Finding the balance between spin and speed

Strokes and Technique

Duncan Wraight
Duncan Wraight Asked 11 years ago

Hi both,

Thanks for your help with my forehand technique recently. I'm delighted to say that after solid forehand training for the past few weeks I "played up" tonight, as a substitute in a Division 3 team (I play D4), and won all of my games. My opponents had a lot of difficulty dealing with the amount of topspin I was able to get on my forehand. I took particular delight in playing against a long pimples opponent as my own experience with the pimples made it much easier to pinpoint her weaknesses, and playing against the few backspin shots she managed to get off was bizarrely pleasurable.

One thing I've noticed is that my topspin doesn't have a great deal of speed. I get a very fine brushing contact and it my current rubber does appear to grip and really spin the ball, but I suspect against better players my forehand would be fairly ineffective.

I'm only playing with a 1.8mm sponge on a DEF blade. The rubber is a tensor and I chose it for its tabletennisdb.com high spin rating.

My question is this: should I be altering my technique a little to get more pace (i.e. less brush, more contact) or is it simply a case of the rubber/bat combination reaching its limits? I get more pace when I use my training bat (OFF- blade with 2.2mm sponge and tacky Chinese topsheets) but even that isn't particularly fast.

Thanks in advance,
Duncan


Alois Rosario
Alois Rosario Answered 11 years ago

Hi Duncan,

You are most welcome.  It was a good process to go through and you have made some significant changes.

As far as increasing the speed, you can try to have less brush for more speed or you can try just moving your swing through faster, remembering to keep your technique correct.

The bat you are using will be quite slow so as you feel more comfortable with the stroke and speed you may think about dabbling with something a bit faster.

Do you train with a different bat to the one you play competitions with?  If you do, I would use the same bat.  Perhaps you can think about moving to the Off- blade for all your play.


Thoughts on this question


Duncan Wraight

Duncan Wraight Posted 11 years ago

Hi Alois,

No, I don't train with the "training bat". Sorry - slightly misleading name I've given it there! I bought it for a few reasons:

  • One of the guys I work with doesn't play much TT outside of work but is actually a reasonable standard, so he borrows one of my bats
  • Gives me an opportunity for comparison, to try and work out which blades/rubbers suit me
  • Gives me a spare, albeit one without pimples!

Today I tried a few different rubbers (on a couple of OFF- blades) - Calibra LT Sound, DHS Hurricane 3 Neo and Galaxy-Yinhe Mars v2.

I find the H3 to be incredible spinny but not particularly fast, whereas the Calibra LT seems to get a lot of pace even on my brushy-topspin despite the sponge only being 1.8mm thickness.

I don't think I'd be able to chop with my short pimples on an OFF- blade as controlling heavy topspin would be really tricky. As such, I think the answer may be to simply find a faster rubber with a thicker sponge, hopefully not trading off the spin I get with my current rubber. I guess one of the Tenergy series may be the answer.. I'll just look into re-mortgaging my house..

On a related note, the contact I'm making between bat and ball offers very little sound. You can actually hear it "brush". When I watch some of the better players in my local league you often here that lovely click sound, seemingly even when they're playing a topspin stroke. Should my contact be making that kind of noise or are they just not brushing as much as I am?

Thanks again


Alois Rosario

Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 11 years ago

Hi Duncan,

Hope the mortgage goes well for you.

The brushing contact is good.  You can vary it more especially off a flatter ball and get the contact more solid with the clicky sound.  Off the backspin ball though the brushing sound is good.


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