OOAK Table Tennis Forum

A very insightful post larrythoman!

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Thank you for enlightening me Larry.

I gave that remark based on my experienced. Admittedly, I made a conclusion in a short period of time. This is what happened: I have a Newgy 2050 which really helped me progress ( won a championship and became a feared player even with limited practice partner ). I attribute my progress to the robot because of my improved footwork and consistency on rally. Now I have a 9 year old son who is not very keen in learning and playing table tennis. Tought him the stroke and immediately fed him balls from the robot. Here is the manual setting :

spin = top spin
speed = 13 position of head 8 and position at table fh : 12 bh : 3

I have done this and alternated with human drills. Then I was able to secure a coach and trainor for him. He has a hard time correcting his stroke. After that incident, I intentionally limit his playing time with the robot and played more with a human player.

Moving forward, I want to bring him back to robot training. What drills should he start first? Should I go back to drill number 1 ( as programmed ) instead of manual setting?

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Enjoy the game. It is a never ending learning experience once you play and keep the ball on that 45 sq ft of space or should I say half of that space.

Red_lion, the basic steps to learning strokes are:

1. Learn the stroke with balls placed in one spot
2. Learn the stroke with the balls placed in a pattern
3. Learn the stroke with balls placed randomly (also speed, spin, timing variations)
4. Combine the stroke with other strokes already learned with balls placed in a pattern
5. Combine the stroke with other strokes with balls placed randomly
6. Incorporate the stroke in practice games where the object is to use the skill as often as possible rather than win the game
7. Begin using the skill in actual competition

Since this progression takes a bit of time to accomplish, #7 will normally be partially accomplished along the way as the student uses whatever his current skill set is in the matches he plays. But it will be at its strongest when the other steps have been accomplished first.

These steps are the same whether you are accomplishing this with another player using 1-on-1 drills, a coach feeding him multi-balls, or using a robot. To me the ideal way to learn would be to first receive instruction from a knowledgeable coach where the coach feeds the student multi-ball and refines the student's form. After the lesson, the student practices what the coach taught him on a robot, doing his best to keep in mind 2-3 key principles that were taught in the lesson. Then before the next lesson, the student should practice that same skill with another player that is good enough to place the ball with similar positioning as was used with the multi-ball and robot.

As far as the drills on the robot, if your son can control the ball at speed 13, than I see nothing wrong with that. But most beginners do better with the robot delivering the ball first on its side and then bouncing a second time on the player's side. This lets you reduce the speed to 7-8 and gives the student more time to judge the ball's flight path. Drills 1-5 on the 2050/1050 are written for beginners and bounce the ball on the robot's side first. But all of them involve either transitions or footwork, so they may be still too advanced for your son if his FH/BH are not developed yet with a ball placed to one spot. But once your son is ready for that step of development, then those 5 drills are good ones to use.

Here's a description of those drills on the Newgy blog:

http://www.newgy.com/blog/?p=574

Once your son is at Step 3, one of the great things about the Newgy digital robots is the amount of randomization that you can add--L-R positioning, ball speed (that varies the depth the ball lands), and the amount of time between balls. Varying one, 2 or all 3 of these parameters will make it harder for your son to be consistent, but will be closer to the types of balls he's likely to get from a human player.

Good luck with your son's training. Read the other Newgy blog entries or visit Samson Dubina's website to get other ideas on how to make robot practice more productive.

Larry

The 540 is what I have and there is no way it matches the performance of a good hitting partner in terms of speed and spin. The highest setting is a 10 for speed which generates the most spin, I would call that shot produced, a medium range shot. Every ball that the 540 generates is blockable unlike blocking power loops from the best players at a club.

The other newgys seem to have higher speed settings ie speed 13 so there is an advantage but the simple 540 is very dependable and you can get alot out of it for repetitive drills. If I want more speed out of it, I'll move it forward to a position just behind the net and if I want no-spins i'll just change the arc to high and lower the speed...it's good enough.

edit...I mean its good enough for what you spend and if I had more cash I would buy something better, with more features, more speed and spin, but then again what if it breaks?!

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Thank you Larry. I just want to correct my previous post. It should be correct stroke but my son cannot get the timing right when playing with a human. As of now, seems the problem has been addressed.

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Enjoy the game. It is a never ending learning experience once you play and keep the ball on that 45 sq ft of space or should I say half of that space.

I would disagree with that wording also. The point of my previous rather long post was that if a coach or skilled player isn't available to serve multi-ball to a beginner, using a robot is the next best thing. Otherwise, the beginner is faced with having to learn skills without a consistent ball to practice against and wasting a lot of time doing things (like retrieving and picking up the ball after missed hits) that don't contribute to learning new skills that are useful in a TT game. With a robot, the beginner gets a great practice partner to learn strokes with and he's got a better shot at forming strokes that will consistently get the ball to land on the other side of the table. Without that consistent ball, stroke progress will come very slowly, regardless of whether that stroke is correct or incorrect, proper or improper.

Or to say it another way, beginners who want to get better will develop beginner level strokes with or without the robot, so the robot is not the problem in skill development. Bad strokes can be learned with or without a robot and proper or correct strokes can be learned with or without a robot. Whatever strokes a beginner learns will be learned more quickly with a robot than without (because of the repeated concentrated effort afforded by the robot). I don't think it is fair to fault a robot because one can learn bad strokes more quickly with it, because the opposite is true also--you can learn good strokes with a robot more quickly as well.

The key is having good information before practicing the skill whether it is with or without a robot. That good information could come from a coach, a DVD, a book, a YouTube video, watching good players, or listening in on someone else's coaching session. To transform that information into an actual skill, the player must practice that skill over and over whether it is 1 on 1 with another player, multi-ball, or robot. And during this transformation period, the stroke will be improper or incorrect in many ways, but that is the way we all learn. I'm unaware of anybody, even with a great coach guiding the process, who will have correct or proper strokes right from the start. We all have to start somewhere, and that start is almost assuredly incorrect or improper for quite a while.

Larry