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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