OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Our club opens once a week for a couple of hours for 'training'. Of late, all of our 8 tables are full with a couple of tables playing doubles. Of all these players, none do any sort of dedicated training ie drills, multiball, set plays, robot etc, they just have a hit or play a few games.

There are a handful of players at the club which includes me that would like to do some actual structured training. There's no reason we can't do this, but to be fair to others, as we have no barriers between tables, would only be able to use one ball. Using a box of balls is far more efficient for training so that you don't need to spend half your time chasing around the ball so you get many more drills and rallies done for the same time.

I'm thinking of approaching the club to either open another time slot for training or even opening a bit earlier and having a couple of tables enclosed for perhaps the first hour and dedicate these for multiball use.

What does your club do in regards to training and on your training nights are players there to actually train or just have a social hit.

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Donic Waldner Senso V1,FH Baracuda Big Slam 2.0mm ,BH Victas Triple Regular 2.0mm

Barriers are real simple to make. Just get some cardboard for large appliances cut out and spray-painted with the club name ? You could build these over a couple of weeks and leave in the club. Then request for the dedicated table for multi-ball. Even 30-mins multi-ball should be exhausting. You could do it in intervals of 15-mins / break / 15-mins / switch to different table / etc. Prevents people from complaining against you hogging the slots.

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Even better - find a cardboard supplier with sheets of cardboard. You'd want some maybe three and a half to four foot wide and fifteen long (you can glue sections together), with corrugations running along the width. Crease (pizza cutter) and fold in alternate directions every 18 inches, and fanfold. Now you have barriers that stand up when the fanfolds are expanded, with the cardboard in a zig-zag pattern on the floor. 8-10 foot segments (whgen deployed) of these barriers are ideal, easy to set up, collapse, stack, store and move around. People can run into them and not damage them, nor will they hurt players who run into them. They don't trap and hold on to balls (like I've seen other types of barriers do). Paint them a dark green or blue and you're all set, they can look quite professional. The Duneland tournament in Michigan City (over 50 tables) used stacks and stacks of barriers like this, and our University club bought some from them one year. Lasted for years and years, they're probably still using them. Have a barrier making party one weekend.

Iskandar

We have 5 permanent tables and usually too many players on our "training/free hit" nights. I usually try to keep it casual at the beginning but one table is usually dedicated to training or for the more skilled players leaving the other 4 free for others. I find this is the best balance for us. We also have barriers on all courts though so its easier.

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As the barriers are typically maybe a meter high, possibly lower, balls still easily end up going over the top, finding their way through gaps and end up around the hall. Also balls from other tables end up in our area making them nearly impossible to find.

Regardless of this, the hall opens for practice at 7pm but its sometimes open earlier and it fills very quickly so if you get there at 7:05pm you might miss out and need to swap around with others or play double. No amount of barriers or cardboard can fix this.

Just to give you an idea, this is the rough layout of our hall, all barriers are thigh high with no roof high divisions.

_______
l x x x x l
l_______l
l x x x x l
l_______l


I like the idea of being able to block off a couple of tables for training for maybe a portion of the total opening time and the others would just have to put up with it.

Edit, that diagram didn't work very well but we basically have 4 tables side by side at the front, then 4 tables side by side at the back, no barriers between each lot of 4 and only 1m barriers elsewhere.

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Donic Waldner Senso V1,FH Baracuda Big Slam 2.0mm ,BH Victas Triple Regular 2.0mm

Any scope for buying and hanging hign nets?

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Timo Boll ALC ST
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Seems to me the social evening is good for all those interested in table tennis,they have fun!! For the more serious player I suggest you meet on another day Alternatively use one table and use a net, and perhaps a robot...

Options:

Add extra time to session / extra session.

Set aside table(s) for training only (usually at end / corner of hall that will cause least disruption). I always put a note on one table saying coaching only - sometimes I stop the session and say ok anyone who wants to do a structured session we are using these 5 tables, if you want to knock play matches us those 5.

Multi ball catch net.

Training drills with one / two balls is good - makes players take care to keep ball on table - how you train is how you play matches - if there is a bucket of balls next to you, you are not bothered if you whack 10 off in a row - you are if you have to march up the hall, interrupt someones game and pick it up 10 times!

It's hard to break down a sessions culture - one club made me head coach, and had a youth club / social session. It's hard to break that down - especially as if I am not there they resort back to social play only - so we offer 1 to 1 mini session (10 - 20 mins on request) or they book a longer one to one, and for juniors I started a separate fully structure session. Sometimes its good to have social . experimental play too - so rather than change a session and lose people who didn't want it, I booked another hall another night. That way I only get the dedicated ones.

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We have a similar situation considering players, but the luxury of a configurable hall (3 squash courts where the two dividing walls can be removed to make one larger hall). We don't bring out the barriers for training. Sometimes we have only one divider wall moved, splitting the area in two uneven parts.

Two tables to each court is a bit tight, but works (sort of) for training and beginners' play. Even with physical blocking readily available, some organizing pays off. It doesn't take long to establish sessions as "formal" vs. "social", "beginner" vs. "elite" or "junior" vs. "senior".
Actually, my daughter, 7 y.o. has no trouble when training alongside adult players. Attending the "beginners" session - where the other players are between 10-16 - is more of a challenge. Perhaps we should split into "adolescent" vs. "well behaved" instead... oh, well, I digress...

We have 3 hours reserved for organized training every Tuesday. First 90 minutes "beginners" is more or less established as "mostly social". We offer coaching, but many players in this group just want to do matches among themselves. Multiball is out of the question. Last 90 minutes "elite", where we do drills and sometimes matches ("themed" or free play). Some do drills for the full session, but others need the nerve and motivation that comes with counting points. Anyway, this session is established as formal training, so multiball is not a problem.