OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I just want to say that I hate myself for procrastinating. It's not simple procrastinating, it's different but it's difficult for me to break.. Quite some stuff actually went on, I'll talk about it.

Before christmas, I was working at a warehouse for a couple months. Working 8 hours a day (regular timetable, I know) 5 days a week to get me extra money for my plans. At first I was enjoying the time there because the colleagues were awesome. The colleagues were always awesome to work with, but the work itself was killing me. I couldn't handle the brainlessness, it was dragging me in a depressing slur. I could not think about myself, and when I came home my brain overloaded but my body was decently tired.

This was also the reason why the past couple of months I felt pretty s***. Table tennis was going awful because of it and this didn't help as well. Nobody cheered me on so that didn't help . I'm feeling much better now but I hate the holidays because the clubs are down. There is only one thing that'll make me feel super great and that is when I'm going away.

A couple months ago I went to a training camp in Den Haag, and it felt super awesome, I most certainly know that I want to do that everyday (got some decent defending practice, but it was just 3 days). Besides I had some good conversations with the trainer and he linked me to a club in Hungary. I'm awaiting the second response from the coach there through the trainer, but I just can't wait to go. I believe Leonie Hartbrich plays at that club (maybe some of you know her?). But really I'm completely ready to go abroad right now.

I was in a little bit of a crisis recently, I just wanted to go full defensive equipment, so I took the VKMO offensive, but my coach here made quite a strange decision, and we put short pimples on my backhand. So far I'm not really enjoying it but I'm doubting because some people think SP's are the future of defense, but I think feint long II might fit my game. This really didn't help everything the past months either.

A couple months ago I actually contacted Adam Bobrow, and he made some time for me and we had a call for about 15 minutes, which is awesome. He's such a positive guy and I admire that I aspire to be like that but I feel like I already act that way, it's just hard to act that way in stone cold Holland, people here are direct and always in a hurry (most of them). Besides Adam Bobrow, I actually talk to Matt Hetherington quite a bit, and I try to speak to as many people here and there who might know a thing or 2. I even messaged Gionis and surprisingly we had a nice conversation which was amazing .

When I'm going I will keep this post updated. I don't even know how many people see this thread, I don't expect that number to be high (but it's not about the number )

I just don't want to let you guys down you know..

Good for you Maurice!
May you continue to gain more positive experience through table tennis! Have you joined competition/tournament recently?

_________________
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.

Hi Maurice,

Don't get upset about the short pips. My guess is the coach wants you to learn proper chopping rather than just letting the LPs do all the work. It will take quite some time, but I think the fundamental gains are worth it. Play proper, don't always look for the easy way out. I hope your coach at least explained why he wants you to change.

I would also like to hear about your tournament or even club play experiences. Not just the technical aspects, but how you react under pressure, when faced against a more a consistent player etc. "pros" need healthy doses of competitiveness, confidence, and mental "stamina". I think the last part is lacking even with the high level CNT players (Don't remember the specific one, but Lin Gaoyuan nearly choked in one of his matches).

A positive/bright outlook also makes better athletes (IMO). I perceive the JNT team players to be generally "happier" than their Chinese counterparts. Doesn't make them any less disciplined/competitive (Ito/Fukuhara are excellent examples and great ambassadors of the sport).

Cheers, and good luck!

I'd like to maybe disappoint you by saying that I don't feel like my coach truly knows what he's on about :/. For that matter nobody really does around here. That's also one of the reasons I want to go away. I've been trying to do as many research on the internet as I can, but now it's time to take the step and train non-stop at a good place because that's literally all I want.

As for tournament playing, it's quite limited here as well. I did play a couple and watched my previous youth team members, but because I was not youth anymore, it gets much more limited. What might sound stereotypical, but is really true for me, is that I play a pretty decent match against high(er) skilled players. It's not even because of a quirky playing style (the kind of thing I despise), because against those players I purposefully try to focus as much as I can.

In competition play I didn't do very well. With the transition to SP's it was quite different, nobody could really teach me useful things and I barely had time for myself so it was quite a struggle. I'd like to leave that behind me. The season before that I was still playing youths and that season the team progressed to national league. I won 18/20 matches standing on top of the leaderboards in that competition.

The training camp in Den Haag was delightful. I trained with youth players of the highest league and didn't do that bad actually in match play against them. Also a defender from another club I attended (who also told me about the camp) was there and I beat him in a match situation (he was not playing seriously at all, he was kind of sick of it and he later did apologize , but hey a win is a win ), he is quite a beast defender actually..

I always find my specialty in 1 vs 1 scenario's everywhere. That's why I think table tennis suits me. And yes the mental part is quite hard, but recently I've been getting myself together and just work out how I want to be at the table. Choking is always a hard part of table tennis.

Have you seen Miyuu Kihara and Miyu Nagasaki play last grand finals? The JNT doubles girls who won the finals in a laughing manner. They were constantly smiling, it's crazy

Damn it's been, 2 and half years since I last responded to this. Nobody probably remember this, so this will be the most random bump ever. Nevertheless I want to speak my mind once again.

I've been through alot the past 2 years. In 2020 I went to Hungary to play at a club in budapest for a month in June. This was my first experience going abroad, doing something like this. It was at the table tennis club Statisztika, which you might know cause quite some good players come from there. And the Hungarian national team used to train there, and I saw the Croatian national team playing with them in that month. I played with cadet and junior girls, who were ranked high in each of their categories. I was speaking to the woman trainer about the pimples, and that I wasn't really feeling the short pips, and they had Feint Long 2 there, so I put that on it and ever since I've been playing with FL 2 (And really enjoy it). By now I've gotten way way better with the chops so who knows, maybe the sp's wouldn't be as bad now but I'll get there.

I was talking with Mattias Falck at the time and he recommended to me, Eslöv Sweden. I had a flight booked around march 2020 already but then Covid hit and the flight got cancelled so I couldn't go at the time. I went to Hungary first, and then a couple months after I came home I went to Sweden in october 2020. I'm not going to write my whole Sweden story, because that would be paragraphs long. But I've been in the environment of super high level table tennis. I sometimes got the chance to play with them as well, but this didn't happen too often. I made some really good friends though, with an incredibly talented English chopper Sam Wilson and Luxembourg's best player Eric Glod (who came runner up in mixed doubles in Lima this weekend btw ). As far as the coaches, they are obviously experienced, but they didn't put enough time into personal attention. I do feel like the pros who train also don't unlock the potential they have, but you can possible get it from playing with the players there and the quantity is really good. But since I want more personal coaching specific for my game, I decided to go back from Sweden.

I've had a great time though. In the beginning I came there, I wasn't even really a defender. (This started in Hungary). But the final session I had before leaving, I played with Eric and I was playing insane. I was moving insane, it felt like the best thing ever. It gave me so much confidence and more confirmation that I can absolutely do it, especially considering I have always taught myself anything, the coaches in Sweden didn't teach me technical aspects of Defense, they gave me exercises, but I got better and better. Also I have had shin splints as an injury which has held me back alot in freedom in movement behind the table which was extremely annoying, and with quantity of practise. Also in 2021 in the summer I was at home in NL for about 6 months, and knowing where I come from I just feel so much motivation, I still do after all these years, and I don't want to stop. Eslöv was also Truls Moregardh's club btw, so I've seen him alot in the past years haha, we also had a party from his World Championship runner up achievement. I've seen alot of good players, matches. Jorgen Persson was at the club at some matches, so that was cool to see .

For me the problem is, even though I've been practicing and I've become so much better, mostly in match play it's not too much seeable yet, because I didn't play anything really in Sweden. So match play is something I want and need to pick up now, but that last session with Glod, we just did some normal exercises, then the last 35 minutes I requested service 2 each, because it is amazing to get a match simulating exercise with a pro. At first he was winning almost all points, but then suddenly I got into a certain state (flow state, it's a real thing), and I was in the zone. I started being able to get points together against a pro, I played wild shots, had crazy rallies, even though I had only started chopping with the fh more recently, it felt super comfortable in practise. He said he was going all out in the serve 2 exercise, and we did that for 35 minutes straight, we were both really into it. It felt like the most liberty I'd ever had behind the table, and that was against a pro player. I have recently changed to spinlord marder 2 on the fh, just to try something out, and I read it was a little of a successor of tackifire drive or one of those rubbers (the one Koji used). At first I had a lot of trouble with it, but then I started feeling the rubber, and I started to chop more on fh as well. And now I can definitely see the similarities between this rubber and how Koji used to play, and I'm super happy with that because he is my main inspiration after all.

That brings me to today, I'm back in my old house, no opportunities at all here, but I've asked Glod since he's coming to the netherlands and hang out with Britt Eerland (since they're friends) to ask her for some possibilities for me in The Netherlands, since it's very very hard to get in involved with the table tennis here in The Netherlands, so for now I'll wait until I hear anything back from that.

Anyways there were probably some things that I've missed, as I've just been writing this on the get-go. It was super fun writing this though, I wonder how many people will actually see this and also read this whole thing, idk we'll see.