OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Sorry this is going to be my little blog.

Reading the last 6-7 pages sure looks like the rest of the pages on here

I'm way out of fitness and just working on that along with the basics again. It's been a year and a half since I've played anyone in a game. Tomorrow I plan to play a little, finally. It'll be awkward.

Why? Body decided to get older. For those just under 40...you might experience these in the next 5 to 10 years.

Dec 2020 - felt sick/tired all the time. Went to the doctor finally(feb 2020), they found high blood pressure - and thick blood. Sleep apena was the cause (where i turn into a mouth breather and basically stop breathing for 10 seconds+ at a time). Also got my heart and other things checked out (everything in excellent condition) - put on a lot of pills for high blood pressure which made me hungry and I ate too much. Still felt tired, finally got a couple of sleep apena solutions around May 2021. So that's what 6 months until the medical world could find me a fix? Difficult to get an appointment and such in the USA.

Still felt tired, ate way too much, finally went to another doctor and reduced these blood pressure pills to like 1/4th of what they were. I think it honestly took until around Jan of 2022 where I was able to handle the apena using a few different strategies and stopped feeling tired. I decided I needed to drop the weight I had gained, which is about 20 pounds around March of 2022. I'm mostly there, thankfully.

But of course 2 other things had to come up - I got gout - which is basically arthritis in your toe from high levels of uric acid creating small crystals around the joint. Extremely painful. Apparently eating lots of meat for a keto diet can cause this. My last self inflicted wound was a stupid Korean video game that I played way too much for a couple of months but I'm free of that finally (seemed like a ok idea with gout).

Lastly, and this is a silly one, but being tired so for long and just exhausted I thought my eye sight was being affected but after going to the eye doc - I'm wearing glasses all the time for the first time since 2008(lasik) and it's fantastic. I can see again! So just getting older.

So it's all in place - I can see, walk/run and sleep again. I'm ready to get frustrated at table tennis one more time

I have a couple of thoughts - I'm interested in learning a couple of strong deep serves. I feel like mixing more long serves in might be a good thing to have. Also I'm going to be willing to push(or chop!) more often on return this time around if the ball is somewhat difficult to read or if I'm having issues with the spin. Adam Bobrow's crazy videos of him chopping makes me think there is a lot of value in that sort of change up - specifically at my level.

Lastly glad to see basically everyone is still on here and seem to be doing well.

This is your back-swing against a reasonably heavy backspin ball. It's the same as against a top spin or ball to your forehand from what I can see. Need to get lower. It's also partly why you finish so high up - trying to compensate. Which then if you do get the ball in, you run out of time to get ready for the next one. I suffer from the finish too high thing also.

Do the same drill I'm doing to get back into TT: one backspin, one top spin. Mixing up the back-swings will result in an miss if the spin is heavy enough.

Thank you for all the advice guys, made a lot of notes and I am rewatching ttedge videos to fill the gaps a bit and will return soon with some longer training driils footage

Welcome back wilkinru!

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

OMG that was quite a journey... Glad to know you are back on track! Long deep serves are the ultimate weapon up to <2000. And even then they are very useful.

I also had a bunch of dramatic stuff going on shortly before and throughout the pandemic, and I resumed playing around a year ago. So far so good, but life can be unpredictable at times, especially now.

_________________
Tactics Enthusiast

Indeed. You know I forgot to mention I had back surgery in Sept 2021 and cut my thumb pretty bad with a hole saw in Oct 2021...
The back surgery gives me hope tho! My previous back/hip issues seem to be a lot less. They just removed some sort of mass/growth thing, seems to have taken pressure off some nerves.


So anyway back to table tennis. Did my first match vs anyone in 1.5 years yesterday and felt entirely uncomfortable. Speed of the game and all that. I did a lot of pushing - I won the game by looping the final 2 games...so at least that's done.

While drilling the old stuff endlessly sounds...like a plan, it sounds like suck. So I've decided to focus on 3 new things: Punch serve, flattening out my forehand paddle angle against backspin and hopping back with both feet after coming over the table for recovery.

I found this video interesting (and lots of his other videos) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtBwNhHzy6E . It's pretty good to see what a 2500 player is thinking about.

Wilkinru, My suggestion is for you to work with Brett by sending short stroke videos. He has new stuff which some pros are doing well that he has not talked about on ttedge.com yet.

I have made big changes over the last month or so to both my backhand and forehand strokes based on this feedback. I'm also teaching the guys I coach the new techniques. If you use up to date pro like technique you will have an advantage over guys that use old style methods.

@wilkinru

Welcome back to the forum and the rabbit hole of table tennis / trying to improve in table tennis!

I had some LASIK surgery as well (to correct shortsightedness in 2001) and surprisingly, my eyesight started deteriorating towards the end of 2019. It must be due to too much screentime (playing a soccer manager game on the mobile phone) and age. Hence, I wear glasses when watching TV, riding a bike, etc. these days. I tried playing table tennis with glasses for a few minutes, but I didn't feel comfortable.

How about you? Do you play with glasses?

I agree with Dr. Pivot that long serves can be (very) effective depending on the opponent. Definitely useful to have it in your tool box.

Oh yeah, glasses are key now. It's huge for me. I wore glasses from when I was 8 to 28, so it feels quite normal for me.

Lol my backhand serve toss has been touching my glasses, tho. I'm going to need to adjust that a little.

Wow, it sounds incredible that you have had large technical improvements in such a short period of time, could you please share a bit your training plan that enabled you to achieve this?

Wilkinru, its work in progress.

Brett told me what technical areas to change. I started sending Brett shadow swings of the new form. Then I send videos against the robot. When I train I use video for feedback of the form. I can hold the new form against the robot and against easy multi ball. It does tends to fall away in match play at times. I lack a training partner at present so its hard to fully integrate the new form totally in muscle memory.

I also used split screen video analysis of my form compared to the video of the pro that Brett recommended.

Its worth going down this path as my backhand is now much more like Hirimotos off the bounce shot that is devastating down the line etc. The forehand is now a bit similar in stroke mechanics to the best Chinese pros forehand.

I was playing a guy that was on a much higher level to me. He had the old style backhand topspin. He just had to block my backhand shot as it was too fast and powerful for him to backhand loop. Then a down the line backhand had him in a lot of pressure. Having up to date technique goes give you a big advantage.

Brett's technical knowledge of what current pros are doing is amazing. I suggestion is to make use of it. You really need an expert to tell you what to look for when watching pro video.

Good to see you back, Russ! Sorry to hear about all that, but I'm glad you're back on track.

https://youtu.be/Yc9K1U7Jd6U

I watched this video the other day. Didn't try it yet, so I cannot comment on the effectiveness, but it looks interesting.

Hi Guys,

I took some video against the robot following Brett's latest advice.
Here are the 2 videos.

https://youtu.be/9jqYEPQ0dlI
https://youtu.be/QiGAPYSlQcY

On the backhand he wanted me to rise up more say a few inches.
He liked the forehand.

I feel my stance is not low enough and I am too upright at the end of the forehand swing.

Any feedback welcomed

Looks good to me, so it is hard to say anything really. I like the BH punch. When I watch top players it looks like some of them opt for it instead of a topspin. Especially women, but men too.

_________________
Tactics Enthusiast