The Practice Routine That Will Transform Your Table Tennis Game!

Do you play better in practice than in matches? Yeah, that can happen often, Alois, and today we're going to focus on how to improve your training routine. We're going to show you how to fix errors. Yep, and then we've got your questions about training. And then finally, we're going to show you how to train smarter. Let's get started. Today in Skills Spotlight, we're going to break down the key elements of a smart training routine. Alois, over to you. So the key elements is firstly, a physical warm-up. Secondly, a skills focus. Third, a game section. And then fourthly, reflection. All right, Alois. Now, do we need all four of these? Is a warm-up really important or can't we just get straight into the training? You can, but it's good just to do a little bit of a physical warm-up. Now, just tailor it to what suits you. So I don't expect you to go out and run a marathon. It's just starting to get the body moving, starting to also get your mind ready for that training session. Okay, now, when you say warm-up, is it just a physical warm-up? Or do you include like the on... Is there an on-table warm-up and is that part of the warm-up? Yeah, so you can start with a physical. And as I said, it doesn't have to be much. Move your arms around, just start to get moving. Because especially if you've driven to the training hall and you've been sitting down for a while, it's good just to get your body moving. And then, yes, you can also incorporate an on-table warm-up. Just again, just some forehands and some backhands to start to get your eye in, start to get the feel of the ball. Okay, because I've heard a few people sort of think that maybe that time can be wasted time if you're not really focusing on something. So can you use that on-table warm-up time effectively? Or is it just a waste of time? Yeah, you can challenge yourself even a little bit more with the on-table warm-up. So the traditional warm-up is to just hit forehands or just hit backhands. Why not try just going out there and hitting the ball anywhere? Just forehands and backhands, just slowly, just starting to get the feel of changing between a forehand and a backhand. That's interesting because when I watch tennis players warm up, they just hit anywhere. They don't do this forehand to forehand, backhand to backhand stuff that we do in table tennis. No, it's very specific to table tennis. I think what you were saying before, that can be a waste of time. Okay, interesting. Okay, so then the next bit was the skills section. Now, I would imagine that most people would think that this is the main bit of your training. You've listed out four things there. So yeah, tell us a bit about the skills section and is it the main thing? Yeah, for me, it is the main crux of the session. So it's what you're trying to improve. So just getting to the training session and thinking about, I had some problems with my forehand topspin against backspin. That's the thing that I'm going to try and improve today in training. Excellent. Now, on the PingSeals website, Alice, we have like a 52-week training plan, which structures all this out, which is great for our premium members. So you might want to check that out. But also there's another section that talks about how to structure your training. And I think I completely lost what I was going to say. We've got a download with a whole heap of training routines. Yes, yes, yes, yes, as well. All right, back to it. So the training routine. Yes. So the training routines are endless. So you can start to think about, what am I trying to improve? And then you just need to tailor your training routines specifically to that. Yeah, OK. So each training session, you're not going to work on the same thing. You're going to think, what do I want to improve today? And what can I work on? Yeah, that's right. And it can be the same thing for a few sessions. You know, in our 52-week training plan, we focus on consistency, for example, for the first four weeks or four sessions. But in each of those, if you want to do a little bit more, do two or three sessions, that's completely fine as well. Because everyone progresses at a different rate. And different skills, you will also progress at a different rate. So for example, for the forehand topspin, you might nail it in 20 minutes. But for the backhand topspin, you might want to spend three or four or five weeks on it. Yeah. And I know I've said this before, but for myself, I found the forehand topspin was OK. But the forehand topspin off backspin, I found incredibly difficult to learn. Yeah. So yeah, so tailor it to yourself. Find the skills that you really want to improve during that session. Great. All right. And then you talked about another component was the games section. Now, why is this important? Yeah. So we start to then, in the games section, start to incorporate the skills that you have been practicing during the skills section. It's important, firstly, just to start to move towards that game type play. Why is that important? Because we often find that in training, you do skills and then you do games and you don't incorporate those two things. Because what are you really trying to do? You're trying to improve your game. You're not trying to improve that technique that you're doing. It's not just about improving the forehand topspin. It's improving how you can use that forehand topspin in a game situation. And I guess at the start of this show, Alois, you said, are you playing better in training than you are in matches? And this is kind of that bridge between those two. This is hugely the bridge between the two. And I was really guilty of it as well when I was playing in training. I was really good at training my technique, but I really couldn't incorporate that well into a match situation. Okay. So incorporate games into your training session. Yeah. And I think the other thing with just playing games as well is it's important to practice playing games because if the only time you play games is when you go to your fixtures, your weekly league or pennant, then you haven't had a practice at actually, how do you structure your game? How do you, what serves are you going to use at the start, at the middle, at the finish and those sorts of things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent point. All right. And then the fourth and final tip or element you said was reflection. Yeah. Reflection. And this is the one that I think a lot of people don't do effectively or don't do at all. Yeah. We often just finish our training session, put our racket in our bag and off we go. I think it's really important just to sit down even for one minute or two minutes and just perhaps even write down, you could write down in a notebook or somewhere where you've got some notes and just reflect on, okay, what did I do during that training session? Did I find that effective? Do I feel like that improved? And then next time, at least you've thought about it because then when you get to the hall for the next training session, then you've got some thoughts in your mind and you don't just mindlessly go into doing the same thing again or following the same pattern again and wasting time. Yeah. So you describing that, Alice, I just pictured in my mind that it's probably a great idea to keep a journal and actually set out some goals for the session first. And then when you reflect, you can reflect on how you went to those goals and it kind of becomes this cycle for the next training session. And then the next training session and then any matches you play. Yeah, absolutely. So, and you can do that as detailed or as broad as you like. So, you know, some people love to journal things and go for it. You know, go to town, put lots of notes in, work out all the skills that you want to improve this week, this month, this year, and then start to work your way through them. Great. That sounds good. And if you want more information on this, head to PingSkills.com. We've got a Training 101, which is if you've never trained before, get started on that. And then, as I said before, we've got the 52-week training plan for those looking to take it to the next level. And for Fix It Fast, we're going to look at the three most common problems in structuring your training session. In structuring your training session? With your training. Alois, what is problem number one? The first thing that I see is that a lot of players try to do too many skills. So they want to try and fix their forehand topspin, their backhand topspin, their forehand push, their serves, their smashing. I want to fix all of those too, Alois. That's good, but we need to space that out a little bit, just so you've got a bit more focus on something during your session. Because if you're focusing on 10 things in your session, you're not going to improve any of them. Oh, I like that. That's a very wise sort of quote. Yeah, so too many things at once, you're going to develop nothing. Okay. All right. So what should we do? What's the fix here? So the fix is sit down, make sure before your training session that you have worked out one, two, maybe three things that you want to think about during the training session. Okay. All right. So let's say I'm a beginner, I'm just starting. What's an example of something I could focus on? So it could be that you're going to try and improve your technique with your forehand topspin. Yep. So I'm going to really focus on how do I improve this during the training session? I might also be thinking about developing one new serve. So I want to try and do the tomahawk serve for this session. So they're the two things that I'm going to focus on. Great. And is it the same if I'm like an intermediate or an advanced player? Like what would be the difference there? Or what would you focus on? It's probably just the type of skill that you're going to focus on. So still don't try to focus on 10 things just because you're an advanced player. Focus on a couple of important things for you. So it might be that I'm working at trying to get my serve lower and shorter during a match situation and in a more pressure type situation. Excellent. All right. Great tip there. All right. What is the second most common problem you see with training? Yeah. So the second thing is that you set yourself too many drills where you know where the ball's coming all the time. Where you know where the ball's coming. And I think you referred to them as like set drills in a way. Exactly. So if the drill is set. So for example, I'm going to get Jeff to play two balls to my forehand and two balls to my backhand. That's good. And it has its purpose to, you know, especially if you're at that beginner level and you're trying to improve your forehand topspin and your backhand topspin. Sounds like quite a good drill because you've been improving your forehand, you're improving your backhand and you're improving that switching between backhand and forehand. Yeah. But the big problem is that you're doing that when you know where the ball's coming. So in a match situation, every forehand topspin that I'm playing, I don't know that it's necessarily coming there. Unless your opponent's really kind. Yes, exactly. So I'm not sitting there and waiting for my forehand topspin before you're hitting the ball. Yeah. So in a match situation, you need to be able to read where the ball's coming, move and then play your forehand topspin. And so that's a skill that you need to start to develop pretty early on in your... Yeah. So what's the fix for this? Instead of doing set drills, what should we do? Start to add some randomization in... Oh, randomization. Randomization. That's a good word. In your drill. So for example, it might be that you're doing two and two, but your partner might sometimes be able to switch after one. Oh, okay. So they do one or two here, one or two there, for example. One or two here, one or two there. That's a really easy progression from your two and two. And then I guess the even more advanced one is just it's backhand or forehand, just completely random, whatever they feel like. That's right. Yeah. And that's just different levels that you can start to work through. Excellent. All right. Good ideas. Okay. And what is the third most common problem you see? Yeah. So the third one is just not structuring your session. So we talked about a little bit earlier in the show, not having the elements of the session in what you do. Your warmup, your skills, your gameplay, your reflection, and just turning up at the hall. And here we go. So do you think it would be worthwhile then to actually like have a list of what you're going to do for a training session written out before you even turn up to the training hall? Some people like that. Some people don't. Some people hate writing things down. Yes. Some people love it. So see what works for you. But if you've got it written down, it's much clearer in your head. But a lot of people are really good at just formulating that in their head. And then they know a lot. You should have thought about it before you got to the hall. Today I'm going to be working on my forehand and my serve. That's the key part that you've spent some time thinking about it. And we talk about the fourth element of our training is reflection. And so after you train, it's important to reflect and think about what you're going to do. But also after you play a match, it's important to reflect and think, oh, you know, why did I, what happened there? What went wrong? Or gee, I played really well and I did that really well. But why? Yeah. So the positives as well. Yeah. Good. And just quickly, we won't go into too deeply, but if you structure it, you've got, you know, you're going to do your warmup, then you're going to do some skills, then some gameplay. When you're doing those skills, how do you work that with your partner? Like how do you, like if I want to work on my forehand, how do I do that? And then what does he do when I'm working on my forehand? Yep. So one way, one simple way is to get a clock and just time it. So you can do something for, you know, five, 10 minutes, whatever you decide on. I can do something for five or 10 minutes. But the best option is if you can try to find drills that are going to help both of you. For example, you might be practicing your forehand topspin. Yep. And I'm practicing my ability to be able to switch between a backhand and a forehand. So now I'm going to get you to play forehand topspins, but you're not going to tell me where you're going to play the ball to. You're going to play it to either my backhand or forehand block. So you're both getting something out of the training drill. Then you're almost doubling your training time. That is awesome. Well, that is Fix It Fast. Welcome to the Ask The Coach section of our show. Today, we've got a question from Cesare who says, I've just purchased the premium subscription and I'm looking forward to developing my TT skills. I used to train mostly at home, but I did play once a week at a table tennis club with my friends. But I'm using the Power Pong Amiga table tennis robot and the drills it provides. So can I use the 52-week training plan with the robot? And what do you say, Alois? Yeah, well, you certainly can. And it's a matter of just adapting that 52-week training plan to incorporate the robot. So the robot is good for especially some of the basic drills that we do the consistency drills, practicing skills, and depends on the level of your robot as well. So can it randomize balls? Can it put together more than one or two balls? So can it, for example, do a short push and then a long push? Yeah, and I think robots are getting more and more advanced, aren't they? So there's more and more of them that are able to do that sort of thing. Yeah, exactly. So just depends on the level of your robot. It sounds like your robot is pretty, pretty good. But if you've just got a simple robot, you can still incorporate that into the 52-week training plans and just be a little bit more creative and adapt to what you're trying to do. Great. So it sounds like if you don't have a partner, robots are great. Do they really replace a human at this point? I always say no, but they're a good replacement if you don't have someone to train with. Yeah. But if you can get a training partner, the benefits are multiple fold. And just quickly, why do you think the benefits are better with a person rather than a robot? Firstly, the benefits of the robot are that they're consistent. They're going to give you a lot of balls in the same spot and the same type of balls. Because I do hear a lot of people complain, oh, I can't practice because my partner's not consistent enough. Yeah. So robots solves that problem straight away. Robots do solve that problem, but it's the inconsistency that you're really looking for. And it's not even the inconsistency of getting it on the table. It's just the inconsistency of where the ball's coming, sometimes a little bit shorter, sometimes longer, sometimes slower, sometimes faster that you get from a person playing at the other end. And it's also the tracking of the ball. So with a robot, you're hitting the ball and then you're back to tracking to where the ball's going to come out of the robot. So you're not watching the same ball the whole rally. Yeah. And that's a really important part of playing the game of table tennis is to be able to track the ball out, back in, out and back in. Here you're going, track the ball out, change focus, track the ball in, out, change focus. OK, excellent. So hopefully, Cesari, that helps you out. Robots, definitely helpful, but you also want to be playing with real people. Next up, we have a question from Nigel and he says, Hi, Geoff and Alois. When I practice backhand, I usually aim to land the ball on the outside edge of each corner and not towards the end of the table. If I do this, I find it's easy to replicate this shot in a match. But some players aren't used to practicing like this and want the ball on the inside edge towards the end of the table. So I'm polite and helpful. And this is where I'll try to land the ball. But when I play in a match, that's where I hit the ball. So I'm replicating what I practice. How do we adopt the good things we do in practice, but not the bad? Great question, because this is a big one. When we're training, most of the time we end up hitting the ball to your partner. So Dr. Ross Pinder, someone that I worked with, that was one of his big quotes. We hit the ball to our partner in training and in matches, we try to hit the ball away from our partner. So we're not training what we're doing in matches, what we want to do in matches. In fact, it's completely, it's almost the opposite of what we're trying to do. So what you're talking about is what you should be practicing. You should be practicing trying to hit the ball away, out into the wide ball, the corner, away from your partner. But often the etiquette in training is to hit the ball to your partner. So that they can make a nice consistent stroke and work on their forehand technique. Yeah, exactly. But again, in matches, that's not going to happen like that either. So they need to practice those wider balls as well. But that's difficult to get across to some players, especially if you're wanting a training partner, if you're upsetting them and you're not hitting the ball the way that they want it, then next time they say, oh, I'm busy, I can't make training. And I guess it comes back to that focus about what you're trying to improve, because if you're just trying to improve your forehand technique, maybe you do want a nice consistent ball. Yes, exactly. So if your partner, for example, is practicing their forehand topspin and they're at a beginner level, that's good. I mean, and during their time of training, that's what you do. You put the ball exactly to where they want that ball. But when it's your turn to practice, then start to think about can I hit the ball wider? Can I hit the ball away from them? Yeah, really interesting one. Thank you for that question, Nigel. And so I guess the answer is, what, he should be going wider or working out with his partner? Both. I mean, it's a matter of talking to your partner, trying to perhaps get them to understand that concept, maybe show them a copy of this show. And then, yeah, trying to hit the ball wider. But really, in your practice, you should be trying to replicate what you're going to do in a match. And our next question comes from Kenneth, who says, I'm a recreational player, but I want to get better. He says, I practice my topspins, but when I play in a match, I don't get to use them very often because I often lose the point when someone pushes short and I can't handle the backspin or I'm not confident to convert that backspin into a topspin. So how do I translate my topspin that I'm practicing in practice into a match situation? Another good question. So it's really important that, and you've done this really well, you've started to recognize that what's happening in your training isn't happening in matches and vice versa. So in matches, you understand that every rally starts with a serve, a return of serve, and then the transition into a rally. Whereas in training, often we just start with a flat serve and hitting the ball in an open rally. And you never practice that transition from serve, push, topspin, and then the rally. So trying to incorporate more of that into your training drills will help you to be able to transition. Yeah, because every point is going to start with a serve, like you said. So you've got to practice that a lot. And then the push is such a big part of the game. I think coming from that beginner level where you've never been to a table tennis club, spin is such a key element. And often people just aren't used to that backspin and just don't know how to deal with it. And you can see players that have played for 30 years beat some young kid just because they put a bit of backspin on the ball. Yes, exactly. So spending more time in that zone of the serve, return, and the early part of the rally and starting to incorporate that more and more into your training drills. So that really goes back to having a focus for your practice. And maybe this should be one of your focuses for the practice. And then you'll create drills around that. Yeah, and the focus needs to then come from your matches. Excellent. All right. Thanks for that question, Kenneth. And now it's time for Train Smarter. So our first tip is if you're doing consistency drills, Outside. Outside. Bobo, outside. Outside. Go on, outside. The first tip is if you're doing consistency drills, count how many times you're hitting the ball. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. So Alois, what are the benefits of counting when you're doing your consistency drills? It starts to focus your mind in on what you're doing. And you can also set yourself some targets with your consistency. So see if you can start to increase the number of times you can hit the ball on the table. It's amazing, Alois. I've seen people doing forehand to forehand and just not making many consistently. And as soon as you say count, suddenly they can do 50 in a row. The other thing that does happen when you count is it also starts to help with your timing because because you are counting out loud, you're starting to hear the rhythm of the ball and follow the rhythm with your one, two, three, four as well. Excellent. So when you're doing consistency drills, make sure you're counting. OK, Alois, what is the second train smarter tip for today? It's to start more of your drills with a serve. So we talked about in a match situation, all of the all of the rallies start with a serve, whereas in training, we often start with just a flat serve and go straight from there. So the tip number two is start more of your drills with a serve. So in our 52 week training plan, we call those match drills. And what is tip number three, Alois? So tip number three is to add some more randomisation into all of your drills. So rather than knowing where the ball's coming all the time, starting to just get a ball that you don't know where the ball's coming to and start to be able to react to that as well. So, for example, and in this drill, we're just going to do mainly forehands. But now I'm going to every now and then So he's still practicing his forehand topspin, but he's also in a position that he is able to play a backhand when he needs to. We'd love you to leave a comment and tell us which skill that you've improved and how you did it. Yes, and also, we're looking for ideas for our next show. So if you've got any great ones, leave a comment also. Thanks for watching. Make sure to check out the PingSkills website. We've got heaps of step-by-step tutorials, expert tips, training plans. Plus, if you've got a table tennis question, you can ask it right there on the site.