1) It's impossible to get a very good backhand AND a very good forehand. They're mutually exclusive, meaning to get a good backhand you have to sacrifice some of your forehand power. The most common styles are 2-sided loopers(equally good backhand and forehand, mostly shakehand) and 1-sided(much better forehand than backhand, mostly penholder). Players with good footwork should go for the 1-side route while others should choose the 2-sided route. For example: Ma Long, Ma Lin and Wang Liqin have extremely good forehand attacks while their backhands are very good at blocks. Zhang Jike, Wang Hao and most European players are equally good on the forehand and their backhand. Funny thing is that Wang Hao plays like a shakehander while Ma Long really plays like a penholder.
2) For footwork, it is very important that the left leg goes to the back after serving forehand serves from the backhand. And I tried the low basic position last Thursday, and as a result my loops have increased in accuracy by a lot, almost near to 80-90% chance of hitting. However, handling of short balls is just impossible to do that using a low position. From other videos, I noticed that most players play with a medium high basic position.
3) Defending is impossible in eca centre due to the limited space available, so I can't train my defensive skills. Chopping is near to impossible due to my overly fast bat. So the other alternative is lobbing/fishing. Lobbing can cause much more mistakes than fishing, but fishing gives much more opportunities to regain the initiative by long distance loops. I think I'll probably train the fishing style.
4) Sometimes when failing to produce what you expect, do not disregard the results. For example that day I tried to push with a lot of backspin, but in the end turned out to be spinless. In the end, it turned out to be a very good fake chop!
5) Change is really the heart of table tennis. Ryu's serve worked wonderfully in 2004, where he won the Athens Olympics almost due to his serve. But now, almost everybody can take his serve rather easily. Ma Lin's serve has confused so many people over these few years, but even now more and more players are getting used to it and especially against other younger Chinese, he doesn't win that often anymore. The new wiper serve used by Kenta Matudaira and Dimitri Ovtcharov's modified backhand serve and forehand tomahawk are causing the most trouble now. Waldner was able to remain at the top for so long because of his ability to change. He was changing and adapting ALL the time. His opponents could never expect what was coming, while he was able to predict other people's shots so easily. He remained on top for almost 20 years, managing to beat both Ma Lin and Timo Boll at the 2004 Athens Olympics at the age of 39! Amazing.... It's sad to see no one with the ability to learn and adapt like him in modern table tennis. Just look at this video at all the amazing shots he makes.
Haha, just thought of writing this
Why understanding more important than practice
I still maintain my opinion that it is not that necessary to train endlessly in order to perfect a shot. The most important thing is that you know all the key points of performing that shot, including the motion, footwork, eyes, grip, etc. and remember them when you practise. Practice is only useful in retaining all the important points into muscle memory so that you can automatically perform the stroke without even thinking about the details. Understanding is way more important than practice/memorisation.
In fact, the most common cause for inconsistency is not a lack of practice, but a misread of the ball's spin and power. For example, there are some ppl who think that given enough practice, they can loop all types of balls with the same stroke, and continue to blame lack of practice as the reason for their inconsistency. I can tell you that not even Ma Lin can't do that! The reason why they are so consistent is that they are able to read the ball's speed/spin perfectly and adjust their stroke to compensate for that. Some people are even funnier. They misread a serve and give their opponent a high ball to smash, and fail to take the smash. But then, they don't put the blame on their service misread, but on the inability to defend the smash! What the hell.... And a lot of people practise too much on the basic loop. Of course being able to produce a powerful attack is very important, but more important is the ability to control the amount of spin/speed/placement, to make people very uncomfortable with your loops.
It's true that practice makes perfect, but if you don't understand, practising 100 hours would not bring you any improvement at all. The key is quality practice. You can in fact master a table tennis stroke in less than a day. That's part of what I learnt from Chong Lim, on how to master pieces in the shortest amount of time. When practicing, I never play the whole piece. I practice by parts, by bars, always very self conscious to ensure that I get the results I want. Then only improvement will come. In fact, this is also true for studies and most other things in life.
OK end of rant.... will stop posting about table tennis for this week. I want to post some pictures of the trips to yogyakarta and bangkok, but unfortunately the internet is slow like hell. It's down to dialup speed! Celcom 3G is like that one, it'll revert to dialup speed when you use more than 5GB. But how are you supposed to use less than 5GB in a month?!
Why understanding more important than practice
I still maintain my opinion that it is not that necessary to train endlessly in order to perfect a shot. The most important thing is that you know all the key points of performing that shot, including the motion, footwork, eyes, grip, etc. and remember them when you practise. Practice is only useful in retaining all the important points into muscle memory so that you can automatically perform the stroke without even thinking about the details. Understanding is way more important than practice/memorisation.
In fact, the most common cause for inconsistency is not a lack of practice, but a misread of the ball's spin and power. For example, there are some ppl who think that given enough practice, they can loop all types of balls with the same stroke, and continue to blame lack of practice as the reason for their inconsistency. I can tell you that not even Ma Lin can't do that! The reason why they are so consistent is that they are able to read the ball's speed/spin perfectly and adjust their stroke to compensate for that. Some people are even funnier. They misread a serve and give their opponent a high ball to smash, and fail to take the smash. But then, they don't put the blame on their service misread, but on the inability to defend the smash! What the hell.... And a lot of people practise too much on the basic loop. Of course being able to produce a powerful attack is very important, but more important is the ability to control the amount of spin/speed/placement, to make people very uncomfortable with your loops.
Some people just don't really understand why they don't improve.
It's true that practice makes perfect, but if you don't understand, practising 100 hours would not bring you any improvement at all. The key is quality practice. You can in fact master a table tennis stroke in less than a day. That's part of what I learnt from Chong Lim, on how to master pieces in the shortest amount of time. When practicing, I never play the whole piece. I practice by parts, by bars, always very self conscious to ensure that I get the results I want. Then only improvement will come. In fact, this is also true for studies and most other things in life.
OK end of rant.... will stop posting about table tennis for this week. I want to post some pictures of the trips to yogyakarta and bangkok, but unfortunately the internet is slow like hell. It's down to dialup speed! Celcom 3G is like that one, it'll revert to dialup speed when you use more than 5GB. But how are you supposed to use less than 5GB in a month?!
Just for fun, I have some proof of my ping pong craziness.....muahaha
124 videos occupying 5.57Gb!
