The table tennis players who have used old generation table tennis rubbers will have great difficulty in migrating to the new generation rubbers made of tensor technology. When I talk about the old generation rubbers, I’m talking about rubbers which have good tackiness on the top.
Some of the rubbers made with that technology are XIOM Omega III, Omega II, ZETA etc… These rubbers don’t show any tackiness on the top if you brush a table tennis ball over it like a tacky rubber show – most of the Chinese rubbers are tacky. This gives a straight impression that the rubbers made of tensor technology is good at generating spin at the serve – this was also my impression when I first started using XIOM Omega II.
I have to admit that the tensor rubbers have the best control, speed and spin compared to a tacky rubber. The spin generated from a tensor rubber is changeable based on your stroke. This is not possible with a tacky rubber – the top sheet generates the same spin all the time.
Here are some tips to generate spin with tensor rubbers:
Serving:
1. Please make sure the rubbers are clean.
2. The tensor rubbers need to be brushed with a touch area of 3 mm or less. You need to brush the top sheet of the rubber fast with a medium forward follow through. If the brushing is slow, the spin will be very less.
3. Look at your grip very carefully. You need to have a very good touch feel of the rubber – the top of the handle don’t give that feeling, so you have to hold the paddle little more closely to the face of the blade while serving.
4. Based on what kind of spin you want to generate, the tip of the blade generates more control and spin.
Looping:
1. If you would like to generate extreme top spin, you have to brush the ball on the top.
2. If you would like to generate modern top spin, you can punch the ball on the top of the ball while looping.