Morning class cancelled, so I had a few hours time to play table tennis.
I showed high level TT to a friend of mine recently, who I had casually hit with a few times, a total beginner. He got interested in the game and I'm now playing with him and teaching him. He likes Wang Hao, Oh Sang-Eun and Waldner.
We'd done a bit of basic drilling and stuff to get him started, just basic coordination things.
Today he was at the level where I think I could get to seriously teaching him how to hit the ball. I got to teaching him the basics of stance, forehand counterhit and some theory on how to hit forehands.
All I really did was show him the stance and adjust him little by little by many means. That took some time.
Then I started teaching him the basics of forehand counterhits. The thing that worked best was to take him side-by-side with me and to make him look at me and copy my stance with my instruction, then we did slow shadow swings and he copied me.
We did shadows for a bit, then I made him shadow by himself once he started getting it.
Once he was looking good, I showed him how to self-hit the ball over the table and how to do a counterhit on the ball. Similar to what Carl has shown. He could do one bounce comfortably, so I saw no need for double bounce.
He did that, netted the ball, kept hitting it over my head etc. for some time and little by little I adjusted him and he started getting it. First he went very slow and I had to keep correcting him to use less arm and more body. More body and keep the arm static, I screamed!
The ball was slow and high for some time but he was getting it. Finally, we progressed to a stage where he could consistently hit the ball with a mostly technically correct swing. Keeping the arm pretty much static and just rotating his body to produce the power. He had some unnecessary movements and whatever, and I kept correcting him and urged him to understand that all he really needs to do is turn his body from his hips.
We did that for an extended period of time and he got his quality to a level that is pretty good actually. Very little effort on his part, and an okay amount of power. His consistency was very high and he could get the ball deep on the table and low when I told him to.
Then I told him to produce a faster ball and I showed him how. Rotating the core faster, at a different timing and tempo. His first shots at the different tempo went completely out of the playing field but he eventually got it. I told him to move a little bit faster, and start turning a little bit later but hit the ball at the same height of the bounce. I was telling him to hit the ball on the top of the bounce, and I adjusted his timing until I thought it was good. He was hitting it a fraction too late but eventually we corrected it a bit. But it was not too far off to begin with.
Now he can do quite nice counterhits onto a self hit ball at different speeds, with a good consistency. I then told him to try to take a 2nd swing onto the ball that comes off my block, and it took him a bit of time, but he started landing those. Obviously, they were not nearly as good as his self hit ball. He uses too much arm and not enough body on those. That will take some time to correct. Just natural I think.
After he could get his bat on the ball and he could do a few in a row with okay form, I started moving him a little bit. Then we got into footwork and more stance related things. He is rushing a bit and I think he tenses up a bit when he moves to a live ball, but it's progress. He was reaching before that. Now he uses his legs.
To finish it, we played some "games" where he serves me self-hit counterhit, and then we start driving and pushing back and forth. His consistency is much higher than before the training. Sometimes he does a nice swing if the ball is where he wants it. Sometimes not. That's okay I think. He also started moving to some wide balls that he did not move to before, and could even return some of them. High and without quality, but it's an improvement. A few times he drove the ball past me with speed that I didn't expect.
This took about 5 hours. He is still a very new beginner, of course.
I don't think I have taught him any bad things, and he has clearly improved, so I think today was good. I got to work on my own footwork and counterhit form, too. This also trains my block, because I need to keep it consistent so people can hit an easy ball. Overall, a pretty good day.
