OOAK Table Tennis Forum

My sentiments exactly, he has major footwork issues but his strokes are solid.

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Reminds me of an old professor joke: "My students are total idiots: I explained Maxwell equations to them once - they did not get it. Did it again, still nothing. Went over it the 3rd time, finally figured it out myself - they are still clueless!"

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

My understanding is the top 80 kids are basically paid professionals.

The enormity or TT in Asian countries is difficult to comprehend. India is working towards getting a million players in the near future. There are hundreds of full-time training facilities etc all over the country. The one mentioned in the article is in Kolkata and you can read about it here http://ttfi.org/news/show/849
The Chinese coach mentioned in the article, Yin Wei, will be based there and working full-time with those kids. Think about how many people are involved in just one junior training center. It's quite amazing. You can read about how school fits in, in the article.

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That's how it was. I had to teach you...to teach me.

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Now I get it: we are lab rats here!

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Tactics Enthusiast

I meant after new technique is a functioning part of his game, how much better he will be.

When you video yourself and see the same glaring mistakes over and over it's easy to get discouraged. I find it useful to remind myself that I am beating usatt 1900 - 2000 players *while using horrible form.* So when I fix one or two obvious flaws, I will be beating 2100 players. That's what I was saying to richfs about BL. If he can win two matches without ttedge technique, he will win a hell of a lot more when he has it.

You can flip the idea around. What if I was losing to 2100s and my technique was nearly perfect. Would that be a better or worse situation than I am in now? It's a lot easier to go from completely wrong to reasonably okay, than take something nearly perfect and add 1 or 2% to it.

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Having perfect technique is a better situation for sure. If your technique is solid, all you need is training and competing, and you will improve gradually just by doing and enjoying that.

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Tactics Enthusiast

India will probably overtake Europe in TT within 10 years!

It's interesting because aside from cricket, they are probably the most underdeveloped sporting nation on earth when considering population. They are obviously trying to change this.

Okay, we disagree on this. Or I'm not making any sense.

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I think you are both right in a way. Someone with perfect technique is somewhat at a loss as to how to improve, conversely having gaping technical flaws which can 100% be fixed with effort and which will make a big difference gives a very clear path to improvement. However the guy with perfect technique in this scenario is quite unrealistic, since he must also have gaping holes in some non technical aspects or he would be 2500+ already, which should be just as glaring and easy to address, whether tactical or whatever. In that scenario it could theoretically be even easier to improve but I don't think such a person could exist. Maybe a former pro who was losing his eyesight or something, in which case medical intervention might be the only possibility to help!

You can have perfect technique in drills when you know where the ball is coming and what's on it. In matches it is different: need to read spin, anticipate, make decisions you did not have to in drills etc. At some point there is some other aspect of the game that becomes a low hanging fruit and needs to be worked on. You can polish your FH only so much...

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

I agree with Fruitloop.

Fixing leaks is a neverending part of a player's development. It would be really hard to play with perfect technique and be rated 2100, unless your anticipation, spin reading, and game flow understanding are well underdeveloped.

I could actually imagine this happening to someone like Fruitloop who learns technique at a fast pace. Or perhaps Randy from the ETTS videos. If you give Randy instructions, he can just do it. His technical development is miles above his playing level. In fact, the better I get at explaining something, the more I'd hope to see it. I want to see people with great technique who are very inexperienced players. That's the best thing I can do for an inexperienced player.

One could argue that it's no good having perfect technique if you can't win a match. This is really short-sighted. It's like saying it's bad to have great anticipation if you don't know how to strike the ball. Or it's no good being world class at reading spin if you have no backhand. You take what you can, when you can. I'm not leaving a player with poor technique because he can't read spin or win a match.

Playing experience mostly trumps technique. BRS is able to beat more experienced players because he has learned to serve properly and he developed a proper forehand. He's also worked very hard at his game over the last few years. That said, as a general rule, experience trumps technique.

It's not quite right when a player believes they should have won a match because they have superior technique. They are failing to take experience into consideration. If someone has played for 30 years and you've played for 1, you're probably going down. I don't care how much you bow/squat/thrust/whip your backhand. Your opponent will almost certainly read spin better, just for starters.

When someone is good at something, they tend to have an imbalanced opinion about it. Say a player has learned a very good forehand stroke. They may say that forehand technique is the most important part of TT. Or they may say that technique is irrelevant because they already have it. This tends to happen a lot. I'm guessing that some billionaires say that money is irrelevant and others say it's everything in life.

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I totally agree. You need to get out there and learn game flow, spin, direction etc. It's just super hard to teach that stuff in a video and they are the most important parts of the sport. Experience trumps technique...up to a threshold.

How does a guy who is rated 1500 know if his forehand is right? Who decides? When people send me videos of themselves playing, I have a horrible habit of looking around the hall at their peers on other tables. I see a lot of ugly "capped" shots out there Peter. Someone needs to teach those guys how to hit the ball, cos they're going nowhere fast!

Almost every member is hitting the ball far better than the average of the hall, imo of course.

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I'd prefer to think of you as the beneficiaries of my hard work and study.

Besides, tests have shown that lab rats don't know where the subscribe button is.

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He compares himself to the best player(s) in the club/hall.

If the best player is 1800 and has messed up strokes, Mr 1500 is in trouble. If the best player is 2500, not so much.

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Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono