Tournament Prep

Serve practice every day. Quality over quantity. Pick best couple of serves and get them as sharp as possible. Lots of matchplay, including against weaker players. Get in the habit of winning.

Unless you are Randy Daytona from "Balls of fury", nothing you do over the course of just one month will magically turn you into the winner of that big national tournament.

Winning tournaments requires countless hours of dedicated and deliberate practice and then a healthy doze of luck on top of it. Realistically, the best you can do in a tournament is be positive, relaxed and compete to the best of your ability (and all of that is the direct result of these countless hours of practice).

There is a great book on the subject - "Ping pong for fighters" by Tahl Leibovitz. I highly recommend it.

Andy44 said:

Serve practice every day. Quality over quantity. Pick best couple of serves and get them as sharp as possible. Lots of matchplay, including against weaker players. Get in the habit of winning.

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I agree with Andy - quality over quantity.

Concentrate on your strong points and polish them. This way you'll gain lots of confidence in your game and confidence in table tennis is gold.

Sometimes playing against weaker players is also a good advice. It will make you focus on scoring points without unnecessary overuse of power.

This timeframe is too short to measurable improve a lot of stuff.

Days and weeks prior to tourney get good continuous hydration, exercise, rest and nutrition for back to back days.

Going into a tourney with any of those messed up will hurt performance.

This is another important topic that is underappreciated and not discussed enough.

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The other major area going into tourney is mental.

This is also affected by physical rest nutrition etc, but also controlled to a good extent by the player.

This is also another under discussed topic.

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Der_Echte said:

[...] Days and weeks prior to tourney get good continuous hydration [...]

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Der, could you explain this a little more? Seems interesting.

Pretty simple, your body and mind (and immune system) will perform much better if for back to back to back days you get the physical stuff right.

One might get by missing a few hrs sleep on one night, but when one has for a week straight slept right and long, it is much easier to handle stress or a physical load, especially on a long tourney day.

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Modern day stuff really gets in the way of these basics.

So many players enter a tourney rushed, not enough sleep, poor nutrition, wrong cycle... yeah adrenaline can carry us, but the crash happens at some point.

You can get by much better messing up one or two factors if one has a week or more straight good rest and nutrition.

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Der_Echte said:

One might get by missing a few hrs sleep on one night, but when one has for a week straight slept right and long, it is much easier to handle stress or a physical load, especially on a long tourney day.

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Sure, but just this "good continuous hydration" part. Does it mean to drink like specific amount of water every hour or so ... for weeks before the tourney?

What I found out for sure is that drinking water between sets, helps me to be relaxed.

It might take one a few days to get hydration and mineral levels in a good zone... but crappy hydration the day or two prior can wreck anyone's performance.

Flip side is too much straight water in too short a time frame will flush minerals and electrolytes from system and open up a lot of electrical and cellular problems.

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As said earlier in a post. I think it's important to drill your skills vs your regular mates a week or two before and try to improve weaknesses but I don't play someone real tough in a match just shortly before a tournament. Get in the habit of wining and keep your spirits up.

I want to be going into the tournament ultra confident and playing at what I believe is a great level. So if I play a match, it's usually vs a weaker opponent to keep my spirits up. If you're not like me and you're not effected by wins & loses at all, well congrats for starters and knock yourself out. But if you're anything like me, mental is as big of the approach as anything.

A few weeks ago I won my class singles at a local tournament. While I'd guess that the way the seeding broke out, I was probably the #1 seed. However, I've never won a class singles event before. So I wanted to get that monkey off my back. Had finished 2nd a couple of times before. But never first in a singles event. In that tournament, I played well but I remember hearing the voice in my head "just keep fighting" over & over. Consequently, there were several times in certain games where I was down say 4-5 points in a game where a more rational thought might be, "well this game is most likely over" but I didn't think that. "Just keep fighting". And it worked. Shoot one game I was down 8-10 with match point being down 1 game to 2 in the semi-finals. But again I remember thinking "just keep fighting" and came back to win that match.

Hope it helps you. Good luck.

Have you seen this price on Amazon....£140.85!!

vvk1 said:

..........
There is a great book on the subject - "Ping pong for fighters" by Tahl Leibovitz. I highly recommend it.

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Haha. But you don't have to buy the leather paperback edition ...

The kindle edition is just £7.63.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ping-Pong-...618497&sr=8-3&keywords=ping+pong+for+fighters