OOAK Table Tennis Forum

The biggest issue is the receive, obviously. But it is not a low hanging fruit in any way. It will improve over time as I play here, but it will be a very slow process. Investing heavily into the serve seems like the way to go.

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Tactics Enthusiast

This is my thought on it too. After the camp I've been on a bit of a run (funny how not being exhausted helps one's serves so much!). I played a match vs a penholder and served me off. He was serving deep and hitting corners. At first I tried to attack aggressively and by the end I was meekly putting the ball on the table. I lost 11-5, 11-6, 11-9. I'm pretty sure I only took 3 points off of his serve the entire time (1 in each game? ugh). I guess the score wasn't that close but I had my winners too, on my serve. I could have extended the match further by playing my serves better, the backhand failures were once again apparent. Maybe next time I play him I'll do better but returning those serves looks like not very low hanging fruit.

Of course I'm not talking about the 6-0 league night or the other matches I've dominated recently, just focused on the SINGLE loss.

Still even in my wins, the backhand isn't great. I'm half tempted to TJ it...but more tempted to just get it more reliable. I'm betting most of my issue is timing. Timing requires practice.

I also wonder what Brett thinks about two pivots in a row starting from 12:57.

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Tactics Enthusiast

https://youtu.be/a1Zxl98tGZk?t=342 (start at this time)

replace game with "table tennis". replace money/loot/skins with ratings.

Thanks guys. I knew a lot of you would have gone through, or are going through a similar predicament, so it was nice to hear from you all.

My main way of measuring progress is still through improvement in technique, consistency in practice, and beating people who I've never been able to beat. I've only ever played team events, but since my team is relatively low rated (maybe 1400-1600), we're not able to get out of the division we play in. I've been beating nearly everyone 3-0 there. I might try some singles events in the future, but there are a lot less of those.

I'm also not worried about hitting a soft wall. All my advancements so far have been in blocks. I plateau, even go back a level or two, but then come back stronger than before. A cycle might be a few months, half a year or even a year. I hope my real peak in skill won't come too early!

NL's post gave me a lot to think about too. I've always considered my goals to be reasonable. Something I could strive for while enjoying the sport. But I guess I've also been underestimating what it takes to improve a level. But too often the frustration does overtake the joy.

Almost always taking the first attack when it is available to you is more important as pgpg pointed out and that was what stood out to me even more than the receiving. I think investing in the serve is going to cost you many more points if you are just going to push the ball back when the opponent pushes the ball long.

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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

Don't get me wrong, your goals are usually reasonable and standard for most people, and I am in a situation where I have physical issues that give me an out when I watch my matches and see my arm working out of sync with my body. But to put it in perspective, I got to 1800 from roughly 1000 in about 1 or 1.5 years of play with regular coaching - it took me another 2 to be a 2000 level player. And I had a lot of holes in my game. When I cleaned up those holes, I wasn't beating better players consistently, I was just not losing to worse players anymore. I suspect against better players, my movement and physical issues are more directly exploited. But I also expect that my experience will accumulate if I give it time to and I continue to utilize the right technique (or my delusional version of it).

The main thing is to be aware and manage the process. The effort to get better increases at every strength (rating) level and most of us aren't going to put in the hours that other players at that level have put in or are putting in. All of us have a Dunning Kruger effect problem, where we don't know how incompetent we really are, because we aren't good enough to assess what we don't know. So when the plateau comes, we try to solve this and that and this and that and think it will make us better. And they all will, but who knows whether they are really that Pareto 20% that is giving 80%?

In fact, maybe you will improve a lot more just by playing in a higher league, and that is what is making you less competitive and hardly anything to do with your training, so maybe most of your effort should be spent on getting to a better team/league. After all, in the past I always had players at my club who were better than me and willing to play me often. Nowadays, on most days, I walk into my club as the best player. I have to drive an hour or more to play competitive matches repeatedly. How to get better in that case if TT is not a priority? I just remember I enjoy playing and stick with that.

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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

Always good to seek out the person you lose 1-3 to. That's the player who is a bit better than you but within range that you can actually come up with a plan to beat within a few months. I suppose the dunning kruger effect is pretty limited since winning is possible. This is all BRS advice.

Well , 1-3 losses come in different forms. If you are usually lose 1-3 to someone playing their game, I agree. But sometimes, people experiment one game and win the other three with their real game. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

A guy in my club is about 1700 lefty, 2100 righty. He let me win when I was 1300 playing him lefty and I thought I had hit the jackpot. Luckily someone warned me he was not playing seriously. Was another 6 months before I beat him again.

So you really never know what you don't know. Hazard of life. But obviously, if you are just playing without any pressure inducing expectations, it really doesn't matter. Even with Dunning Kruger, it is reasonable to try to improve. To what degree you will be successful and how that translated to better match results is the complication. It is like people buying more expensive paddles because they think it will make them play better.

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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

[quote="mickd"]
NL's post gave me a lot to think about too. I've always considered my goals to be reasonable. Something I could strive for while enjoying the sport. But I guess I've also been underestimating what it takes to improve a level. But too often the frustration does overtake the joy.[/quote]

It's good to remember that goals don't actually exist. They are figments. The only real effect a goal has on the world is how it makes you feel about what you are doing.

My lifetime goal is the same as yours, 2200. It is far less realistic for me than you, I'm 50 years old and started at 43, and I'm not talented at all.

But 2200 is just an arbitrary higher number that I associate with "really good, two levels better than I am now." Two levels better than now will always be my real goal, even when I'm blind and 95 years old and rated 400.

But no matter how hard I work for years and years, I will never be two levels better than I am. It's the ultimate unrealistic goal. So what? Goals are just imaginary reasons to do something that makes us happy, because in this world we need a reason.

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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

We forgot to do that editing class in FL.

Well for people with time to waste...

Princeton Pong June 2019 Laj: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... -R0L8DRotV

My last tournament at Princeton where I usually struggle. This time I was top seed in U2000 and defended my seeding. I didn't record any matches before the semis. These are the semis and the finals. I think in the finals I saved the best shot for last.

And no, I didn't use my torso properly especially on serves, I didn't hip clap and I served long no spin to the pip because it was working. I am ashamed of my play and happy with my win. Winning is hard these days. But I don't think I could played without the confidence and the feeling of the training.

My unrecorded matches were better because I can only remember thunderous shots and can't peruse them for technical issues. More seriously, I went down 0-2 to a 1500 penholder before I came back. Then I beat the finalist 3-0 (thanks to pgpg for all the Grass Dtecs LP practice), played a kid in the quarters who was near tears that all his long serves were being looped at him (and ended up giving up a game out of pity/annoyance), won the semis (video above) vs a guy who I hadn't beaten before though he has gone rusty while I have trained since I last played him, and then won the rematch with the guy in my group in the final (again thanks to pgpg for the DTecs training).

Using BRS metrics, this was really an U1850 win as none of my opponents were rated over 1850 (though the semi-finalist and finalists have easily beaten players over 2000 before). But I think I will stick to the BRS criteria.

Congrats on your U1850 win, NL!

PS: OH and I forgot to mention that I had flu like symptoms. So add 50 pts for that. Congrats to me on the U1900 win.

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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

Editing class https://youtu.be/-VLCg18VxfU

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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

Gratz on the win. As a respected coach said to me last summer " a win's a f###ing win, innit?". Sage advice I will always recall on the incredibly rare occasions that I win an event.

OT, Does anyone else think it would be ridiculously funny to record a post-match interview with NL and pay zeio to dub it into chinese and then apply subtitles? Or maybe that's just me.

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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

Okay, rock back hard onto your straight right leg and then stamp forward onto your left. The stamp should be jolting whilst the left leg is bending at the knee.

How can you improve your return now? If those serves are really short, then just tap them back short and prove it. If you can't, they are probably long.

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ttEDGE.com Professional online coaching

They are half way towards being great. You need to do the double-fold in a more defined way and that should propel your racket over your head in a circle. Your circle is way too small because you body doesn't move enough.

For those of you wondering what this all means, watch LTT112.

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Get your 3 wishes here today!
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