How does booster work, exactly?

Some light reading (actaully, pretty technical!) about speed glue...  LINK

zeio wrote: Well, even the Japanese people suspect Tenergy came boosted at the factory(noting its huge performance lead over the Tensor back when it was first released) and Mizutani used it without being aware. http://hayabusa6.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/pingpong/1456064653/, post 20.

Its known that sponsored players have a tiny metal bottle with booster. And mizutani was carrying that small bottle in a worlds there are boosters from nittaku donic butterfly. A korean women in the us open also had that metal bottle sold one to a coach

The part about dwell time is not well understood, especially how it affects spin. It is a complex interaction involving multiple elements, namely friction and elasticity. The general rule follows that as the bounce increases, dwell time decreases, yet the ability to spin is closely dependent on it.

Thanks. That's a great thread on the topic! Many of the pictures have bad links though. Is there any way you can fix?

berndt_mann wrote: Better table tennis through chemistry? I suppose that would depend both on your perspective of the sport and to a lesser extent on how much table tennis you have played and how many changes tt has gone through since you first started playing it.

most players do not boost and they keep their rubbers for a long time, only the top players and the copycats do it, regardless if they are any good at playing

dpt wrote: Frankly, I couldn't detect any consistent difference between the boosted and unboosted rubbers.  Can anyone suggest a better way to do the experiment?

Maybe a bad / too soon a glue job?

IMHO, especially within a few days of boosting, one should be able to detect just by the sound: the boosted rubber should sound (upon hitting) like you just fired a gun, if boosted properly.

There should definitely be a consistent difference between boosted and unboosted rubber. I remember a few years ago before I improved significantly in play, I could tell the distinct difference between boosted and unboosted hurricane. You need to put it through varying 'load' in an actual game situation or in training to be able to notice it. You can't throw balls at it and leave the bat there and expect to feel any significant difference.

If boosted correctly and played correctly, not only should you hear the audible click clack difference but you should also be able to feel that the ball catapults more off the rubber and the rubber is faster by far.

I've tried different sheets of Hurricane: unboosted commercial, unboosted blue, boosted blue, boosted provincial and unboosted neo. There is a fine line between boosted and unboosted. Unboosted is very lackluster to me. I can flick against just about any serve with H3 against a particular training partner that I tested the rubbers with but it is extremely slow in play. I've found with unboosted sheets you can get spin fine but you also have to put in a lot of effort into putting on speed. Unless you have a miraculous stroke with heaps of momentum, your shots will either be moderately paced with moderate spin or very fast but borderline flat... relatively. This is coming from a spin oriented player.

I know the age old argument of you should do athletic drills and whatnot but when you're using your playstyle as a controlled variable and keeping it consistent with the independent variable of bat setup, there is a difference for sure.

Quick question of my own: From my experience, majority of the young players are straying away from spin and are insistent on speed. Is this phenomenon happening around the world where everyone else plays? I'm not sure if it's a lack of training or just a shift in play style. I'm seeing a number of players in my club which has drastically reduced in size picking up fast rubbers such as tenergy or rasant but few of them play with heavy spin let alone much spin alone...


Edited by Johnny.d.p - 12/03/2016 at 10:15pm