I often hang out with guys who don’t know much about ping pong and table tennis equipments. These folks have seen only pre-assembled paddles or rackets at the corridor of their office where they have a ping pong table. I surprised them when I have told them they can assemble a racket like that pre-assemble racket they have seen. This is true in any sport. In tennis or badminton, the serious players do their custom stringing of their rackets to suit their strokes. Similarly, the serious table tennis players choose their favorite table tennis blade and the table tennis rubbers and assemble them together.
Table Tennis Blade Class or Style
If you are going in the direction of assembling your own table tennis racket, you are more like entering a maze. There are so many characteristics of table tennis equipments need to be considered to make a good racket. A table tennis racket someone else uses may not suit you, so it is always important to understand some factors to make a table tennis racket.
In this blog, I’m going to talk about how blade is categorized by class or style.
Class or Style
Take any table tennis blade from any manufacturer, you will see a blade may fall into DEFensive -, DEFensive, DEFensive+, ALLround -, ALLround, ALLround+, OFFensive -, OFFensive, OFFensive + class. This is the first thing you have to look for in a blade. These different classes simply mean the style of game. The DEFensive blades are suitable for defensive style of game. They primarily defend in their game. The ALLround blades are for combination of attack and defensive play. The Offensive blades are for highly offensive game.
What is your style?
A developing table tennis player may find it hard to figure out their own style of play. I have seen numerous players who buy equipments from our TableTennisStore.US visit me, show their game in front of a robot that we have in the store and ask me suggestions. I find it hard to figure out their style sometimes. The reasons lie in their orthodox style of game, and they have not developed a style yet.
I recommend any serious table tennis player to visit a local table tennis club and take few classes from a table tennis coach. You may take years to develop a stroke of your own. With the help of a coach, it will take few weeks or months only. I have gone through that path of progression.
Choosing DEF, ALL or OFF?
The defensive blades are specialized blades. The size of the blades are wider than other blades. They would be little slower and special characteristics for defending. So, your first choice would not be a defensive blade. The offensive blades are with high power generating woods, carbon. They are faster. They are hard to control for a beginner. Your best bet is an all-round blade. What is really an all-round blade? With an allround blade you can do pretty much defensive and offense strokes with high control. With an all-round blade, you wont go too defensive or too offensive.
What’s next?
Once you start using an all-round table tennis blade, it is not required to move to an offensive blade. The important factor you have to consider in this game is the style. If you are developing a style of very much aggression, then you can move to an offensive blade. If your coach finds that you are better off with defense, you can move to a defensive blade.
Migration Tips
The table tennis and ping pong equipments are available everywhere. I’m not talking about Sports Authority, Garts Sports, Walmart, Target etc… You may not find a good quality equipment in those stores. They sell equipments for recreational players. The majority of players now buy equipments online. Our TableTennisStore.US distributes table tennis equipments in North America and rest of the world. You can visit a club where they will have a store. They are the venues you can buy quality equipments.
There are many table tennis brands in the market. Choosing the right brand is a hard choice. There is Japanese brands like Butterfly, TSP, Nittaku, Yasaka etc… There is Chinese brands like DHS, 729 etc… There is German brands like Andro, DONIC etc… There is Korean brands like XIOM, Champion. The players who looks for very economical and cheap equipments, they prefer Chinese brands. The Japanese brands are expensive just like Toyota cars. The Germans brands are expensive too but they are different in technologies compared to Japanese.
It is important to stay with a brand for a while. During the development of your game, you can try equipments from the same brand. Their ratings of the equipments help an easy migration. The players switch brands too. A player who has reached the peak of calling himself as competitive, I recommend them to try equipments from different brands and find the right one that fits them.
Once you have reached the stage of finding the right equipments for your style, stick with it forever. Don’t change it.
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