OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Another session with WF and I was feeling that tonight was perhaps make or break. It's our fifth session and if things didn't start coming together tonight after some progress last week I was thinking it might have been a bit out of reach.

Pleased to say that things went really well. I started by doing same as last week ie stand side on and swing vertical with no shoulder turn to get the feel of contact. Planned to only do this for as many balls as it took to get where we got to last week. The only change was that I said to do a slower and earlier backswing. He got it immediately so only did 5 balls.

Then I still got him to stand side on but swing on a more 45 degree angle. Again he did this very well and out of 120 balls or so only swung across his body a handful of times. The nice high action is starting to happen and even feel natural, though he does still feel like he's being flamboyant even if he's not. Also unprompted was doing some shoulder turn.

The last thing we did was he stood in normal ready stance, I served backspin and he would turn shoulders and loop. At first we just did one shot then a new serve but soon enough we kept going and after the first loop i would block he would then loop the topspin returns. Often did 4 or 5 good shots in a row.

I was really pleased with tonight hence the long post and look forward to the next session. I think we are just one or two sessions off him having a fairly functional loop that the practice will just be about refinement and him learning about spins and bat angles.

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

Sounds like he is a quick learner and good progress so far. Five sessions is really not that much, so I hope you and he will be patient if the new technique takes a while longer to show up in games.

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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

My thoughts exactly. Since BRS and I have gone through the pains of radical long term technical improvement, I can tell you that it can be 2 years or more to reap the full benefits. Unless the new shots immediately address something about how he loses points and he has brilliant and above average ability to adapt his strokes to the ball on the fly, be patient with the effects.

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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

Haven't reported here for a while and although still doing some practice, it hasn't been as often or a structured due to various factors beyond our control.

We've hit a bit of a snag though, WF has neither taken on a new technique but also has lost his old technique so is in the middle of nowhere, lost all confidence and completely out of sorts. I've destroyed him.

My view is we just need to get back to drilling some balls as we never quite got over the hump of cementing in the new technique so now he's trying to do it in matches with a lack of muscle memory and its a bit ugly.

We all know spin is the key so I'm wondering whether I should just get him spinning the ball with bad technique and fix that later or keep focussing on the correct technique up front which will likely take longer to get the results and be harder and more frustrating but the results should be better in the end?

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

Cobalt,

Learning is complicated. The most important thing that a person has to learn about looping is not the loop itself, but how to adapt it to a variety of incoming spins and speeds so that you can loop confidently. It's why I warn people in general not to get too procedural about teaching the process as a balance should be found between technique and adapting it. Set the basic rules and let the technique individualize itself.

WF is of course going to go through growing pains changing whatever he had into whatever he wanted to become. And he should accept that he has to get worse for things to get better. He wasn't a nobody to begin with so to get to the same level.of skill with a new stroke is not always easy unless the stroke adapts seamlessly into what he did and that is not the case here. You want to uncap his potential a little.

As for the question you are posing, you are the coach. What do you think is ideal? WF and you have worked for too short a period to expect miracles given his lifetime of hitting the ball the way home has. The first thing you have to establish is what he wants to do with his technique. Is he trying to become the club #2/3 (be as good as you are) or is he trying to become the club #10?

Secondly, all you have to do to fix his stroke is do the same things I told you to do - have him use have stroke to play against multiple spins while learning that the more topspin or the lower the backspin on the ball, the higher the backswing and the more forwards the stroke, the higher the backspin or the lower the topspin, the more upwards you can swing. All of this should be based on the subconscious spin read so if you feed him 1000 balls with different spins and have him loop them, and do this for two weeks, he will adapt to reading the ball as long as you vary the spins more and more over time.

The problem is that too many people are concerned with putting the ball on the table in the beginning. I saw what you did earlier, I am 95% sure he has a better stroke, and 5% sure he has better stroke that is not just putting the ball on the table.

So I am saying that you are right, but that he already has the right technique, what he needs to learn is how to subconsciously adjust it to the ball. Sometimes I tell my students to loop the ball into the net, they think I am crazy but I tell them it is important for them to learn to control the ball, not to think of looping as some mechanical activity. You need to bend the ball like Beckham and hammer it like Hotshot Hamish. You do it all with the same swing and you learn to make that swing do what you want it to do to the ball, all with minor adjustments to your swing. So learning to loop the ball into the net is as important as learning to loop it off the table vs any spin as it shows that you can make the ball do what you want, not just swing mechanically. Practice hitting all kinds of places and not just ones on the table. Make sure you hit the ball where you intend to.

So you have done the technical part and any part you didn't do, he can shadow swing by himself. Now you have to get him to swing at balls and adjust his swing to the ball with spin or speed or whatever. And make him loop the ball to various places so he is reading and controlling it, not just swinging mechanically. And make him learn to accept the learning process, not to feel like he is broken because the ball is not going on the table now. That putting the ball on the table is the easy part once you have the right tools in place.

Hope that helps.

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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

Yes it does NL thank-you.

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

Thanks. Coaching is not magic, it is completely possible to screw someone up, but I have seen worse players than you screw up players for the better as long as the worse players spent enough time seeing what worked and understood how the process broadly worked. So I have no doubt that as long as no one is expecting miracles, you and WF will perform a few. You should both be looking for ways to surprise yourselves, not going through it like some slog where if the ball doesn't hit the table the world has fallen apart. I sometimes fall into that trap to, but on better days, I just accept how things are going and don't really care.

Try to have fun with it as much as possible. Play games. I find that the more time spent with the ball, the better things get. Just don't let it become a slog or else you dread the session. As long as WF is doing the stroke properly and not focusing on putting the ball on the table in the beginning, with minor adjustments based on the kind of ball WF is trying to produce, the rest will take care of it self. And if he misses, as long as he understands what happened relative to his stroke, then the adjustments will follow as long as he practices hitting a range of shots to do what he intends to do, and that intention should not just be with the narrow focus of putting balls on the table.

_________________
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

Had our first session in a while today. Since our last session WF has played our only 2 competition nights for the year and were the first real hit outs he's had since we started. In these matches he was in a rut, not accepting the new but even hit old ways date him which has me thinking we had taken steps backwards.

What was pleasing about today was that despite WF going back to his old habits in games, or worse, doing neither, today in training, in a no pressure environment he was able to pick up where we left off. This shows that despite improving, at this stage he's unable to transfer the training to real matches.

Our stock drill is straight up and down multuball with little variation. I'm wondering whether we should keep focusing on this to in grain the stroke or perhaps do more match type scenarios of 3rd, 4th and 5th ball but at the expense of encouraging bad technique as the new good technique is not yet overtaking the old?

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

There is a difference in my experience between coaching and training. What you seem to be describing is "training". Are you coaching or training?

When I'm working with kids they lose their attention span very quickly. Variety and fun is key, even if it's just changing where you place the ball, or a friendly compliment, a bit of encouragement about what they are doing right, not what they are doing wrong.

I also remember a CPD course I attended where Nick Jarvis - Table Tennis England Head Coach - gave a question and answer session and he was stressing the need for randomness even at the early stages of development. Sometimes good players practising with improving players can be helpful for the good player. The chances of the new player being able to control the ball placement is limited so although a routine can be set the good player benefits from constantly having to adjust to the randomness of the improving player and the improving player benefits from the consistency from the good player.

You can also aim to make the sessions "fun". People learn better and quicker when they are enjoying themselves. That enjoyment can come from many different things - talk to your friend, find out what he gets enjoyment from and try and tailor your sessions to tap in the things he enjoys whilst still getting across what he needs to develop. I sometimes get the best results for practising the forehand by telling the person we're going to work on improving their footwork with the aim of being able to do "X" by the end of it. They concentrate so hard on their footwork they forget about how to play their forehand and "just do it". Their footwork benefits too, but the hidden agenda was to encourage them to play their forehand. It's very difficult and frought with danger if you try and "impose" your style of coaching on someone. The destination might be the same but the journey you take needs to be different for different people. You have the luxury of only having one person to coach so you don't have to balance different peoples personalities abilities etc all at once. This should be fun for both you and your friend.

At the moment I'm still not sure

1. What your friend wants to be able to do (break it down in to easily manageable chunks eg friend can play forehand correctly is too big - try friend ready position works for him, friends back swing works for him, friends forward motion works for him, friends recovery etc etc.
2. What your friends preferred learning style is
3. What your friend is prepared to do to achieve his goals
4. What he's prepared not to do (reverting to type in matches sounds like one of these things)

The sessions seem to be drifting and if you don't know what you (and your friend) are trying to achieve it's hard to know when you get there and that can be "depressing" or "demoralising" and damage all the progress that's being made.

If he has goals, are they realistic given the time he puts in to these sessions? If they're not, you are setting yourselves up to fail.

It seems to be more of a slog at the moment.

My worst habits as a coach are "over talking things", or "overdemonstrating" and giving information overload. Keep it simple, keep it focused, keep it relevant to the person you're coaching and keep it fun. People are very good at focusing on what they can't do and often forget on what they have learned or can now do. Does your friend recognise how far he's come, is he reminded of that, how do you encourage him?

I also don't plan my sessions properly, partly because from week to week we don't know who's turning up and so we often "wing it" relying on the head coach giving us the lead. We don't set up development plans, again for the reasons above - do you have one for your friend, one he buys in to. We don't baseline people in a formal way - we should though, even if it's just for our benefit when as coaches we get together and discuss peoples progress.

There are lots of other things about coaching you seem to be discovering. If people are still reading this, some will probably say "there he goes again, over analysing, talking to much, just get to the point", well the point is simple. Coaching is a skill, and it's much about communication and connecting with your student and finding out what their needs, wants and values are as it is about knowing how to correctly play a shot and importantly, it's about recognising in people what information you should offer them to benefit them and how you go about doing that. There are best practices that can be shared but in my limited experience, there is no "one glove fits all" approach to the table tennis journey.

I asked Andrew Rushton one time didn't he find it frustrating coaching players of my standard and below because we simply can't play the shots to his level and we want the rewards without the effort. He replied "no". He saw his job as offering alternatives, advice etc which he felt could aid the person - not what was "text book" but what would help the person improve. If he could help them that way, then he was happy. What the person then chose to do with his advice and help was up to them.

In many respects, when I started to read this thread I thought it was about your friend and him improving as a player. Now I think it's turning in to a thread about you and your journey in discovering how best to help your friend improve.

Really interesting thread, thanks for sharing your experiences.

Possibly, but in this case its the same thing. WF has no interest in watching videos, joining forums, reading, experimenting etc etc, just wants to be told what to do, never had ideas and doesn't offer input, so in that regard it is all up to me what we do.

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

Here is one of my favorite videos on training, Let me know what you think, Cobalt.



Here is a related article:

http://www.icoachtabletennis.com/motor- ... le-tennis/

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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

Well, you started your journey with a pretty tough adult case then and have the hard job of distilling your wisdom and experiences and finding the right stories and drills to motivate him. Most of the people I coach at the very least either briefly review the video I send them and usually read the links I send them to.

Coaching was much harder than I originally thought. I did have the advantage of having worked in teaching so I knew there were limits. But teaching kids and adults had differences I had to get used to and there are probably some limitations grounded in childhood exposure and athleticism as well.

The video and article on random vs blocked training helped me explain to people why their skills may not show up in matches immediately and why fixing strokes/technique is a long term exercise as well as one that needs quite a few practice hours. You have gone through the process, Cobalt, so I think you can relate. The main thing I try to impress upon people is to do the proper stroke, don't care about the ball landing on the table. I can tell them the adjustments to make if they do that ( come round the side and over more, come from beneath the ball more, more whip/racket head speed, more brush etc.). The alternative, which is better, but might take longer, is to aim to put the ball into the net, put the ball off the table, put the ball short on the table, put he ball long on the table etc, so you give their brain a range of experiences using the stroke. But if they don't do the right swing or repeatedly chickenwing without reading the height of the ball, I can't make that better because the brain is not adjusting with good technique.

_________________
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

NextLevel is giving you interesting and useful insights in to coaching methodology.

Personally, in your circumstances I'm tempted to be "politically incorrect" here. There comes a point when your friend is going to have to take responsibility for his own development. I don't mean coach himself, but I do mean commit to doing what's necessary to achieve his goals. He talks about wanting to improve but you've given plenty of examples where that simply isn't backed up by what he's actually prepared to do, or just importantly not do. It sounds like in reality you both need to reassess your goals and how important they are to you.

Assuming I'd tried everything possible to connect with him and help him, I'd now be brutally honest. I'm giving up my time to help you. I value my time. Progress isn't being made. I don't want to feel miserable doing this. I don't want to feel like something I enjoy is becoming a burden to you and me. I'm not a good enough coach to help you right now. You need to find someone better than me.

Moreso because Cobalt is doing it for free. One of the reasons coaching for free can be tough is that while admittedly the student is giving some time commitment, they can always pretend it wasn't a serious commitment - I find it is much harder to get people to listen if they aren't paying. But the reason why I would encourage Cobalt to press on is that Cobalt is learning a lot. Maybe Cobalt underestimates how especially motivated Cobalt himself was.

_________________
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

What I'm finding interesting is getting back to the old questions. Can an adult (and I'm talking 40 year olds and over) change their ways? I'm starting to believe that its only possible with dedication, commitment and a slight obsessiveness. I'd go as far as putting it in the same category as giving up smoking or weight loss. The individual has to decide that they REALLY want to do it and also that they can do it, not just would like to do it. Coaching alone won't do it, just the same as attending weight watchers won't lose weight.

You are right next level, when I decide that I want to do something, I do it. I plan, set a goal and get the job done. I was very committed to my improvement, not so much time wise, but my mindset.

I've seen that video before I think and really like it and was thinking of it when I asked my question above. The only thing I wasn't sure of was if we should at least have some correct technique first before getting too random.

Thanks for everyone taking time to post replies.

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