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Table Tennis Basics - Like a Boss - by Brett Clark |
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Baal
Forum Moderator Joined: 01/21/2010 Location: unknown Status: Offline Points: 14335 |
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Nobody is even coming close to disputing that people sometimes need help-- well, except perhaps for your contention that coaching is usually ineffective (to the extent it is even possible to discern what you are bloviating about). So yes, people need whatever help they can get to feel the right mechanics of the stroke, which is the whole point of this video. |
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AgentHEX
Gold Member Joined: 12/14/2004 Location: Yo Mama Status: Offline Points: 1641 |
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> What isn't covered is what do both strokes, fixed elbow and power loop, have in common?
There's plainly a tradeoff between getting everything in line for max effect and the time it takes to do so, so the pertinent question is how that tradeoff gets made. A lot if not most players seem to make the choice in game poorly if they're anywhere near making that tradeoff at all. IOW they're not even trying to the right thing so it's no mystery when they remain in place for long spells. Also to clarify these sort of flaws in pedagogical technique aren't unique to this case or TT specifically, nor that it's particularly pernicious here in any way. It's just something for general discussion given it's here, and the fact anyone takes it personally usually means some point hits home. People for example get taught/study languages for years yet can't carry out a basic conversation. |
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Brett Clarke
Super Member Joined: 10/05/2014 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 173 |
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Hey pnachtwey. Correct, the first video is for coaches to help new players from day one. It is about stoke efficiency and recovery. It is to stop players from messing up big time. If someone doesn't believe there is value in the technique, I would be excited and grateful if they made a video showing me a better alternative as I'm willing to learn and I don't want to teach students/coaches rubbish. Coaching is a big part of my life. Just saying you don't agree doesn't help coaches to teach backhand and forehand to players from day 1 forward. A short 2 minute video with specific and practical instruction would help everyone a lot. The second video is about bringing in extra power and speed by using wrist and forearm close to optimally. There is some upper arm used on power shot (I mentioned it in the basics video when talking about Henzell), but it's still mostly wrist and forearm. I believe there are a few ways to approach technique, but not as many as people may believe. The range is very tight. Most people make significant errors which are miles outside of this range. Cheers, Brett |
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Table Tennis Videos by Brett Clarke
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pnachtwey
Platinum Member Joined: 03/09/2010 Location: Vancouver, WA Status: Offline Points: 2035 |
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That is a general statement. What is common to both types of strokes? I think one of your earlier posts mentioned keeping the paddle in a plane or something to that effect. I took this to mean that the plane of the paddle or normal vector was pointing in the same direction during the time of possible impact. This makes the timing of the impact less important. If the orientation of the paddle is changing during impact then the ball will go in different directions depending on when the ball hits the paddle. If you had a robot that could move like a human how would you program it? I am not talking about the details and nitty gritty of programming but what things would be important to making optimal shots? What are the trade offs between doing a straight arm loop and one where the elbow is close to a fixed point? What goal would be common for both shots? I think keeping paddle orientation constant during possible impact time is important. It is relatively easy to program a robot so that the end effector's orientation, paddle orientation, remains constant during a stroke so the wobbly paddle effect is negated no matter what the stroke is. This is a little harder for people to do this but I think the important thing is the goal. |
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wturber
Premier Member Joined: 10/28/2008 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 3899 |
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... with typically no more than one seconds "notice" and also with the intent of aiming the ball to a specific location. Further, the particular stroke that they execute can very well need to be determined in a time interval much less than a second. My general opinion/experience is that table tennis is frequently taught backwards with an emphasis on strokes first and footwork later. It should, IMO, be the other way around. If the footwork is good implementing a good stroke is much easier.
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Jay Turberville
www.jayandwanda.com Hardbat: Nittaku Resist w/ Dr. Evil or Friendship 802-40 OX |
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ttTurkey
Silver Member Joined: 09/07/2010 Status: Offline Points: 516 |
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I have a suggestion: create a sig that says "everyone else is stupid and always wrong". That way you don't have to repeat that assertion in a myriad of different ways in all your posts. With that out of the way and taken care of by your sig, you can focus on posting constructively (if that is your aim). "A lot if not most players seem to make the choice in game poorly...". Poorly compared to who? Top professionals? Well, duh. Of course amateurs do a lot of things poorly compared to top professionals, who got there by taking up the sport at a young age, practising 5-6 hours per day under the eye of a good coach and happened to be born in a strong table tennis country. Show me any sport where amateurs nail the basics and play like the pros. If I remember correctly, on another thread you admitted that you have played occasionally for about a year. I think you suffer from thinking that expertise in one field translates to expertise in completely unrelated fields, and that all problems can best be solved using science aka engineers' syndrome. As for your criticism of Brett, he is offering very helpful (IMO) advice for the average amateur (you know those guys that either started playing later in life, didn't train many hours per day, did not receive expert coaching for years and weren't born in a strong TT country i.e. most of the playing population!!!) in his videos. And best of all, he is graciously offering his expertise for FREE! If you don't like the price, then don't buy. |
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BRS
Gold Member Joined: 05/08/2013 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 1583 |
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So true, and so, so sad. If the footwork is bad implementing a good stroke is just about impossible. The sad part is that learning a proper stroke is easy. Anybody can shadow practice a perfect stroke like throwing rocks in a pond. They just never get to use it because learning proper footwork as an adult isn't easy at all.
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pnachtwey
Platinum Member Joined: 03/09/2010 Location: Vancouver, WA Status: Offline Points: 2035 |
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My coach 2500-2600 teaches the same fixed elbow technique. It isn't just for beginners. It is for anybody playing close to the table where minimizing reaction and recovery time and efficiency is a must. Watch top rated female players. For playing close to the table, the fixed elbow meets the criteria like like efficiency, accuracy, speed, and consistency. True engineers like these attributes.
We should take this up on an different thread where you can explain the engineer's syndrome. |
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Brett Clarke
Super Member Joined: 10/05/2014 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 173 |
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Yes pnachtwey, The technique is relevant for top players as well, especially in close to the table play where efficiency is necessary as the ball comes back quickly. Efficiency is efficiency, no matter the level of play. I targeted the content more to beginners, club players and coaches as these people are the majority. I really enjoy coaching at lower levels, especially beginners. Cheers, Brett |
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Table Tennis Videos by Brett Clarke
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AgentHEX
Gold Member Joined: 12/14/2004 Location: Yo Mama Status: Offline Points: 1641 |
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The simple answer is that there's also a compromise between flexibility and max mechanical leverage. Keeping things in a "ready" position in lieu of better informed decision isn't a bad idea. The more complicated first principles derivation of this follows.
Yes, it's basically an algorithmic optimization problem. From a high level perspective doing the calculation for all possible interceptions for all possible flight paths is onerous or at least time consuming, so it's best to reduce the solution space by setting a point where the path intersects a given distance distance from the table as a hard deadline and schedule everything both backwards from there and towards that point of interception. Looking at this simplified version, the main goal is always going to be preparing as well as can be at a given point in time and thus the limitation is always going to be acquiring enough data soon as possible. Again for simplification if we take last ball leaving your racket as time zero, there might be a span where it's difficult to see what the opponent is fixing to do and react accordingly (if for example we assume the opponent has no anticipation and reacts only after your shot), so it's necessary to rely on heuristics entirely to start doing *something* that's better than nothing. In its most basic form might be "return to neutral position", to "best position for cross-court return", up through something based on the specifics of the point/game against historic statistics of specific opponent. Once more externally visible info (eg. opponent moves toward right of ball and starts lowering racket) is available whatever previous course of action can be preempted. Thus far we've only touched on fwd scheduling. Calculating backwards from anticipated time of impact, some solutions (say, powerloop) are necessarily precluded. There are necessary dependencies in the algorithmic chain of events such as backswing before stroke, the end of which is limited by the ball's ETA. This is where the decision for arm angle or whatever comes into play. There's always going to some compromise in the heuristics between a more generic position and one more optimized/risky for an expected shot that may never come. Generally as time passes, more info becomes available to increase certainty of nature of the interception, and less time is available for scheduling more lengthy movements. For example, if you play an offensive FH down the line on the right side, it's reasonable to expect a cross-court to the BH. Whether it's best at that point to keep to a safe/flexible arm position, or when to turn the shoulder over to optimize for another attack depends on various specific factors. Some thing else worth mention is a typical issue I've seen in most players (incl myself) is they react too late to do much, even if they had perfect guidance on what to do from that point fwd. I've heard high level players mention that there's "plenty of time" which is accurate from a perspective where good "anticipation" is the norm; but in any case the framework above contains various concepts like data acq, scheduling, decisions, etc which when applied to any given situation helps explain what that word means. |
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AgentHEX
Gold Member Joined: 12/14/2004 Location: Yo Mama Status: Offline Points: 1641 |
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More or less the same thing applies to footwork as strokes, even if less attention is paid to it for various reasons. The overarching problem is that most folks lack the tools to figure out what's going on and thus what's going wrong and thus how to fix it. Not figuring things out for longer obviously doesn't help much here. |
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Baal
Forum Moderator Joined: 01/21/2010 Location: unknown Status: Offline Points: 14335 |
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AgentHEX
Gold Member Joined: 12/14/2004 Location: Yo Mama Status: Offline Points: 1641 |
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Just in case anyone needs a reminder what trolling looks like. |
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AgentHEX
Gold Member Joined: 12/14/2004 Location: Yo Mama Status: Offline Points: 1641 |
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That side of the market seems pretty crowded; that's why I'm going with the too complicated to understand end of things.
Srsly tho, imo just people are new doesn't necessarily mean they can only handle simple. |
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Brett Clarke
Super Member Joined: 10/05/2014 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 173 |
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Hey fatt, I would be delighted to see you post content right here. If you can teach me a thing or two about coaching, it would seriously make my day. There is almost no video content on how to coach TT online. I'm sitting at my computer right now making a 100+ episode series called "learning table tennis" so I may even try to steal an idea or two from you. Looking forward to seeing your stuff, especially if it's portable and practical. Coaches need simple tools to take down to the club to teach players. Cheers, Brett
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Table Tennis Videos by Brett Clarke
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