OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I've been playing TT for about 7 years now, have used inverted rubbers on both sides. I'm not a very good player, I can topspin on both sides with serving and serve returns being my weakest parts of my limited game.

I injured my knee 5 months back playing football and I have pain while in my right knee while climbing stairs, I rested during these Covid lockdown hoping the knee pain would go away/heal itself and didn't do any sports apart from walking everyday. Now my knee pain is gone and I don't find any discomfort climbing stairs or doing ordinary stuff. But after resuming playing TT and bending my knee to do forehand topspin, the pain has come back. It's something I have to talk to a physical therapist and I'm doing that parallel y.

So I started thinking if I could stay close to the table and not bend down so much I could reduce strain on my knee, will changing to short pips help me with this, I know that short pips is little bit useless when moving away from the table and I hate chopping anyways, so is this something I can try out or will using short pips is not much different from using inverted rubbers?

Sure - you could develop a blocking and hitting game, which can be pretty effective. There are some pretty high level players who play like this. The problem, of course, is to play close to the table you need faster reflexes to get your racket to the ball. You can mitigate this by making it more difficult for your opponent to hit to random parts of the table or to attack your shots - blocking to place your balls low at extreme angles, for instance. Short pips will help with this, since they don't react to spin as much as inverted does (particularly true for serve returns) and the relatively flat/spinless topspin drives will often cause an opponent (particularly at the lower levels) to put their returns into the net. I'd say try it for a while - it'll take some practice to switch over - and see if it works for you.

Iskandar

On one side you definitely want blocking type long-pips (not chopping long-pips, since you admit you hate chopping. mostly because you either were not good enough to be a chopper before your injury and or probably hate chopping for fear of social rejection, sorry for being so brutally honest).

On the other side you probably want to keep inverted (since you topspin from either side) , as it is better for an all around game. Short pips is not for you as it requires you to be close to the table as you correctly pointed out & needs great reflexes & to be on top of the ball all the time. I am not sure you can handle that with your injury. But blocking long pips will add a new dimension to your game & you can play a mid distance game spinning with your inverted side & close to the table flat hitting & blocking game using blocking long pips side (again, unless you are afraid of suffering the wrath of long-pips haters and becoming a social outcast)

Isn't it much more likely that he hates chopping because he has the mentality of an attacker and defense is deeply unsatisfying even when it works?

If so then blocking with LP will be no better.

Unless you expect the knee injury to be permanent do not change equipment. Play with double-inverted close to the table, like the world champion.
https://youtu.be/IV3OZNJh8SA

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