5th practice session, and yet I still have something new to add.
Everything began as normal. We're back in the garage and there is an adjustment process that takes place. We talked about it after the session over dinner. Basically, what I do when I play is learn a stroke, repeat it until muscle memory takes over, then try to recreate that stroke in games and drills. If any variable changes, such as the ball or the table or the altitude or the humidity or the rubber's glue effect or my cat ran away & hasn't come home yet- I'm going to miss. What Chetan does is that he opens up for the shot and then looks very carefully at the ball. It is this period of looking that is completely nonexistent in my game. Don't get me wrong, I "think" I'm looking but I'm really not. I'm not concentrating very hard on the ball. I'm concentrating more on the stroke, or on the spin on the ball, or where is the opponent, and where do I want my shot to go, what's the score, do I really need this point or not, will I have to buy a new cat, do I look skinny in this outfit? O.k....you get the point.
It is after the initial opening of his arm/body that Chetan adjusts by bending knees more or standing slightly higher, by moving in or moving out, adjusting blade angle, etc. He's doing this at the same time as all the rest of the stuff. Even he requires time to do this. But it doesn't take 5 days as it takes me. He says he can generally adjust to new conditions in an hour, depending on how extreme are the conditions.
The next half of the practice session goes pretty much exactly as the others.
I did something new today. He wants me to serve short then he's going to push out and he wants me to open up and he's going to attack back. In a forehand stance I serve and he pushes out to my wide forehand and I'm really pressed to even get to the ball. I realize that my serving stance needs work. He instructs me to come out of that stance into a more midcourt position, so that I can better get to the return. Maybe this seems obvious to most of you. But I've never really had to deal with this quality of returns before. Not on a regular basis. The important thing here is for us to examine not only the quality of our serve but of how well does our serve "serve" our purpose? We want to make sure that our footwork after the serve sets us up for what we wish to do next.
We bring out the robot. It's a Newgy. Instead of setting it up smack in the middle of the table as usual, he sets it up on the far right corner (as you are looking across the net) and sets it to serve reverse sidespin fingerbreakers. Fully 1/2 of the robot was hanging off the edge of the table, so that the "head" was located very close to the right endline. The ball shoots down at the table on the robot side, bounces onto the other side, and just barely misses the endline on the second bounce. This is to simulate a righty person doing backhand serves, or a righty person doing curled in serves (like Samsonov, Schlager, etc) Interestingly, the robot doesn't give every ball exactly the same and Chetan says this is a good thing. Though the robot is set at straight sidespin, some balls will have just a hair more top than others, or just a hair more under. Some will just barely miss the endline and some will bounce just inside the endline. He practices flipping, dropshotting, and looping to all places.