My daughter is 12 years Old & enjoys ping pong. She wants to play seriously in tournaments.
Currently we all play with sandpaper & hardbat bats
I hear that spong rackets are better.
What is your advice ?
Junior player sandpaper / hardbat advice
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Maren Nodi
- Posts: 4
- Joined: February 18th, 2023, 6:32 am
- Country: India
- State and City: GSL TT
- My blade: GKI Euro Jumbo
- Forehand Rubber: Stag Peter Karlsson
- Backhand Rubber: DHS Cloud and Fog 3
- Playing Style: -
- Grip: -
Re: Junior player sandpaper / hardbat advice
Allowing children to use hardbat or sandpaper borders on child abuse.
It has been more than 71 years since sponge arrived in table etnnis.
Hardbat was great when it lasted but it is time to move on instead of psychotic fantasisies of regressing abck to hardbat to turn tabletennis into pickleball just because pickleball is becoming increasingly dominant.
Tabletennis is not pickleball. Picklesball is a brilliant design with different objectives in mind.
Hardbat is also a one size fits all approach with mostly identical (or nearly identical) rubbers on forehand.
But sponge tabletennis recognizes the fact that more than 90% of humans have different forehand & backhand in terms of playing styles , consistency etc. and provides different rubbers if needed, to match these differences between forehand & backhand * enhance these different needs. Forehend is is also the strong side for almost all huamns with some rare exceptions & players can design their reckets to accomodate this buthardbat cannot by a long shot.
Another big issue is that the strokes using hardbat are very different using sponge inverted rackets.
The attack strokes with hardbat in general are more upward with racket more open angle & with inverted sponge the strokes are more forward with racket more closed. Talented adults with lots of expereince can adjust to these differences & their muscle memories can adopt quickly to switching between hardbat & sponge inverted within hours but most for less talented adults & almost no juniors (even those talented ones) can make this adjustment. Also in general this only confuses children & distracts them from focused training just to have some so called fun but in the long run it is lot more harmful for developement of children playing in the sponge domain.
It has been more than 71 years since sponge arrived in table etnnis.
Hardbat was great when it lasted but it is time to move on instead of psychotic fantasisies of regressing abck to hardbat to turn tabletennis into pickleball just because pickleball is becoming increasingly dominant.
Tabletennis is not pickleball. Picklesball is a brilliant design with different objectives in mind.
Hardbat is also a one size fits all approach with mostly identical (or nearly identical) rubbers on forehand.
But sponge tabletennis recognizes the fact that more than 90% of humans have different forehand & backhand in terms of playing styles , consistency etc. and provides different rubbers if needed, to match these differences between forehand & backhand * enhance these different needs. Forehend is is also the strong side for almost all huamns with some rare exceptions & players can design their reckets to accomodate this buthardbat cannot by a long shot.
Another big issue is that the strokes using hardbat are very different using sponge inverted rackets.
The attack strokes with hardbat in general are more upward with racket more open angle & with inverted sponge the strokes are more forward with racket more closed. Talented adults with lots of expereince can adjust to these differences & their muscle memories can adopt quickly to switching between hardbat & sponge inverted within hours but most for less talented adults & almost no juniors (even those talented ones) can make this adjustment. Also in general this only confuses children & distracts them from focused training just to have some so called fun but in the long run it is lot more harmful for developement of children playing in the sponge domain.