OOAK Table Tennis Forum

So my opponent is what in the UK we would call a "band 3 and 4" player - so around top 300 senior men. I've never beaten him in a match, although have got games off him (including today!)

I felt I did "ok" given the conditions (not a lot of room behind the table, and not a lot of room for me to step around my BH). Against this particular player, I find it hard to transition into attack - you'll see often I end up twiddling against him - in this case with a few good results, but also a few rushed or mistimed shots.

I think service return wasn't too bad, but service could be tightened up, with more variety.

Kev, I like your posts, so I'll tell you some stuff, just between us. You didn't just come on here to teach me table tennis, so thanks for that.

I've coached against most of the best players in the world with a decent success rate. I give myself zero credit for any player's win because I just don't like that concept. I've been both an international player, and a coach, and I know that all credit goes to the player. Coaches don't like to hear this because they drastically overestimate their impact and it needs to be said. Pro players absolutely hate coaches taking credit too.

The average rally in top 100 goes for 3.6 hits (including serve). I've counted many matches. Now let's assume I'm coaching against Harimoto, for example. The serve from my player is totally controllable, and placement is super important. This needs to be discussed and understood or else your team is going down hard. Harimoto is going to try to banana flick every serve, so the serve needs to be short and very wide to the forehand, mixed in with some variations. A good variation against Harimoto is very short and wide to the backhand (the Chinese use this against him) or long to middle/backhand. Again, this situation is very controllable and coachable.

When it comes to receiving against Harimoto, you can't use regular returning which is short to forehand. His forehand flick is too strong, so the return needs to be more to the middle. If he starts to use the banana (less likely than you think) the player needs to push long to his middle. When he is nervous, Harimoto accidentally serves long and these must be heavily attacked to his middle/forehand to put him into a cycle of nervousness.

During rallies, things become very difficult to control and this opens the door for horrible "coaching" mistakes, because you need only one idea. Let's say the idea here is, always attack to the middle and forehand. Do this as much as you can.

The above ends the discussion because we have accounted for the 3.6 hits. If a rally goes any longer, it will come down to variance and even luck. Hopefully my player can hit the middle forehand with most attacks.

The biggest mistakes that coaches make is not understanding what is controllable and how long a rally really goes for. For example, if you say that this guy has a bad backhand, so play everything to his backhand, you are probably a 1600 coach. The serve is the most controllable, followed by the return and then a little direction for attacking during a point.

I bench coached this win against Harimoto last year (all credit to Sathiyan, of course). At least you may believe that I'm not a totally incompetent tt coach and you can reconcile everything with the above mentioned advice that I gave to the player.

In my view, the best part about long pimples is the opportunities it creates to attack.

LC, I think since this thread started in 2015 your play has improved as much as the other core posters put together. NL, me, Dr P, Big D, wilkinru all play pretty much the same way only a little better, judging by the last videos I have seen. Your game is utterly tranformed and unrecognizable. It must be all the ejing you do, it's working!

Absolutely - and against lesser players this is my route one to success. I just find this guy harder to attack against. Here are some of the highlights where I did manage to get an attack in:

I tell players that if they've used the long pips 3 times in a row, it's too many because they have missed an the opportunity to attack.

Thought it might be an interesting idea to share me playing against righty’s for the first time since beating the lefty’s 11 0. Had a hard time in the beginning to get focused so there were a few restarts

https://youtu.be/ty_H8sFdeNU

LC, I think since this thread started in 2015 your play has improved as much as the other core posters put together. NL, me, Dr P, Big D, wilkinru all play pretty much the same way only a little better, judging by the last videos I have seen. Your game is utterly tranformed and unrecognizable. It must be all the ejing you do, it's working!

I became a relatively good national player in about 1991. Then I really stopped playing in 2008 after coming back to play in a local league.

Throughout these 17 years of senior play, I'm not really sure if I improved. I honestly don't know. For some of the years I played well, some were a joke, and in many of the years I just coached and then tried to compete. One year I drove a truck for 10 hours per day and played tt only once. I don't know what you'd call that?

If I could do it all again, I'd definitely do it differently. But it's crazy because it'd be unfair to go back with 2020 knowledge to coach in 1991 or even 1983 when I started. The game has changed and I've got unfair advantages. I now study the game for many hours per week with amazing technology and I've had access to international tournaments and training halls.

Do I have a point? I probably didn't improve over 17 years!

You probably did improve in some ways. Your understanding of the game probably got better. All that trucking must’ve given you a lot of time to think

Do I have a point? I probably didn't improve over 17 years!