An (amateur) player's secondary & primary sides of their racket in table tennis

[PingPongPam]

Most players don't understand this conccpt because of two reasons

1. They have been subconsciously brainwashed into thinking that you can 9& should) play sponge domain tableetnnis just like hardbat

2. Every human has equal forehand & backhand skills like most profesional tabletennis athletes do

More on this to come. Just think about this for now

[Papermoa]

For probably 90% of players the forehand and backhand is very different in terms of

1. Playing style
2. Consistency in producing a certain stroke
3. overall talent
4. Stroke mechanics in executing each type of stroke

But yet most players treat sponge domain tabetennis as if it was like hardbat tableetennis where you essentially used the same rubber for both sides of the racket. Hardbat just does not work in sponge era tabletennis but yet players stuck on hardbat want you to think so & regress to hardbat days

Yet sponge domain tabletennis has evolved ( those living in the past with hardbat for all the wrong reasons may say it has devolved) in a different direction in that sponge era tabletennis recognizes the fact the your forehand & backhand are very different foe most players especially amateur players and provides the right tools (rubbers) to enhance your skills that may be very different on your forehand & backhand.

Another primary reason for the issue discussed here is that most amateurs think that if they just emulate their favorite player's style and use what their pro uses, they can also be just as good. This is psychotic.

Even among pros only a very small percentage of players have equal forehands and backhand that they do not have such a thing as a primary side or secondary side & they can execute all the stroke within their primary playing styles equally) . In fact only few of these even play any other style than two winged looping using inverted.

There probably was single player like Johnny Wang who can play forehand & backhand equally using short pips.

And there is almost no known chopper at the top recent times who can just chop using long pips or just using inverted or just short pips or just anti both sides.

So what all this boils down to is that for almost all amateurs (even some pros) there exists a primary or strong side (usually forehand) and a secondary or weak side usually backhand

You can accept this and choose the proper rubbers for your forehand & backhand which may be very different in 3 items mentions at the top or you can just force the issue trying to look like Ma Long or Waldner etc using exact same rubber both sides and keep forcing the issue. Even many pros who are two winged loopers probably use different spinny inverted rubbers on their forehand & backhand.

Yes it is quite complicated & unlike any other racket sport, but this is what makes tabletennis far more challenging (and also frustrating) because every single human is different in terms of their playing styles on their backhands & forehand. Even though you can stereotype players into certain groups such a looper or a blocker or lobber or flat hitter, even with the same classification, say a looper the stroke mechanics vary from player. No two player really loop the same way because there are so many subtle variations from each player. No two players really block or chop the same way etc and this adds up to millions of combinations if you combine each stroke, style & stroke mechanics