OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Maybe.

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"Bad technique doesn't work when you need it most"

My second attempt to go back to camp (go to about 3 minutes in if you dont want to hear me try to fix the feed):

https://youtu.be/bSK-mjrvfFI

My body really wants to do multiball like this everyday. May have to pay a coach once a week.

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

Why are you even letting him feed like that? I'd go over and smash his hand into the table and yell at him 3 INCHES. 3 F*(&ing inches.

OK not really, but I've thought this too often when training people on feeding in the last few weeks.

Two reasons- I just want to hit a ball and I can't picky if I want to hit balls as just about any player in the club will be as bad and definitely worse on the ball quality.

The other is that I probably don't feed that much better myself. In fact I am going to post some of my feeding for critique.

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

I'm going to sleep now and will be thinking of Laj as the drill master in Full Metal Jacket yelling at people who feed poorly.

Hahaha..Hahaha. None of it is deliberate, just my poor temper.in silly moments.

Here is my way too fast crappy feed.

Have a good night.

https://youtu.be/u0jfOikuI7s

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

[quote="fastmover"]
There is one more thing with staying low. Because go for spinny loops, I often push up with my legs and get straight as the result This crap has been with me for years and I see no way of fixing it.[/quote]

Two possible fixes:

1. Don't straighten up to make a spinny loop so you stay low.

2. Get back down after standing up. At canp Brett told me to jump into a squat. I assunr he told the others that too. Spinnt loops travel relatively slow, you have time to get back into ready position, unless you are shot-watching.

Bonus possible fix 3. Serve topspin or no-spin around half the time. That will make the third ball of choice a faster attack instead of a spinny loop vs backspin.

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Taken as statements of fact, such utterances are logically meaningless and convey no information. Though they seem to be the best possible explanation in words of the experience itself, it is as if in the moment of saying the last word the tongue were paralyzed by its own revelation, and compelled to babble nonsense or be silent.

Alan Watt -- The Way of Table Tennis

Entering a fast bang-bang rally starting with a flick coming at me is one of my worst nightmares. I've been trying to learn playing those scenarios in the last two years with very modest results.

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"Bad technique doesn't work when you need it most"

Nice video analysis wilkinru! So the problem is the pivot. To me that doesn't look like good position. It's slightly exaggerated normal fh stance. Which would be great if it was set up 18" further to your left. Or for a pivot, if the body/feet are in line side-on to the table.

Everything in the stills after is unavoidable once you have that poor body position relative to the ball.

It's really hard to pivot successfully against a quality ball (ie when it matters). That's why I've been trying to play better backhands, and also why I rebel or tune out a bit when coaches want to emphasize drilling pivots. I'm making a distinction between pivot technique and playing normal fhs from most of the table. the difference may only exist in my mind, but I hope it's clear.

Going side-on gives up a ton of table position that sliding a normal fh stance along the end line doesn't. You have to be really quick with your feet. Fastmover, that's what I was trying to say when I pissed you off by calling you too big and slow to play an all fh game (not my exact words, and this is why I don't try to coach people very often, something about my approach rubs them the wrong way).

There is physical training for footspeed that's relevant to any sport where quickness is essential as opposed to running speed, like boxing. I'm working on some of that even though I am much older, slower, and less athletic than you, and at the margins it helps. Being young and strong, for you it could really make a positive difference, not just delay the inevitable change to LP blocking like for me.

At the higher level you are playing now I think it becomes much harder to separate technique from athleticism. There is a reason NL's bh is so strong, and it starts with his knees.

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Taken as statements of fact, such utterances are logically meaningless and convey no information. Though they seem to be the best possible explanation in words of the experience itself, it is as if in the moment of saying the last word the tongue were paralyzed by its own revelation, and compelled to babble nonsense or be silent.

Alan Watt -- The Way of Table Tennis

I'm not sure you will get a stronger flick off a topspin or no-spin serve. Actually I think heavy backspin allows opponents to flick the heaviest. Also the serve spin variation itself makes them be more careful (less effective) attacking the serve. Unless they always rrsd the type and amount of spin on your serves. And in that case you will be shaaking their hand after three sets no latter whst you do, so you might as well work on a weakness.

I'm horrible at countering flicks also, but my response is to serve less heavy short backspin. That was actually a useful part of the group training I did on Saturday. Coach had us work on the timing to counter a topspin off the bounce close to the table. I don't rrally train that, so no wonder I suck at it in games. It's a distinct skill to practice with multiball at first, and work through the whole sequence of integrating a skill into matchplay.

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Taken as statements of fact, such utterances are logically meaningless and convey no information. Though they seem to be the best possible explanation in words of the experience itself, it is as if in the moment of saying the last word the tongue were paralyzed by its own revelation, and compelled to babble nonsense or be silent.

Alan Watt -- The Way of Table Tennis

Your feed is nowhere near as bad. It's actually acceptable.

Your friend is doing the 12 inch bounce and chop-smash feed and you have every right to go into a massive rage.

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ttEDGE.com Professional online coaching
YouTube table tennis videos by Brett Clarke

No one likes being flicked at, even pros, but you can see a difference between a flick and a smash flick. Fastmover is still in the early stage of his game I think an he is getting used to looping topspin but isn't all the way there yet. I think dealing with flicks is when you start to appreciate swing with the body and not the arm because the arm is always too slow, and any use of the body is usually enough to get the ball back. But I also think fastmover learns to slow spin with a more forward motion, his handling of topspin will improve.

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

Your feeding is much much better than your friends. It's so much easier to feed underspin taking the ball early off a low drop. Your friend looks like he's taking it higher from a higher drop and swiping the ball with some sidespin.

If you guys put the balls closer to where you're feeding from, you won't have to move to get more balls by the way

After wilkinru got me thinking more about my body usage on the forehand (something I haven't been putting a lot of focus on since I started to practice more backhand), I decided to video myself from a different angle to get more of my legs and movement in.

I actually found it pretty useful looking at myself from this angle.

This one is all from receive. When I took this, I was mostly interested in seeing if I was using my body or not on forehands. I also wanted to see if I was being lazy with my footwork or not. From about 0:50, I also started to do some banana flicks (I'm not sure if they're actually called banana flicks since I'm not whipping my wrist and more so borrowing the spin to put the ball back to get into a rally). For those, I wanted to make sure I got back into position quickly enough after the flick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4qbSfXYTOQ

What do you guys think?

The second one is from serve. You can see a lot of my backhand technique too. I was doing short serves here. I also included regular, reverse, no spin and top spin for variation. My general serve strategy is to contact the ball in a way that's between two spins so that it's hard to read, but that also means I don't put extreme spin on the ball. For most opponents, they will pop the ball up a little, which is what I use to attack. My partner is quite used to my serves, so it doesn't happen as much. I think I fold my upper body into the ball relatively well on serves since I have a completely straight back after the toss (is this okay?). From 1:20 I started to pull my racket back after contact to add possible deception. Considering it was something I never practiced, I'm surprised I pulled it off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JByTJa1aYDc

What do you guys think?

I think the reason why I appear to fall back on my forehands is that I over exaggerate LTT93 kind of motion. When I face a heavy backspin ball I try to put all my body into the unfolding action which results in bending backwards sometimes due to inertia of the unfolding motion. You can even see it in wilkinru's pictures: on the second screenshot I am folding downwards, then unfolding. I don't know, maybe I have to fold on a steeper angle to prevent this.

The point at 05:24 shows it very clearly: it is easier to see when I am in front of the camera.

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"Bad technique doesn't work when you need it most"