Equipment (Racquets, Rubber, Tables, etc)
From TableTennisTraining
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Racquets
Rubber
There are a seemingly infinite number of brands of rubber for table tennis. Don't let all the brands confuse you, the most significant thing about rubber is which of the categories below that it belongs to. Within a given category, the differences are typically not that huge.
If you have the time and money, I recommend you try playing with all the major types of rubber below. Not only is it fun to play different styles, it will also give you a better understanding and appreciation of the techniques and skills required by each. Many players will disparage the less-commonly used, so-called "junk rubbers" such as long-pips and anti-spin, and these rubbers can wreak frightful havoc against a player who is not familiar with them, but they do require a fair amount of technique to use properly and trying to use them yourself will probably give you more respect for the players who choose to use them.
Inverted
This is the standard spinny rubber that is predominantly used in modern competitive table tennis. This type of rubber is often reverted to as "Inverted" because the pips side of the rubber is turned inwards towards the bat, resting on a thin layer of sponge, leaving a smooth top sheet with a high coefficient of friction. Be aware, however, that not all smooth top sheets are spinny: the cheap bats with rubber that come with "starter" table tennis sets generally do not enable strong spins to be generated and there also exist anti-spin rubbers that are nearly frictionless.
Inverted rubber is the preferred weapon of virtually all loopers, but it is also used by the majority of other styles of players. While it is possible to loop with other types of rubbers (e.g. long pips), it is difficult to generate the high levels of spin that make loops deadly.
Short Pips Out
Short pips rubbers are primarily for attack players who like to flat hit. They are especially good for flat hitting against balls with spin (either underspin or topspin). Short pips should generally be paired with a light offensive blade that allows for very quick attacks. Their biggest weakness is they cannot generate much spin, so it's nearly impossible to use short pips to attack any ball that is too low to have a straight-line shot to the other side of the table. So generally short-pips players will pick-hit attack with their short pips side and push or block with it at other times. Short pips play is very demanding physically, requiring fast footwork and fast hands. Most short-pips players stay close to the table where they can get good angles of attack and can catch the ball before it begins to drop due to gravity. One of the most common forms of short-pips player uses a traditional chinese penhold style and forehand flat kills nearly any ball that bounces even a hair too high.
Medium Pips Out
Long Pips Out
Frictionless Long Pips Out
Anti-Spin
An anti-spin rubber is a nearly frictionless rubber. Therefore, it is nearly impossible to generate signicant spin with these rubbers. However, since they are relatively frictionless, any existing spin on the ball from an opponent's shot will typically remain on the ball when returned to the opponent. These rubbers are called anti-spin because they return the opposite spin in this situation than is returned by the more standard Inverted spin rubbers. For example, when a topspin loop shot is returned by a inverted rubber, the return ball will come back to the looper as topspin (as the rotation of the ball was reversed by the spinny rubber). An anti-spin rubber, however, doesn't change the rotation of the ball, so the blocked topspin shot comes back to the looper as underspin. This can be very disconcerting when first encountered, and it generally takes some practice to adjust for this behavior. For this reason, if you're planning to play in tournaments, it's a good idea to find someone to practice against who uses an anti-spin rubber (the same goes for long-pips and short pips rubbers as well).
Many of anti-spin rubbers will also absorb a lot of the force of the ball, making it easier to perform soft blocks against strong attacks and to make soft drop shots and pushes. This is similar to the slow-down effect produced by pips-out rubbers.
Balls
Tables
Training Robots
Table tennis robots can be used to practice strokes and footwork. The robots shoot balls in a method similar to that used by the tennis robots which most people have probably seen on television at least. Table tennis robots do not actually return balls, as someone might first imagine when hearing the term "robot".
Unless you are in an area where there are plenty of players to practice with, a robot makes a good supplement to regular play, since the robot can always play without requiring you to schedule a playing time! I particularly like to use a robot to practice a new shot before trying it on a real person, since the robot will keep feeding me good balls no matter how bad I flub the shot and it doesn't get frustrated by my repeated misses. My general training style is to first practice the new technique with the robot for a few days, then drill with a person for a few days, then start using the technique in game play with weaker opponents, then finally introduce it in to competitive matches once I'm comfortable with the shot.
Surprisingly, another useful way to use a robot is to practice service with the robot turned off, since they often have good netting systems for collecting the balls you serve into a tray on the opposite side of the table for easy pick up.
Newgy
Newgy robots are the lowest cost robots and are probably the most popularly sold robot in the world. It only takes a few minutes to put on or take off the table and the controls are simple to understand and quick to change. The Newgy website has considerable product information and a Coaching Forum with dozens of articles, tips, movie clips, photos for table tennis strokes, serves, footwork, drills, strategies, and most other table tennis skills. Also available is a 105-page Training Manual, free for download from their website.
The newgy robots have two design limitations:
- only a single spinning wheel is used to apply both speed and spin to the balls, so only spinning balls can be ejected and the amount of spin is directly tied to the speed at which the ball is ejected
- only a single "type" of ball can be configured at any given time, so it's not possible to program a sequence of balls to work with such as looping an underspin ball, followed by looping a topspin ball.
Despite these limitations, the Newgy robot is an excellent value for the money and makes a useful supplement to training with a person.
Amicus
Game Videos
It's helpful to occassionally watch some games by professional players to see what techiniques they use and what is possible to do. Watching games live is the best way to appreciate what's happening in a game, but well taped video can also be useful for gaining a better understanding of advanced techniques, especially when slowed down to half-speed. Even reviewing the same games as you advance in skill can be helpful, as you will often see things you didn't see on earlier viewings of the games. For best video quality, I recommend some of the quasi-exhibition games filmed by ESPN/Killerspin that are available on DVD from most table tennis equipment sites.
Of course, if you have a video camera, it is also very useful to have someone tape you while practicing and playing games, so you can see things about your game that you might not be aware of in the heat of the game. It's quite surprising sometimes how differently your game will look on video compared to the way you've been visualizing it in your mind.
Books
Dannote 00:34, 13 February 2007 (EST): I've only read three table tennis training books, and I'm willing to recommend two of them:
- Winning Table Tennis by Danny Seemiller and Mark Holowchak
- Table Tennis: Steps To Success by Larry Hodges
Here's some other books you may wish to try:
- Robo-Pong Training Manual by Larry Thoman (available as a free PDF download from the Newgy website)
- ITTF Level 1 Coaching Manual, by Glenn Tepper
