Here is the picture of IKARUS.
I will start to write how I designed this blade here.
And here is one review.
http://mytabletennis.net/Forum/forum_po ... 875#404875 1. How I learned about long pimple rubbers.
When I was in the university, I joined table tennis club. And in that club, I had to follow harsh internal rules. I had to do form-training, that's what we called, which means I had to train my swing form in front of a big mirror inside of our club room more than one tousand times a day every week days for one month before I can let my blade touch a ball.
While I do that mirror training, a lot of senior players kept on criticizing on my swinging movement without a ball, and that was not enjoyable at all.
After that, I could start "many balls training" which means I could not play with a person and I only have to hit the balls coming from senior player's one-side tossing from a ball basket.
That took more than 2 months,then we could start playing with a real person. And it took about a year before I could start looping, of course after many months of chopping training.
So, basically, our club has it's own style. it was like a total training program built up by many years of it's own history.
So, basically, it took a year before I could decide what kind of style I would choose.
Anyway, after that hard one year, I started looping training.
And some senior players thought that it would be great if they could have one defensive player in our club which will help that every one can get better trainings.
So, they picked me up, and I was not sure what it would be like, but I took the offer.
I thought it would be cool if I could be a good defensive player, but my playing character was very much aggresive even at that time.
By the way, at that time, there was very few who could play with shake hand blade, and more than 95% were Japanese Penholder players.
Moreover, it was extermely difficult to meet a defensive player.
So, how could I ever be able to learn how to play in a defensive way?
First I had to switch from Japanese pen holder to shake hand blade.
Then I had to learn defensive style, which was totally new and different from what I had been doing.
I started to study, and I watched videos a lot, because I could not have any other souce of trainings, and even those things were not easy to get.
I read all the stuffs I could get, and I started to study long pimple rubbers, and also short pimples, anti-spin.... and whole new blades.
At that time, we did not have good information that it wasn't easy to train a defensive player in such surroundings, and I did not know I was not suitable to become one.
It took 2 years that I finally came to a decision that I could not become one good defensive players.
It was very important matter at that time.
I was a student, but I spent 3 ~ 7 hours a day in playing table tennis.
(I was not a good player compared with other players in my club, but I really liked playing)
Actually, our club has only 2~4 players per one year, because it's not possible to find that much crazy-in-table tennis guys more than that among 4,000 new students in one year.
When I decided to turn back to offensive playing style, everything I learned became opposite way. I trid really hard to go downward and backward, but I had to make it upward and forward if I wanted to become offensive player again.
So, that's the brief story I first leaned table tennis and how I got to know long pimple rubbers and lots of blades.
Anyway, it's already quite old story.
2. How long pimple out rubbers came into Korea
When I entered this market, Korea started to experience new challenge.
For many years, amatuer tournaments did not allow long pips players to participate in local amateur tournaments in Korea.
There could be lots of reasons for that, but little by little, people started to use more and more long pips, and the association could not prevent all those long pips players from participating in those tournaments.
So, there came out that more and more tournaments allowed long pimple out players to play in those matches.
It was very shocking situation for normal amature players that they had to play against long pips players in the local tournaments.
There happened lots of arguments in many ways, but population using long pips burst out to increase.
Maybe it's around 2002~2004.
And I started my table tennis business in 2005.
I came to know , little by little, Hallmark and Dr. Neubauer, new long pimple out rubbers blades. And all the new rubbers became big challenges for me.
I had to find out how I could play against those new rubbers, and also I had to find out how I could sell those new rubbers and long pips blades.
I happened to associate with some disabled players, and I could get lots of new experiences from them also.
I became Tibhar agent in 2006 and I started to think that I could make a new kind of long pimple blade.
That's how I started to design a blade for the first time.
I co-worked with one guy, and we came up with a new idea about long-pimple our rubbers-oriented blades.
That's how we released a blade named "Musiro" in Korean market.
I designed one-ply carbon structure, and the size of the blade was done by another partner, Joo In Baek.
(He is now sick, and I'm really sorry about that.)
Here is the picture of that blade.
You can meet the blade here. :
http://nexy.com/shop/step1.php?number=717 That blade was a big success in Korea.
And I was quite satisfied with the function of that blade.
In 2007, I tried another blade, which is faster than the first one, and it was named Mi-Large.
That became another legendary blade in Korean market.
Those two blades were produced by Tibhar, and I'm really proud of those two blades.
If I start to explain how I designed those two blades, then it would become another long story, so I would not explain that here.
But anyway, those two blades are the father of IKARUS of NEXY.
Here is the second Long Pimple out rubber blade, Mi-Large
You can meet this blade here :
http://nexy.com/shop/step1.php?number=716 I will write more in the next article.