How do i improve with a sh*t coach

It's difficult to improve in TT without a good environment but you're lucky that you have a school where they let you play for 6 hours a week.

Now that you have a taste for the game it's time to spread your wings and find a local club. The ex-national team player should be able to point you in the right direction.

find a club

Talk to the good coach and tell him you really want to be serious about tt, what advice does he have?

Try to talk with the good coach and arrange a private lesson. Or a group lesson with a couple of you friends who are serious about training.

Finding a club and coach who is good for you are the biggest thing that will help.

But these things may also help.

1) Finding a training partner who is close to your level and working on training skills.

2) Working on shadow strokes and shadow footwork can be surprisingly useful in helping you improve.

It doesn’t sound like the training sessions with the woman are very useful. You can go or not. But don’t think of that as training. Think of those sessions as an opportunity to play and have fun if you go to them.


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy

All the previous advice is spot on. I would like to add:

1) Ask the developing players that you are partnered with that want to kill every shot and play games if they could be cooperative and practice instead.

2) Who is the 'bad' coach doing multi-ball with? Slightly higher level students than you? Or students whom she deemed 'serious'? Does that mean she think you are not serious?

3) Why did she want you to hit with the developing players? Does she always pick you? Does she think you are of a high-enough skill level to help the others? Does she think you are a good coach? Does she think the others respond well to you or like you over others? Does she randomly pick other students to work with the others? Does she pick more than 1 student to hit with the developing players in a 3 hr session?

4) IMO, you should reframe your perceptions:
a) If the developing players only want to play games and kill every shot, then you should view this as an opportunity to train your: gameplay/tactics/defense. Use this opportunity to figure out each partner's weaknesses. If all your partners are truly developing then work your defense. If they always focus on kill shots and you are higher level than them, you should be able to return the shots. If you can't, work your defense, your footwork to get to the ball, etc. If some of them are decent enough, work your gameplay/tactics. Work your serves, work your 3rd ball attacks. Work on pushing...
b) Your time with the 'good' coach is about self-perfection and skills acquisition. Your time with the 'bad' coach can be used on self-preservation - your gameplay, tactics, defense, etc.
c) You are access to 6 hours free of charge to play TT. When you join some club, you will have to pay some fee, either visitor's fee per day or membership. They may have student rates however, you have a golden opportunity with 6 hrs per week to play free at school.

Focus on what you have instead of what you don't have. Everything is an opportunity if your reframe your thinking.

I truly hope this helped and I didn't come across as too preachy.

Good luck in your training!

I wish I got such "bad" coach and training when I was young.

I think you might want to spend a bit extra time play with other players besides school. You might learn more when playing with advanced players at your school and appreciate your progress by beating other non-school players. That possibly encourages you play more and feel less frustrated.

Yep. I echo everyone else. You can't rely on the school training alone. You need to find players better than you and as interested.

Try making up games within the games to play with the slammers. We used to put a spare bat at each end of the table and to win the point you had to hit the bat and the other player had to fail to return it. If you did not hit the bat on the point that the other player did not return it then you did not win the point. This takes the need to slam it out of the equation. It also makes you work on targeting points on the table. If you have to - tell them you learned about this on line from serious players and that they said this was good for your game. There are ways of turning your time with others into productive time. There are all kinds of games like this. Like playing on just one half of each side across the diagonal (it amounts to getting them to mostly hit forehands or backhands with you). Just decide what you want to work on each week and make a not too obvious game out of it. Or point out that the "coach" is doing multi-ball over with others and suggest that hitting backhands/forehands to each other is as close as we are going to get to doing what the coach is doing and so you should do that. Or maybe decide to just chop all the time for one practice and lob all the time in another etc. Another idea is what Tim Boggan (a former US Champ) described in his book "Winning Table Tennis". He explains that he would try to mimic the way other players played against him, even if it was inferior, just to see if he could do it. he even developed a no look shot from watching another player. He felt it helped his game to learn new things.

If none of this works (and even if it does) have fun. I wish my local club was open 6 hours a week.

You're complaining about something you really have no reason or right to expect. You can't expect a group coach for what might be a large group of kids to give you personal coaching for any significant duration or even pay much attention to what you're doing. She's mostly there to shout out exercises and to bandage whoever hits their head with their bats.
Just find the best kid there and go on a table with him/her and practice. That's what you do in a big group training session.
That's what we used to do in music school too.. Sure there were teachers and there were bands you can be assigned to etc but mostly we'd just find other kids who we felt were most fun to play with and just played together, ignoring the 'system'.

Also instead of complaining here you should be telling that 'trash' coach what your expectation and desires are and how you're feeling and what you'd like to do. That'd be more mature than blaming her for something you have no right to expect from her.


Also get personal coaching

Agree with most of the other posts above and suggest you re-frame the way you look at it. You are getting at least some exposure to a strong coach, and have access to other players and facilities.

Most importantly, have you discussed your training goals with the coach you don't like? Especially for a new coach, this can be useful feedback and really nothing for you to lose by sharing your goals with them.

Good luck in any event, and don't let the minor setbacks in life hold you back!!

It sounds like the coach you don't like might even realize they are out of their depth with the more advanced players since they work multi-ball with the ones you identify as starting players and leave the others to their own devices.

Maybe point out to the coach that the free style play each others matches isn't working for most of you (if you are not the only one complaining). If that is the case then perhaps she would agree to make someone in the advance group an assistant/junior coach to work drills or at least help pair people up to repetitively work specific skills or whatever the group and the adult coach agree to. It never hurts to ask if you do it respectfully.

Xanderngzien said:

Thank you all for your advice. The thing is that the good coach is the one that gives me multiball while the bad coach gives starting players multiball. Like that coach is so bad she cant even give proper underspin. She doesnt even know how to play tt. All she did was completed the tt coaching course and thats it.

Also i am already sort of in a club. I am in my good coaches private club already. The people there are mostly better than me. But how do i improve during these 2 sessions weekly because im forced to go but dont wanna waste 6 hours of my life

Click to expand...

Is there even one other player at or near your level during those 6 hours?

I will add one more comment:

Do you know the 3 types of opponents (can be 4 actually) you need to improve?

1) Those better than you - almost everyone mentioned this. Generally you will not be able to beat them. See how they win their points. Relax and be worry free, as they are higher-level than you and you don't expect to win, you can work your game.

2) Those of the same level as you. These are the players you need to learn how to beat as they are your level and if you played tournaments, you will play more players of your level. Work on your game as well as how to beat them. What I mean is, you have a killer FH loop, but they are good counter-loopers, but they have no BH. Instead of working your best shot, work on their weakness.. look to exploit it. The name of the game is not to always play your best shot, but to win points, an easy way to win points is to pinpoint opponent's weakness and attack it.

3) Those lower level than you. You should always win against this type of opponent. This lets you really work your game. Play the developing players and work your attacks or if you are a defensive player, work your defense. You should be worry-free as you should win.

Most players place extra stress on themselves and their game when they worry about the outcome. Relax, focus on the current point. Play one point at a time. If you play higher level players or lower level players, you should be worry-free in your play.

There are your 3 types of opponents. But wait osph, you said there is a possible 4th opponent, and you only listed 3.

The 4th opponent will always be your main and most feared opponent ... the one that is hardest to beat ... that 4th opponent is yourself. Master your all aspects of your game, master your emotions, and you will have mastered yourself, the 4th opponent.

If i was you, i wouldn't want multi-ball from the bad coach, i would take the opportunity/gift given to me of working with developing players and use one, some or all of the above advice. Or change the focus to a win-win scenario ... ask the kids, see the coach there? She is working with those players, want to be good like those players? Instead of playing matches, let's practice instead. One drill/game i've seen coaches do even with adults is to see how balls they can hit without a miss... shoot for easy goals like 5, so they have a sense of accomplishment and pride... they see you are not killing the ball and also helping them meet the goal of 5 shots without a miss... once they accomplish that, set the next plateau at 10 or whatever. Be reasonable, dont shoot for 100, as that will put them into a defeated mindset. Think win-win!

With the good coaches club, as the players are better than you, practice with them. If they only play games, suggest a handicap, as that would make it more even. Or master yourself and your Ego and need of winning... you have a great opportunity to play better players, go and be worry-free and attack!

Truly hope you are able to make use of the time when the bad coach is around.

Good luck in your training!

Bring a squash racket to multiball practice, hit the kneecap of whoever is gunna do multiball training with coach and take their place. Replace the balls in the training box with golf balls, use your squash racket and hit away towards coach. She will get the idea and start wearing PPE... or she will ask what changed your behavior... and give you more than one ball for match.

Still, I agree with all the previous posters that you are in a much better position starting TT and most of us when we started.

Turn into a Trouble Maker, in fact, get that lettered on the back of your TT jersey, Act the part, give her trouble (do well in training) and become a bad-azz. You will change opinions that way.

Challenge the coach. If you can beat her, you can complain about her coaching and make demands as a stronger player. If she beats you, show interest and ask her about where you went wrong and what you should do to improve.

change schools
get private coaching

these 2 are just some normal things any young athlete would do to follow the sport of they dream