Table Tennis Camps

I have never joined TT camps for training, Is there anybody on this forum who have been participating on the camps

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Hahaha wish I could help, but my last camps were back in the 80s

These camps are not on the whole year round. Take Grant Solders camp in August and some other top ex England players who do the same thing I believe once a year only. Grants camp was for 4 days and included Desmond Douglas, Carl Prean, Gavin Rumgay and Matt Ware with Joe Kennedy also popping in. They all come round and help everyone out with info in what they are doing right or wrong and even having a knock-up with you. It was from 10am to 5pm so its quite a long day. The cost was well over £300 but if you need to learn anything, its well worth it. I did take some video of this and the 10 day 'Ping' at Canary Wharf and if you have not seen these, look up www.YouTube.com and put in on the top search space bobcastor12 and the videos will come up so then just click on the ones you want to see.

Sure buddy. As you know it was donkey years ago when the rules were different. But I'll try best to recall some of the trainings and their schedules.

Mornings usually we do fitness, and it started at about 7am..like jogging and 15 metres sprints. We also do running up the grand stands of the stadium next door (it's a football stadium!) to build up our leg muscles, especially the knees and stamina. It usually finished about 11.30. After lunch it's rest until 4pm, when we start hitting balls and drills (usually multi balls). Anybody not committed enough will be subjected to punishments at the end of the sessions (about 7pm). Normally it will be walking around the hall in a squatting position or we called it 'duck walk' for a few laps. A real nightmare!

At night will be light drills like serve and returns. Back then, hiding the serve was perfectly legal (and each player had 5 serves instead of now, two) so service and returns were extremely important. Plus the balls were smaller, so their spin were a lot higher than now. Training finished at 10.30pm and lights off by 11.15pm.

Every other day,in the morning after our daily jog, we do weights for the upper body and core. It involves using the bicycle inner tubes to create resistance, in which one end was tied to pole and the other to your wrists. You are required to "act" out your FH and BH as many repetitions as you can in 2 minutes. Bar bell squats were on the menu without fail. Bench press was another one. It increases your FH power since we were taught to hit with a straight arm (not chicken wing). Oh before I forget, each of us got a dumbell (1.5kg) on the 1st day, where we are required to carry (bring), so we may lift with our wrists repeatedly during our free time. (to increase wrist strength and explosiveness).

At 4pm we do more multi ball drills. There was this one fun game where we were told to score a goal with our shots. We had to hit the balls as hard as we can, past the opponents. Each time the opponents fail to EVEN make contact with the balls and the balls flew pass them, then it was considered a goal.

At night we will spend time looking at videos of ourselves training and how we may improve and assessments by our coaches.

Wish I can give you a more detailed account, but it was in the mid 80's..hahaha

When I was in France I went to a strong training camp with 5 players all top 300 in the world. The sessions were really intense and there were 4 cut offs in the hall. It was measured in ability. There were 24 tables split into 4 groups. So there was a top group, intermidiate and so on.

There was a coach per group however all the exercises were the same throughout the 4 groups set by the head coach.

We would all have to wake up at 6am.. go for a 30 min light job, stretch ect. Then shower, have breakfast and be in the training hall for 8 (morning session). The morining session generally consisted of consitency exercises and footwork. This finished at 11. Each session always had a good warm up and cool down.

The team then went to lunch and then relaxed until the afternoon session at 4-oclock. We then had practice with serve and receive. Lots of short game and so on. Sometimes match play was implemented. This finished at 7, then we had dinner and then went to bed.

Mid week there was some tournament matches with each group. And at the weekend, everyone had a big tournament. Was really good and intense!

Equipment ideas and tools.... I think get ladders and other cool equipment to break up the warm ups. Lots of athletes in the morning are tired, when they have fun in the morning it prepares them for training

Hope this has helped Josh.

All these sound so fun. However, if I really go into TT during my high school, I don't think I would like those stuff lol. However, right now my workout plan are similar to what azlan had done. Even though most of them just for personal interest, and part of it is for TT and other reasons...

Azlan that's a great description and not too far off from what training camps are like in China. Today is more about speed so a lot of agility work outs are used one seen on TV are the ones where the players are required to stand straight and then reach with their legs and kick or "stall" a tt ball thrown by the coach randomly. It improves flexibility, agility, muscle stress and reflex coordination.

You can watch in Ma Long's Documentary where he will take a suspension cable and mimic the strokes which he actually does on both sides so as to keep his left forehand the same size as his right. And in Xu Xin's documentary he plays the goal game you talked about where he has to hit past his coach 7 times to win.

@ josh - There are many camps around the world that teach different things. Any one of them will help you to become a better Table Tennis athlete, but it depends on what you're looking for. If you're really looking for something to help improve your game I'd suggest going to a 4 day minimum camp that really helps focusing on footwork and tactics. Technique on forehand and backhand is very iffy because everyone has there own way of teaching, but no system is really in place to properly teach it. I personally want to work with Dynamic Table Tennis to help modify and teach the aspects that they focus on which really helps players when I coach.

If you're working on something in China it all depends on the provinces you'd like to learn at. Shanghai and Beijing are great for their camps, but just about anywhere in China can help improve any athlete around the world.

I've done a fair number of training camps in my time playing. The format of the NZ National training camp was over a few days with 2 x 3 hours sessions a day, full fitness testing and lots of on table training. I have also been to similar day format training camps which have gone for 1 or 2 weeks with 5 days of training in the week. Training camps are a great opportunity to test your endurance and your ability to train for longer periods of time, they also teach you how to take care of your body in tougher training situations i.e make sure you are eating well and getting enough rest, if you get these wrong you can learn the hard way

I find training camps give you the opportunity to BUILD on things you are working on, pick out things at the start and work on them over the camp and monitor your progress with the coach/es help. A lot of training camps have different setups but the main idea is to get out there with a purpose and real focus and get stuck into some decent training!

The training camps should be a 2-3+ thing a year for players. If you are unable to attend multiple training camps a year then they really won't help you over the long run. You may learn some things or gain some insight on some of your tactics, but without proper analysis and consulting with the coach you won't have an efficient training camp. For those of you who go once a year it's a start, but you really have to train to gain the ability to play at the higher league and tournament levels.

Obviously you aren't going to train to be a professional or you would have these training schedules 6-7 days a week, but if you want to improve I suggest at least 2 training camps over a 2 year period giving you some great insight on how to increase your skill level.

As someone who has coached on a few training camps for me you can get things out of them provided you put the effort in.

You need to work hard but also take the chance to practise with different players with different styles. I see a lot of people team up with someone they know or the same person all of the time and I feel that is a lost opportunity. Go and seek out someone using long pips or anti and spend some time at the opposite end from them. Use it not only to practise your technique on the routines set but also to improve tactics against different styles and rubbers.

The last one I was coaching on I picked up a few service tips myself. The game does move on and there is always someone who has worked out something a little different.

Belisar said:

As someone who has coached on a few training camps for me you can get things out of them provided you put the effort in.

You need to work hard but also take the chance to practise with different players with different styles. I see a lot of people team up with someone they know or the same person all of the time and I feel that is a lost opportunity. Go and seek out someone using long pips or anti and spend some time at the opposite end from them. Use it not only to practise your technique on the routines set but also to improve tactics against different styles and rubbers.

The last one I was coaching on I picked up a few service tips myself. The game does move on and there is always someone who has worked out something a little different.

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I can't agree more with Belisar. Some players tend to play with someone whom playing styles they are familiar with. I would say, go and seek out players whom you have problems playing against. If you have issues with long pips and anti, look out for these players and train with them..that's what training camps are for. Or, you may have problems with defensive players. Your trainers should be able to identify with these things and should put you into pace. Another thing that I get from my camps was learning to assess my opponents, and playing strategies.