Reflexes

Tried to edit post and clicked quote instead, please delete this post!

Edited by Honey - 22 June 2010 at 13:37

I think that the reason that top players are quicker to the ball is not purely reflexes its also that they know where the ball will come back to and are already on the move before the other player has hit the ball. They know where it will go based upon what they did with the ball and the other players movement and where they are looking. At a training session run last year by Gareth Herbert when asked why he was faster he said he had no more time than anybody else he justs uses it more efficiently.

Therefore a standard Reflex/reaction test will not tell you the whole story.

Yeah I think this is great too, it takes away a common perception that table tennis is all about speed and you just have to have fast reflexes.  It's really actually about awareness of time and, as mentioned above, using the available time as efficiently as possible.  Very difficult because the time intervals are just slivers, 100s of milliseconds, little bits that are not part of your normal everyday perception because they're so short.

Something a really good player used to tell me was that you almost always have more time than you think you do.  I tend to miss more often because I have rushed than because I am late.  I don't think you need great reaction time to have great timing, they are two different things altogether.  And Wiggy I know has very useful things to say about peripheral vision because he told them to me.

Originally posted by Izraphel the fast reflexes thing is a myth imo. if i play someone i know well i seem to have super human reflexes, when it's someone new and deceptive on the other side of the table my reflexes seem to disappear. it's all about reading your opponents movement and anticipating his shots.

Izraphel: In this case, the person you react quick to, you have obviously played with alot, and you've already made lots of mistakes playing against. You have infact gained fast reflexes for just playing these people as you are able to 'chunk' the information from them as it is familar to you, therefore you can process it faster and respond.

An example of this (I forgot which book this was in). Chess grandmasters were asked to memorise a complete chess board from halfway through a match. They were able to repeat this with almost 100% accuracy. When tested against 'normal' people, they was a massive difference in results. The test was repeated but the pieces were arranged randomly this time. The grandmasters results were very poor this time and performed no better than 'normal' people. This is because in a chess match they are able to chunk familar patterns and so process it faster, just as you are familar with your friends TT styles. I know you don't have reflexes in chess, but its the same thing really. It's all about how fast you can extract and process information.

Any reflexes you have are very specific to the practice from which they are attained. You cannot test someones reflexes as a whole, you can only compare peoples reflexes over the same test. You can improve your reflexes, its just a matter of how much information you can extract out of a tiny snapshot of time. Some people have higher bandwidth in these situations than others due to having more layers of mylelin wrapped around their neurons. The more you 'deep practice' these situations (ie. mentally challenge yourself, adapting to mistakes in small stages) the more myelin you can grow and so increase your bandwidth for processing information. Myelin is specific the the individual circuit from which you grew it from. Meaning, you can grow 'general' myelin, it grows for a very specific activity and so your 'reflexes' will only increase for that particular circuit/activity.

This is the reflex action in your brain which tells your muscle to move. I'm not talking about how fast you can physically move your muscles. This depends on high twitch fibre which I haven't read as much about.

Another example (again from Syed's book). He talks about how he faced a top tennis players best serve. He expects he can make a return because of his "fast reflexes". Turns out he was no where near able to return it. This is simply down to the fact his reflexes are tuned to table tennis. He cannot extract the same information from a tennis serve and process it fast enough like he can with TT.

Reflexes, the time between the brain receiving information and acting on it? I hesitate on Baal2 's answer, because he is infact a neuro scientist.

Edited by wiggy63 - 26 June 2010 at 00:55

All really good stuff, keep it coming....

Originally posted by Useless1 Honey I've not read the book so feel at a bit of a disadvantage. Are we talking reflexes or reaction time?

Both the books I've read are quite vague in this, I wouldn't like to try and distinguish between the two. I'd say they talk about reaction time as a whole, but don't pay any attention to movement time. It's all about the time in which a decision can be made. I believe that movement time is relatively fixed, but I've read in the past that athletes such as sprinters have a higher amount of high twitch muscle fibres (like mice) that enable them to physically move their muscles faster than average people. I'm clueless any further than this!

Originally posted by Useless1 What was the test Des did poorly on (how ecoligically valid was it). Is it a table tennis task, is it a computer screen? Did it test what they set out to test?

Without looking back I believe it was a set of pads that he had to react to a light on different pads. There wasn't much (if any) scientific information. He was just trying to make a point (other examples too) that we generalise reaction times between sports and really there is alot more to it. Just because Des was super fast at a table tennis table, doesn't mean he's the quickest at a reflex test, no matter what the test is. There is a wider picture.

Originally posted by Useless1 An example of sporting transfer the other way to your tennis one. Migel Mansell tried baseball when he was doing indy (he is a quality golfer which is basically a baseball swing on an inclined plane - spine angle so may have a head start). He did very well against fast balls. 90mph balls he found slow as he worked at 200mph.

There is a logical explanation to this. Nigel Mansell is constantly 'working' where his eyes are having to adapt to very fast moving landscapes. He will have grown myelin around the circuits that are used for seeing under these conditions, and so these circuits will be very strong and efficient (almost like bees/wasps that can see detail at 5x the rate of a human). So he will be able to see a baseball travelling fast alot clearer than we can and in essence he will have more time to react. In effect, he probably sees everything alot slower than the average person because he is used to speed.

A table tennis player (such as des) does not work at high speeds and won't see the ball any clearer than others. It's not that des could see the ball any better (like nigel mansell would) its that he can read the cues such as arm action, contact points, players movement etc etc that mean his anticipation of the next shot is better.

Nigel Mansell's reflexes are due to having adapted to high speed conditions, a very adaptable skill; Des Douglas is about understanding under very limited conditions (table tennis). My guess would be that Nigel mansell would react entirely differently to a baseball pitch that a baseball batsman would.Unlike Nigel Mansell whos reactions are based purely on his familiarity with speed, a baseball batsman reactions would include his understanding/anticipation of the mechanics of the throw, much like Des reacting to table tennis shots.

So yeah, sport transference is definitely possible as useless1 has explained. The thing is that the general public understanding of sport transference is watered down to things like 'oh yeah he plays badminton so he's got fast reflexes' etc. It's not as simple as that.

ok guys, how to improve tt reflexes on our level ('one and a half wing looper' pretty well describes our average level)? So far we have:

reaction time = detection time + decision time + movement time.

Obviously all three can be shorter, but which can provide biggest time cut?
 In my case, I must say, I have terrible bad reaction time. Lots of incoming loops I dont even try to block. But, I believe I have good decision time generaly, because I've always been very good at tetris, 5min chess, rubic cube and similar. My movement time is so-so, sometimes very fast sometimes very slow, depends of shoots I know to do. But decision time is really bad, I cant guess will loop go left or right, so I have to wait and then is late for good block.
Ideally, detection time should be almost zero(counting from moment ball leaving opponents bat), if player anticipate well, and decision time can also be short in modern tt where attack is almost only decision, just adjusting angle of loop.
So, are there good exercises for particular times of reaction time, and which one you think can save most time on our level?

Originally posted by garwor So, are there good exercises for particular times of reaction time, and which one you think can save most time on our level?

For pure reaction time and hand-eye coordination video games are known to be good training tools.  I don't play them myself but I would guess if you google the subject you'll come up with some ideas on which games are the best in this respect.

Originally posted by Honey Izraphel, you mentioned earlier in the topic about how you feel you have super fast reflexes against players you know well, yet you feel slow against players you don't know as well. I was playing some ends against oneply the other night and I noticed how he is able to block my loops so much easier than other people. We knock with each other all the time and we know each others games inside out pretty much.

 its because you are playing in a 'comfort zone' you subconciously read a familliar players body language, and players often react in a set way to a given scenario, which you learn easily if you play them enough. On top of that, everyone has a unique timing rhythm, and the more you play someone the more you get used to theirs, and they get used to yours.

Motor reflexes are very short hard hard-wired neural circuits that have only a few synapses between sensory input and motor output.  The response to accidentally touching something burning hot is the classic example; that reflex is located in the spinal cord and never makes it up to the brain.  These kinds of reflexes are very fast, much faster than the time needed to make a response in table tennis.  Their speed varies in different people, but assuming people do not have some disease, they are always faster than necessary for our sport.

Then there is basic response time.  See a light, push a button.  A bit more goes into it then into a simple reflex, but still it is very fast because little processing is necessary. 

But we very rarely use these kinds of reflexes or simple responses, perhaps once in a while when we get a more or less lucky block of a smash. 

Instead, in table tennis we almost always have to make decisions.  It is almost never a simple response.

On every shot, we have to integrate lots of information about ball speed, spin, our own position, the opponent's position, our previous experience (i.e. a judgment about our likelihood of making a particular shot, which is individual), and for older players maybe our injury status on that day. 

The ability to make the right decision can be very high in a player who is not that quick or athletic and people like that can play at a high level.  Also, Wiggy makes a great point about unfamiliar opposition.  With someone new, you can't use your knowledge of a player's past patterns to make your own decisions, and that means you have to wait just a fraction longer to see what they actually do, which compresses the time you have to make your own decision, which feels a bit uncomfortable of the opposition is strong and capable of some unexpected things. 

Really good players take in more information so they predict less and see more and still have time to make their own decisions with lots of time to spare.  That is Wiggy's idea about peripheral vision, something I have been thinking about a lot lately.

Originally posted by Baal2 Also, good players don't necessarily see more because the have better vision.  The see more because they have learned how to do it between shots.  They have been taught or have taught themselves how to see more and to immediately begin to restrict their own options to simplify decision making.

 Yes, it is there for all to see, only most concentrate on the ball entirely. most players even at a real novice level, can use their peripheral vision, but only if the shot they are attempting is very easy and they have plenty of time, imagine a very easy smash near to the net that is harder to miss than hit the table, at this point the execution of the stroke is so easy, we can afford to concentrate on where the opponent is, rather than just hitting the table, and it becomes easy to smash the ball into an area of the court that he cannot predict and cover. The hard part is that as the situation gets progressively harder, against better opposition, time becomes squeezed out, and the situation reverses. Its always been my belief that it is this 'time over the opponent' gap that defines different standards. Whatever tactics are used, however much power a player has, if you can control his serves and squeeze him for time, you win.  How do you squeeze him for time? you read his intentions, better than he reads yours, so we are back to the ability to process the given information. One thing that I know is useful technique wise to achieve this, is to always contact the ball well infront of your body on both wings if possible, especially when just off the table, you can get a snapshot of the lot, ball table and opponent, with enough time to make an adjustment to your intentions. (See Waldner)

Edited by wiggy63 - 04 July 2010 at 22:17

Originally posted by Baal2 One thing that I know is useful technique wise to achieve this, is to always contact the ball well infront of your body on both wings if possible, This makes perfect sense but I always seem to mistime by rushing when I try to do this.  I'm not sure why.

 Its because of your normal stroke preparation, which will be tuned in to where you normally contact the ball, you can't easily get out of this because of your personal tempo, which is dictating what feels 'normal' to you, ie the time between the start of your stroke, and your contact point, this will be altered (longer) until you adapt to an altered contact point, making your strokes seem rushed (from start to finish your bat is travelling further but in the same time so is faster)