OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Not all of us!

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Tactics Enthusiast

The other day I tried it for a few minutes and couldn't even hit the ball. But yesterday I tried it again for about 10 minutes (but during free practice, so I wasn't serving non stop), and I landed about 50% of the serves!

Waiting a little longer before starting my backswing definitely gave it more quality! I'll need to keep practicing it for a little longer before I can use it in a match. Since I'm not used to the timing yet, the ball often popped up a little higher. But my practice partner dumped heaps of them into the net and he commented on how heavy it felt.

I love things like this because with such a little change, I feel like I've gained so much.

Thanks again!

Great attitude mickd!

This is exactly what I'm always talking about. mickd's serve is now a lot worse than it was a week ago because I pointed out a whip destroying pause. After receiving my wisdom, mickd initially regressed to the level of not being able to hit the ball as a result. Clearly I'm hoping that mickd can improve the spin on his serve over the upcoming months and start making consistent contact again. Rebuilding something takes a little time.

Coaching should make you worse! If you get coaching and you don't get worse, you really got training instead. Training is good too, however, practice makes permanent, not perfect.

I truly believe that coaching can make you perfect, if you have the perfect attitude towards it and you dedicate enough time. In my mind, the mechanics of table tennis are mostly solved. My understanding is increasing in extremely small increments these days, which is good and bad.

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ttEDGE.com Professional online coaching

Interesting call.

Ma Lin was playing at a time when the first loop mattered more. The cell ball has changed that. I still feel that Ma Lin's mechanics were the best. Imo, he had the best arm extension and whip/lag. Some of the Korean's had the same thing going on too, and that's mostly dead now.

Ma Long probably has one of the best pivots of all time too. I just don't think it looks as spectacular as some of the older players. Maybe it really is the ball?

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There is something good about this post. The language tells me that you understand a lot.

Against backspin, the body movement is up and around. The ratios may change depending on many variables (spin, height of ball etc). You need to be in very good position to just go around with your body.

Form must follow function. Folding and unfolding is always going to be an important part of playing against backspin. A video is worth 10K words, so watch and see how much he bends from the waist (folds/unfolds here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVL_mc4q0Qc

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To be honest I was joking more for the sake of having fun. I personally liked the look of Ma Lin's motion the best even in the match against Xu Xin. And I think they are all ridiculously good shots and that any member of the CNT has his place on that list and a few Koreans and Japanese as well. And I was joking about Wang Liqin too he could easily be #1.

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

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

On a more serious note, given my initial response:

I actually agree with and said a lot of this in different words. And it is stuff I think a lot of us see what you see in fastmover's technique, but I am still not sure whether the main point I tried to convey was accepted by fastmover or not. He seemed to think he was folding over his knee and you are right, it might be possible to modify the stroke without that fold I am looking for (it will probably look a bit more back driven like mine does). We will see his next forehand topspin vs backspin video. But for me, the fold he displayed was limited. I have a limited fold myself but you can see I try to lean over the knee much more. But I have a really crappy right knee that influences all of this.

https://youtu.be/bSK-mjrvfFI?list=UUPt3 ... ddOA&t=153

On whether it is better to get holistic or to get into "minutiae", I will say not as an expert, but as a amateur coach, if you are trying to push for someone to change something, both approaches have their place, you try to make it work by figuring out what makes the student get it right and keep it going. Small details can be what limit a person's technique, and fixing those small details can unleash improvements (look at the fix for mickd's serving and try to tell him to do it holistically). The foot pointing to the side either as part of hip rotation, or as a foundation to push off when folding the torso, is not a small detail. But it only came up in part because fastmover may have felt he could keep the same technique and finish without coming up but not fold the torso more (he felt it was folding sufficiently already). From personal experience, I cannot see how, because the way that stroke affects a knee when you don't point it outwards while backswinging can be interesting (I won't go into the gory details). The back doesn't like it either over time.

The problem is that fastmover seems to be focused on the foot positioning relative to the table, when the real point is to focus on it relative to the stroke. And this would probably be a fast conversation with a student in person. Or one would whip out a video of Ma Long as Brett did and point out the elements one wants you to embrace. And like I said, LTT93 spells all this foot positioning and spinning torso stuff out in excruciating detail.

And yes, if a holistic or goal oriented description works, great. But sometimes, you have to go into the details like TTEdge does to refine technique and without the details of what to fix, it is hard to just go forward, especially if you have technique that somewhat works. And it is not as if fastmover isn't a good adult player. He is an above average adult amateur player in the USA. What he does right now wins him points against players. So fixing what kinda works right now is rarely going to be simply about changing an approach and expecting the body to follow - some of it will require him to deal with the details and in general, the more advanced a player, the more you have to deal with some details, though you can sometimes make it a whole new stroke. He could change it and still end up using too much upper body when he could use more hip rotation as one example. Though maybe any change is progress?

I think if you coach, you will have your approach, but realize that not all students respond the same. And if you want to work with every case, while of course working best with some temperaments, you will modify your approach to fit the temperament of the student. And even for me, there are times when each approach works.

I try to explain to my students that if I or any player tells them to fix something, we are seeing something we think needs a fix. But we don't always use the best language. It is up to the student to try to make sense of it and see whether it works. Everyone sees something but very few people understand it well enough to describe it exactly the way it will make sense to you. Bring what they said to me and we can see whether it is really something or not. Doesn't mean I will be right but I am your coach.

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

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Thanks Brett. Glad to hear I am not completely off piste.

I think for people going wrong it helps to exaggerate something so they accidentally do the right thing sometimes. Like my advice wasn't desiring an actual counter top spin from fastmover, but for him to try something that felt like one to him. Then his body would adjust. Probably having a low backswing would be enough as he would naturally end up with a high finish due to the swing mechanics even trying to go completely forward over the top of the ball.

I know I always come back to this but it's just another sport I play and know a bit about. In golf instruction, it's common to get someone who slices the ball massively to try to come from the inside and hook it. Often they end up hitting it straight. Or to get someone who habitually aims to the left to aim way to the right of target. They will actually aim right at the target but until they are shown photographic evidence they would swear you are crazy. I think my post was an attempt to do something a bit similar.

These are good points.

There are certain things that did not make sense to me at all and others that clicked right away, when actually both were attempting to get me to do the exact same thing.

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I am a very strong believer that words have no meaning in themselves and that they are just tools of communication and it is far more important to try to understand what the other person is trying to say other than to take what you think they are trying to say as being exactly what they are trying to say. There are limits to my approach but it helps.

The funny thing is that I know exactly what fruitloop is trying to say. For me, my counter topspin stroke and my loop against backspin feel similar but just take place in two different stroke planes.

But if I read him as literally saying that you should use the same exact stroke with no modification for contact point or stroke plane for looping both backspin and topspin, then we start this linguistic semantics pedantic gymnastics.

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

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

https://youtu.be/ijahzxwMsKM

Russ, do your thing.

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

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

I want to see FruitLoop counter topspinning heavy pushes in a tournament match facing at least equal opposition. Preferably covering the whole table with the forehand. I am especially interested in cases when the ball is dropping and nearly approaching the table level, like in my point.

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Tactics Enthusiast

Why not just try it and see what happens? That's science, innit?

Does it really help to have to understand everything before you can do it, or does it make things harder?

Not being a troll, it's just so foreign to me I can't get my.head around it. I would totally just try it and see if it's good.

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Have you ever tried doing it yourself, in a match, under pressure? Power looping every single push, even the one below the net height?

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Tactics Enthusiast