Bobloiy's Improvement Thread

For 4 months, i think you are doing very well. I would say your are around 1400. Your coach or teacher has taught you some good basic strokes. Keep practicing and try some multiball sessions. Talk to all the people you play with and pick there brains...for tips. If you can afford it, try paying for a top coach for a couple of lessons. We all pick up bad habits that are hard to get rid of. Coaching will help alot. In my younger years, I know i improved alot on my backhand loop when my coach multi balled me to death....lol  Your serves are a little week, get a bucket of balls and keep practicing serves...that will help alot...Try different angles, timing and where you contact the ball on your rubber. Keep practicing and you will steadily get better.....

Grip on your FH is excellent. However you are too passive on your BH. 

You've got lots to work on. I would work on making sure you hit the ball from the side of the ball and swing across. You need a backswing to the ball, contact near the side of the ball, and then follow through across and forward. A lot of the balls you are contacting the back of the ball and not the side. 

You clearly have a coach.  Listen to him/her.  You play well and your game is headed in the right direction.

V-Griper wrote: bobloiy wrote: V-Griper wrote: Grip on your FH is excellent. However you are too passive on your BH.  My advice is to use a more BH biased grip for your BH and practice grip switching. What do you mean by passive? My coach told me not to change my grip when going from FH to BH. That's cool, then stick with what your coach advises then.  What I mean by passive is that you block or counter with your BH when you could drive or loop. At least with the higher level player from what is shown in the vids. The vids are edited so maybe there are more points where you attacking with your BH than is represented in the vids you posted. You are obviously a FH dominant player and I have no issues with getting to your FH early and often. However imo you could be putting more pressure on with your BH. A BH biased grip affords better control on the blocks and counters and gives more attacking capability imo. In some of the clips it looks as if you might be switching anyway but I can't be certain. Regardless the obvious problem is that it might slow down your BH-FH transition until it was automatic.

Oh. Well I just started learning the BH loop, it'll take some time to adjust to the stroke. Trying to get the timing/feel right, it's tough...

bobloiy, don't sweat it too hard about BH looping vs underspin right now. Although I think it is one of the easiest and most natural TT strokes, you just don't start doing that early in your playing progression for many coaches, especially KOREAN coaches. They got their own top secret coaching manual (in their heads) and it is amazingly standardized across many coaches.

Thanks BH-Man for the clarification on the Korea TT ratings system. I always find it interesting to learn and hear how other countries operate there clubs and ratings system.

I think your coach was on the natl team in the 70s and Korean amature TT has changed a lot since then. What hasn't changed a lot is schools trained kids hardcore like pro training for hours a day. Brutal footwork training, hours of practice. Korean system spends FOREVER on footwork and stance/movement/stroke mechanic fundamentals before moving on to complicated combination drills.

The only way to stop ringers form coming about is for a TD to have complete personal knowledge of the players and the ability to command-override the division assigned by the coach. Ironically, I always complained about these ringers to TD to no avail, then enemy coaches griped about me and got me advanced to higher divisions and I NEVER won a city or regional or national tourney EVER.

Edited by BH-Man - 11/17/2014 at 8:29pm

BH-Man wrote: I think your coach was on the natl team in the 70s and Korean amature TT has changed a lot since then. What hasn't changed a lot is schools trained kids hardcore like pro training for hours a day. Brutal footwork training, hours of practice. Korean system spends FOREVER on footwork and stance/movement/stroke mechanic fundamentals before moving on to complicated combination drills.   Natl open tourneys have Div 1 as highest, then if there are athlete players, they make an "Athelete" (Seon-Soo) Division. And if there are a lot of those ringer Athletes who have won Natl tourneys in the tourney, then they make a Champion Division.   You see the Div 0 in the city/regional tourneys. When there are not enough players to make a division field, the TD will combine two divisions, usually it is Div 1 and 2. Some of the larger ones combine Div 1 and Div 0. When Div 1 player faces Div 2 player, he gives up a 2 point handicap each game.   If the 8th grade kid has been identified and trained as a TT athlete since age 8 or 9, he would have 5 or 6 years in the hardcore training, so City Div 0 is about right for the good ones. Some of those go on to succeed on junior natl circuit and get identified to potentially be a pro later. I wouldn't be surprised if the 8th grade kid is already as high as 2400, some of them get that level before HS. I saw a few 10-11 yr olds who were 2100ish already who came to my local club to train once a week.   Some cities... the TD will make you Div 0 even if you are 2200-2300 though, since you might have won city tourney before once or twice.

I think he was on the national team in the 80s/90s, he's not that old, haha.

Edited by bobloiy - 11/17/2014 at 8:39pm