OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Can I improve from a low level 62 year old player to a 2000 level player without a coach?
I have a table and robot at home to train.

I think you can, but you need more than a robot. Not a 2000 player but someone else with the same ambition. Need to be smart about what you practice. Watch higher level players and see what they do better. Don't practice at a comfortable level, always work on improvement.
You have to become your coach for each other. It is easier for the other person to see why you missed the shot than you can. Watch vids! Critically compare your strokes to better players.
You have to trust your partner when he tells you you're not doing what he says. I have coached people that swear they are doing what I told them, and I have to show them a video of them hitting to convince them.
Example. I tell them your stroke is starting too high or finishing too low.
Don't let yourself get frustrated. Keep the challenge fun!

You might also have to consider some alternative styles, because most players around your age, will struggle to out-loop or outlast your much younger opponents. So you'll need to outsmart them or play a style that stops them from playing their natural game.

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I thought about that after my post, you need to be in shape! I am older than you, but I work out 1 or 2 times a day. I have a Weider machine that can target any part of your body you want.
I play a Seemiller grip and use the anti to disrupt looper styles.
I played a lot of 60 year old men in China that were easily over 2000. Women too though most women were very skilled pips players.

Hi French Frog,

When you see Hookshot AND DeHaggis post at the same time talking about the same thing - LISTEN.

I concur with both, one thing Hookshot said that stands out is helping other players. Why? When you are in a position to communicate to others how some things in TT work, you will want to be sure what you are saying is not smoke... it motivates you to pay attention to process and biomechanics along with the other things holistically are related. That makes you understand the sport better and gives you a lot of leverage to improve.

I jumped up almost 300 ratings points in a 2 year time period to crash through 2000 and basically all I did at the TT club (when we actually had a daily club - not anymoar) was to either goof off with my friends or hang around the sub 1200 crowd and help them out an hour or so at a time. I did this maybe 2x a week, had one other night to play at Church which was mostly doubles playing. That was enough to move me up. I had a lot of good advice from 2000+ players, one an ex-national youth team member.

Getting to 2000 without a coach is not an easy thing, rarely accomplished, but possible - it has been done.

Either way, our sport has so much going on that there is literally a world of things to learn and improve until we expire. TT is the greatest sport on planet earth.

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To get to 2000 plus USATT rating you HAVE to play good players. If all you had is a robot and no coach and no highly rated regular opponents I would say it would be essentially impossible to get to that level.

You also need to play LOTS of tournaments. This gets you exposure to multiple styles, ups your tactics game, and really tests your ability to analyze the opponent and make quick adjustments. Plus it will check your stamina and psychological strength: there is nothing like getting into 0:2 hole against someone who is 300 points below you.

P.S. I got as high as 1970 at one point, thanks to a good Teams tournament but it was a steady downhill from there on. It is tough to even cross that threshold, holding it consistently is something else.

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It's hard to know if you're a 2000 level player without competing against other players - a lot of other players. If you don't have a wide range of 2000ish players around you, you won't easily be able to assess your level, and even if you had a few and started being able to beat them, that wouldn't necessarily mean you'd reached that level - it might just mean you'd learned how to beat those exact players.

If you're willing to practice with a lot of players, sure, with a combination of focussed practice with a range of partners, lots of competition, and with intelligent and targeted use of video of yourself, together with online support via forums, youtube, and maybe on of he internet-based coaches, I don't see why you couldn't reach a good level. That said it takes a long time. I don't know the ins and outs of the US rating system, but it can be very hard to sustainably grow your points - you only need to lose a few times to other lower ranked players, or underranked players, and whatever progress you made gets undone. And you need to win a *lot* of matches, and go on a run of winning more than you lose against players rated higher than you, to climb the ranks.

You'll need to work out your best way to beat these people. They're probably either up and coming youngsters or experienced older players. As a self-taught 60-something yr old, what will you bring to the table to win? Probably not speed and physique. Serves? Tactics? A nasty spoiling style? All these things matter if you actually want to collect points.

If your question is metaphorical - can you get to a level where you can be reasonably considered to be a genuinely strong player, then sure. Same thing, just minus the need to prove yourself in many competitive matches.

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To make a long story short and not to sound discouraging -- it's very very difficult. Without a coach - nearly impossible.
I am a 2000+ player myself so I am speaking from experience. It took me many years of hard work to finally reach the magic number. Once you get your feet wet so to speak (lots of practices, tournaments) you will sort of know what it would take you to get there. Most players of 1800-1900 level know what skills they lack and what they need to be working on. Many stay at that level for years and even decades.
If it was that easy, everyone would have been 2000+.

I would recommend you read a great book written by a fellow player: Breaking 2000 by Alex Polyakov. It's a fascinated read which helped me years ago when I was just beginning my journey.

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Attackers: "All pips players are cheaters who can't loop, move, or read spin"
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My two cents...

I think it can be done. And I am putting it to the test myself. I just turned 62. I was away from the game for 15 years until about 5 years ago.

When I stopped playing I was right at a rating of 2000. I rarely lost to anyone rated below me. I was constantly switching between inverted on both sides to a twiddling anti player. Also I was re-gluing heavily with Sriver FX or a Butterfly rubber called Selvid on a Grubba Pro blade or discontinued Butterfly blade named Polite. When I started playing seriously at around 16 years old I did have exactly 2 weekend coaching sessions (4 days) but after that no coaching. I have always been good at copying what good players do and have had a few over 2000 practice partners. At the time I was 2000 I was only playing once a week at a club where you could only play games for about 3 hours and I played 1 tournament a month. So I was only playing 5 times a month.

Now I have a place to play whenever I want and a couple 1900 to 2100 practice partners. But my regular practice partner is rated and their ability is, below mine. I also just finally have come to grips with some physical issues that were holding me back for the last 2 years. I have chronic and severe back, neck and knee pain. I've had more needles stuck in me than I have ever thought I would but now things seem to be not so bad.

I also think that I have found a good playing combination after extensive EJ'ing. I am currently playing with a Cybershape Carbon (a Christmas gift from a very nice friend). I started playing with what I had on hand which was Tibhar Quantum Pro Soft 2.0 and Grass D.TechS OX. I just recently made a change to Nittaku H3 Turbo Blue Sponge and Dornenglanz to try and slow things down a touch. I like the Cybershape so much I am determined to find a rubber combination that works best. I am liking the new setup a little more that the last (been playing with it for 2 weeks) so the blade is staying.

Getting to 2000 will take a lot of work but I still think it's doable. I have started to have some decent results again. Before I started feeling badly I was beating players between 1800 and 2000 pretty often and had a few wins against over 2000 players. Then all of that disappeared. I was loosing to 1500 players and just struggling to play like I wanted to. I started EJ'ing way too much and was feeling terrible. Now all that has changed and I just had a very good tournament that took my rating from just above 1500 to the middle 1600s. I did have one bad match or my rating my have gone above 1700. All is not perfect and I am working at improving my OX pips play since (maybe oddly) that is where I am struggling against weaker players. But I feel I'm on the right track again. Only time will tell.

Now back to you FrenchFrog. The hardest part of this will be whether you are physically capable, have the technique and poses the observational ability to put the effort needed in your play to match higher rated player. There are very few 2000 players that are not gifted in at least one aspect of the game. What is your best attribute? What makes your game difficult for your opponent? Can you make that even more effective, faster more consistent? Can you physically use that advantage as often as possible? Can you watch yourself play and compare that to a very good player doing the same thing? Are you executing that skill the same? There is a reason that good players do most things the same way. It works. Don't try to reinvent a skill until you can do it correctly. Can you push yourself past your current skill to improve? You will fail a lot when you start do things faster or try to be more consistent. You will want to dial it back to be more successful. That won't help you improve. You need to be able to analyze your mistakes to see what and why you are failing.

You will need to move faster, hit harder and put more spin on your shots. Can you push yourself to do that? Are you in decent shape? How is your flexibility? All of these things will become more important as you try to improve. You will need to be critical of all aspects of your game. You can play as many matches and tournaments you want but if you aren't learning why you failed and succeeded you won't improve very quickly. Can you force yourself to spend as much time training your weaknesses as your strengths?

You will need to be brave in your play and consistent in your training. You will need to work on the difficult and uncomfortable things. You will need to have technically sound and consistent strokes. You will need to be powerful when required either in your shots or movement. You will need good serves. Spend time practicing them and learning new ones. You should have spinny long and short serves from a similar motion that have both top and back spin (so 4 different but similar looking serves).

Video yourself practicing and in tournaments as much as you can. This is the bast way to see what you are doing. Compare that to a good player doing the same thing. Then go and make changes and see if you have improved. When you do get it right work hard to make it consistent/powerful/spinny/accurate. Then pick on another part of your game and repeat. But, you need to keep working on the skills you just learned.

A lot of this will be about hard work and desire but it will also be about actual improvement that you can see. That will be in the tournaments. If you are playing matches with others in practice, concentrate some of that time on using a new skill or something you want to improve in a game situation. Don't worry about winning in practice or the score. Or practice for a time and then if you are behind try to catch up the score by playing to win. When I couldn't train but only play games I did this all the time.

I think I've said enough. Good luck to both of us.

Heck, there are THOUSANDS of 1100-1400 level players who've stayed at that level for decades.. They go to tournaments and look at 1800-1900 level players with envy.

Iskandar