ooak1102 wrote:
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?
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)