OOAK Table Tennis Forum

So I have been working with my student on transition for may be 6 months or so. He likes to admire his shot after taking it and for some ridiculous reason that must be grounded in a great childhood experience, rushes with glee when he sees a high ball. So we started with drills where he is forced to recover go ready position or do something in the middle of his stroke before taking the next shot. For example you can so multiball but between every shot you have to tap the table with your paddle in order to interrupt your feeling that you must recover immediately to where you anticipate the ball is going to.

The other thing is to get multiball or a good blocker and practice transition without moving.get a ball yo your backhand and to your forehand that you don't have to move to and just play the shots.

Another thing to note is that transition has a link to shot quality. My transition sucked for a long time yet it was hard to expose my issues in a game. That was because I could pin people down with backhand shots so fast and spinny that they never wanted to risk blocking long down the line. When you play a weak ball and you get lost in transition, don't blame your transition, blame the ball that gave the opponent the opportunity to misdirect you.

At game speed you will often be rushed and play half assed shots. It's the shots that come to a point on the table that you should be able to play if you had recovered after your shot that you want to complain about. Again shot quality plays a role here because if you put energy on the ball, your opponent usually can only take so much energy off the ball and you can often use a decent short stroke to play the next shot. But a weaker first shot can lead to a fast flat return that leaves you scrambling to cover a bad angle.

In the beginning your priority should be to be able to transition to a weak ball played to the wing you are not ready for at random. You start by training the feeling of general transition by playing routine forehands and backhand close to the table. Them you do the drill that fast mover mentioned where most balls are coming to one wing and then you have to deal with a slower ball to the other wing.

The main culprits of bad transition are

1. Grip changes.
2. Extreme stances for shots or the inability to play most shots out of a fairly similar stance.
3. Poor anticipation.
4. Poor prior shot quality.
5. Bad recovery after prior shot.
6. Going out of balance to play shots without balancing the risk with the reward.

Hopefully this will give you ideas for diagnosing and improving your transition issues. In order to simplify my play, I modified a lot of my strokes and grips so I could minimise the transitions I needed to make to play different strokes.

AT the B75 camp one of the coaches, Istvan Moldovan, told me I was turning my hips into the FH after the ball was gone, ie arm is leading hips are following. So it added nothing to power or consistency, but at least reset me square to the table for the next stroke. Today I was watching video of a club match and saw exactly what he meant. So I made a very short clip.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGt8UCU4pJo&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

Frame by frame at 60fps the error in the sequence is super clear. I think I misunderstood something Brett told me, or I'm applying it wrong. He said the first thing you have to do for a FH is turn your shoulders. I'm doing the whole stroke with shoulder rotation. It makes some nice shots sometimes, like this one was nice, even as jammed and wrong as it was. But it makes it very hard for me to shorten the stroke when I need to, and plays holy hell with my recovery. I'll be trying to change this timing to hips-first-then-shoulders. But since I've hit approximately 2,000,000 FHs this way, I'm probably stuck with it forever.

Up to 14:44, I thought you played fantastic. After 14:44, you started to make a lot of errors.

I think it's important to understand the difference between technical errors and your state of mind. After the 14:44 point, your desire to win tipped over the edge. The mistakes were all linked to your state of mind. and not your technique. You were very lucky to win the 15:03 point, based on your emotional level. Watch LTT51 for a better explanation.

I think it would be a mistake to examine every technical error you made after 14:44 because you would be missing the point. You had already demonstrated up to 14:44 that you have good shots. You were playing amazing. You are capable of playing well.

Please watch the match again and see if you can see the downswing after 14:44. Your reaction at 14:48 is an important part of the story.

It is always extremely unpleasant to lose with a high emotional level. That's why you call this video a "horror movie". If your emotional level was too low, then you could easily say "I couldn't be bothered".

Once you understand the relationship between emotional level and playing level, it's important to not overthink it and start worrying about worrying. Doing some LTT58 can help.

That is interesting. I actually thought about 14:44 as a positive thing, for the reason below. Earlier in the day I played up and down, missed everything in one game, and landed everything in the another. I was probably too nervous in the beginning, but I didn't worry too much, as I kept reminding myself the mantra "It is OK to be nervous, I can still play well." Yet something was very off. Then I played a doubles match with my friend, and we lost the first two games miserably. My forehand just didn't work, I missed the swings completely. I don't think I was afraid or nervous at that time, but something was very wrong. Then in the third game we played a couple of good attacks, which gave us a lot of confidence. After that I don't think I missed anything. All our forehands hit the target and we played very good defense too. We won the next three games easily, with the scores like 11-2 or 11-4. It all started with a small emotional high from hitting a good shot, and built up like a snowball to the point we couldn't miss and the opposing team looked lost and didn't know what to do.

When I hit the shot at 14:44 I used it as an opportunity to build up that emotional high to enter the same state I was in the doubles when I couldn't miss. I think I even exaggerated the celebration for the exactly this reason. But it seems that I overshot the narrow peak. Looks like I was also too greedy as I was already playing fine and there was no need for more. That is an interesting experience as I don't think it ever happened to me before.

"It's okay to be nervous, I can still play well" is one of the most important concepts in sport, in my opinion.

Welcome back Brett!

In your absence I abandoned my doomed four-year attempt to develop a reliable bh loop, and have switched to short pips, at least for a little while. So a question for you -- are there any major technique differences between using a relatively spinny, max sponge sp and inverted?

Or is the physical technique about the same, and only the contact is a lot thicker?

And this is my horror movie.

I agree, it was one of the most valuable benefits of TTEdge to me, and I keep it in my mind anytime I play a tourney. It also applies to other things in life. If some of my friends get nervous before giving a talk in public, I tell them the same thing.

But the real trap was that I never knew I should have stayed away from being overexcited. Obviously, fear and nervousness are detrimental to the game, I experienced them before and was prepared. But this time I was way too agitated and it was new for me, and I didn't know I should have kept it under control. The win did matter since I lost to the same opponent in U1800 earlier in the day, with the same score 1-3. So probably I got too excited when I saw the finish line on the horizon in the third game.

Do you think maintaining a constant, relatively slow, pace between points would help you avoid getting too high or low?

Do you think maintaining a constant, relatively slow, pace between points would help you avoid getting too high or low? I've been trying that lately and it seems to help. And I have a huge problem with managing my emotions in tournaments

What really made me focus on it was watching the national junior ranking tournament that was played at the Broward TTC recently. All those kids took their time, whether serving or receiving, until they were really ready.

It's probably not be a cure-all, but just playing slower between points might be worth experimenting with. Better than taking timeout to calm down from being too angry, which is what I normally have to do.