On the Question of Equipment "Acceleration"
From footwork to strokes, acceleration is first a technical issue. Better footwork, more accurate anticipation, more relaxed strokes — all help acceleration. But as a gear nerd, we can also discuss how to achieve acceleration through equipment.
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Accelerate from the feet: choosing table tennis shoes. You will find that at some important events, like the Olympics, Liu Shiwen or Chen Meng covered their shoe logos with stickers. They have favorite shoes, but the brand conflicts with the sponsoring brand. The Asics Hyperbeat 4 Chen Meng wears belongs to the light-quick king series, with fairly fast starts. The Mizuno Crossmatch Pilo series, one of the bestselling value table tennis shoes, is also known for a barefoot feel and fast starts. Choosing suitable shoes lets us ramp up speed better. Generally, first-three-balls-dominant, lighter players suit thinner shoes highlighting the barefoot feel. If you are heavy or have knee injuries, or are a heavy-hitter type emphasizing one deliberate ball at a time, you can choose shoes with better cushioning and protection. Good value, like Asics’s crossover king. Of course, high-end models are more effective. Good shoes help boost match performance — faster starts, steadier grip, both favorable for stroke stability. If your shoes have not improved, maybe switching to a good pair is worthwhile.
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Blade and rubber elasticity favor acceleration. First, a bat’s elasticity can be adapted to. Players switching from aramid-carbon blades to outer SZLC may at first feel the blade is too springy and uncontrollable, but this can be adapted to. Including switching from the retail Hurricane Long 5 to the W968; or from Butterfly retail to Butterfly customs, whether inner or outer — you can feel the blade’s better elasticity. Some is the blade itself having better rebound, faster pace-borrowing, better support, favoring defensive efficiency. Some is the blade having better deformation tension, triggered after firing, providing stronger explosive energy and bottom power. We cannot demand from the start that a blade have good rebound speed and be easy to adapt to — sometimes these conflict. But people really do have strong adaptability. The stronger your ability and power, the easier to adapt to a springier blade. Rubber elasticity is the same — adaptable through lots of practice. What hinders adaptation is usually habit. For better acceleration, we have to work to adapt. For example, from ALC to SALC, from domestic high-tack rubber to slightly-tacky imported tensors. Speed is an important component of killing power. If spin and power are not our main advantage, then improving via placement changes and equipment’s speed help is also feasible. Slower speed may mean, for us, a more controllable, faithful feel. But at the same time, it may mean insufficient killing power. After long use, both blade and rubber elasticity drop to some degree, correspondingly affecting speed too.
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Lightening the bat is also a way to accelerate, for amateurs. Pros are a bit different — they can strengthen and adapt through much more training. Compared with the celluloid era, many players’ bats now total over 200g. For amateurs, the blade can be lighter, and the rubber too. This makes quick-exchange faster and the swing more effortless. But a drop in the blade’s and rubber’s own weight brings some drop in ball quality. You can only observe for yourself: is your ball quality mainly spin and power, or is two-wing quick-exchange especially important to you?