Chinese forehand Vs. Euro forehand?

L2Pivot wrote: Leshxa wrote: ... He actually said, "do not watch the pros. Trust me." He also said, "I will not show you my loop because you will do it your own way anyways". He said, "We will try to create your loop so that it has all the necessary consistency and effects with whatever execution you will find best suitable for you." While I was learning my forehand, many people kept coming up and suggesting different things I should do with my forehand and how I did things wrong. Well, there aren't any more left with suggestions, now these same people come up with questions instead. To this day, my technique keeps CHANGING. It is EVOLVING automatically when I practice on different elements. I am still making mistakes, but its a work in progress... In my opinion, that's terrible advice. Sure, you could misinterpret certain things and pick up bad habits, but what's the harm in watching the pros? I'm assuming you have the required critical thinking ability to be able to determine whether something is conducive to your game. On that note, when people give you advice, take it with a pinch of salt. When a coach gives you advice, take it with a grain of salt. What I'm trying to get at here is that only you can feel your arm swinging, or your knees bending. I've had people comment that my stance is wrong or that I'm not spinning the ball enough, when the actual problem was that my timing was just off! Regarding stroke development, I believe that it is much more sensible to have a top-down approach than a bottom-up approach. What I mean by this is, try and develop a forehand technique that is as fast and as spinny as you can possibly manage - try and utilise as many muscle groups as possible and ensure that they all work in harmony with each other. Obviously with the first few attempts you will not be able to execute the shot consistently. This is where practice comes into play so that you can familiarise yourself with the timing, acceleration etc. If you have a decent coach, then this would be made much easier for you as they know exactly what to look for. Contrast this with the bottom-up approach, where you start off with a bog-standard 'brush-over-the-ball' stroke. You then tweak and tweak and tweak your stroke until you can play a stroke that is more powerful and spinny than when you first started learning it. The problem with this however, is that you have no idea how much more your technique can improve - is it the best you can do? Is it as efficient as you can make it? These two approaches are kind of what lie at the root of the 'copying the pros' vs. 'find your own stroke' argument. I'd say that there is a fuzzy area between the two; you can incorporate technical gems gleaned from other players into your game, as well as developing your strokes accordingly to your physical limitations. I am however, heavily biased towards learning from the pros, especially if you already have a good idea of the basics. Think of it this way: the professionals get quality training from their coaches, they exhibit the training in publicly viewable matches, and we study the results. The only caveat would be, as already stated, misinterpretation of technique (and maybe a few injuries or two if you get overzealous ). This is what I think the main purpose of a coach is. His goal is not to help you find footholes in a mountain to climb as such, but to show you the peak of the mountain and to make you stretch for the shortest route. To summarise, I guess the only reason why you wouldn't want to imitate the best would be if you're missing a limb or if you are more... prominently built.

You may disagree, but there is a difference in watching and seeing. Many people observe the pros but do not see the same thing. When it comes to technique - it does not matter how many times you watch someone execute a certain shot, or how much you slow down the shot frame by frame, you are only watching 1 shot!!!

EVERY shot executed by the pro will come with a different element of adjustment of the stroke - it will come with slightly different delivery depending on the incoming ball and the resulting shot that the player wants to produce. You may try to immitate this as closely as possible, but you cannot learn the pro's feeling of executing that shot. This approach will teach you WHAT the pro does, but not HOW he does it.

Your timing being off as you mention is a perfect example of you copying the stroke without being able to feel the touch and adjustment!

Regarding top down or bottom up approach, you speak of it a bit more radically. I would like to compare it slightly differently. So here is my question and I certainly would like to get your take on it. Because I would like to see which approach will be best suitable for learning the forehand as you have described above.

When developing a forehand loop, do you teach a player to use his wrist right away or later? This is a perfect example of a question that will poke a hole in your top down, bottom up theory of learning.

If you look at how human as a species learn to do different things, you will realize that we never get the final thing perfectly right away. Everything changes, and everything comes with timely adjustment. Learning needs to start with basic mechanics and timing. Once that is done, you need to learn to adjust to different incoming shots and footwork. Then you work on improving balance and learning to transfer more weight for power. Then, you review everything and work on trimming timing and looking at how to make movements more efficient without a loss of any of the elements mentioned. Then, you can go back and look at any of these points again to see where you can make things stronger, better, faster. It is ALWAYS an ongoing progress.

Copying the pros won't teach you that and if it will, it won't teach you how to make a BETTER shot, just merely the SAME shot.

I will give you a final analogy. You drive a car right? So you have some experience driving. If you take a seat in FORMULA 1 and try to take it for a lap at the pro level, you will either kill yourself or will never be able to get it to move at the pro speed. That's just how complicated certain things get. You have ALL the skills to drive the car, but you WON"T be able to handle this one.

I use roundell and I think that I have a chinese stroke. I stretch it all and the pick it up and I brush dont hit and then go up for engage the ball. So I think that you can make a chinese stroke with euro/jap rubbers

Leshxa wrote: Learning needs to start with basic mechanics and timing. Once that is done, you need to learn to adjust to different incoming shots and footwork. Then you work on improving balance and learning to transfer more weight for power. Then, you review everything and work on trimming timing and looking at how to make movements more efficient without a loss of any of the elements mentioned. Then, you can go back and look at any of these points again to see where you can make things stronger, better, faster. It is ALWAYS an ongoing progress.

Nagatito wrote: I use roundell and I think that I have a chinese stroke. I stretch it all and the pick it up and I brush dont hit and then go up for engage the ball. So I think that you can make a chinese stroke with euro/jap rubbers

Your technique would not suit well with Chinese rubbers, therefore it cannot be a Chinese stroke.

My opinion is that it's very difficult to know if your style [really does fit Chinese rubbers/is Chinese].

Try on a sheet of the hard sticky stuff and see how your shots are. If you manage to get a decent amount of speed as well as spin on the ball and you feel that you can 'control' the path of the ball better then I see no reason why you shouldn't switch.

Seeing as you mention you feel that you hit more than spin, I think that Chinese rubbers would serve your loops well as you get [an arbitrary] twice as much feeling on your shots.

And to finish off, one caveat to using Chinese rubbers is that you must really be confident and consistent in your ability to produce a snappy accellerating stroke. It is much too easy to make a fairly decent shot using Euro rubbers with an inconsistent power output, just because of the nature of the rubber to feed on the speed of the ball. With Chinese rubbers if you don't 'whip' the ball properly the rubber can appear dead and the reliability of your shots drop dramatically. A good indicator that I've contacted the ball correctly is if I hear a loud 'crack' from the blade. I find that my YEO seems much louder than my old blade so it's easier for me to evaluate my shots.

Of course using these rubbers is definitely no easy feat and even after using them for a year I can still make the most basic of errors. As I mentioned in another post, there was a time when my shots were more consistent with Tenergy than they were with my H3. It was only after I changed it to a harder (and therefore slower) sponge that I got more used to outputting the appropriate amount of power.


Edited by L2Pivot - 06/03/2012 at 11:10am

harder rubber less dwell more power. also lets you use more of your own power

The only thing to really get use to is the point of contact is further away from the body than Euro forehand.  But it allows for greater coverage of the table and greater margin of error in guessing the amount various spins, since you are over powering the ball with topspin.

I have tried using T05. It is not the same.

Tomtat92: The softer the sponge, the more kinetic energy from the ball is stored as potential energy, which is then transferred back into the ball as kinetic energy.

Think of a trampoline vs. a concrete floor.


Edited by L2Pivot - 06/03/2012 at 9:09pm

L2Pivot wrote: I have tried using T05. It is not the same. Tomtat92: The softer the sponge, the more kinetic energy from the ball is stored as potential energy, which is then transferred back into the ball as kinetic energy. Think of a trampoline vs. a concrete floor.

Both T05 and H3 can brush loop with slow, spinny topspins. If you're doing textbook forehand strokes, with waist rotation and wrist snap, then such strokes are not dependant on equipment. In fact, when I play with short pips, it's still the same stroke as these inverted rubbers, except the blade is more closed.

An example is looping heavy backspin. T05 and H3 both does this the same if you have fast arm speed, but T05 would be much more forgiving if you have slow arm speed. H3 would just hit the ball into the net if you're slow, but T05 you can get away with it. This just means bad technique. Some rubbers are more forgiving of bad technique, but the textbook strokes work for any rubber with decent grip.

Of course, I've played thousands of hours with tuned H3 and T05, that's why I use them as examples. I can switch from one to the other very easily. Ironic, because I have a hard time playing with Tenergy clones made by ESN.

People always say that H3 requires some special stroke. Maybe super hard untuned samples are like that. Today's H3 Neo at most hardnesses can play the same strokes as euro/japanese rubbers just fine. Watch the Chinese pros. Their strokes are just textbook forehand strokes.

I have the same experience as L2.  Most people try to use Chinese rubbers the same way they use Euro rubbers, by brushing with a concave stroke.  Now, there are many situations where it's entirely appropriate to use Chinese rubbers that way, but in many situations, particularly when driving low blocks and backspins, a different, convex stroke is required to get the maximum speed and spin.  Like L2, when I use Euro style rubbers like Tensors or Tenergies, that type of covex stroke results in the ball going WAY long with seemingly little spin.  This is especially true for Tensors, Tenergies actually work pretty well with some adjustments.

dingyibvs wrote: I have the same experience as L2.  Most people try to use Chinese rubbers the same way they use Euro rubbers, by brushing with a concave stroke.  Now, there are many situations where it's entirely appropriate to use Chinese rubbers that way, but in many situations, particularly when driving low blocks and backspins, a different, convex stroke is required to get the maximum speed and spin.  Like L2, when I use Euro style rubbers like Tensors or Tenergies, that type of covex stroke results in the ball going WAY long with seemingly little spin.  This is especially true for Tensors, Tenergies actually work pretty well with some adjustments. As for the question of TG3 vs. H3, generally, people evaluate using Euro-style strokes, so rubbers that play more Euro will get higher ratings.  TG3, being a bit softer, seems to perform better for people using Euro style.  It does Chinese stroke just fine too, and you do get the best performance out of it using a more Chinese stroke.  Personally, I like it quite a bit, I think I can switch to it with rather minimal adjustments from the H3.

Furthermore, I don't understand why Chinese hard tacky rubbers is associated with brush looping when none of the Chinese pro's do such a stroke. They do mostly drives near table and non-brush looping away from the table. There is always a strong forward component to the stroke.


Edited by cotdt - 06/04/2012 at 4:04pm

cotdt wrote: There is always a strong forward component to the stroke.

a strongly forward, please