How Does Equipment Affect an Ordinary Player's Technique?
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The value of all-wood: feel and high error-tolerance. Often now, all-wood blades are reduced to training blades. This precisely mirrors their merits: more faithful feel feedback, strengthening your understanding of spin, easier to create arcs, higher error-tolerance, more obedient. So generally, kids training with all-wood blades is correct. Adults, even beginners, do not necessarily have to use all-wood — one reason is that most all-wood blades tire you after long play, unfriendly to many middle-aged and older people. Young people are different, with tireless stamina and energy, able to fully exploit the trait that the blade is the hand’s best extension.
For beginners, cultivating feel and understanding of spin is important, so a thin all-wood blade is always the first choice. And why do some pips stars like all-wood too, like Sun Mingyang and He Zhuojia? Because it is obedient, fully under control. All-wood blades are relatively more linear, letting you produce the effect you want as much as possible — spin variation, switching between attack and defense at any time. For amateur experts and pros, all-wood blades do have the issue of slower pace-borrowing rebound and relatively less support, but they still have easier spin-generating ability and higher error-tolerance. Whether to make an all-wood blade your main blade also hinges on one key point: whether you have enough stamina and energy to command it.
This afternoon I just sparred with an expert using a YE-3D. At first I did not even notice he used this five-ply all-wood that I used at the University Games years ago. He just did over-the-table control, loop-driving to get on the offensive as much as possible, and some defense like blocking; though it seemed not so fast, because his power was active, the overall ball quality was quite good. For such an opponent, the old five-ply all-wood does not become a shackle, because he still has ample stamina and energy to use it.
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Equipment also influences and shapes the person. Much of it happens unconsciously. For example, I wrote before that after using an outer ALC blade as your main blade, gradually your strokes become compact, you raise your backhand usage, and at the same time you come to like scoring by speed and do not stand too far. After using an inner KLC blade as your main blade, you cannot help but back off a bit, preferring to settle battles at mid-table. This kind of blade, often paired with an ayous core, has a longer arc and shows more power off the table. And after long play with this kind of blade, most people come to prefer scoring by spin and a sense of power. As for friends who frequently switch blades — well, the situation is complex, hard to analyze. They just enjoy the different feel and traits of different weapons; that is the fun.
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I said before that one element of a god-blade is “soft yet powerful.” Soft refers more to your command of the blade. Even if it is actually as hard as the Super Zhang Jike, or even the Primorac Carbon or Nobilis, as long as you can fully command it, it can be regarded as soft. What is the standard for fully commanding it? First, high error-tolerance — when you use it, errors are few, you feel grounded, and switching between different strokes is fairly smooth. So any blade that is powerful but you cannot command well is not all that good. A good blade always varies by person.
Soft also means a clearer, more transparent feel, not stiff. For example, the Zhou Yu custom ALC holds the ball well, with a power-amplifying feel; some players even find it easier to play than the Viscaria. But why, in my heart, has it not surpassed the Vis? Because the feel is a bit stiff. Why do I always say Butterfly customs are good? Because besides a stronger energy-storage feel, the feel feedback is clearer. A clearer feel lets you better fine-tune your stroke in an instant, while bringing higher error-tolerance. Why am I confident in the Heima-tuned series? Because first it fits the soft, clear feel and high error-tolerance, not stiff. Of course, some players are not so sensitive to blades; some just paired a hard, non-transparent rubber, like un-boosted Hurricane. When the rubber has not been driven through, you cannot sense much about the blade.