Tony's Table Tennis , congrats on starting your recovery process

[James Z]

on Tuesday September 16, 2025 at 11:48 AM #34
there are 10s of thousands that start at a young age with inverted on both sides, and most of them fail .
Its only a few that makes it.

Tony,
I have to congratulate you on starting to come out of denial .
This is a great start on your ITTF de-brainwashing process.

Don't feel bad . I have been brainwashed by the ITTF & its coaches for almost 50 years.
This was the last of my 4 brainwashings by the ITTF.

Only till last year I also believed that all children should only start with spinny inverted rubber on both sides.
I was set straight by learning the truth from 3 sources about

1. An excellent 2600+ Chinese coach who is also excellent at teaching backhand loop. He also switched some young kids (boys & girls) to slim flex pips on backhand
2. Indian girls (youth) have overwhelmingly rejected the nonsense of using spinny inverted on the backhand lead by Indian women (starting with Neha (Aggarwal) Sharma)
3. I read in German TT News about Europeans complaining about India is flooding the youth events with pips players.

My first brainwashing by ITTF 50 years was exactly like this. For my first 10 years in the sport I also was led to believe that top spin from both sides using spinny inverted was the ONLY & NORMAL way to play table tennis. Thankfully I at least corrected myself switching to slim flex pips. But I at least have a partial excuse because I did not even know about long flex pips as they were new and only last year I realized I was not even playing with actual long pips for my first 45 years because I did not even know what long flex pips were . In all fairness again I have an excuse because almost no one knows that long pips were banned in a matter of 4 years at the Birmingham 1977 BGM and what existed was slim flex pips & ITTF has been deceiving everyone by calling slim pips as long pips.

BTW I also did indulge in backhand wide pips in my first years because I also was looking for a good solution to be able to chop on my backhand. I had no clue about the mechanics of operation of wide pips & how useless they are for an amateur chopper. This is laos why I initially tried a very thin (0.5 mm to 1.0 mm) spinny inverted on my backhand before finally sticking with slim pips. I also tried slim pips for 2 or 3 times and quickly gave up because it was so hard to learn at first even with thick sponge. I still remember how I felt with a Mark v or Super Sriver on my forehand and Feint Long OX on my backhand. The spin contrast was astronomical & so hard to adjust. This is also why many players who tried double inverted and failed become honorary loopers using anti or wide pips because they do not wan to be hated by robotNazis for using slim pips .

Piligrim correctly points out that this father daughter duo may be getting wrongly inspired by watching some of their favorite pros using wide pips on the backhand , players such as Hou Yingchao, Han Ying, Honoka Hashimoto, Hitomi Sato etc. I have explained in the other other thread as to why this is so wrong (choosing wide pips for all the WRING reasons instead of actual long pips)

[James Z]

BTW when I was under first ITTF brainwashing and naive & impressionable (& clueless ) , I also switched to wide pips just because Stellan Bengtsson switched to wide pips on backhand (though he is not a chopper LOL)

I even tried anti just because Jonyer switched to Anti. Again anti has already been dismissed as a chopper;s tool though it came slightly before actual long pips. Once choppers started to realize long pips were far superior to anti for chopping, ITTF quickly stepped in and banned long pips at the Birmingham AGM (of course to protect the robotNazis .............. and has done 13 more times since then LOL )

Needless to stay both my attempts were collosal failures.
And I was still afraid of slim pips both due to difficulty of using them (and they were still new) as well fear of social repercussions as a young person succumbing to peer pressure