Equipment – 360TT Blog

Blackout by Sauer & Tröger: it kills your opponent's pace

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 21:00:00 -0300

Irritatingly slow. That is what I thought most during my 45 days with the Blackout on my backhand. The ball comes back so slowly that it looks like it won’t clear the net, and very often that is exactly what takes the opponent apart.

This is the blog’s first review, a mini review with my impressions from using it, no lab measurements. I’ll start with the most important thing: 360TT sells the product tested here. The Blackout is made by Sauer & Tröger, whose official distributor we are in Brazil, and the rubber I tested was supplied by S&T itself for testing. That changes nothing in what follows. Here you will read the good and the bad, no beating around the bush. It is common to see reviews that only praise what the shop itself sells. The idea here is different: to tell how it went, including what didn’t work, who this rubber is for and, perhaps most importantly, who it is not for!

I was the tester: I play a classic style, close to the table, and I used the Blackout on my backhand for about 45 days, on a DHS 08X blade with a black Hurricane 3 NEO 37° on the forehand. That meant training sessions and some doubles against first- and second-division players from Minas Gerais. After that, I stopped using it. The reason is further down, and it is not a flaw in the rubber. I never meant to keep it anyway; I just wanted to test it.

TL;DR: the Blackout is an anti-spin with an ultra-soft absorption sponge: the opponent’s ball “dies” and comes back heavy, low and slow (why). Shot by shot, it shines when blocking a strong topspin and when receiving heavily spun serves, and it struggles against passive, backspin or high balls. The strengths are the block, the control and what it does to the opponent’s head; the weaknesses, attacking and pushing dead balls. It works well for players with a good pivot or who want to defend close to the table; it is not at its best for those who rely on attacking with the anti side. And be careful when removing it: the sponge is very fragile.

What is an anti with an absorption sponge

An anti-spin is a smooth rubber (pips in, like a regular offensive inverted rubber) with a topsheet that has very little friction. Instead of creating spin, it sends back a good part of the spin it receives: the opponent’s topspin comes back as a no-spin ball or with heavy backspin, depending on how you play the shot.

The Blackout adds an absorption sponge to that: extremely soft, made to “swallow” the ball’s speed instead of returning it. Sauer & Tröger describes an ultra-soft, linearly damping sponge and a topsheet with about 85% less grip than a regular rubber. The result, at the table, is a ball that reaches the other side slow, low and with reversed spin. That combination is what confuses the opponent.

And here is the rule for every absorption sponge: the thicker, the slower. It is the opposite of an offensive sandwich rubber (topsheet + sponge), where more sponge means more speed.

The Blackout from the side: the topsheet with its pips showing, the absorption sponge and the DHS 08X blade. You can see that the pips are wide and tall and that the sponge is very airy. Photo: 360TT

Why the ball dies and drops

We say a moving ball has two speeds. Horizontal speed is how fast it travels forward, toward the other side of the table and back: it is what we call a fast or slow ball. Vertical speed is how fast it goes up or down. At the highest point of any arc, vertical speed is zero: the ball has stopped rising and has not started to fall yet. The horizontal speed carries on.

Timing points, the way we organize the moment of hitting the ball, only count after the bounce on your side of the table, because that is when you are allowed to touch it (there is no volley in table tennis): point 1 is on the rise, before the top of the arc; point 2 is the highest point; point 3 comes after it, on the way down.

The absorption sponge mostly steals horizontal speed. The ball leaves the Blackout moving slowly forward, while gravity keeps pulling it down as hard as ever. Even clearing the net by a hair, it travels less forward in the time it takes to fall: it lands short, and the bounce comes out low and does not travel far. The opponent’s point 2 is low and close to the net. To attack, they have to go and get the ball and put all the horizontal speed back on it by themselves.

The drawing below shows this when blocking a strong topspin: a regular rubber sends the ball back fast and with topspin; the Blackout sends it back slow and with backspin.

Blocking a strong topspin: with less horizontal speed, the Blackout ball lands short and bounces low. To-scale drawing with illustrative speeds. Illustration: 360TT

Specifications

I didn’t measure much, I admit: the plan was just to test it, not to write a review. But I did weigh the rubber: my 1.5 mm Blackout, cut for the 08X (a large blade), weighed 31 g, without glue. It is light, and the sponge is, in my words, “ridiculously slow”.

31 g on the scale: the 1.5 mm Blackout cut for the DHS 08X, without glue. Photo: 360TT

What the manufacturer says (official Blackout page):

Item	Blackout
Type	anti-spin with sponge
Thicknesses	1.5 mm and 2.0 mm
Sponge	ultra-soft, linearly damping
Topsheet	about 85% less grip
Colors	red, black and blue
Speed / control / disruption	33 / 98 / 99 (S&T scale)
Recommended style	defensive, close to the table

I used the 1.5 mm, the thinnest (and therefore the faster of the two), in blue (the sponge is blue too).

The three Blackout colors: red, black and blue. Photos: Sauer & Tröger

Front and back of the packaging. Photos: Sauer & Tröger

How the test went

About 45 days of use, only in training and some doubles, always on the backhand, with the setup I described at the start. I didn’t take the Blackout to a tournament, partly because I stopped competing in 1995 and never went back, nor do I plan to. The opponents were first- and second-division players from Minas Gerais, people who attack well and know how to read spin.

The test racket, with the Blackout on the backhand of the DHS 08X. Photo: 360TT

I expected a less slow rubber than it is. Its ability to absorb speed surprised me. The topsheet is very smooth, but not as smooth as the Dr. Neubauer A‑B‑S 3 Pro (another anti with an absorption sponge), and that little bit of friction helps with some pushes.

It took me about two weeks to get used to it. Having used the Monkey long pips in 0.6 mm before helped a lot; it is also from Sauer & Tröger and also uses an absorption sponge, like the Blackout. Anyone coming straight from an offensive rubber will probably need more time.

Shot by shot

Blocking a strong topspin

This is where the Blackout shines. Against a strong topspin, the ball dies on the racket and comes back really heavy, low and slow. The opponent who went all out gets a ball with no pace at all and has to generate the power again, from scratch.

Receiving serves

It depends on the serve. Against serves with lots of spin, it works very well: the rubber ignores much of the spin and the ball comes back under control. A slow, no-spin serve, on the other hand, is chaos: there is no speed or spin for the rubber to use, and the ball tends to pop up far too easily.

Against backspin balls and pushes

This is the weak spot. Against backspin, the Blackout is too slow, and pushing is not very effective. What worked well was a firmer chop, even close to the table. Players used to pushing with OX long pips will need to adapt.

Slow balls and the short game

Against passive balls, it doesn’t work well. Without the energy of the opponent’s ball, the rubber has nothing to send back, and the push lacks weight, forcing you to hit harder and take more risk.

Attacking

Very hard and not very effective. You can push backspin balls, but not as well as with long pips, and hitting firmly is really difficult.

Serving

Very limited. Serving with the Blackout side gives an average player an easy ball to attack.

Away from the table

Only chopping, and quite hard, or the ball won’t even reach the other side. And it always comes back slow, with little spin. A more offensive blade might help, but I didn’t test that.

What about twiddling?

I don’t twiddle the racket during the point: I never learned to think of it in time. Whenever I use pips or an anti on the backhand, I lose the touch of an inverted backhand; I would need a lot of training to turn it into a skill. For those who twiddle, the Blackout helps: you can choose between the anti and the inverted rubber on every ball, and also create chances to attack.

On the other side of the table

The Blackout ball drops before it gets there, it is so slow, and that makes it hard for the opponent to attack: they have to go and get the ball and generate all the power on their own. And yes, it often messes with the head of whoever is on the other side. That psychological effect helps a lot: if the Blackout ball is followed by an attack right after, the opponent is under even more pressure.

But one kind of opponent put me at a disadvantage: the one who understands spin and, instead of going all or nothing, builds the point with more passive, well-placed balls, especially to the backhand, waiting for the right ball to finish. Against that player, I had to get out of the passive backhand and attack with the forehand, that is, pivot, or risk attacking with the Blackout, which doesn’t work well.

The players who attacked more were the best ones for me. That is where the Blackout shines: on defense.

Why I stopped using it

I have a total hip replacement, as I mentioned in the post Your heart lost the point. Because of it, my movement is limited, and attacking almost everything with the forehand is not a real option for me. I also had no plans to keep using it: the idea was just to test it, and it was a lot of fun and quite a challenge.

The Blackout made my backhand purely passive. Without the pivot to compensate, it limited my game too much. That is not a flaw in the rubber: it is its profile. Players who are quick enough to attack with the forehand, or skilled enough to twiddle, live a different reality with it.

Compared with other rubbers

Super Stop (Sauer & Tröger): another anti from the same brand. The main difference is the absorption sponge, which the Super Stop doesn’t have. The Super Stop makes attacking much easier, but it doesn’t absorb as much speed and spin as the Blackout. Want more attack from your anti? Super Stop. Want to kill the ball? Blackout.

Dr. Neubauer A‑B‑S 3 Pro: its main direct competitor, also with an absorption sponge, and it costs quite a bit more: a quick search showed me the Blackout’s average price is about 40% lower (prices checked in October 2026).

Blade: on a slow blade, the Blackout is almost unworkable. The blade needs medium or even high speed to make up for the slowness of the sponge. Very soft, flexible blades are not the best options either. On a 7-ply like the DHS PG7, it works really well.

Gluing, cleaning and durability

Gluing is easy, like any rubber (if you’re not sure which glue to use, see Which 360TT glue to use?). Removing it is the big problem: the sponge is extremely fragile. Gluing it with a double-sided adhesive sheet, instead of glue, can be a good idea here.

Careful when removing it

The Blackout’s sponge tears easily. Peel it off slowly, without rushing and without bending the rubber. We recommend using a plastic spatula to help. If you change equipment often, count on this risk.

Cleaning: we recommend the regular SpinUp. It doesn’t need a protective film, and you should never put an adhesive protective film on its topsheet, or on any anti-spin’s.

Durability: here it is the opposite of other rubbers. When it wears out, the Blackout starts to grab spin, that is, it gradually loses exactly what makes it an anti. I used it for a short time, so I can’t say how long it lasts; from what I saw, it lasts a long time. Mine looked like new.

Strengths

Blocking heavy topspin: the ball dies on the racket and comes back heavy, low and slow.
Receiving heavily spun serves: the rubber ignores much of the spin, and the ball comes back under control and dropping.
Control: it absorbs speed and spin very well, even against strong attacks.
It gets into the opponent’s head: the slow ball with reversed spin breaks the attacker’s rhythm, and the pressure grows if you attack right after.
Light and durable: 31 g cut for a large blade, and mine looked like new after the test.
Price: its main direct competitor costs quite a bit more.

Weaknesses

Passive, dead or high balls: attacking and pushing these balls is chaos. Against backspin it still works, but not as well as with pips.
Attacking: very hard and not very effective.
Serving: easy for the opponent to attack.
Removing it: the sponge is fragile, be careful.
The slowness: you can hardly call it a weakness, since it is made to be this way, but it is, in my words, irritatingly slow. That is the price of absorbing so much.

Who it may suit

Where it works well:

with players who have a good pivot and want to use the backhand to create chances after the opponent’s attack;
with players who want to play mainly defending close to the table;
with players who twiddle during the point, breaking the rhythm;
with veterans: the Blackout fits well in the game of those who already read spin and prefer blocking to attacking.

Where it doesn’t shine (nothing stops anyone from adapting and using it, but it is not its strength):

for players who rely on pushing or attacking with the anti or pips side;
for players who chop away from the table: you can adapt, but it is not where it shines;
for beginners: without reading spin and without the pivot, they struggle more.

The bottom line

Irritatingly slow, and that is exactly why it works.

The Blackout does very well what it promises: it kills the opponent’s speed and sends back a low, slow ball with reversed spin. In return, it charges a high price from anyone who needs to attack with it. If your game has the pivot to take advantage of what it creates, it is worth a try.

Now I want to hear from you: have you used the Blackout or played against it? Do my impressions match yours? And which DHS, Sauer & Tröger and 360TT products would you like to see in the next review? Tell me in the comments.

Blackout – Sauer & TrögerAnti-spin with an ultra-soft absorption sponge: it kills the speed of the topspin and sends back a low, slow ball with reversed spin. Visit the store →

Double Happiness: the story of DHS, the brand intertwined with Chinese table tennis

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:12:00 -0300

If you play table tennis, you have seen those three letters a thousand times: on your training ball, on your forehand rubber, on the colorful table in the World Championships broadcast. Few people know that DHS stands for Double Happiness, and that the name was born from two celebrations in 1959, one of them a world title. By the way, many players call a ball that clips the net and then the edge a double happiness: double luck for the hitter, none for the receiver.

Telling the story of DHS means telling the story of Chinese table tennis. Since the first title, the two have walked together, in a cycle that has repeated itself for more than 60 years: the team tests, the factory adjusts. When the rules change, both adapt together, and they almost always come out ahead.

This post is based on the DHS Service Guide, the brand’s technical handbook (4th edition, 2022, in Chinese), which DHS made available to 360TT as its official distributor in Brazil. It includes a timeline of the sport and of the factory. Since it is the brand’s own version of its history, I checked what I could against other sources and I point out when a figure comes only from DHS.

TL;DR: the ball reached China before the national team did: the sport landed in Shanghai in 1904 and the first Chinese ball came out in 1927 (before the national team, the ball). In 1959, China’s first world title gave the brand its name, and it debuted at the 1961 World Championships in Beijing, the same event where a 15-year-old Brazilian knocked out the champion. Then came ping-pong diplomacy, the 40 mm ball and the Hurricane (the world against China), the Ma Long era and Paris 2024. At the end, what this story teaches players.

The story in one picture: from the English dinner table to the tables of Paris (text in Portuguese). Infographic: 360TT

Before the national team, the ball

Table tennis was born in England at the end of the 19th century as a dinner-table game: rackets made of stretched skin, rubber or cork balls wrapped in wool so as not to damage the furniture, a net strung between two chairs. Around 1890, the Englishman James Gibb adapted a hollow celluloid toy ball, and the game got the ball we know. From there the sport went to Japan, where it became takkyu.

In 1904, Wang Daowu, the owner of a stationery shop in Shanghai, brought ten complete sets back from Japan and gave the sport the name that stuck: pingpang, after the sound of the ball. Curiously, in the West that name had an owner: the English company Jaques registered “Ping-Pong” as a trademark in 1901, and in the United States the rights went to Parker Brothers (today they belong to Escalade). That is why the federations adopted the name table tennis. In China, pingpang simply became the name of the sport. In 1926 the ITTF was founded and held the first World Championships in London that December. And Shanghai started manufacturing: the first ball made in China came out in 1927; in 1928 and 1929 the first racket workshops appeared (one of them made 2,000 to 3,000 a year); in 1937, the Lianhuan ball (“linked rings”) was the first Chinese ball good enough for competition. In English, DHS itself calls that ball Double Circle, and the two interlocked rings survive to this day as the mark of DHS’s training ball line, such as the Double Circle D40+. In 1946 the Hualian ball factory was founded.

Old Double Circle balls, made in Shanghai: the two rings of the 1937 Lianhuan still on the stamp. Photo: reproduction

An old Chinese racket, from the days of the first Shanghai workshops. Image: DHS Handbook

Meanwhile, world table tennis already had an owner. The handbook tells this story in five eras, and in each one the game and the equipment change together. From 1926 to 1951, Europe ruled: 109 of the 117 world titles, with the shakehand grip, defensive play and pips rubber with no sponge, which gave little speed and very little spin; the idea was to miss less than the opponent. From 1952 to 1959, Japan changed the game twice: it swapped the shakehand grip for the penhold, to attack from a distance with the forehand, and brought the novelty that changed everything, the sponge, which gave rise to sandwich rubber (rubber with sponge), still used today, and multiplied speed and spin.

China only joined the ITTF in March 1953, and that same year it played its first World Championships, in Bucharest: it beat Austria and Sweden and lost to England and Hungary. Between 1956 and 1958, Hualian and three other Shanghai factories became joint ventures with the state and formed the basis of what would become DHS. In 1957, Hualian made the first Chinese ball with a sealed seam. All that was missing was the name.

Packing balls in a Shanghai factory, in DHS's early years. Image: DHS Handbook

1959: two joys and a name

In 1959, in Dortmund, Germany, Rong Guotuan won the men’s singles at the 25th World Championships and became China’s first world champion in any sport. That same year, the People’s Republic turned ten. Two joys. According to DHS and the Chinese press, Premier Zhou Enlai named the ball made in Shanghai Hong Shuang Xi, “red double happiness”, the same name as the 囍 symbol the Chinese use at weddings. In English, Double Happiness. As an acronym, DHS.

The ball with the “double happiness” stamp. Image: DHS Handbook

The name came with a deadline. China was going to host the 1961 World Championships and wanted to play with its own equipment, so the country set up a joint technical effort with factories and research institutes. In September 1959, the new ball and table were tested by national team players, among them Xu Yinsheng, and approved. The same effort produced the first Chinese racket with inverted rubber and sponge. In 1960, the ball was approved by the ITTF, the first Chinese sports product to get that approval. It was the first turn of the cycle: the team tested, the factory adjusted.

An old table from the DHS collection. Image: DHS Handbook

1961: Beijing, the home debut

At the 26th World Championships, in Beijing, the ball, the table and the scoreboard were DHS: it was the first time sports equipment made in China appeared at a world championship. And at home, China won the men’s team event, the men’s singles and the women’s singles. For the handbook, this is when the center of table tennis moves from Japan to China, with fast close-to-the-table attack, and the game becomes China’s “national sport”.

The 26th World Championships, Beijing, 1961: the debut of DHS equipment. Image: DHS Handbook

🇧🇷 Biriba, 15, against the world champion

At that same World Championships, in April 1961, a boy from São Paulo wrote his name into history. Ubiraci Rodrigues da Costa, known as Biriba, aged 15, beat Rong Guotuan, the 1959 champion whose title had given DHS its name. It was in the third round of the men’s singles, in front of some 15,000 Chinese fans, and he reached the last 16. He received a telegram from Brazilian President Jânio Quadros, and his run was only matched by Claudio Kano in 1987 and surpassed by Hugo Calderano in 2021.

It was no bolt from the blue. At 11, Biriba was already South American champion among adults; at 13, he beat two Japanese world champions, Ichiro Ogimura and Toshiaki Tanaka, in exhibition matches at the Ibirapuera arena in São Paulo, the school that dominated the sport at the time. On November 18, 1958, the sports newspaper A Gazeta Esportiva put him on its front page alongside Pelé and tennis player Maria Esther Bueno: “the golden triangle of Brazilian sport”.

Biriba, aged 13, with Pelé and Maria Esther Bueno at the A Gazeta Esportiva offices, on November 18, 1958, each holding the other's tool. Photo: A Gazeta Esportiva

Biriba died in São Paulo on September 25, 2025, aged 80. This is 360TT’s tribute to the first great name in Brazilian table tennis.

The rest of the decade strengthened the partnership. In 1963, in an ITTF test, the DHS ball tied for first place with England’s Halex. In 1965, at the World Championships in Ljubljana, every Chinese player used DHS rackets (the “65” series), China took 5 of the 7 titles and the Chinese women beat Japan, which had dominated the women’s game for eight years.

The small ball moved the big ball

China stayed away from the World Championships for six years and returned in 1971, in Nagoya, Japan. That is where the most famous episode in the sport’s history took place. The American Glenn Cowan, 19, got on the Chinese team’s bus (by mistake, according to the best-known version). Zhuang Zedong, three-time world champion, went to talk to him and gave him a silk painting of the Huangshan mountains; Cowan returned the favor with a T-shirt bearing the peace symbol. The photos went around the world, and days later the American team was invited to play in China, one of the first groups of Americans to enter the country since 1949. This was “ping-pong diplomacy”, which brought China and the United States back together after 22 years of closed doors and paved the way for Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972. “The small ball moved the big ball”, as the Chinese say.

If you want the behind-the-scenes story, there is a great book: Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game That Changed the World, by American journalist Nicholas Griffin (Scribner, 2014). He tells how table tennis was used as a political tool from the 1950s on, and he even doubts the “chance” encounter in Nagoya: in his view, the Chinese were expecting Cowan.

Ping-Pong Diplomacy, by Nicholas Griffin (Scribner, 2014). Image: book cover reproduction

With the sport back to life in the country, DHS production grew again, and in 1972 its ball got the highest overall score in an ITTF test.

The 1970s, however, belonged to Europe’s comeback. The Europeans combined Chinese fast attack with Japanese topspin and caught up with the Asians. China’s answer came in 1981: after two years of rebuilding, the team won all 7 titles at the World Championships in Novi Sad, the first time a single country took everything in 55 years of the event.

In the early 1980s, DHS also went out into the world with the PF4 line (ball, racket and rubber), the first Chinese brand to open markets abroad. The PF4 still exists, today as a family of tacky-topsheet rubbers.

The old PF4 package. Image: DHS Handbook

DHS PF4The legendary rubber that took DHS to the world, updated for the 40+ ball: the same spin as always, with more speed in attack. Visit the store →

In 1988, in Seoul, table tennis became an Olympic sport. In 1995, DHS unified its brand into a single company, and its ball was the official ball of the World Championships in Tianjin, where China, once again, took all 7 titles. That is the birth of what the Chinese call “the world against China”.

The PF4 ball presented as the official ball of the 43rd World Championships, Tianjin, 1995. Image: DHS Handbook

The world against China

With China winning everything, the ITTF began changing the rules to make the game more competitive and easier to watch on TV. DHS was involved in those changes. In 1996, according to the handbook, the ITTF commissioned it to develop the bigger ball. The Sydney Olympics, in 2000, were the last major competition with the 38 mm ball, and a DHS ball: the first time Chinese equipment was official at an Olympic Games. That same year, the World Cup in Yangzhou debuted the 40 mm ball, also DHS. I covered that change in detail in the ball guide, from 38 mm to 40+. Next came 11-point games (2001) and the serve without hiding the ball (2002).

The Sydney 2000 ball, the last major competition with the 38 mm ball. Image: DHS Handbook

In rubbers, the turning point had come in 1998, when DHS launched the rubber already glued to its sponge at the factory. Until then, Chinese players bought the topsheet and the sponge separately. That is how the G888 (used by Wang Liqin and Yan Sen while the ball was still small) and the Kuangbiao family, known worldwide as Hurricane, were born. With the 40 mm ball, speed became the priority, and the Hurricane 2 and the Hurricane 3 were designed for it.

The G888, from 1998: DHS's first rubber already glued to its sponge. Image: DHS Handbook

DHS G888DHS's first rubber already glued to its sponge is still in production: a very tacky topsheet for maximum spin in mid-distance attack. Visit the store →

In blades, it is a comeback story. Since the 1980s, the Chinese team had used almost only foreign blades. In 2003, DHS studied the game of eight national team players and launched Hurricane blades named after each of them. In 2005, at the World Championships in Shanghai, the Hurricane Wang helped Wang Liqin win the singles and the mixed doubles. In 2006, the Skyline 2 and Skyline 3, made for Ma Lin and Wang Hao, completed the lineup, and 70% of the team’s forehands were already on DHS rubber.

Wang Liqin at the 2005 World Championships in Shanghai. Image: DHS Handbook

In 2008, DHS supplied the Beijing Olympics, and China won the team events and the top three places in both singles.

The table of the Beijing 2008 Games. Image: DHS Handbook

Shortly afterwards, on September 1, 2008, the ban on solvent-based speed glue came into force (I told that story in Why Is Your Glue Water-Based Today?). It is the best example of the cycle: DHS tested less tacky rubbers and thicker pimples with the national team, and the players’ answer was to keep the rubber tacky. So the factory worked on the sponge instead. That is how the NEO line was born, with a sponge treated at the factory to be “stretched”, imitating the effect the glue used to give.

DHS Hurricane 3 NEOThe rubber that has followed the Chinese team from the 40 mm ball to the present day, with a factory-treated NEO sponge. Visit the store →

The Ma Long era

Ma Long signed with DHS in 2008, and the history of his blades shows the cycle in detail. According to the handbook:

2008: the first Hurricane Long, built on the blade he was already using;
2011: he switches to a seven-ply, all-wood blade and puts together 51 straight wins starting at the Suzhou Open. DHS launches the Hurricane Long 2;
2012: the Hurricane Long 3, with improved internal glue at his request, and the blue handle with the yellow crescent that became his trademark;
2013: the Hurricane Long 5, with inner carbon and aramid layers, with which he wins the National Games;
2016: after the gold in Rio, the Long 5 gets a smaller blade face;
2021: the Golden Slam edition, to celebrate his Tokyo feat.

The evolution of Ma Long's blades (labels in Portuguese). Images: DHS Handbook; layout: 360TT

Ma Long and the Hurricane Long 5 Golden Slam. Image: DHS Handbook

I covered that evolution, and what it teaches about changing blades, in the post Ma Long’s Lesson. In 2015, with the Long 5 and Hurricane 3 on both sides, he won the World Championships, the World Cup and the Grand Finals. In 2021, in Tokyo, with the same setup, he completed the Olympic, World Championship and World Cup singles titles for the second time, the “golden grand slam”, and was the first player ever to do it.

Meanwhile, the ball changed again. In 2011 DHS announced a ball made of a new material, and the ITTF decided to retire celluloid, which had been used for more than a hundred years. The change took effect on July 1, 2014. Besides changing the game, it solved a practical problem: celluloid catches fire easily and was shipped as dangerous goods; the plastic ball travels by air without restrictions. DHS’s first new ball was the official ball of the World Championships and the Rio Olympics; in 2017 came the ABS plastic ball that led to the DJ40+, the Tokyo ball.

The figures DHS publishes about the Chinese team and the market show how big this is. They are the brand’s own data, from 2022, but they are impressive:

97%of the Chinese team's forehands on DHS rubber

46%of the team's blades are DHS

50%+of the world's table tennis balls are made by DHS

70%of major competitions use the DHS 3-star ball

The handbook also shows a lesser-known side. In 2010, the top four in the men’s singles at the World Championships all played with DHS equipment. In 2017, the brand launched the Gold Arc 5 and Gold Arc 8, non-tacky, European-style rubbers, made in Germany by ESN and tested by Wang Liqin and Ma Long. And, in 2022, the colored Hurricane 9, after the ITTF allowed colored rubbers. On the backhand, DHS rubber also gained ground with the 40+ ball: 32% of the team’s backhands in 2022.

From Paris 2024 to today

The handbook dates from 2022, so from here on the sources are the ITTF and the specialized press. At Paris 2024, DHS was the official supplier of the tables and nets for the Olympic and Paralympic tournaments, with a table made for the Games based on the Rainbow II. It was the seventh Olympic Games in a row with DHS equipment, from Sydney to Paris.

In April 2025, the ITTF renewed DHS as the official table supplier for the World Championships Finals from 2025 to 2028, starting in Doha, with the Rainbow table. It was on that table that Hugo Calderano reached the World Championships final, the best result ever by a Brazilian.

The Rainbow table at the 2025 World Championships in Doha, before play began. Photo: ITTF

🏓 Curiosities from the handbook

The 44 mm ball: in 2003, DHS launched a bigger ball, slower and with less spin, for recreation and beginners. Today it is used in physical education classes in Chinese schools.
The racket gauge: the device that measures rubber thickness at racket control in international competitions is supplied by DHS.
A museum table: the Rainbow table from the London 2012 Games, with arches shaped like the Olympic rings, was kept permanently by the International Olympic Committee at its headquarters in Switzerland.
The Beijing table: the table for the 2008 Olympics was designed from the Chinese character for Beijing, 京.
The two-color ball: in 2014, DHS and the Chinese federation tested a two-color ball, which makes spin more visible on TV and for the receiver.
The World Championships trophies: each of the 7 titles has a trophy with its own name, such as the Swaythling Cup (men’s team) and the Corbillon Cup (women’s team). They are made of silver and pass from champion to champion: the winner only gets to engrave their name.

The London 2012 Games table, now in the IOC collection. Image: DHS Handbook

The two-color ball, from 2014. Image: DHS Handbook

DHS D40+ ABS Bi Colour ball (box of 10)The two-color version of the D40+: you can see the spin as it rotates, great for training how to read spin. Visit the store →

Leaf through the handbook

For those who want to see the original, here are some pages from the DHS handbook: the cover, the nine timeline pages this post is based on, the page on Ma Long’s blades and the one on the history of the balls. Click any of them to enlarge it.

Cover

1890–1937

1946–1963

1965–1989

1995–2000

2000–2005

2007–2009

2010–2014

2014–2020

2021–2022

Ma Long's blades

History of the balls

Pages from the DHS Handbook (Service Guide, 4th edition, 2022, in Chinese). Images: DHS Handbook

What this story teaches players

🤓 360TT technical view

Reading the whole timeline, one thing stands out: equipment changes because the rules change. The 40 mm ball, the end of speed glue, the plastic ball: every ITTF change forced manufacturers to rework rubber, sponge and blade. DHS had the advantage of being inside those decisions and of testing everything with the strongest team in the world before it reached the shop.

That is why Chinese rubber is the way it is. The Hurricane, tacky and hard, was born for the Chinese style, which generates speed and spin through technique: technique is what puts real energy into the hard sponge. With little energy, the rubber feels slow; with technique, it becomes practically two rubbers in one, with control on passive balls from the tacky topsheet and power from the hard sponge. I explained this in detail in So, which rubber should you use? The null hypothesis method, where I also tell how the rest of the world adopted tacky and hybrid rubbers, driven by the German company ESN, the same one that makes the DHS Gold Arc.

The other lesson is simpler: what the Chinese team uses is available in the shop, with differences in quality control between versions (I explained this in the Hurricane 3 guide). Since 2023, 360TT has been the official DHS distributor in Brazil, and it was as a distributor that we received from DHS the handbook this post is based on.

Now I want to hear from you: what was your first piece of DHS equipment? A PF4, a Hurricane, a box of balls at the club? Did you know this story? Tell me in the comments.

See DHS rubbers in the shop

So, which rubber should you use? The null hypothesis method

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 23:05:00 -0300

I wrote the first version of this article a few years ago. I sent it to a few WhatsApp groups, told anyone who wanted to share it to go ahead, and it traveled all over Brazil. One day I was asked to publish it on an official Brazilian table tennis website, as long as I first made an infographic summarizing everything, because “it’s too long, nobody will read it”. I didn’t make the infographic. If nobody was going to read it, there was no point in publishing it.

Since then, something I argued for in 2022, when almost nobody was talking about it — that tacky and hybrid rubbers would change the game — has become what you see on any broadcast from the world circuit. That was the push I needed to rewrite the text, now with numbers and with a real case of a hypothesis tested on a worldwide scale. It’s still long. But it’s the first post on this new blog, and I think it’s fair to start with the subject that causes the most confusion, wasted money and regret in table tennis: so, which rubber should you use?

The short answer: probably not the one you’re thinking of buying. The long one is coming.

TL;DR: “tried it and liked it” is a clinical trial without a control: the novelty effect fools you, and the right starting point is the null hypothesis — the new rubber is not better than yours until proven otherwise. In Butterfly’s own catalog, spin and arc follow sponge hardness in an almost straight line (correlations of 0.97 and 0.98). So choose by method: throw angle, hardness, thickness, cost per month of use and your current technical level. Tacky and hybrid rubbers are the real case of a hypothesis tested by the whole world. And, once you’ve chosen your rubber, stop switching: it takes 60 to 90 days of training for it to pay off.

Note

I don’t mean to judge anyone who likes testing equipment. Back when I played, I made my rubbers last until they were worn out, and then used them a few more days. Today, now that I can afford it, I also buy things just because I like them or out of curiosity. But the scope here is different: what does or doesn’t help you win more points and more matches. And that doesn’t depend on our curiosity.

For years I’ve followed opinions and recommendations about equipment with a certain unease. Many come from smart, honest people, some of whom I know well. What bothers me isn’t the opinion itself: it’s how easily rationality collapses in the face of a shallow argument, with no technical or logical basis, bordering on mysticism. Without a minimum of method, we become hostages to “tried it and liked it”, to fashion, to the recommendation of the influencer of the moment or to the rubber that so-and-so from the national team uses.

The clinical trial of your racket

Start with a hypothesis: “rubber X, regardless of brand, price, weight or hardness, is the best for athlete Y to win more matches”. Note: it’s not about landing more drives in training. It’s about winning more matches.

That hypothesis is born with a very low probability of being right. The obvious combinations, like “famous rubber used by a famous player”, were picked long ago: they’re the low-hanging fruit. What’s left is high up in the tree, more expensive and more laborious to reach.

And the tree is huge. In October 2019, the ITTF celebrated a record: more than 1,600 rubbers on the list of authorized racket coverings (LARC). On September 21, 2026, I checked the official list: there are 1,716 approved rubbers from 150 brands. In the meantime, many dropped off (approvals expire, manufacturers discontinue models), but even more came in. The funnel keeps growing.

On top of that, each rubber behaves differently on each blade. Simplifying a lot, with just three blades from the same brand (defensive, allround and offensive), you already have 5,148 combinations: a 0.02% chance of getting it right at random. And that math is generous, because it assumes a single rubber per racket, when the forehand and backhand usually carry different rubbers.

Keep that number in mind, 0.02%. It will show up again somewhere very different.

🔎 The cover challenge

In fact, it has already shown up once: this post’s cover image has 5,148 rackets, one for each combination, and only one is orange. Missed it? Scroll back up and take a good look. Found it? That’s your chance of getting it right by luck.

I went digging in a field that isn’t mine, to draw a parallel. Before a drug reaches the pharmacy, it goes through a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Patients are randomly split into two groups: one gets the drug, the other gets a pill with no active ingredient at all (the placebo). “Double-blind” means that neither the patient nor the doctor doing the assessment knows who is in which group until the end of the study.

All that care exists because of a real, well-documented phenomenon: the placebo effect. A significant share of the people who take the sugar pill, thinking it’s medicine, report improvement, out of expectation, extra attention, the ritual of “being treated”. It’s an effect strong enough to contaminate any assessment done without a control.

That’s why the starting hypothesis of every clinical trial, the null hypothesis, isn’t “the drug works”. It’s the opposite: “this treatment is no better than the placebo”. You run the study, compare the groups and ask: if the drug did nothing, what would be the chance of seeing a difference this size or larger just by chance? If that chance falls below 5% — the famous “p < 0.05” that shows up in any serious study — the null hypothesis is rejected. And even then, regulatory agencies usually require more than one study before approving anything.

The funnel is relentless. The most quoted estimate in the pharmaceutical industry is 1 drug approved for every 5,000 to 10,000 compounds examined in the discovery phase. In the best case, 1 in 5,000: 0.02%. And of those that make it to human trials, fewer than 1 in 10 is approved (7.9%, according to the most recent survey by BIO, the US biotechnology industry association, covering 2011 to 2020).

Did you notice? 0.02% is practically the same as the chance of picking the right rubber-and-blade combination at random. A numerical coincidence, of course. But the logic is the same: when the search space is huge, a guess almost always misses.

Now, your reality. You buy a new rubber, train two or three sessions, like it and conclude: “this is the one”. Statistically, you’ve just run a clinical trial with a single patient, no control group, no blinding and an enormous expectation bias. You knew it was new, you paid more attention to your fundamentals, you trained with more motivation, you’d already paid a lot for it (and nobody likes admitting they wasted their money), and you were still riding the manufacturer’s marketing or the social media hype. It’s the placebo effect, applied to the racket.

And there’s one more ingredient, maybe the most treacherous: almost nobody switches rubbers during a good spell. We switch after a bad run, and bad runs pass on their own, with or without a new rubber. In statistics, that’s called regression to the mean. At the table, it becomes “the new rubber fixed it”.

“Tried it and liked it” is not evidence that the rubber is better. It’s exactly what a clinical trial exists to filter out.

That’s why the right stance is to keep the null hypothesis by default: the new rubber is not better than yours until proven otherwise, with enough time to separate the real effect from the novelty effect. In practice, that time is around 60 to 90 days of training. Not out of pessimism. Out of method.

One detail makes all the difference: in statistics, the null hypothesis is never “proven”. At most, a study fails to reject it. Nobody proves that “rubber X doesn’t work”; what exists is an absence of evidence that it works, which is quite different. That’s why the burden of proof always lies with whoever claims it works, never the other way around.

Now you start to understand why there are so many rubber models and so much marketing around them. And why it’s so tempting to use your favorite player’s rubber.

The next Waldner and the silent graveyard

Your 10-year-old cousin plays far above his training partners and is always praised by the coach. Could he be the next Waldner? He could. Is it likely? No: there are thousands of kids like him around the world, and most will never turn pro. When one of them finally reaches the top 20, the coach says he “always knew”. That’s hindsight bias: once the result shows up, memory rewrites the past and everything seems to have been predictable, while hundreds of other coaches thought the same about their own pupils. For a neutral observer, back at the start, the logical thing was the null hypothesis: that boy will probably become a driver, a lawyer, a dentist, and most promising talents stay just that, promising. Whoever sells or manufactures something shouldn’t fall in love with their own creation, which is exactly what a mother does when she swears her son is the next Waldner.

The same happens with the champion’s rubber: you only see the ones who made it. In the business world they say the graveyard is silent: companies that went bust don’t give keynote talks. Nassim Taleb calls this silent evidence. There’s no list of the thousands who used the same rubber and got nowhere, and nobody sees the years of training that made that rubber work in the champion’s hand.

And there’s the opposite path. Everyone knows the athlete who, when he loses, finds the culprit: the equipment, the lighting, the ball, the floor, the air conditioning. The philosopher Karl Popper had a name for this: ad hoc hypothesis, an explanation invented after the fact, just to save a belief that reality was knocking down. With rubbers, it sounds like this: “the rubber is great, I just wasn’t having a good day”, “it only works when boosted”, “it didn’t match my blade”. Each of those sentences protects a belief instead of testing it.

The antidote has existed since the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, which pulled us out of magical explanations and the authority of tradition. Your smartphone exists because of chemistry, not alchemy: nobody got to the lithium battery by mixing substances at random and making up excuses for every mix that went wrong. But when it comes to equipment, we’re still very medieval. The method is clear: assume it doesn’t work, leave the burden of proof with whoever claims it does, and don’t make up excuses when the null hypothesis wins.

The Enlightenment gathered in one salon: in this 1812 painting, Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier imagined the leading names of the era in Paris, in 1755, listening to a reading of a play by Voltaire (the bust in the background). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What the catalog itself reveals

Among rubbers in the same hardness range, most of the differences that marketing advertises are just sales pitch. Unfortunately. Or fortunately! And the proof comes from the most unlikely place: the manufacturer’s own numbers.

Before going on, a clarification: what follows is not a criticism of Butterfly. Quite the opposite: they’re incredible products, and I always say the Dignics 09C is the best Butterfly rubber of all time. I use their numbers precisely because the catalog gives indexes for an entire line, all measured the same way, and that makes the math possible.

And a technical caveat. Butterfly doesn’t publish “control” as a metric. It publishes Speed, Spin and Arc, all relative indexes, measured in its own tests (the numbers here are from the 2026 catalog). Arc, by Butterfly’s own definition, measures how easily the rubber produces a high trajectory on the topspin. In other words, it mixes the ball’s throw angle with the effect of spin on the curve. I’ll say more about that later; here, I keep the name from the table.

Source: Butterfly 2026 catalog. Analysis: 360TT.

I cross-referenced the three indexes of 16 rubbers from Butterfly’s High Tension generation: Tenergy, Dignics, Zyre, Glayzer and Rozena. I left out the ones that predate that technology (Sriver, Sriver EL, Flextra and Tackiness Chop), the Roundell, well below the Tenergy line in performance and in use, and the Tenergy 25 family, which barely circulates in Brazil.

The result: spin and arc follow sponge hardness with correlations of 0.97 and 0.98, respectively. Almost a straight line. Speed, on the other hand, tracks nothing: it sits between 75 and 90 for all of them.

And the catalog throws in a lab test for free. The Tenergy 05 Hard is, by Butterfly’s own text, the Tenergy 05 with a harder sponge (from 36° to 43°). Spin goes up 26%, arc goes up 16%, and speed doesn’t budge (83 and 82). Only the hardness changed, and performance jumped the way that, in theory, it should only jump with a whole new line. The Tenergy 05 Hard ties on spin with the Dignics 09C, which costs a third more, and even comes close to the Zyre 03, the most expensive of all, launched years later. The name changes, the price changes, the sponge gets harder, and the result follows the hardness, not the name of the technology.

How much of the “generational leap” is repackaged hardness?

There’s one exception that confirms the rule instead of breaking it: the two slowest rubbers in the group aren’t the softest. They’re the only hybrids in the catalog, Glayzer 09C (speed 75) and Dignics 09C (79), both with a tacky topsheet. And the catalog gives you a second test that looks free but has a catch: the Dignics 09C and the Zyre 03 use the same sponge, the 44° Spring Sponge X. The tacky one comes out at speed 79; the non-tacky one, at 88. But the topsheet isn’t the only difference: the Zyre 03 has a thinner topsheet and, to make up for it, a thicker sponge (2.5 or 2.7 mm, versus 1.9 or 2.1 mm on the Dignics 09C). Part of that speed is less tackiness; part is more sponge. There, hardness doesn’t act alone: the tackiness holds the ball longer on contact, steals speed and gives back trajectory. It’s no coincidence that the two hybrids are among the highest-arc rubbers in the group (95 and 96). Butterfly doesn’t say how it measures speed, but the number is what you’d expect from a low-energy test, in which the hard sponge doesn’t even get activated. It’s the same “slowness” many people feel when they try a Chinese or a hybrid rubber, and that disappears when technique puts real energy into the stroke.

And here comes a variable almost no manufacturer explains: sponge thickness. When the catalog says rubber X has speed Y, it doesn’t say which thickness it measured, and most likely it’s the thickest in the line. With regular sponges, the rule is simple: the thicker, the faster. The Zyre 03 illustrates this: it isn’t faster than the Dignics because its sponge uses a different technology, but because it has more of the same sponge. The relationship only flips with absorbing sponges, made to deaden the ball, like those of the Sauer & Tröger Blackout and the Dr. Neubauer A-B-S 3 Pro anti-spin rubbers: with them, the thicker the sponge, the more it absorbs, and the slower the rubber.

And with hybrids, the story gets more interesting than a catalog number: the throw angle changes with the stroke. Contact dominated by the topsheet (more tack, more dwell time on the rubber) produces a high throw angle. Contact dominated by the sponge (a drier touch, with less tack coming into play) produces a much flatter trajectory. It’s the same rubber with two behaviors, depending on execution: the “2 in 1” I talk about further on, now applied to the trajectory.

Sponge hardness, by the way, is the most glaring example of how each manufacturer creates its own ruler. Rubber hardness is measured with a durometer, on the Shore scales: within the same scale, the higher the number, the harder. But there are different Shore scales, with no simple conversion between them, and many manufacturers don’t really use a standardized scale at all. The “degrees” on the package are usually the brand’s internal ruler. A “40° DHS” and a “40° ESN” don’t necessarily represent the same physical hardness. The chart above only works because it compares rubbers from a single brand, on the same ruler.

Another subject that has become a fad is the so-called arc of the ball, poorly understood and “sold” in a strange way. The arc is the curve the ball draws in the air, and what draws that curve is physics: the angle and speed at which the ball leaves the racket, gravity pulling down, and spin. On a topspin, the Magnus effect pushes the ball down and closes the curve. The rubber plays a part in two ways: in the throw angle (which depends on sponge hardness, topsheet grip and pimple design) and in how much spin it lets you generate. But what generates the spin is your technique. Without enough spin, the ball comes out high, makes a long, open parabola and goes past the table. Throw Angle is not arc: it’s just its starting point.

About control, which I consider subjective: if rubber speed were always linear, control would just be a function of speed. It isn’t. Soft rubbers react more with little energy applied and give the false sensation of being fast. Hard rubbers (like Chinese ones or the Tenergy 05 Hard itself) are more direct, and if you can’t apply enough energy to activate the sponge, you’ll get the false sensation that they’re slower than soft ones. Tacky-topsheet rubbers with a hard sponge, by the way, give a much greater sense of control on passive balls (serve, receive, push, block) and are very fast on high-power attacks, when your technique activates the sponge. Keep that in mind for a little later.

Some conclusions:

Choosing by catalog speed is almost useless: the manufacturer doesn’t say which thickness it measured, and the difference between models is small and doesn’t even track hardness. What would help is an index per thickness, something like 1.7 mm: speed 7; 1.9 mm: 8.5; 2.1 mm: 10 (numbers just for illustration). Then it would make sense.
So is choosing by catalog spin: it practically repeats the sponge hardness. Look at the hardness and you already know almost everything that number tells you.
Choosing by the stated control is useless: control isn’t just a function of speed, and it’s subjective.
The catalog “arc” says little about your game: it depends on your ability to generate spin, and even the blade contributes. What’s worth looking at is the throw angle; I’ll get there.
Choosing the famous player’s rubber is completely useless: what he does with it is the fruit of a technique you probably haven’t developed yet, built over years of training with that equipment. It’s correlation mistaken for causation.
Choosing because a friend “tried it and liked it” is just as useless. Most people test by hitting drives in a controlled setting, when they should test in real matches, and only after adjusting their muscle memory to the rubber. Then the opinion would have some method behind it.

How to choose by method

With the null hypothesis as a premise, how do you choose a rubber?

Method 1 — Middle Ages precepts: catalog arc, spin, speed and control, marketing descriptions, fashion, “tried it and liked it”, “my favorite player uses…”.

Method 2 — Enlightenment precepts: throw angle, sponge hardness, overall perceived hardness, sponge thickness, cost per month of use and, above all, your current technical level.

A good drug doesn’t come from testing a thousand substances at random hoping one will reveal itself. It comes from criteria for choosing the compound and fine-tuning the dose. With rubber it’s the same: choose by Method 2 and, once you’ve chosen, adjust your technique to it.

Throw angle: rubbers that lift the ball a lot on topspin push low and, if the sponge is soft, tend to be more sensitive to the opponent’s spin (they “eat” more spin): it gets harder to receive a heavy backspin serve, but easier to open up against backspin. Examples: Butterfly Tenergy 05 and Donic Bluefire, M line. Rubbers that lift the ball less push higher, are less sensitive to the opponent’s spin, and their topspins arrive faster and deeper, making the counterattack harder. Examples: Butterfly Tenergy 64, Donic Acuda Blue, P line, and hard Chinese rubbers like the DHS Hurricane 3 National Blue Sponge (the line Ma Long uses on his forehand).

Wang Chuqin in the semifinal of the 2025 World Championships in Doha (May 24, 2025), a tournament he won: on the left, backspin; on the right, topspin. Photos: WTT/Eng Chin An

Sponge hardness: there’s no reliable general table; each manufacturer uses its own ruler, as we saw. If you don’t have refined technique or an athlete’s fitness, and don’t train every day, avoid very hard rubbers, like Butterfly’s 44° ones, those at 52.5° or more on the ESN scale or a DHS Hurricane 3 above 39°. You’ll probably find these “cannons” heavy and slow.

This also explains a phenomenon that confuses a lot of people: a rubber considered “medium hardness” two decades ago may feel soft today, without the sponge having changed one millimeter. The ball has become bigger and more demanding. In 2000, it went from 38 mm and 2.5 g to 40 mm and 2.7 g. In 2014, it switched from celluloid to plastic (the 40+ ball), which is stiffer; and, from 2017 on, came the ABS generations that dominate today (I tell that story here). A bigger, heavier, harder ball engages the sponge more and demands more from it to return the same response. Add to that the end of speed glue, in 2008 (the full story is here), and the market pushed the ruler upward: so-called “dynamic” sponges appeared, firmer and more reactive. The middle of the scale shifted. What used to be “medium”, compared with today’s catalog, falls into the range we call soft. It’s not that the rubber got weaker; it’s that the ruler moved.

A good starting point is an intermediate hardness: 45° to 47.5° on the ESN scale, 37° to 38° on DHS (except Gold Arc 5 and 8) and 36° to 38° on Butterfly.

Overall perceived hardness: what you feel in your hand is the combination of sponge and topsheet, and it can be quite different from the sponge’s nominal hardness, besides being tremendously influenced by the blade. Donic’s Bluestorm line has a good example: the Z1 and the Z2 have the same 47.5° sponge, but the Z1 feels harder because of the topsheet. The DHS Gold Arc, even with a sponge considered medium (42.5° or 47.5°), is reported by many players as “harder than it looks on paper”, an effect of its firm, non-tacky topsheet.

Sponge thickness: when you buy, the manufacturer usually offers three choices: color (one side black and the other colored, as the rules require), hardness (not every brand offers more than one) and thickness. That last one matters a lot, and hardly anyone thinks about it. The physics is simple: the sponge works like a spring. The thicker it is, the more room the ball has to sink in and the more energy it gives back, so the rubber gets faster. The thinner it is, the sooner the ball reaches the wood: the feel gets firmer and more direct, speed drops, but spin doesn’t drop with it. Relative to speed, you get even more spin, and the ball dips more onto the table. The thick one only wins on a very hard stroke, where the thin sponge bottoms out. In Brazil, it became the rule to always buy the thickest, as if thickness meant quality. It doesn’t. When I trained seriously, I used Max on the forehand and 2.0 mm on the backhand. And thick sponges are nothing new: in the ’90s I played with Yasaka Mark V 2.5 mm and speed glue, which swelled the sponge even more; it was surely already at the Zyre 03’s 2.7 mm. This habit costs everyone: since the Brazilian market rejects thin sponges, importers avoid bringing them in, and the players who need them are left without options.

Cost per month of use: the most expensive rubber on the market won’t make you win more matches, believe me! (Yes, I’m a terrible salesman…) As we saw in the numbers, the price follows the name of the technology, not the result. And there’s a calculation almost nobody does: durability. Traditional Chinese rubbers, like the DHS Hurricane 3 National Blue Sponge, are among the most durable on the market: a dense sponge and a tough topsheet lose tack and response much more slowly than most of the latest-generation European and Japanese rubbers. A cheaper rubber that also lasts more months of hard training comes out much cheaper per month of use than an expensive “technology” rubber with a short lifespan. Before comparing list prices, ask: how many months of training does each option really deliver?

Current technical level: perhaps the most applicable suggestion of all. I don’t like the idea that an athlete’s performance is something fixed: saying “so-and-so is better than such-and-such” ignores that both are constantly evolving. At 360TT we use a dynamic assessment report, filled in by the athlete and the coach, that compares how each of them sees the athlete’s current technical level. And that reference changes as the athlete evolves: a topspin rated 8 against state-level players may be worth a 3 at a Pro Tour, because the reference changed. It’s the same logic as the hardness ruler that moved. In general, with more technique and better fitness, harder rubbers start being put to better use.

The world changed its mind about tacky rubbers

I’ve been championing Chinese and hybrid rubbers for years, because of the huge advantage they give. They’re practically two rubbers in one: power from the hard sponge, a sense of control on passive balls from the tacky topsheet, and more spin generation. China has always used hard, tacky rubber on the forehand, and later on the backhand too (why the Chinese elite carries the Hurricane 8 on the backhand). When hybrids started to appear, it was clear that Western manufacturers were trying to combine the power of European and Japanese rubbers with the advantage of the Chinese tacky topsheet.

I even posted about it on 360TT’s Instagram, in January 2022, when we were still reselling other brands, before becoming the official DHS distributor. The 5 reasons I pointed out still hold, now with an extra layer of evidence, mass adoption by professionals:

a hybrid makes it easier to keep the ball short (the topsheet’s grip “holds” the ball);
it gives more spin on the serve, without the ball shooting off, making the opponent’s receive harder;
it gives a greater sense of control on passive balls (push, block, serve receive), making it easier to put the ball where you want;
it allows attacks with more spin, making up for the loss of spin with plastic balls without losing speed, thanks to dynamic sponges;
it helps refine technique: with a greater sense of control, you hit relaxed, not tense, and still gain speed.

360TT's Instagram post from January 21, 2022 (in Portuguese: \"The 5 reasons to use a hybrid rubber\").

Back then, though, hybrids still fell well short of pure Chinese rubbers, like the Hurricane 3 National Blue Sponge itself. And the market, at first, didn’t really understand how they worked: it labeled hybrids as “slow”, the same way it had always labeled traditional Chinese rubbers. In reality, they were less slow than pure Chinese rubbers, but they felt slow for the reason I explained above: the false sensation of slowness for those who can’t apply enough energy to a hard sponge and overcome the tack of the topsheet.

Want to check it? Put a rubber protector film on your “slow” Chinese rubber (it isolates the tack) and bounce the ball. Then tell me whether it died (as it does without the protector) or bounced high.

With players’ gradual adaptation and the evolution of tacky topsheets, driven mainly by the German company ESN, which manufactures for practically everyone (Donic, Tibhar, Stiga, Andro, Joola, Gewo, Xiom, among others, including DHS’s Gold Arc 5 and 8 line), the advantage that was almost exclusive to the Chinese started to shrink. Never have so many Chinese and hybrid rubbers been used around the world as today.

A good “home-grown” example for us Brazilians is Hugo Calderano. He had already switched to hybrid rubbers some time before: I noticed it in his game before the market talked about it, I even brought it up in the WhatsApp groups I’m part of, and Xiom itself confirmed it the same week I mentioned it. The trajectory of passive balls on a tacky rubber is very distinctive, and his passive game improved a lot: serve, receive and so on. The power of his counterattack also increased. 2025 brought the biggest results of his career. On April 20, he won the World Cup in Macao, beating Tomokazu Harimoto in the quarterfinals, Wang Chuqin in the semifinal and Lin Shidong in the final, and became the first World Cup champion from outside Asia and Europe. A month later, at the World Championships in Doha, he beat Liang Jingkun in the semifinal and only lost in the final, against the same Wang Chuqin. Far be it from me to reduce any player to the equipment he uses (I know very well how much training it takes to get the most out of any tool), but the tools are, without a doubt, more capable.

Calderano and Thiago Monteiro, then head coach of Brazil's men's team, seconds after the historic title in Macao (April 20, 2025). Photo: ITTF

China, for its part, is going through a strange moment. In the men’s world ranking at the start of October 2026, number 1 is a 19-year-old Japanese player, Sora Matsushima, and only two Chinese players appear in the top ten: Wang Chuqin, in 4th, and Lin Shidong, in 9th. Days later, at China Smash, in Beijing, the men’s final was between Matsushima and Lin Yun-ju, from Chinese Taipei, without a single player from the Chinese national team. On the women’s side, the dominance continues: six Chinese players in the top 10, and the title at that same China Smash went to Wang Manyu. The signs had been there for a while. Three days after Calderano’s title, on April 23, 2025, Liu Guoliang stepped down as president of the Chinese Table Tennis Association, which he had led since 2018 (officially, to ease the transition to Los Angeles 2028). Months earlier, Fan Zhendong, Chen Meng and Ma Long had dropped out of the world ranking, at odds with the WTT rule that fines players who skip mandatory tournaments. And at the 2026 World Team Championships in London, the men’s team lost twice in the group stage, to South Korea and to Sweden. It still recovered and won the title (I told the story of that turnaround here), but with a struggle that didn’t exist before. None of this is explained by a single factor. My hypothesis, and it is a hypothesis, subject to the same method as this article, is that the worldwide adoption of tacky and hybrid rubbers narrowed a gap that China enjoyed almost on its own.

Since the world truly adopted Chinese and hybrid rubbers, the balance of forces in table tennis seems to have shifted, including on the women’s side, and we’re all relearning how to play. In the end, it’s a real case, on a worldwide scale, of the mechanism I’ve been defending throughout this article: a hypothesis (“Chinese and hybrid rubbers are slow”) was held for years, until the accumulated evidence knocked it down. And notice the difference: it’s not “the champion uses it, so it works for you”. It’s an entire population of players, of every level, migrating over years. That’s evidence that the equipment works for those who learn to use it, not that it will work on its own in your hand. And, of course, among Chinese and hybrid rubbers there are friendlier, more forgiving ones and hard-to-handle, very hard ones. Choose according to your current technical level.

Transparency: 360TT is the official DHS distributor in Brazil. What I say about it is worth what any seller’s claim is worth, and the burden of proof is mine.

If you want to feel this in your own hand, DHS, a traditional maker of tacky rubbers, today has a lineup too complete to ignore: from the old-school tacky of the DHS Hurricane 3 National Blue Sponge, through the hybrids DHS Hurricane 3-50, DHS Skyline 3-60, DHS PF4-50 and DHS Hurricane 8-80, the latter at a much more demanding level, all the way to the non-tacky, European side, made by ESN itself: the DHS Gold Arc line.

And here’s a personal claim, almost a new hypothesis under test: the DHS PF4-50 would comfortably serve a huge share of Brazilian table tennis players, from beginners up to Brazil’s national “Absolute B” division, maybe even “A”. But look closely: it’s exactly the same kind of claim I made about hybrids back in 2022, still without any statistical proof. Hypothesis launched, not yet refuted. Time (and your own hand) will tell.

DHS PF4-50Hybrid rubber with a tacky topsheet and an elastic, soft #50 sponge: spin on the serve and the drive, with control. Visit the store →

Made your choice? Now stop switching

I usually tell athletes that technique and muscle memory adapt to new equipment in 60 to 90 days of training. It varies a little from player to player, but in general that’s it. If the change in equipment isn’t radical, the adjustment takes much less time, as when you replace 6-month-old rubbers with new ones of the same model. The same goes if you switch your forehand rubber for one with a different throw angle: it may bother you today, but in 60 to 90 days you’ll be adapted, beating the people you used to beat and losing to the people you used to lose to. Once the equipment is chosen by logic, winning matches won’t depend on brand or model. It will depend on you being properly adapted to it.

“Don’t switch” doesn’t mean never switch. Replacing a worn rubber with the same model is maintenance. Moving up to a harder sponge when your technical and physical development starts to call for it (and allow it) is a dose adjustment, made on sound criteria; it’s exactly what “current technical level” is about. What doesn’t make sense is switching because of a new release, a fad or because a friend liked it.

Want to test anyway? Run a single-patient trial

Medicine has a name for this: an “N-of-1” trial, with just one patient, but with a control.

Define beforehand what “better” means: tournament results, ranking points, percentage of receives that land on the table. “The ball felt livelier” doesn’t count.
Write down where you stand today, with your current rubber: it’s your control group.
Change one thing only. New rubber and new blade at the same time = impossible to know what did what.
Give it time: 60 to 90 days of training before judging.
Compare with what you defined in step 1 and, if you can, ask your coach for an assessment before and after.

If the difference doesn’t show up, the null hypothesis won: stick with the one you had and invest the money in training.

Once the compound has been chosen by criteria, and not at random, switching medicine every week isn’t treatment, it’s anxiety.

Adjust the protocol: train, refine your technique and get the most out of the equipment you already have. Happy training, everyone!

Now I want to hear from you: what was the last rubber you switched to, and why? Can you say, with any data, that you won more matches with it? And, if you play with the PF4-50, tell me down below: does my hypothesis pass your test? On the old blog I couldn’t reply to comments; here I can. So feel free to disagree, preferably with evidence. The burden of proof applies to me too.

From the 38mm Ball to 40+: A Complete Guide to Choosing Yours

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:18:00 -0300

Equipment guide

The ball is the smallest piece of equipment in table tennis, yet it is the one that has changed the game the most over the last 25 years. Changing your racket is a personal choice. Changing the ball was imposed by the ITTF itself — and every change reshaped the way the game is played at a high level.

If you have been training for a few years, you have probably heard “40mm ball” and “40+ ball” spoken of as if they were the same thing. They are not. Understanding the difference explains why that “impossible to receive” serve from the old era is easier to handle today — and why choosing the right ball changes your training in practice.

TL;DR: the ball changed three times in 25 years: from 38mm to 40mm in 2000 and from celluloid to 40+ plastic in 2014, with less spin and longer rallies. The stars measure manufacturing precision, not quality, and the color is chosen for contrast with the table and the background. The buying guide shows the right ball for each level, from training to competition.

The era of the 38mm celluloid ball (1900–2000)

The first official table tennis ball, made of celluloid and 38mm in diameter, was introduced in 1900 and barely changed for 100 years. It was light and extremely responsive to spin — the friction between rubber and celluloid allowed extreme rotation, and by the late 90s professionals were already generating spin at the physical limit of what the ball could take.

Add another detail of the time: the serve could be made while hiding the contact between racket and ball. Combined with extreme spin, this made the serve almost unbeatable — in practice, most points ended within the first 3 balls of the rally. The result: a game that was too fast, hard to follow even from the stands — and the ITTF itself recognized this as a problem for the sport on TV.

The switch to 40mm (2000–2014)

In 2000, after the Sydney Games, the ITTF increased the ball diameter from 38mm to 40mm — still celluloid — to slow the game down and lengthen rallies. A bigger ball meets more air resistance, loses speed faster and is less receptive to extreme spin.

But that was not the only change of the period — and together, they reshaped the sport:

2001: the end of the 21-point system, turning games into the 11-point sets we know today, making matches more dynamic.

2002: a serve rule requiring a minimum vertical toss of 16cm and a clear view of the contact, ending the “hidden” serve of the previous era.

2008: the ITTF banned speed glue because it contains volatile organic compounds (VOCs) harmful to health.

Each of these changes, on its own, seems small. Together, they took away much of the advantage that came only from “supercharged” equipment and gave weight back to technique. And, as a bonus, the athlete’s physique had to evolve — a lot.

The plastic era: the 40+ ball is born (2014–today)

The celluloid ball is highly flammable — the same material used in the earliest cinema — and that was always a real problem: warehouse fires, ever-tighter air transport restrictions and rising insurance costs. The ITTF decided to replace the material.

From July 2014, every official ITTF event started using plastic (poly/ABS) balls. Since they can be up to 0.5mm bigger than the old 40mm celluloid balls, they got the “40+” marking to tell them apart. In 2023, celluloid was officially removed from the rules — today every table tennis ball is made of plastic.

The effect on the game was real: the friction between rubber and plastic is lower than between rubber and celluloid, and professionals initially reported a 10 to 15% drop in their ability to generate spin — a significant number at the elite level. The sport reacted in a chain:

Tacky and hybrid rubbers, like those in the DHS Hurricane line, practically became the standard to recover part of the lost spin.

Blades with carbon fiber and a thicker core, like the DHS Fang Bo Carbon B2X and the DHS Hurricane Long 5X, gained ground to compensate for the ball’s lower response with more structural power in the racket.

Players had to become more athletic. Without the “help” of the ball and speed glue, generating the same power now demands more real physical preparation — legs, trunk and hip explosiveness became part of the technical equation for good.

What the stars mean (1★, 2★, 3★)

The star rating indicates the ball’s level of precision and consistency — it is not about “good or bad quality”, it is about manufacturing tolerance:

1 star: a training ball, with greater tolerance in weight, roundness and hardness. Ideal for multiball, robots and heavy everyday use.

2 stars: intermediate, a balance between durability and consistency — good for more serious training or recreational play.

3 stars: competition standard, approved by the ITTF for official tournaments, with maximum consistency in weight, roundness and hardness.

The DHS DJ40+ is a good example of how strict this selection can be: even though it is already within the margin the ITTF allows (weight between 2.67g and 2.77g, roundness with a tolerance below 0.25mm, hardness between 0.68 and 0.81mm), the most carefully selected batches of the ball use only a much smaller fraction of that range — the smaller the percentage of the total margin used, the higher the precision of the ball.

White or orange? Color is not aesthetics, it’s a rule

The ITTF rule is straightforward: the ball can only be white or orange, always matte — and the main color of the player’s clothing must be clearly different from the color of the ball chosen for the match. It makes sense: if the ball and your opponent’s shirt look alike, you literally lose sight of the ball against their body.

This matters more today than it did a decade ago. For a long time, the standard at major competitions was a blue or green table — today green has practically disappeared, and black has established itself as blue’s partner at the main WTT events (the DHS W1000 table, for example, is black and has been used since 2023 at stages such as the WTT Grand Smash and the Cup Finals). In other words: the choice between a white and an orange ball is not about “which one looks nicer” — it is about which one contrasts best with the table and the background where you play or compete.

Buying guide: the DHS balls we have at 360TT

As an official DHS distributor — the world’s largest ball manufacturer and official WTT sponsor — we bring the complete line, from training to competition:

Ball	Stars	Recommended for	Notes
Double Circle (white/orange)	Training	Beginners, clubs, multiball and robots	The most economical of all, with surprising quality and durability — best value for training and multiball
D40+ 1★ (white/orange)	1★	Recreational training and daily use	Great value for everyday play
D40+ 2★ (white)	2★	More serious training and recreational games	A balance between price and consistency
D40+ 3★ (white/orange)	3★	Club and regional competitions	Competition standard with good value
DJ40+ 3★ (white)	3★	Competition and advanced players	Official ball of the Tokyo 2020 Games and the WTT circuit — renewed as the official WTT ball for the 2021-2028 cycle, the benchmark for feel and spin in the DHS line
RS40+ 3★ (white)	3★	Competition and advanced players	Also official WTT, made with recycled plastic (PCR), slightly stiffer and faster feel
D40+ Dual Color	—	Technical training, seeing spin	Helps you see the ball’s rotation during practice

Choose the right ball for your game

Choosing the right ball is not about spending more — it is about matching your level of play to the ball’s tolerance, and also about using each model wisely for its specific purpose. If you train every day, the Double Circle or the D40+ 1★ do the heavy lifting without wasting your budget. If you are moving up a level or already compete, the D40+ 3★ is the natural next step. And if your game already asks for the best there is — in a real match, not in multiball — DJ40+ and RS40+ are the balls the best players in the world use.

Tip

If the back wall where you train is white, buy orange balls!

Now I want to hear from you: do you already know which ball fits your game? Tell me in the comments.

See the full line of DHS balls

DHS Hurricane 3 NEO: The Guide to the World's Most Famous and Most Used Rubber

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 15:25:00 -0300

Historically, rubbers like the Butterfly Sriver and the Yasaka Mark V dominated the 80s and 90s. In the modern era, the Tenergy 05 carries enormous weight. But when we talk about absolute volume of users (driven by the gigantic base of players in China) and undisputed dominance on the world pro circuit, the DHS Hurricane 3 (and its NEO version) is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most iconic, famous and winning rubber in contemporary table tennis.

With the arrival of the era without speed glue (VOC-free), DHS introduced the NEO version, which comes with a factory semi-activated sponge to make up for the loss of speed, while keeping the famous “tackiness” and the aggressive ball trajectory.

But when a table tennis player decides to buy this rubber, they run into the market’s biggest question: what is the real difference between the DHS versions? Is there a secret ingredient?

TL;DR: the Commercial, Provincial and National versions use the same recipe; what changes is the precision of quality control, and you can tell each one apart by its corner cuts. The tackiness of the more expensive versions is more extreme, which is not an advantage for most players. Choose the hardness for your level (37° to 39° for most), count on booster and buy from someone with a proven source so you don’t fall for a counterfeit.

The big secret: same recipe, different precision

Let’s get straight to the point that surprises people the most: according to DHS’s own technical manuals, the Commercial, Provincial and National versions use exactly the same formula and manufacturing recipe. The real difference is not in the material itself, but in the precision of the technical tolerance (quality control).

The version X-ray and the “corner rule”

To stop counterfeiters from selling commercial rubbers at elite-version prices, DHS established a strict geometric rule. In practice, when you look at the rubber outside the packaging, identifying the cuts visually is very simple (as you can see in the cover image):

Commercial level (4 corners cut): the rubber comes with all four corners of the square cut off. It is the mass-produced version, with a wider tolerance margin at the factory, which makes it much more affordable. It offers excellent value for anyone who wants to step into the world of Chinese rubbers.
Provincial level (2 bottom corners cut): only the two bottom corners are cut. Aimed at professional teams from the Chinese provinces, the quality control is much stricter, ensuring consistent performance from one batch to the next. This is where you start to get frequent access to the famous blue sponge.
National level (no cuts, square): the rubber comes whole, perfectly square and with no cuts. It is DHS’s standard “cream of the crop”. The tolerance is absurdly tight: sponge hardness is accurate to within 0.5 degree and thickness to within 0.05mm. Restricted supply and a very high price.
Player Edition: like the National, it also comes perfectly square and with no cuts. It is a step above the National! These are rubbers made to measure, with the exact specifications required by the elite athlete whose name is on the packaging. For example: Ma Long and Liang Jingkun use 42°, while Wang Chuqin is the best example of an extremely specific setup, demanding exactly 41.5°. On the women’s circuit, where the vast majority use 40°, the star Sun Yingsha stands out using 41°. Your “Player Edition” will come with exactly the personal setup of the athlete you choose.

The truth about the “stickiness” (tackiness)

A common question is whether the more expensive versions “stick” to the ball more.

Thanks to the millimeter-level tolerance, the National version reaches the absolute peak of tackiness on its top layer (topsheet). However, “stickiness” that extreme demands monumental physical effort, flawless technique and perfect footwork to get the ball moving. If you don’t have the explosiveness of an Olympic athlete, the ball will end up in the net.

That is why the Commercial and Provincial versions have a slightly more moderate tackiness. This is not a flaw or a shortcoming, but rather an enormous technical advantage for the general public. They deliver the famous, devastating “Chinese spin”, but with a more friendly response, allowing smoother play without requiring you to be a professional at the table.

Understanding hardness: the Chinese scale vs. the rest of the world

In the DHS universe, sponge hardness changes everything. Since the Chinese scale is different from European (ESN) and Japanese (Butterfly) rubbers, we created this approximate reference table to guide you:

37° (approx. ESN 45~~47° / BTY 35~~36°): the big ace up your sleeve. Extremely efficient for the backhand, but also the ideal starting point for the forehand of beginners and intermediates, since it lets you activate the rubber’s sponge without brute force.
38° and 39° (approx. ESN 48~~50° / BTY 37~~40°): the gold standard for most amateur and advanced competitors on the forehand. Interestingly, professional Chinese players often use up to 38° on their backhand for extra reactivity.
40° (approx. ESN 51~~52° / BTY 41~~42°): high hardness, it requires excellent weight-transfer technique to be used, usually on the forehand.
41° and 42° (approx. ESN 53°+ / BTY 43°+): rubber “bricks”. Reserved for players with massive strength and impeccable technique, usually the Player Edition setups and, in that case, practically exclusive to the forehand.

Blue sponge, orange sponge and the reality of booster

Make no mistake: the Hurricane 3 NEO was made to be used with booster. The reality of high-performance sport is undeniable: virtually 100% of the world-class athletes who use the Hurricane 3 NEO apply booster to activate the sponge’s tension and maximize the catapult effect.

The coveted blue sponge has a structure that makes it absurdly more responsive to booster than the orange sponge. To activate this rubber the right way, a high-tech enhancer such as our SpeedUp boosters is the key to unlocking the Hurricane’s “turbo mode” without damaging the material.

Global dominance: far beyond China

The Hurricane 3 NEO is not exclusively Chinese. The table tennis world has realized that spin (hard Chinese rubbers are bad for smashing) dictates the modern game, and non-Chinese stars from many national teams have built their careers trusting DHS material.

Current players

South Korea women’s team: the absolute domination of DHS. Stars such as Shin Yu-bin, Jeon Ji-hee, Joo Cheonhui and Kim Na-yeong use the tacky rubber to guarantee heavy attacks and set the pace with spin variations.
Hina Hayata (Japan): the current big star and ace of the Japanese team built her top-level game using the Hurricane 3 on the forehand to generate huge arcs and absurd spin.
Jang Woo-jin and An Jae-hyun (South Korea): very strong names on the South Korean men’s side who adopted the Hurricane 3 Blue Sponge on the forehand, dramatically increasing the weight of their first attacking balls.
Nicholas Lum (Australia): a young talent (currently top 34 in the world) who has been shocking the world circuit, recently beating big names such as Darko Jorgic, using the power of the Chinese rubber.
Doo Hoi Kem (Hong Kong): one of the rare athletes in the world elite who used tacky rubber on both sides (forehand and backhand). She recently switched.
Zeng Jian (Singapore): a strong name on the Singapore team who trusts the Hurricane’s precision for her offensive game.
Fu Yu (Portugal): the experienced penholder who represents Portugal shows that the Hurricane 3 is lethal even for an adapted traditional European style.
Andreas Levenko (Austria): an excellent example from the current European circuit who trusts the power and massive spin of the Chinese material.

Retired legends

Kasumi Ishikawa (Japan): one of the most beloved players in the world, Kasumi was one of the main people responsible for popularizing the Hurricane 3 on the forehand outside China. She proved that the classic Japanese speed-based playing style benefited enormously from the arc and the “weight” generated by the Chinese rubber.

Counterfeits and the 360TT verdict

As we saw, the geometric rule (the sponge corners) helps, but the “parallel market” improves its replicas every day, forging holographic seals with a frightening resemblance.

The only way to be sure you are playing with the real material is its source. We at 360TT are official DHS distributors in Brazil. When you buy from us, you can be absolutely certain of getting a 100% original rubber, free from the Russian roulette of counterfeits on the internet.

Which version should you choose?

Beginners and intermediates: start with the Commercial (38° to 39° on the forehand; 37° at most on the backhand).
Advanced players and competitors: go with the Provincial (with sensible use of booster).
Professionals and collectors: National or Player Edition for the peak of precision.

The millimeter precision and technology of the Chinese National Team are at your disposal, but it is your sweat in training that will make the ball land on the other side of the table.

Don’t stop at curiosity! Get your Hurricane 3 NEO with the security of 360TT, glue it onto your blade and test it at your next training session.

DHS Hurricane 3 NEOThe most iconic rubber in table tennis, with a factory semi-activated sponge and DHS's classic tackiness. Commercial version 39°; other versions and hardnesses in the store. Visit the store →

The table is the only place where the truth shows up!

Now I want to hear from you: are you already on Team Hurricane, or do you still play with traditional tensioned rubbers? Tell me in the comments!

Discover the DHS rubbers in the store

Stop "Licking" Your Racket: Let's Raise the Level of Our Vocabulary?

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 21:26:00 -0300

Brazilian table tennis is going through an incredible phase. We have world-class idols, top-level equipment and a passionate community. But we need to have a serious (and slightly painful) conversation about our vocabulary (the Portuguese one, that is).

It seems we’ve been invaded by a legion of “Google Translate parrots”. Plenty of good people keep repeating terms that, besides being wrong, border on the comical. Today I decided to play the “annoying friend” so we can look at three linguistic crimes you probably commit (or hear every day at the table).

1. “I’m going to change my lâmina” (careful not to cut yourself)

Friend, if you call your racket a “lâmina” (the Portuguese word for a razor blade), I sincerely hope you’re wearing protective gloves.

This happens because, in English, the wooden part is called the blade. The automatic translator, which doesn’t play table tennis, translates it as “lâmina” (as in a razor blade or a microscope slide). But let’s be honest: calling a structure of 7 plies of noble wood, carbon and an FL handle a “lâmina” hurts the ears.

🤓 360TT technical view

The correct term here is MADEIRA (Portuguese for “wood”; or just blade, if you want to be international).

“Lâmina” implies a single cutting surface. A table tennis blade is a technological “sandwich” of pressed layers (sheets, or plies). The correct terminology honors the engineering of the material.

2. The so-called “hexagonal racket” (geometry sends its regards)

I think this mistake is the pirates’ fault. Stiga launched the novelty Cybershape. Then the copycat “factories” looked at it, were too lazy to count the sides and called it: “raquete hexagonal” (hexagonal racket).

And the Brazilian table tennis player embraced it. But let’s go back to 5th grade for a second? No jokes, okay…

A hexagon has 6 sides. Count the sides of the head of your “different” racket.

Top, upper diagonals, straight sides, lower diagonals… Oops! It went past 6 a long time ago.

🤓 360TT technical view

Geometrically, the Cybershape (and its copies) has 7 visible sides in the playing area, which would make it a heptagon. But we have to count the base of the handle as a side (where the rubber’s lettering is), and with that it becomes an irregular octagon.

Calling it hexagonal is a gross observation error that oversimplifies a complex impact-area distribution technology. Still in doubt? Remove the rubber from the lâm… oops, madeira, and count the sides. You found 8, right?

3. “Ponto doce” (what does it taste like?)

We’ve reached my favorite. The famous sweet spot. In English, sweet in this context means “smooth”, “just right”. But then they translated it word for word as “ponto doce” (literally “sweet point”, as in sugar-sweet).

Honestly, does your rubber taste like strawberry? Do you lick your racket after a winning drive? If the answer is no, stop saying that your racket’s “ponto doce” is good.

🤓 360TT technical view

The correct technical term is IDEAL IMPACT AREA (in Portuguese, “área de impacto ideal”) or even CENTER OF PERCUSSION (“centro de percussão”).

It is the region of the blade where vibration is minimal and energy transfer to the ball is maximal. There is no taste involved whatsoever, it’s pure wave and vibration physics.

Precision in speech, power in play

It may look like I’m just nitpicking (with a bit of humor, come on…), but precision in our terms reflects how seriously we take our sport. At 360TT, we are obsessed with this technical precision.

It is this same obsession with detail that led us to develop the SpeedUp X booster. While some people are busy translating wrong, we were in the lab creating a booster that truly delivers speed and spin, with no “papo furado” (empty talk). If you want to stop making mistakes at the table (and in your vocabulary), count on the people who understand the science behind the racket.

SpeedUp X booster360TT high-viscosity booster: power without losing the firmness of the rubber. 60ml bottle with applicator tip. Visit the store →

Now I want to hear from you: what other bizarre term do you hear at your club? Tell us in the comments!

You Don't Need Your Idol's Rubber (and Clóvis de Barros Explains Why)

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 01:20:00 -0300

I’m a huge fan of Professor Clóvis de Barros Filho. Recently, watching a video of his about values and decisions, my mind blew up and went straight to table tennis. The philosophy is his, but the analogy here is mine, and it explains exactly why choosing equipment hurts so much.

Choosing equipment is agonizing. You walk into our store and see rubbers at R$ 80.00 and rubbers at R$ 800.00. The natural tendency is to think: “If the R$ 800.00 one is what Hugo Calderano uses, it must be the best. If I want to be good, I need it.”

The problem is that, thinking this way, you fall into a classic “context” mistake.

The wrong “answer key”

Professor Clóvis explains that, to give value to something (an exam grade, a soccer player), we need to compare it with a reference, an ideal “answer key” (the gabarito). If we say Neymar is a star, it’s because we compare him with the idea of a perfect player.

The problem with the amateur table tennis player is that he usually uses the wrong answer key.

You look at Hugo Calderano or Ma Long as your “perfect 10” reference. Automatically, you conclude that the “perfect 10” equipment is what they use.

Note

When I say “Calderano’s rubber,” take it as a metaphor for any elite equipment used by your idols. The point here is not the brand, it’s the concept of using professional material without having the professional “touch.”

You buy the fastest, most expensive rubber on the market thinking you’re making the best possible choice (“the chocolate cake,” as Clóvis says), but you forget to look at where you’re going to eat that cake.

Army vs. nursing home: where do you play?

Here comes the brilliant part of the reasoning, which I adapted for us. Clóvis compares two places with opposite values: the army and the nursing home.

In the army, the supreme value is discipline. If the bugle sounds at 5 a.m., the right thing is to get up. In the nursing home, on the other hand, the supreme value is rest. If the bugle sounds at 5 a.m., nobody hears it, and that’s fine. The good life there is the peaceful life.

(Before moving on, a heads-up: when I say “nursing home,” I’m not making a reference to old age, but to the concept of a place where the supreme value is rest and tranquility, as opposed to military rigidity.)

Now, bring that to the table:

Your idol’s context (the army): he trains 8 hours a day, has an elite physique and perfect technique. The value there is maximum speed and surgical precision. His rubber charges that price: it demands absolute technical discipline. If your movement is late by milliseconds, the ball goes into the wall.
Your context (the nursing home/club): you play two or three times a week, you want to improve and have fun. The supreme value here is not suicidal speed; it’s control, consistency and forgiveness.

Using “your idol’s rubber” at your current level is like waking up at 5 a.m. blowing a bugle inside a nursing home. You have the “right” attitude (top-end equipment), but in the wrong place (a technical and physical level that doesn’t match). The result is chaos: balls in the net, balls blasted into the wall and frustration.

The realistic solution

Table tennis, just like life, doesn’t have a single answer key. For our context of learning and improvement, the “perfect 10” is not the Tenergy or the Dignics. It’s the rubber that talks to your current technique.

As the official DHS distributor in Brazil, I use the PF4-50 as my example. There are countless other rubbers on the market that would fit this analogy, but I mention this one because I see many players ignore it out of prejudice, often just because it’s cheap, thinking that, because it costs little, it’s a slow, bad or “dead” rubber.

That’s not true. Being very realistic: a rubber like the PF4-50 supports you comfortably up to the Absoluto B level in Brazil, maybe more…

It combines the best of both worlds: it has the tacky (sticky) top sheet to generate plenty of spin on the serve and the drive, but it also has the #50 sponge, which is elastic and soft, and that makes it a hybrid rubber. It delivers speed when you attack, but offers the control that the professional rubber denies you.

DHS PF4-50Hybrid rubber with a tacky top sheet and an elastic, soft #50 sponge: spin on the serve and the drive, with control. Visit the store →

For an amateur, this rubber has more practical value than a R$ 500.00 rubber, because it gives you the confidence you need to do the most important thing: win the point.

The illusion of “magic”

To wrap up, I’m going back to Clóvis. He pokes fun at those self-help books that promise “50 tips to be happy forever.” Obviously that doesn’t exist, but we buy the illusion.

In table tennis, buying the most expensive rubber on the shelf thinking it will fix your drive and win you the game is exactly the same illusion. It’s trying to buy success without going through the process.

As the professor says when he closes: “we are handing back to you the task of taking the reins of your own life”.

Take the reins of your own improvement. Stop trying to “buy” Calderano’s game.

Tenha Brio! (Roughly: “Have spirit!” Did you catch the reference?)

Choose equipment that is consistent with your level, train for real and improve within your reality. When you’re “in the army” (advanced level), then yes, we’ll swap the ammunition.

Now I want to hear from you: which rubber are you using today? Does it talk to your current technique, or is it your idol’s? Tell us here in the comments.

Reference: video “As Decisões Dependem Dos Valores | Clóvis de Barros” (watch here).

Why Is Your Glue Water-Based Today? The "Speed Glue" Crisis

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 17:56:00 -0300

If you’re a veteran player, you probably remember the smell. A strong, chemical smell that took over every competition hall. If you’re a newer player, maybe you’ve heard people talk with nostalgia about the “click”, the iconic sound the racket made in the 80s and 90s.

That smell and that sound came from the same place: “speed glue”. For decades, it was the elite’s secret for generating absurd speed and spin. But it was also at the center of a health crisis that forced table tennis to change forever.

To understand why your TENSOR rubber is so elastic and why your glue is water-based today, we need to tell this story. Our analysis is largely based on a fantastic historical article by Jens Fellke, the author of the Jan-Ove Waldner biography (“When the Feeling Decides”). In a report for USA Table Tennis Magazine (Mar/Apr 2009), he detailed this saga.

Chapter 1: the magical “click” (the discovery)

The story begins by accident in the 70s with the Hungarian player Tibor Klampar. During a practice session, frustrated with his game, he peeled off his rubber and glued on a new one. He didn’t like it, peeled it off again and re-glued the original. Suddenly, he heard a “click”.

Klampar realized that his original rubber was suddenly much faster and had more spin. He had found the jackpot: applying fresh glue with volatile solvents (VOCs) before playing “supercharged” the rubber. The game became faster and more aggressive, allowing the famous topspin-against-topspin rallies with players meters away from the table.

Chapter 2: the hysteria and the dark side

Klampar kept his secret for more than a year. But once it was discovered, the table tennis world changed. Gluing became a “hysteria”.

The ritual was to apply coat after coat of glue before every practice and every match, sometimes six times a day. Players traveled with cans of highly flammable glue smuggled in their suitcases.

🤓 360TT technical view: the real risk

The problem was health. The solvents were toxic. Fellke’s article cites several alarming incidents:

A player in Scotland passed out after spilling a jar of glue and inhaling the fumes.
Doctors warned about neurological risks, headaches, concentration problems and even a link to birth defects.
The situation got so serious that doctors advised athletes to wear gas masks while gluing.

The legendary Stellan Bengtsson had a famous story: he told of parents arriving to pick up their beginner kids at the club and seeing the main team’s players wearing gas masks, thinking they had walked into a “chemical warfare exercise”. The sport’s image was being seriously damaged.

Chapter 3: the ban and the modern era

The ITTF tried to ban speed glue in 1993, but failed. Pressure from players and the lack of a reliable test made the federation back down.

However, the pressure for a “green” and safe sport continued. In 2004, the ITTF voted for a definitive ban on all solvents (VOCs), a rule that took effect on September 1, 2008, right after the Beijing Olympics.

Chapter 4: the solutions (today’s game)

The ban created a vacuum. How do you get speed without speed glue? The industry, which was already preparing for this, answered with two innovations that define today’s game:

“Tensioned” rubbers (TENSOR / High Tension): manufacturers such as ESN (with TENSOR technology) and Butterfly (High Tension) figured out how to put the “spring effect” in from the factory, inside the rubber. They come “supercharged” permanently and safely.
VOC-Free glues (water-based): the new glues, safe and approved by the ITTF, were created. They are 100% water-based and their job is no longer to “supercharge”, but to fix the tensioned rubber to the blade as efficiently as possible.

360TT expert analysis

The speed glue era was exciting, but it was a “chemical war” that fortunately ended. It changed the game forever, forcing the sport to become faster and more athletic.

It’s even a little ironic to look at how the market has evolved. In the 90s, many of us used classic rubbers like the Yasaka Mark V with a 2.5mm sponge. With speed glue, that sponge swelled and easily reached 2.7mm. Curiously, one of the biggest releases of 2025, the Butterfly Zyre-03, is treated as a major innovation precisely because it has a sponge of… 2.7mm. The sport has come full circle.

Fortunately, today we no longer need gas masks. Performance now comes from the technology built into the rubbers (TENSOR) and from modern glues that, besides being safe and 100% within the rules, also help performance. Solutions like EasyGlue Green and EasyGlue Carbon (with its carbon technology) are the best example of this evolution: maximum performance, with total safety and respect for the current rules.

Now I want to hear from you: did you live through the speed glue era? What is your memory of the “click”? Tell me here in the comments.

Discover the full EasyGlue glue line

Table Tennis Serve: 5 Tips to Surprise Your Opponent (and the Equipment That Helps)

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 20:24:00 -0300

The serve in table tennis is your first attack and the most controlled stroke a player has. Unlike any other moment of the game, you have complete control over it, with no interference from your opponent.

The main goal of a good serve is to disrupt your opponent, pulling them out of their comfort zone and, ideally, either winning the point outright or setting up a decisive attack. If you can turn your first attack into a powerful play, your whole game becomes much stronger, because your opponent will constantly worry about what you’ll do next.

Here are 5 essential tips to improve your serve and catch your opponent by surprise.

TL;DR: the serve is the only stroke you fully control, and surprise comes from disguising the spin, varying the height of the toss and forcing your opponent to move. Since most points are decided in the first three balls, set up the next attack and keep the no-spin serve as a lethal weapon. The right equipment amplifies spin and control, and training with targets and multiball completes the package.

5 tactical tips to surprise your opponent

1. Master the art of disguise (variation is key)

The essence of a surprising serve is illusion. A serve that is always obvious and telegraphed won’t fool experienced players, making your opponent’s return easy.

The secret is to make your serves, even with different spins and speeds, look identical until the last second. Use a semicircular motion (down, sideways and up) and accelerate into the contact. That way, your opponent won’t be able to tell which part of the arc the contact happened on, making it harder to read the spin (backspin, sidespin or topspin).

Of course, an “obvious” serve can be used on purpose, to set your opponent up for a variation on the next play. What can’t happen is for it to be obvious because of a lack of technique.

360TT tip

Exaggerate the racket’s follow-through in the direction opposite to the intended spin (for example, finish downward for a topspin serve, or upward for a backspin serve).

2. Use a high toss to break the rhythm

Although the rule requires a minimum toss of 16 cm, there is no maximum height. Varying the height of the toss is a powerful tactic to confuse your opponent’s timing.

A serve with a high toss can take a few seconds for the ball to come down. If you repeatedly use a high toss and suddenly serve with a minimum toss, your opponent, who expected more time, may have muscles unprepared for the quick movement. Besides, a higher toss makes the ball fall faster, which can be turned into extra spin and speed at contact.

3. Mix short and long, aiming at the extreme points

Ball placement is a crucial tactical element. The goal is to force your opponent to move, pulling them out of their comfort base. Even if it’s just one step, that forced movement already hurts the quality of the return.

One of the best combinations is to alternate between short serves to the forehand and deep serves to the backhand (the extreme points of the table), since it’s hard for the receiver to prepare for both.

Short serves: the bounce should land close to the net, making a full-motion attack difficult.
Long serves: fast and aimed at the corners, they are effective as a surprise.

360TT tip

One particularly effective placement, which contrasts with the extremes, is to aim at your opponent’s middle (the elbow of the racket hand). When the ball is played there, your opponent is forced to make a quick decision (use forehand or backhand), which hurts the consistency of the stroke.

4. Set the stage for a fierce attack

Remember: in high-level matches, the majority of all points are won in the first three balls. The serve and the first return are the most important shots.

Your serve will be ten times more threatening if it is followed by a vigorous attack. If your playing style is offensive, short serves let you apply a topspin (attacking stroke) on the next ball, taking the initiative and preventing your opponent’s first offensive action.

5. Master the no-spin serve

The no-spin serve (with no spin on the ball) is a lethal variation. You can imitate the motion of a backspin serve but, instead of brushing the ball, make contact close to the handle (where the surface moves more slowly) and simply push the ball gently.

Your opponent, expecting backspin, will probably lift the ball, handing you an easy attack. If they expect topspin and close the racket, the ball goes straight into the net.

How the right equipment improves your serve

Technique is fundamental, but to get the most spin and control, the right equipment works as an amplifier. Based on the tactics above, here is what you need to know:

1. To generate maximum spin (tips 1 and 4)

You need rubbers with a tacky top sheet (upper surface). Chinese rubbers are famous for this trait, letting you “grab” the ball and generate extreme rotation, essential for disguising the spin or executing the no-spin serve.

Our recommendation: take a look at the DHS Hurricane or the PF4-50 lines, which are masters at generating spin.

2. To keep the serve short and low (tip 3)

Control is everything. Rubbers that, by nature, help keep a lower and deeper ball trajectory (especially harder Chinese rubbers) make it easier to execute serves that are hard to counterattack. Combined with a blade with good feel (control), you’ll have the sensitivity needed to make the ball “die” on your opponent’s side of the table.

Our recommendation: explore our 5-ply or 7-ply blades that prioritize control and sensitivity.

3. To ensure consistency (the “do it yourself” factor)

The quality of your gluing directly affects the feel of your racket. Using a quality glue, like 360TT EasyGlue, ensures an even layer and the perfect adhesion so that the rubber performs exactly as expected.

Our recommendation: learn to glue your own racket. Check out our EasyGlue glue and the SpinUp Cleaner to keep your equipment at competition performance.

Bonus: tools for focused training

Improving your serve takes repetition.

Targets (target zones): use tape or markings on the table to define specific areas (lines, corners, elbow). Mastering placement is what separates high-level players.
Multiball training (robots or basket): this is the best way to train serve and receive technique. With a basket of balls, you can focus 100% on executing the motion, refining speed, spin and direction without interruptions.

Conclusion: practice and surprise

A good serve is built with repetition and intention. Start by choosing one or two of these tactics to train in a focused way. You’ll see how, in a short time, your confidence to start the point will grow and your opponents will get more and more uncomfortable.

Now I want to hear from you: which of these 5 tips will you train first? Leave a comment below!

Discover the rubbers at the 360TT store

Ma Long's Lesson!

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 21:01:00 -0300

In table tennis, the greatest hero of all time, Ma Long, did not use the same “weapon” his whole life. The story of his blades is the story of his evolution as an athlete. Many players, especially beginners and intermediates, look for the “perfect blade”, believing they will find one model that will serve them forever. Ma Long’s career teaches exactly the opposite: choosing a blade should be a journey, a process that follows and boosts the player’s technical development.

Chapter 1: the start with a pure wood blade (2011-2013)

The story: At the beginning of his domination on the world stage, Ma Long played with pure wood rackets, with no synthetic fibers. Models like the Hurricane Long 2 and, above all, the Hurricane Long 3 (7 plies of pure wood) were his choices. It was with a pure wood racket that he played the 2013 World Championships in Paris, a period marked by sublime control, extreme spin and unmatched ball feel.

🤓 360TT technical view

Ma Long, the master, started with the foundation. And that is the lesson for everyone: starting with a pure wood racket (no fiber) is essential. This is the stage where you develop correct technique, ball touch and reading of the game. A blade without carbon fibers “forgives” mistakes less and therefore forces the athlete to refine the fundamentals. It is the foundation of a great player.

Chapter 2: the great turn to carbon (2013-2014)

The story: In 2014, the sport went through a drastic change: the introduction of the 40+ plastic ball. Slower and with less spin, the new ball required athletes to generate more power on their own. Ma Long, always a strategist, realized he needed a new tool. That is when he made the transition to the legendary Hurricane Long 5 (HL5). This blade represented a technological leap, with a structure of 5 plies of wood and 2 inner plies of Arylate-Carbon (5+2 AC). He started using it back in 2013, when he won the Chinese National Championship, and from 2014 on it became his inseparable partner.

🤓 360TT technical view

This is the crucial moment in a player’s journey. When technique is solid and strokes are consistent, but speed is missing to close out points, it is time to consider a blade with fiber. Ma Long’s HL5 is the perfect example of an intelligent transition: the carbon is placed internally, next to the core. This adds speed and power but keeps a high degree of control and feel, making it the ideal step for anyone coming from a pure wood racket.

Chapter 3: the golden era of the Grand Slam (2015-2021)

The story: With the Hurricane Long 5 in his hands, Ma Long became a force of nature. It became his “champion blade”. In 2015, using the HL5 and Hurricane 3 rubbers on both sides, he won the World Championships, the World Cup and the World Tour Finals. The peak came at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, when he used the same setup to become the only man in history to win the Double Grand Slam (two-time Olympic, World and World Cup champion). The feat was so monumental that DHS released a commemorative edition, the Gold Slam Hurricane Long 5.

🤓 360TT technical view

Reaching your maximum potential is not about having the fastest blade from day one. It is about having the right blade at the right moment of your development. Ma Long’s most victorious phase came after he made a strategic equipment change, aligning his new blade with the maturity of his game and the new demands of the sport. That proves that proper equipment progression is a key to unlocking your best table tennis.

The 360TT expert analysis

The story does not stop. Even at the top, Ma Long and DHS kept innovating, with versions like the Hurricane Long 5X, which uses a thicker-core technology to adapt even better to the 40+ ball.

The lesson from Ma Long’s journey is clear. Don’t look for the “best blade in the world”; look for the “best blade for you, right now”. Think of your career as chapters. Start with a pure wood racket to build your fundamentals. When your game evolves and asks for more speed, make a controlled transition to a blade with inner carbon. Your blade is not a static piece; it is your partner in evolution.

Ready to find the next step in your evolution? At 360TT you will find everything from classic 5-ply blades to modern ones with Arylate-Carbon. Start writing your own story.

Now I want to hear from you: which blade do you play with today, and which chapter of your evolution do you think you are in? Tell me in the comments.

Explore our selection of blades

Hurricane 8 on the Backhand: The Secret Weapon of Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha!

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 02:12:00 -0300

It’s not a trend anymore, it’s a reality. Chen Meng, Wang Chuqin and the world number 1, Sun Yingsha. The names at the top of the world rankings share a secret on the backhand: the DHS Hurricane 8. In a move that breaks decades of paradigms, the Chinese elite is rewriting the rules of the backhand game, and here at 360TT we took a deep look at this news.

The change forced by the 40+ ball

Historically, the backhand has always been the territory of European and Japanese tensor rubbers: fast, elastic and less demanding physically. However, the introduction of the 40+ plastic ball changed the game. The ball became slower and heavier, requiring athletes to generate much more power and spin on their own, even on the backhand. It was this new reality that opened the door to a Chinese solution.

What makes the H8 special for the backhand

Many people think of the H8 as a “softer Hurricane 3”, but the truth is more complex. It was designed from the start to be a weapon in the 40+ era, with unique characteristics.

A unique balance: the Hurricane 8 is a high-tack, high-elasticity rubber, keeping a perfect balance between flexibility and elastic strength.
The #25 sponge: its high-elasticity, micro-porous sponge is more elastic than the classic #20 sponge of the H3, which contributes to better support and superior “ball depth” (power on long strokes).
Activation with moderate force: this is the secret. The H8 is better suited to players with moderate strength. That doesn’t mean weak players, but rather that it doesn’t demand the full, explosive biomechanics of a forehand to “activate” its properties, making it ideal for the more compact, faster movements of the modern backhand.

The protagonists of the revolution

The final proof of the Hurricane 8’s effectiveness is in the rackets of the best players in the world. Each of them uses it to maximize their own playing style.

Chen Meng (陈梦)

The Olympic champion uses the NEO Hurricane 8 with 2.1mm sponge thickness and 37 degrees hardness. This setup lets her execute an overpowering backhand, with a heavy ball trajectory, loaded with spin and continuous power.

Wang Chuqin (王楚钦)

One of the biggest stars of today, Wang Chuqin opts for the NEO Hurricane 8 with 2.1mm sponge thickness and 38 degrees hardness. The extra hardness in his rubber is the mark of an ultra-aggressive backhand game, looking to finish points with maximum speed and impact.

Sun Yingsha (孙颖莎)

The definitive confirmation of this revolution comes from the racket of the world number 1. Sun Yingsha’s adoption of the Hurricane 8 on the backhand validates this rubber as the top choice for a modern, aggressive and versatile game, tested and approved at the very top of the sport.

The expert’s conclusion

The rise of the Hurricane 8 on the Chinese elite’s backhand is no accident. It is a smart tactical response to the demands of modern table tennis. For the advanced player who wants to generate their own power, attack with heavy spin and dictate the pace of the point with the backhand, the H8 has stopped being an alternative and become the new standard of champions.

Now I want to hear from you: have you ever tried a Chinese rubber on the backhand? Tell us in the comments how it went.

Ready to use the same weapon as Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng and Wang Chuqin? The DHS Hurricane 8 is waiting for you at 360TT.

DHS Hurricane 8The high-tack, high-elasticity Chinese rubber that the elite uses on the backhand. Visit the store →

Which 360TT Glue to Use? The Definitive EasyGlue Guide

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 20:16:00 -0300

Equipment guide

When it comes to building a racket, every table tennis player knows how important the blade and the rubber are. But the most detail-oriented players understand that glue is not just an adhesive: it is a performance component. The layer that bonds your playing tools together can drastically change the speed, the feel and the precision of your strokes.

That is why at 360TT we take glue seriously. The EasyGlue line is the result of research and development with Brazilian athletes, created for our climate and our style of play. Under the motto “Quality from those who play, for those who play”, we created a solution for every goal. Find out which one is yours.

EasyGlue performance guide: find yours!

From a practical, safe gluing job to an explosive gain in speed, there is an EasyGlue for your game. Here are the details of each one:

For convenience and confidence: EasyGlue

EasyGlue is the solution for those who want efficiency and respect for the original characteristics of their equipment. It is the ideal choice for a professional racket assembly with no complications.

Low viscosity: its more liquid consistency lets you spread the glue evenly and effortlessly.
Neutral feel: preserves 100% of the original feel of your blade and rubber, without interfering with performance.
Neutral speed: adds no speed, keeping full control of your setup.
Clean removal: makes changing rubbers easier, letting you peel off the old glue film without damaging the material.

See EasyGlue in the store

For control and easy removal: EasyGlue VISC

For the table tennis player who demands absolute control over every detail, EasyGlue VISC offers precise application and incredibly easy removal. It was created for those who value a clean, efficient process.

High viscosity: the thick consistency prevents dripping, ensuring controlled application and an even layer.
Simplified removal: the thicker layer turns into a single film, making removal quick and clean.
Slight speed increase: adds a subtle speed “plus” to your strokes, without changing the original feel of your setup.
Neutral feel: keeps intact the feel and characteristics you already know from your racket.

See EasyGlue VISC in the store

For offensive performance and spin: EasyGlue GREEN

Developed for offensive players, EasyGlue GREEN is a true performance upgrade. Its technology goes beyond bonding, acting as a power layer that propels the ball.

Spring (catapult) effect: when you apply 3 or more coats, the glue creates an elastic film that significantly increases the speed of your strokes.
Elastic feel: gives a softer sensation, increasing the contact time with the ball (dwell time) and, consequently, the potential for spin.
Higher throw angle: the formula results in a higher launch angle, ideal for attacking strokes.
Optimized performance: to get the most out of it, applying 3 or more coats to the sponge is essential.

See EasyGlue GREEN in the store

For explosive speed and precision: EasyGlue CARBON

Meet the world’s first carbon glue! EasyGlue CARBON is the peak of performance, designed for the aggressive player who wants the most in speed, power and precision.

Extreme speed: its formula, with 3 or more coats, unleashes maximum potential for low, powerful and deep attacks.
Direct, precise feel: inspired by carbon rackets, it creates a direct and crisp sensation, resulting in greater precision in blocks and fast attacks.
Visible technology: as it dries, the glue reveals the carbon particles, the visual proof of the technology that is about to boost your game.
Energy transfer: the firm layer, reinforced by carbon, acts as an extension of your racket, catapulting the ball with impressive speed.

See EasyGlue CARBON in the store

Quick comparison table

Model	Viscosity	Main goal	Player profile
EasyGlue	Low (liquid)	Convenience and confidence	All levels
EasyGlue VISC	High (thick)	Controlled application	Those who change rubbers often
EasyGlue GREEN	Medium	Offensive performance	Offensive players
EasyGlue CARBON	High (thick)	Power and precision	Aggressive players

Safety and approved quality

Your health and compliance with the rules are our priority. The entire EasyGlue line is VOC-free (volatile organic compounds), meeting ITTF standards for use in any official competition. In addition, the bottles have a safety cap to prevent leaks and child opening.

Conclusion: upgrade your performance

Now that you know the science and the goal behind each glue in the EasyGlue line, it is easier to choose the right tool for your game. From total control to explosive speed, 360TT has the ideal solution to take your performance to the next level.

Now I want to hear from you: which glue do you use on your racket today, and what do you miss most about it? Tell us in the comments!

Choose your EasyGlue in the 360TT store

Let's Talk About Boosters?

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 17:26:00 -0300

At the 2020 Brazilian Championships in Rio de Janeiro, a young player asked me:

“Auad, what is booster and what is it for?”

After I explained it, he asked me why this kind of information wasn’t known by every table tennis player. That’s when I decided to write about the subject.

TL;DR: booster is an oil that expands the sponge and makes the rubber faster. European and Japanese rubbers already come with factory booster, and the ITTF rule only requires a maximum thickness of 4mm and no VOC. In 2019 tests, the ITTF caught players who sanded their blades to hide rubbers up to 4.18mm thick: every booster increases thickness, and more thickness means up to 10% more performance. But the opposite is also unfair: a rubber that has lost its factory booster plays worse. Within the rules, booster only brings benefits; see how often to reapply it.

What booster is and how to use it

Definition of booster: it is an oil that, when applied correctly and properly to the sponge (and/or the top sheet, but that is a subject for another time…) of a table tennis rubber, expands it and makes it more responsive. In other words, it makes it faster.

Definition of oil: substances in a viscous liquid state at ambient conditions. Oils are hydrophobic (they don’t mix with water, which is why there is no water-based glue with booster) and lipophilic (they form a homogeneous mixture with other oils). They can be of vegetable, animal, mineral or synthetic origin. In the world table tennis market there are basically two types of booster: mineral-based and vegetable-based.

Now that you know what booster is, let’s look at how to use it. Booster must be applied to the rubber’s sponge (it can also be used on pips rubbers), and then you have to wait for it to work. A single coat of booster normally takes 12 to 24 hours to act, depending on factors such as the booster’s viscosity, its origin (vegetable, mineral, etc.), the type of sponge (porous or not) and the sponge’s hardness. Room temperature and humidity can slightly change the time it takes, but I consider that difference negligible.

Booster makes the sponge “grow” in every direction, and since the top sheet doesn’t grow along with it, the rubber bends toward the top sheet side.

Now, to keep it very simple: if we only thought about using booster on new rubbers, the subject would end here and the only use would be to make the rubber faster (a little softer and launching the ball higher). But it is not quite that simple…

What the ITTF says about booster

The ITTF says in its rulebook: “Racket coverings must be used without any physical, chemical or other treatment.” (ITTF Handbook, rule 2.4.7). That makes the subject controversial, but in practice it allows the use of any rubber listed on the LARC (List of Authorised Racket Coverings) that does not exceed 4mm in thickness (including the glue layer) and does not release VOC.

The ITTF doesn’t worry about booster use, because it fenced everything in with the two rules I mentioned above: a 4mm thickness limit and no VOC release. Many rubbers already come close to that 4mm maximum, leaving no room for much booster, except those that are not tensioned, such as Chinese rubbers.

Factory booster: what nobody tells you

What the ITTF doesn’t say, and neither do manufacturers, is that tensioned European and Japanese rubbers released since 2007 come treated with booster from the factory. Some more, some less, but all of them have it. That changes our whole perspective on using booster.

The booster in the sponge, whether from the factory or applied by the player, does not last the whole life of the rubber. It is used up with play (the impact of the ball), and the harder you hit, the faster it is used up. Although we always talk about booster durability in days or months, the right way to measure it would be in hours of play. In my experience, based on the rubbers that come with the most factory booster, it is completely used up within 40 to 50 hours of play at most, and in some cases much sooner.

In Brazil, because of the high dollar and absurd import taxes, rubbers are very expensive and we end up using the same rubber for months, sometimes for a year or more. As a result, after some time all the factory booster is used up and the rubber no longer has the “tension” of a new one, losing a good part of its performance. The more booster a rubber receives at the factory, the more it will lose. Note: rubbers made in Japan are generally the ones that receive the least booster at the factory and, consequently, lose less performance once it is gone.

You can confirm that rubbers receive booster at the factory by the smell some of them give off when new, and also by how much they shrink relative to the blade after being peeled off following some time of use.

Think of a bicycle: a solid wheel, usually metal, and a rubber tire. For that tire to work properly, it has to be inflated with a certain amount of air. When a tire goes flat, do we replace the tire or simply put back the air that was lost? Right: we grab a pump and fill it up again, or take the bike to a gas station and set the tire to the right pressure for use. Bringing the example to table tennis, the racket is the wheel and the rubber is the tire. When the rubber’s air/booster “goes flat”, we can replenish it to give that rubber back its factory tension/speed. To me, this is the best use of booster and there is no reason for it to be “illegal”. Quite the opposite: it should be encouraged, because it is a practice that gives the rubber a longer life and, consequently, means less waste on the planet.

The ITTF test in 2019

In December 2020, the ITTF held a webinar on YouTube about table tennis equipment. One of the topics was the use of booster, which they call After Treatments.

In 2019, after the Croatia and Poland Opens and the Team World Cup in Tokyo, they selected some players to have their rubbers peeled off, with no consequences for the player in case of non-compliance. The players themselves removed the rubbers, always after their last match of the tournament. The choice of player was based on the racket test, where the assessing umpire had doubts about the result.

Curiously, they caught several players tampering with their blades to allow more booster on the rubber, thereby defrauding the thickness test.

Important

It is important to clarify that every booster increases the thickness of the rubber: the rubber grows on all sides, including in thickness. And if it has more thickness, it gains performance. It is well known in the table tennis world that a rubber with a 2.2mm sponge is faster than one with 2.0mm, which is faster than one with 1.8mm, and so on.

The evidence found on the rackets

They found evidence on the rackets such as:

Sealant near the handle.
A dent in the rubber where the measuring device rests.
Very low thickness readings, like 3.58mm, on rackets of world-class players.
Thickness divergence measured with a magnifying glass.
The top veneer of the blade sanded at the point where the measuring device rests.
The appearance of the rubber’s top sheet showing the use of booster.

In measurements after disassembly, they found rubbers up to 4.18mm thick. Below is the measuring device used to measure the thickness of the rubbers after disassembly:

This extra thickness delivers up to 10% more performance compared to a rubber within the 4mm limit. Those rackets passed the normal thickness test with the racket assembled, because the blades had been severely prepared for it.

Below are some images:

From the images, the players caught were using Chinese rubber or were Chinese. Since the list of players was not disclosed, it is not possible to know exactly.

At the beginning of these tests there were heated discussions, but after they explained that the goal was to protect honest players from cheaters, reactions were positive.

What the ITTF concluded

After these tests, they realized that the performance advantage for a player using rubbers thicker than 4mm was enormous and equality among players would not be guaranteed that way. The players even suggested raising the thickness limit, a sign that they are still chasing performance through their rubbers and that simply switching to a faster blade would not solve it in this case.

And when the factory booster runs out?

That was a case of cheating to get better performance, and that is what racket control is for. But let’s flip the situation: a rubber whose performance has dropped because its factory booster has already been used up is also a factor of inequality. In that case, with the goal of restoring the factory tension, booster should be widely used, especially if the following conditions are met:

The European/Japanese rubber has been used for at least around 40 hours and still has usable grip on the top sheet.
Booster is not harmful to health, so the racket passes the tests as long as it is within the 4mm thickness limit.
Booster contains no VOC, so the racket passes the tests.

If the rubber is Chinese and does not have a porous sponge, such as the GoldArc (made in Germany), it was developed to be used with booster, and this is simply not said openly for commercial reasons. So use it from new, as long as it does not exceed the 4mm limit and the booster does not contain VOC.

Benefits of using booster

It is ecologically responsible, because rubbers will last longer and far fewer of them will be thrown into nature.
Your used rubber returns to factory tension/performance one or more times until the grip fades and it has to be replaced. Playing with a used rubber stays enjoyable for much longer, as if it were new.
The rubber’s spin/speed potential is kept for much longer.
If you bought a used rubber and it did not fit your blade because it had shrunk, booster can bring it back to its original size. After using booster on a shrunken rubber, it is normal for it to grow 0.5cm or even more around its entire circumference.
If you don’t play official tournaments, you can supercharge your racket and make it more pleasant and faster to play and have fun with.
You feel the ball better on a rubber whose factory booster has been replenished. The feel is spectacular.
The sound of the rubber gets much better, reminding you a little of the sound of speed glue.
The rubber lifts the ball more, which is great for attacking.

Tips for use

Now that I have probably convinced you that using booster is not wrong — on the contrary, it should be encouraged — let me give you some usage tips. If you train every day, replenish the booster every 30 days; otherwise, every 2 months. Prefer a booster that is very efficient, lets you control the amount applied, is not harmful to health and has no smell, has a physiological pH (it doesn’t harm the skin) and has technical support from the manufacturer. Our SpeedUp 360 offers all of that, plus an instruction manual via QR Code, an applicator sponge, and my regular technical support.

SpeedUp 360 boosterUniversal 360TT booster: works on any brand or type of rubber, including pips. Treats up to 10 rubbers per bottle. Visit the store →

Oh, and booster can (should?) also be used on the top sheet, but that is a subject for another time.

Now I want to hear from you: do you use booster? How often do you reapply it? Tell me in the comments.

Discover the 360TT boosters