OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Random and match practice is critical for sure (also patience) but filming your matches and even introspection about what you do right in drills and what might be missing in matches could reveal why training technique doesn't transfer to matches so well.

For example, my serve recovery is still slow and poor so my third ball attack percentage suffers a ton. Also when I get into the groove on backspin looping drills my arm is relaxed and I loop with a medium power closely watching the ball and carefully pulling my arm into the backswing as the ball approaches. In matches,however, I hesitate too long and start the backswing late when the ball has already approached me and often do a panicked tensioned swing with maximum force and little control.

To combat that I do shadow drills where I imagine myself being relaxed and fully focused in the matches and loop with smooth, controlled technique as in my training drills.

For me, part of the reason people get into trouble when taking practice loops into matches is that they don't practice looping when they get late to the ball. At the lower levels or as experienced adults with likely bad footwork, being able to play decent spin shots when the ball is falling is going to be a larger part of your game than the practice drills that many people do take into account.

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
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"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

How random are the drills we are talking about? Some drills are pretty match-like and others aren't. The more random the drills that you can maintain the technique in, the sooner it will show up in practice matches. League or tournament matches, or whatever "counts" for you, will take longer.

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Yoko Ono

It's not so much random but you are right, the closer the drill is to What you do in matches, the more effective it will be. I would argue that against most if the opponents you are trying to beat, unless you have good footwork or a strong serve game, you will be late to the ball most of the time and looping it from awkward positions where you are not balanced. The ability to make those shots is underestimated at the u2000 level. Above that, higher quality is important.

Most of the time, I see people taking wild swings when late to the ball, rather than a wristy touch oriented spinny swing. It's just evidence that you have not worked on what it would take to spin a ball falling off the sideline when you are late to it.

_________________
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

For some people, it's not letting go of the *need* to win practice matches. Maybe it's that opponent you just hate losing to for whatever reason. Or maybe it's the opponent that you just want to beat so bad. If we just forget about the *need* to win and focus on technique, the wins will eventually happen. To get out of that trap, sometimes during practice or league matches, I set up the scenarios that gives me trouble and repeat them until I get it right. Sometimes my opponent will tell me my serves are too simple and I just smile and nod. I don't tell them it's on purpose.

Yeah this is a good lesson. If you practice game like situations...then you need to apply it to practice matches. I've got one older gentleman that knows it's best to serve short and dead to me - mostly because if he does serve long it is over. I know I can beat him if I just push the ball back deep to his backhand and await the longer ball. However I work on flips and flicks vs him and lose many points this way. It always makes a very competitive game and over time I should learn how to play over the table.

We haven't played in the lobby for many months now but that is what I did against people who I could beat easily - serve slow, long topspin, which in the beginning resulted in a lot of missed topspin drives on their part but eventually they got better (with some coaching) and were able to return them with some speed. And then I would have a nice return to tee off on and practice my loops. A couple of these guys actually got pretty good, and could loop the ball pretty hard. One of them was good enough to keep a high speed counterlooping exchange going for 3-4 strokes.

Iskandar

You mean balls like this 3rd ball? One way to get tons of reps playing balls on the run from below table height is to have ridiculously poor serve recovery.

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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 serve recovery is similar to the amateur recording at 2:57 and I frequently get jammed on my BH after serving. I found the tips in this video to be very helpful and I'm working to make it part of my routine.

Backing off with 3 steps is only appropriate when you consciously or subconsciously see the opponent making a banana flick. If you jump back 3 times and someone pushes short, you'll be watching the ball bounce 9 times on your side of the table.

This is the last time I comment on someone else's content, especially when the guy is just downloading everyone's content/footage from YouTube, commentating on it and pretending it's his own.

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I think you did well BRS!

NL has a strong point about training against a variety of balls and being versatile. Good players are extremely good when they are off-balance or late. I think that it's important to have a solid foundation stroke first though.

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Yes. Of course there are others that are even wider and shorter but the ability to just spin a ball that you are late to onto the table just to begin the point is underestimated at the level where most people just block anything you loop at them. It helps with all kinds of returns from half long serves to balls to the short but wide forehand which cone off the table to over the table loops vs high balls that need precise placement. Yet you will largely see people doing drills where every swing is a loop drive at 110 miles per hour where they are in close to perfect position.

When you know you can loop the ball onto the table if it comes long and you are not in position to drive It, then you become more patient on long balls and focus on getting into position because once you are there you can take the ball with spin if you are late or drive it if you are early. Otherwise, it's all loop driving that requires you to have perfect footwork and that is going to fall apart in matches where you don't have enough experience to anticipate the returns of your opponent. If you can loop round the net, hook with sidespin or a few other variants of the loop, then you dont always feel like you are in trouble when your opponent gets you on the run. It's when you practice taking every ball early or at the top of the bounce that you start pushing too many half long balls because you don't feel comfortable just spinning them up when you are late.

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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

Yeah, but I think most people here have a serviceable forehand loop, whether French, German, Japanese, Korean or Chinese. They just sometimes play as if at their level, if they don't loop the ball past the opponent, as opposed to looping the ball onto the table, they have committed a mortal sin.

_________________
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

Much to my surprise it only took ~9 days to arrive to the US. Nice! Attached it to a kitchen dining table (my wife gave me a strange look, but did not kick me out of the house yet). Since dining table is not ITTF approved, I think ball sits lower than usual, but hey, promotes staying low, right? Fun fact - I missed 5 first swings while trying to brush the ball. Great...

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

Don't think.of it as trying to graze the ball. Think of it more as trying to set your stroke trajectory to make the ball rotate.

_________________
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