Okay. We will revisit your progress in a year or two and see whether you agree with this or not. You might just be the adult learner that thrives under this system.
Some of my club-mates who are of decent level and who has never been trained formally has this warped view that a coach is to teach you tactics or tricks to win points. They will say, you pay him XX per hour amt of dollars, he should have taught you this and that. He should have taught you this pro player's serve or that pro players serve etc. However, all I was ever taught was just the pendulum serve.
It's about aligning what the coach offers and what the player wants. Not all players aim to be USTA 2200. Working on foundation is good, but for me the unique selling point of a coach is their wisdom, not their multiball feeding - that can be largely replaced by a robot or a training partner. It would be ideal if I can just hire a coach for 5 minutes, get some advice on a specific stroke, then go away and practices.
This is the point. It isn't unique to table tennis, it is applicable to all forms of coaching. And even coaches who sometimes develop players aren't always developing them optimally, the problem is that it takes a trained eye to know that the coach is not giving you good training. But the main point is that coaches should figure out what a player's goals are, and what kinds of problems are in their game and tailor the coaching around something that aligns with those goals. Not just do some general training that might make the player look beautiful, but which doesn't make them win matches. Of course, if the player wants to look beautiful, that is good and the coach should do that. But when you see a good coach investing in a player, you can tell that the difference between that and the coach who is just giving basic lessons is massive. Like I said, whether for fee or free, if your coach has never seen you play or asked what problems are currently in your game, or done some diagnostic on your skill level before training you, he is just taking your money. It doesn't mean you won't get better, but it does mean that you are likely not getting advice that cuts to the heart of things that you need to work on to solve the problems that currently keep you from getting better.
I think the value of a coach is not that 5 minutes, it's that he can watch you again and again and address your problems in real time. My experience is that it's unlikely that you can perform a stroke correctly after 5 minutes of advice. I don't have a coach, and when I try to develop a new stroke, I need to record myself, watch it, compare it to the form I want, correct it, record again, then rinse and repeat many, many times, sometimes with recordings from multiple angles. It's a tedious process, and even then I won't get it right. When I feel that I'm getting close, I post some videos on here to seek more advice, then process what works for me and what doesn't, then go back to doing the same thing again and again.
I have seen coaches give advanced players one or two lessons and helped them massively improve so it isn't about repetition per se, it is more about whether the coach is giving you something you really need at the level you are at. It is a complicated question no doubt, but the main thing here I am focusing on is whether the coach is invested in your improvement. People who have never worked with coaches invested in their improvement will have no clue what I am talking about, and people who have will know exactly what I am talking about. My second coach used to follow me to tournaments.
When I can back to TT last year I hired a coach for 4 sessions. He's a highly rated player in the 2400-2500 range. I did 3 sessions with him and all he did was run some drills with me. I got little input on how to improve. I still have a session left to use because I'm struggling to figure out what's the most effective way to use him, as he certainly isn't making it obvious how he can help me.
Sometimes for those one session tutorials, you need to find the right kind of coach. The level doesn't sound high enough IMHO, or the style might not be quite right as you need a thinking player. Talking to them about how they see serve and serve return is often critical to understanding what they find important. One coach I have often thought about going to his camp is someone like Stellan. When Barry Dattel was still alive, he was awesome. I have not been fortunate enough to do a lesson with Cory at Lily Yip, but he has a very strong technical and tactical mind.
This is exactly the advice given to me by world class tennis player Casper Ruud, deliberate practice!
You never answered my question about whether you think your pristine technique will help you beat the Norwegian players without the pristine technique and what the reason for your answer was
I find those who trained since young under proper coaches tend to be a bit worse in coaching compared to those who had to figure a lot of stuff out by themselves - there's a ton of stuff that they do automatically that they simply take for granted - and it may not be that obvious to those who are starting in the sport. I too had some lessons with some of these players and it was a bit useless. What helped me a lot more was the tutorials on Douyin by exCNT pros (全世爆，孙浩泓）which is worth their weight in gold.
I think BRS started after the age of 40, and he is very much against overthinking, in fact, whenever I make an elaborate story around technical control, he points out such verbiage doesn't help him at all.
The main point here is that it shouldn't be an impression, he needs to know your goals, you need to know his plan for you, and then you both need to figure out the intersection. He might assume you are playing somewhere on the days you don't train with him, and the things you are learning are working? Or he may assume that you are happy with what is going on because you have voiced no complaints?
I am sorry. I must have missed the context of what makes this important, or deemed it as not important to answer. The way my arm moves is just not what I am working on right now and there are only so many things you can improve at the same time to not lose focus and deliberation. Also, I think its important to strictly distinguish interaction with people on the internet from the relationships and feedback you get from people offline. I also have an online coach that watches videos of me, but the coach at the club is focused on building everything from where my feet is planted in each shot; so, untill I am able to properly adjust my feet to every ball, he is not going to pick on the details of my armswing. I believe this method is the right one because muscle memory is "programmed" for the whole body at the same time, meaning that if you learn a stroke when your feet is planted wrong, it is hard to translate that into moving your feet differently .... or maybe its just two different ways to Rome. Right now, its very hard for me to improve my reaction times because I have this habit from training with a robot that makes me not properly perceive the movement of my opponents racket to earn valuable milliseconds to adjust my position. Table tennis is so hard! I just have to practice practice practice. In matches, all the technique things quickly go out the window and I just use my reach and slow racket to win points on awkward balls.
I blv it is sequnetial ,you need to develop the intuition first by eliminating all other unnecessary factors , the more your reduce the problem, the better you will get the intuition faster. A carbon blade will add an extra factor or two. You might eventually overcome this but I blv you will lose a bit more time and in TT, it is crucial. Early days but I saw Hana Goda changing her blade to Cybershape and boy I feel like she committed many unforced errors in some matchs I watched.
Sounds like the robot practice is sub-optimal if it encourages bad habits...maybe you should re-consider how the robot may be utilised.
It probably depends on the robot as well. Once I'm comfortable with a technique I often set mine to a supra-realistic speed where the next ball would come before my shot even lands on the table. This way I get no warning of where the next shot is going and I train myself to react to unexpected locations. Good players can be very good at disguising the direction of the shot, so I do find this helpful.
