop doesn't feel natural the way it used to. Staying low and doing form-loops felt great during warm-ups, but my quads started getting tired pretty quickly and my knees are a little sore afterwards (sore like a well-used muscle, not like a joint that's been tweaked). It was also hard to maintain form against a variety of incoming shots during matches. I did have a little success attacking with the pips on loose balls to the BH side, though, which was very satisfying.

_________________
Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )


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PostPosted: 30 Apr 2021, 23:56 
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BH: TSP Spectol Blue 1.5 red
A quick update: I'm getting some more wins than I previously was, but I still feel like I'm struggling with the same basic control and footwork issues. I think drills would probably be really helpful, but the other players at the club really only want to play matches.

_________________
Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )


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PostPosted: 16 Oct 2021, 00:37 
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BH: TSP Spectol Blue 1.5 red
I was out of the game for about two months during the tail end of summer and beginning of fall (due to a mix of family travel and back pain), but restarted playing during lunch with a coworker about two weeks ago. My coworker LOVES to loop at me, so I've had lots of practice chopping on both wings and counter-looping on the forehand. Though loop/chop and loop/loop rallies are exhilarating and fun, my major focal point has been really paying attention to what the ball is doing and what I'm doing when pushing. Anyways, I finally got back to the club last night, with much better results than expected:



- won my one match (3-1) against a lobber who I've only beaten once before. He really dislikes opening up the attack when he plays me, usually leading to a mix of pushing wars and smash/lob rallies with me smashing. I tried to eliminate instances where I'd open with a weak or low-percentage attack, and instead to either pick a ball early to attack strongly and with confidence (at an angle or into the body, to end the point quickly) or to be patient and focused in pushing so as to avoid errors. It paid off :) When things did get into smash-vs-lob territory, I did OK but not great.

- split matches (lost first 2-3, won second later in the night 3-0) with left-handed close-to-the-table attacker/blocker Don. Historically he has played mostly with anti on his backhand, but he's been doing double-inverted for a while and was doing so tonight. He's another guy who doesn't like getting into attack/chop rallies with me, and as a result we were both playing the same strategy though I did try to bait him into attack/chop rallies a few times (mostly unsuccessfully). In the first match I kept brainfarting re: his handedness and giving him balls to kill.

- lost (1-3) to ~2200 level right-handed flat hitter Rich. He mentioned during and after the match that he was having trouble reading the balls from my [short] pips, which felt great since it's been a point of focus for me lately! What I think is going on is that when I push a backspin ball quickly off the bounce with a nearly-vertical racket and little wrist, I can produce a dead ball, whereas when I wait for the ball to get to its peak and do a wristy push with a nearly-horizontal racket I can produce very respectable backspin. I also had some success generating errors with FH chops with the inverted - trying to keep the floaty ones really low seems to lead to more points via over-hit balls. He killed me by the scoreboard (I think it was 11-9, 5-11, 7-11, 4-11) but the rallies were great, and it's satisfying to have any success at all against a player so far above my level. Great workout too, he really moves a defender all around the court over the course of a rally.

- won (3-2) against a lower-level righty flat hitter. We played this game on a table where space was very constrained, so I mostly had to play close-to-the-table. I made a lot of mistakes attacking low dead balls, mostly missing long. This is a longstanding weakness of mine that I need to work on.

_________________
Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )


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PostPosted: 03 Oct 2022, 23:30 
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Joined: 02 May 2017, 11:49
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BH: TSP Spectol Blue 1.5 red
Playing semi-regularly again after another long break between January and August. Got a house though, which is nice.

_________________
Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )


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PostPosted: 10 Nov 2022, 22:56 
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Joined: 02 May 2017, 11:49
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Blade: VKMO (FL)
FH: Gambler Volt-T black
BH: TSP Spectol Blue 1.5 red
In a fit of EJing, I bought some Spinlord pips to experiment with - two red sheets of Waran II, and two blue sheets of Gepard (in 1.8).

I slapped the Gepard on a Joola Chen Weixing blade that had been sitting in the factory shrinkwrap mocking me since The Before Times. It tacos pretty noticeably with cheap Chinese "organic" TT glue that I got from Aliexpress a while back. I put a sheet of Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange (which had similarly been mocking me in the factory shrink-wrap for about the same period of time) on the forehand, which didn't appear to interact with the glue at all.

In my first play session yesterday during my lunch break, I liked the combo. I think I get less spin on wristy pushes than I did with Spectol. Topspin blocks and counterhits work better than I thought they would. Chops are pretty good, I think, but I'll need way more practice (and practice against higher level opponents than I have access to at lunch) to tell.

The color looks GREAT. I'll have to take a picture and put it up here when I get the chance.

_________________
Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )


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