Thanks Jacek. A compliment I'm nowhere worthy of receiving!!
Thanks NL. I recently had a chance to practice in China for a little over a week, and I really enjoyed the experience. They focused heavily on multiball, and I finally felt like I was being pushed. Having to stop half way through a bucket of balls because my legs were burning was a great feeling.
After returning to Japan and having to go back to the club style playing environment, I was really depressed. Maybe I'll leave that story to another day!
Anyway, I decided to try out the robot again (probably the first time in like half a year). It took an hour to setup some drills, and I spent another hour doing various drills with it. It felt great!
I was finally able to do what I wanted, which was do short drills, review the video, and do it again and again, slowly fixing things I didn't like. The first video was the first one I took for that particular drill. The second video was the 5th (and the last for the day).
I think you're familiar with the limitations of the Amicus robot. My plan was to practice until I could hit the ball, while using the body in a way I'm satisfied with. Then turn on the random placement mode. Once I get used to that, add a few balls to the forehand side with slightly different placements, and use both the random placement and random ball mode to get it more close to a real game.
In the drill above, I have it set to two balls to my forehand side. One to the middle of the forehand court, and one closer to the middle of the table. I did that because I want to get used to moving my feet to the ball, even if it's a small adjustment only. That was something they focused a lot on while I was in China (as well as various other things).
I don't think I'm fit enough to do a proper forehand forehand drill where the second ball goes into the backhand court, but I plan to practice that too, at a slower pace, of course.
My backhand was also atrocious. I found out everything about my backhand was wrong, and now I'm rebuilding it. Maybe I'll make another thread about that later :) The videos I took practicing on a single ball had me getting a decent stoke in sometimes, so I know with a little more practice I can engrave that into muscle memory.
Back to your comments about the whip mechanics, that's something I'm trying to achieve. Every time I take these videos, I feel like I'm seeing better and better whip mechanics. I've also never been able to hit the ball as fast as I can now.
For the people who have experience with robots, what do they think about my plan? I'm sure many people have intended to do it like this, and for various reasons stopped. Please share your stories so I don't make the same mistakes :)
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