What is talent in table tennis?

[mamedium]

recently had a chat w my teammates but it seemed like no one could come up with any clear answer

curious to hear from the pros on this forum!

 

[TTWiz]

recently had a chat w my teammates but it seemed like no one could come up with any clear answer

curious to hear from the pros on this forum!

To me, talent is the set of innate abilities and physical attributes that each of us is born with.

My 2.5 year old son, for example, can dribble a basketball better and more naturally than some kids many years older than him. He can also kick a football with remarkable ease, speed and accuracy, even when the ball isn’t stationary. And when he plays against a table tennis robot (standing on a chair), he can return almost every ball as long as the speed and spin aren’t too extreme.

I haven’t treated him any differently from my older son, who is 4.5 and couldn’t do the same things at 2.5. In fact, there are still some of these things that my older son can’t do as well, despite being two years older.

To me, that is talent. My younger son has exceptional hand-eye and hand-foot coordination, and generally seems to have an unusually good sense of his body and movement. In that sense, his head start and perhaps even his potential could be huge.

But if the desire, motivation, persistence, willingness to work hard, etc. don’t follow, he probably won’t get very far, regardless of which sport he chooses.

People often say Messi is the definition of talent, while Ronaldo represents hard work. That’s obviously an oversimplification, and at the very highest level you probably need a substantial amount of both.

 

[Füty Imre]

My opinion is that talent can be seen by how fast they improve, also most people have a skill ceiling after a few years of playing if they arent training a lot. Or if there is no clear ceiling I think that there is a certain point technically that after you improve really slowly or stop improving with the same amount of training. In my opinion this also depends on talent.

I think people who have more talent tend to play better than the training amount would suggest. For e.g,: a kid in my club has a technically advanced backhand, I think that he has a way better backhand than the training time would suppose.

 

[Helanren]

I can only speak from my football playing youth but back then it would be quite obvious even to us kids. It's the ones who can coast and still be ahead. Now that doesn't mean you'll succeed. You need that plus hard work and being lucky enough to be noticed and not get injured or burn out on the sport.

And also that specific talent might not cover all aspects of the sport. There were kids great at dribbling who couldn't pass. And the opposite who could read the game way ahead. You also have to be lucky that your specific talent is meta at that time.

 

[Tyce]

Imo talent is having a combination of factors.
Physical coordination is probably the most important thing to have a high base value for.
Mental resilience is part innate, and definitely a big factor in the potential to reach a high level.
Grit is the most underrated part of talent. The ability to keep going, trust the process rather than the outcome, to have the conviction of improving in the long term even if you encounter short term hardship. There's a famous speech by Federer which popped up in my timeline recently where he talks about it in front of a bunch of graduates. Innate ability is just a small part of it.
Take Ovtcharov for example. The main reason that got him to where he is, is the relentless training ethic. Sure, if he didn't have any proper coordination it would have never taken off, but he made the difference by training like a beast.

I have talent. My hand-eye coordination is good, and I can process a lot of information quickly. But I don't train much, and the quality of training is not that good either. I have taken on bad habits and I'm honestly not confident. The result is a low level player with a fair bit of touch and insight but not the ability to act on it.

 

[JustANoob]

Everything above, also, talent can probably be quantified as "If _X_ and _Y_ put in the same amount of training/playing, but _X_ gets better results and consistently beats _Y_ , we can say _X_ has more talent than _Y_"

 

[Dr Evil]

Coordination and quick reflexes. At least as important is fast processing ability, the kind of talent that makes the game slow down for you as you get better (or not speed up so much as the play gets faster).

 

[lightspin]

Everything above, also, talent can probably be quantified as "If _X_ and _Y_ put in the same amount of training/playing, but _X_ gets better results and consistently beats _Y_ , we can say _X_ has more talent than _Y_"

I think this is the absolute correct answer.

 

[J-fed]

recently had a chat w my teammates but it seemed like no one could come up with any clear answer

curious to hear from the pros on this forum!

Very much over rated in every sport.
It is of course a reality but if a player has an awareness of it and dwells on it to any extent it’s a pretty sure thing they lack ‘growth mindset’ and as such, especially in young players, would be stronger candidates for burnout and attention related anxiety.

I highly recommend not focusing on talent at all.

 

[lightspin]

When I trained in China, I got to speak to one of the women's head coaches of the CNT. He said that Waldner was the most naturally talented player of all time. He also said that if you don't start seriously training at a young age, your skill ceiling will be very limited. He said had Waldner started at playing at age 15 and been given the best possible training and coaching China had to offer, Waldner would have ended up a mid-level province team player at best.

So I do agree that "talent" isn't something you should focus on. Getting the right training, starting young, and putting in a ton of hours will beat "talent" almost every time. Once everyone is doing the same training starting from the same age, which is rare, is when talent will make a difference.

 

[J-fed]

When I trained in China, I got to speak to one of the women's head coaches of the CNT. He said that Waldner was the most naturally talented player of all time. He also said that if you don't start seriously training at a young age, your skill ceiling will be very limited. He said had Waldner started at playing at age 15 and been given the best possible training and coaching China had to offer, Waldner would have ended up a mid-level province team player at best.

So I do agree that "talent" isn't something you should focus on. Getting the right training, starting young, and putting in a ton of hours will beat "talent" almost every time. Once everyone is doing the same training starting from the same age, which is rare, is when talent will make a difference.

Starting young is also a myth. In terms of serious dedication those who start specializing before 13 on the whole do worse than those who choose a sport at 13/14.
It is very well researched and evidenced at this point (See Nielsson especially) but the narrative of ‘catch ‘em young’ is still so attractive to those who have not looked into the reality of it.
Highly unlikely to do well if specializing very young but the ones who do make it are held up as examples of successful hot housing. All sports scientists know this syndrome at this point and it’s a well established genre of research.
Basically only closed skill sports show any potential benefit from being specialized young, but TT is arguably the most open skill set in all of sport. Maybe MMA has the edge.

 

[lightspin]

Sora started playing at 2.
Harimoto started at 2.
I believe the Lebrun brothers started at 2 or 3.
There are tons of kids in china training full time at age 6 or so.
If pressed, I could find a quote of one of the heads of the Japanese table tennis association who said the ideal age to introduced table tennis was age 2.

The latest age of someone that broke the top 30 I know of was Duda who said he started playing at age 10. His dad was a professional player, so I sincerely doubt they never hit the ball together before age 10, but who knows.

I think in other sports starting late isn't so much of a problem. In table tennis, I think it is absolutely necessary. But maybe you know of some people who started at age 13 or 14 and broke into the top 30 or 50.

 

[J-fed]

Sora started playing at 2.
Harimoto started at 2.
I believe the Lebrun brothers started at 2 or 3.
There are tons of kids in china training full time at age 6 or so.
If pressed, I could find a quote of one of the heads of the Japanese table tennis association who said the ideal age to introduced table tennis was age 2.

The latest age of someone that broke the top 30 I know of was Duda who said he started playing at age 10. His dad was a professional player, so I sincerely doubt they never hit the ball together before age 10, but who knows.

I think in other sports starting late isn't so much of a problem. In table tennis, I think it is absolutely necessary. But maybe you know of some people who started at age 13 or 14 and broke into the top 30 or 50.

Yes. Sport exposure at a young age is not what I’m talking about, the issue is specialization and if you look into each case closely you’ll find the vast majority were doing many other things.
That players start young doesn't contradict what I wrote or poke any holes in the body of research.
The Lebrun example is an easy one because I’ve seen one of them doing some pretty cool stuff with a soccer ball so there’s an indication that they weren’t only playing TT from 2.
There are extreme outliers but they tend to be in golf or chess and become famous because of the comfortable and easily sold story. They are extremely are in open skill sports though, and if they were coerced into hard training rather than insisting on it by themselves the long term prognosis is not at all great.
Trouble is people hang their hat on the Tiger Woods story or similar ones without looking much deeper. Golf is a closed skill sport so it’s possible to hot house it, also he was apparently intrinsically motivated but we now see his extreme mental health issues and wonder how true that is.
Someone like Roger Federer who just ducked in and out of various sports until 12, then decided for himself that tennis was the one he loved and could excel in is more the norm. Much more.
I’m just offering research based knowledge that might open up some avenues for folks to look into.
Young age specialists do very badly compared to those who play around and experiment then choose to dedicate around 13. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be playing from age two or that starting young is at all bad.

 

[jonol]

It's very difficult to imagine someone who wasn't already interested in the sport, suddenly starting at age 13/14 and then committing most of their free time to becoming professional.

By that age, most people who intend to play the sport for a living have already been playing consistently with coaching for at least a few years.

There are some anomalies that may start at a later age and turn out to be phenoms at a sport, but I'd argue that there's also far less people in that category in the first place.

Also, who's to say that the people who started at later ages and were successful, would not have been even more successful if they started earlier?

If the claim is that young age specialists fare worse for table tennis, I'd expect actual examples. Studies are nice - but if they're accurate, why are all the best table tennis players in the world the ones who started much younger?

 

[J-fed]

It's very difficult to imagine someone who wasn't already interested in the sport, suddenly starting at age 13/14 and then committing most of their free time to becoming professional.

By that age, most people who intend to play the sport for a living have already been playing consistently with coaching for at least a few years.

There are some anomalies that may start at a later age and turn out to be phenoms at a sport, but I'd argue that there's also far less people in that category in the first place.

Who's to say that the people who started at later ages and were successful, would not have been even more successful if they started earlier?

Again, this is off point. Who said they were not interested? Or that they suddenly start at that age? That’s adding false assumptions to the topic. People who do well are usually joyfully experimenting in a variety of sports or at least don't limit themselves strictly to their main sport or train hard enough to be considered specializing up to that point.
It is not an anomaly to do well when you specialize from 13, it is the overwhelmingly observed pattern of excellence.
Instinctively people find that hard to accept but when you read the research or talk to the researchers it becomes much easier to envisage how it happens.

 

[jonol]

How is it the overwhelmingly observed pattern of excellence when the majority if not all of the current top10 players were receiving serious coaching in table tennis much younger?

There's no 'instinctive' aspect to it. The evidence just points to the opposite.

 

[J-fed]

How is it the overwhelmingly observed pattern of excellence when the majority if not all of the current top10 players were receiving serious coaching in table tennis much younger?

There's no 'instinctive' aspect to it. The evidence just points to the opposite.

No, it doesn’t; and yes it is largely instinctive to want to believe that putting kids onto a path to stardom is effective when it’s clearly not the case based on a large body of evidence. It appeals to the element in us that wishes to simplify and look for an obvious and controllable method.

Serious coaching is not a problem at all if it is joyously accepted though. Neither is starting young, but young specialization is clearly damaging when you look at the wider pattern of success in open skilled sports.

I opened up the topic so that some curious people might be made aware of the extremely significant gains made in understanding youth development in recent decades then look into why people who specialize from around age 13 do much better on the whole.
That’s as far as I’ll go.
I hope you look into it deeper and gain some insight into the concept and appreciate the robust, consensus based evidence for it.
Best place to start would be the book ‘Range’ by David Epstein. ‘The sports gene’ by the same writer is also very accessible sports science based writing.
‘Range’ nails this topic though and references much of the relevant research and information that makes this topic so misunderstood by the layman
Here's his TED talk where he explains the basics
.

 

[J-fed]

This is what the trend of specialization tends to look like. The early birds do well young but then get overtaken by the later specializers. It doesn't mean that starting young is bad, just that focusing intently on one sport from young is a poor strategy.

 

[J-fed]

What Makes a Champion? Early Multidisciplinary Practice, Not Early Specialization, Predicts World-Class Performance​

Arne Güllich 1, Brooke N Macnamara 2, David Z Hambrick 3
Affiliations Expand

• PMID: 34260336
• DOI: 10.1177/1745691620974772

Abstract​

What explains the acquisition of exceptional human performance? Does a focus on intensive specialized practice facilitate excellence, or is a multidisciplinary practice background better? We investigated this question in sports. Our meta-analysis involved 51 international study reports with 477 effect sizes from 6,096 athletes, including 772 of the world's top performers. Predictor variables included starting age, age of reaching defined performance milestones, and amounts of coach-led practice and youth-led play (e.g., pickup games) in the athlete's respective main sport and in other sports. Analyses revealed that (a) adult world-class athletes engaged in more childhood/adolescent multisport practice, started their main sport later, accumulated less main-sport practice, and initially progressed more slowly than did national-class athletes; (b) higher performing youth athletes started playing their main sport earlier, engaged in more main-sport practice but less other-sports practice, and had faster initial progress than did lower performing youth athletes; and (c) youth-led play in any sport had negligible effects on both youth and adult performance. We illustrate parallels from science: Nobel laureates had multidisciplinary study/working experience and slower early progress than did national-level award winners. The findings suggest that variable, multidisciplinary practice experiences are associated with gradual initial discipline-specific progress but greater sustainability of long-term development of excellence.
Keywords: early specialization; meta-analysis; performance; practice; skill acquisition.

 

[Amaken23]

In my opinion....talent is simply ability for someone to learn/understand a certain thing faster than most people do....whether it is sport, trade, etc. Either by having appropriate physical tools (dexterity, agility, hand-eye coordination) or mental ( patience, analytic mind, deduction skill)....of course it does not substitute for hard work as talent is nothing if you do not practise.