Do you think deaf people control their nerves better in table tennis?

That depends. Many of them can actually hear to a certain extent, and according to some there is a constant buzz, so they suffer more in a noisy environment because they can't really pinpoint the source of the noise, and that can disorient them.

Try wearing earplugs when you play and see if it helps. For me, noise itself isnt a problem unless it is sudden, abrupt and unexpected.

bzing said:

I bet deaf people manage the stress levels a lot better than other players. I can't never play my best in competetive matches and I'm always too nervous so I never play as good. But I noticed one of the biggest factors are the noises, not only produced by the opponent but also the audience. And in these matches that are competetive the crucial thing is to stay focus, and all the noises kinda qualms it down. I bet deaf people have it much easier and are generally a lot better in staying calm and relaxed during the matches.

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I have an insight into this both within the TT world and outside of it.....

Stress and easier ???

No not really, the stresses and distractions just manifest from different sources.

For example, we have a very hard of hearing guy in our league (95% deaf), so he hears very loud noises which is very occasional and sometimes not at all.
But for him, he gets disturbed/distracted if the referee doesn't look at him directly so that he can lip read the score. In a lot of occasions he takes his own points scoreboard, but he still has to check this in between points which takes his focus away from the table and the next point.
He has learnt to deal with this over the years, but you can see it every now and again if its a new ref (new player) at a match or the scorer doesn't get used/updated straight away.

Growing up I lived near a deaf college and a lot of these players used to play in our 8ball pool league. The noise and banter didn't bother them (they couldn't hear what was said), but as one sense goes, others are heightened. So for these guys their sensitivity to movement from people walking on the floor, their awareness of people around them and in their periphery vision distracted them instead.

The another good example I can think of was my grandparents were both deaf too. I recall their golden wedding party.. I was about 10 at the time and at this party my grandparents and their friends were up on the dance floor in perfect timing to the music. Well as you can imagine at 10 years old I was completely baffled by this.... I could hear the music and the beat, but they could not!!! How did they keep perfect timing ???

As it turns out, they could feel the vibrations of the music through the floor and being a party the music was quite loud, so they felt the vibrations of the sound waves on their body ... this blew me away !!!

I don't have any observations on deaf TT players, so I can't say for sure.
But I presume that playing sounds of ball and bats give at least 50% of the information, needed to compute the reaction.
Its the rythm of the play, if you can't feel it, you'll be lost in space and time.

There was an advise to try playing with earplugs - my advise is to not try it, you may get yourself injured because of coordination loss.

Edit - in what environment do you train?
If you train in a hall with several tables, where a lot of players are creating a lot of noise, your mind would train to focus on what happens on your very table and you will hear only the rythm of your game.

zeio said:

That depends. Many of them can actually hear to a certain extent, and according to some there is a constant buzz, so they suffer more in a noisy environment because they can't really pinpoint the source of the noise, and that can disorient them.

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Me.

So this is some form of deafness too.

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