OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Just bought a Y&T 988 robot and should get it sometime next week. I have read reviews on it & I guess what I get is what I pay. Does anyone have any tips on how to get the best out of this robot ?

Cheers

I've done a little research into whether or not to get a robot, and I've had a little experience playing on a friend's newgy. Here are a few pointers off the top of my head...

1) First, get some coaching to make sure you have good form and technique. If you start practicing on the robot everyday with bad form, you'll only 'groove in' these incorrect strokes, making it difficult to correct them later on.

2) Still include other forms of training with a partner, especially intuitive/creative type drills that you can't perform with the robot. Also, remember to practice serves.

3) Don't set the frequency (rate of balls being fired) too high. You don't want to make a habit of hurried incomplete shots. Try to make the balls come out at a realistic speed, or a little slower and then concentrate on form. An exception to this would be if you are practicing specifically to increase reaction time.

4) I don't know if your robot has this feature automatically, but remember to vary the spin that the robot sends you. On the newgy, you can have the placement change during the drill (oscilation) but the speed and spin are always the same. This is usefull for learning a shot, but once you are perfecting it, the fixed amount of spin is too unrealistic. I got around this problem by having a friend stand at the control and mess with the speed/spin setting while I played.

Hope that helps

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there are a couple good practices on youtube. There's also a couple absolutely hideous ones too. The practice that I thought looked pretty quality is the guy that didn't oscillate the robot, but with good footwork switched back and forth between forehand, and backhand. The guy also did it at pretty high frequency.

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My rubbers are 9 years old. They won’t be there long.