Can a late starter become a quality veteran player?

says Spin and more spin.
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What do you think this coach did differently? 1 coach here started a new player in his 60s on antispin on the backhand to help him be competitive quicker (not sure if It's worked).

I have to be honest with you. I am not 100% sure what he did. I will explain some of what I saw. And maybe I will explain something I noticed in the few lessons I did with him as well.

With the woman, I really am not sure what he did, but I was impressed. She was taking lessons with someone my level who was coaching her for a while and it was clear she was having trouble getting the racket to connect with the ball on a consistent basis. And I did not notice much improvement till she started working with this other coach. But I never got to see the lessons. I just saw, after she started working with him she starting to get notably better.

With the guy, it was very interesting. He was quite stubborn and had in his head that he had to be trying a lot harder than he needed to be trying. And some of what the coach did was have the guy film the sessions and then tell him specific things to watch when he was trying too hard and it was clear and easy to see.

But it had to be more than that. They guy's serves started getting better. There was a point where he could not return any of my serves. And the coach would have me play games with him as part of his lessons to find things the guy needed to work on. And at a certain point, he was able to return most of my serves even as I varied them. So, his return of serve improved an amazing amount to the point that he was reading enough of the variations and deception to get most of the serves on the table and the returns were simple but they were a huge improvement from him just not being able to read what I was doing or compensate for the kinds of spin I was giving him. At that point, the serves that gave him the most trouble were the no spin or low spin serves. Whereas before, he handled them okay but responded to all the higher spin serves as though they had little spin. And if I just gave him serves with little spin over and over, he would begin to adjust.

But, the way I think about it, he was really able to see these two individually and read what they needed to work on. Because the improvements were whole game....not stroke skills or what they looked like. Tactics, serves, return of serves....things that made it so they could win matches against players that looked technically better than them where the other player would make a great shot and think the point was over only to find the ball actually came back.

But one thing I noticed with how he worked when he worked with me is: when we did multiball, my first thought was that it was too slow and too soft....that it was a little two easy. But he used that to get me to move to the balls better and do all the aspects of the multiball drills with more skill and slowly, and it crept up on me, I realized, he was slowly speeding things up as I was doing the drills with more competence and shoring up skills that had not fully gelled. So, I think, some of what he did well was really pay attention and watch even while in drills, and read the needs of the people he was working with, and then problem solve ways of getting them to improve on those things that were within their skill sets. Because it wasn't too flashy. And both players were playing with smooth on both sides so he did not use equipment to mask weaknesses. Although, if either had decided they wanted to play with special rubbers, I am sure he would have helped them know how to use them.
 
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From my experience adults in general are better than kids. Feel like they are more motivated because they have more limited time so they really choose to be there, have better attention span and have easier to grasp what you really want to say. So talking about playing styles and tactics are easier as well.

Do not like the use of talent. Feel it is to undefined. Feel like talent could be that you are good at listening or a lot of things.

Motivation and attention span only go so far and there are significant disadvantages unique to adults that make it harder to adapt to and absorb new information, both on the mental and physical aspects of the game.

Talent usually refers to the motor aspects of the game. Feeling for the ball. Ability to read and handle spin, read ball flight, know where the ball might be coming. Adapt on the fly. You are right that it is not easy to define or quantify, however, it is very easy to see when it exists in a player and when it does not.

As for the OP - the answer to your question of "can a late starter become a quality veteran", depending on your definition of quality, is: yes it is possible, but the odds are definitely against you. From a practical standpoint, there is finding a coach who will care enough about coaching a beginning adult. Making the time. Avoiding injuries. Once you get past that, there are things like being able to correct preconceived notions both in your mental processing while at the table, and your motor movement to execute.
 
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Decent local league player is not that high a standard. The OP is not trying to win WVC, he wants to win 50% in local league. It is definitely achievable. But it is not easy.

Zyu81 gave you good advice. Get a coach who pays attention to you. Train and play as much as you can, but don't go overboard with physical workouts and get injured. Be patient. Table tennis takes a long time to learn. Give yourself five years minimum to reach the decent standard that you seek.
 
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So first I would say that adults do not learn better than kids, they learn differently. Also in my experience it does get more difficult to learn new movements with increasing age. I approached this challenge (for table tennis & piano & programming) and found the following:

* As a kid you learn by copying exactly without asking questions. You follow instructions by the coach. You can learn things naturally with a good coach.
* As an adult any input first goes through the cognitive filter. Your subconscious mind filters out the info which doesn't fit your overall mental state. For example, I can play a piano piece and not hear the wrong notes, as I know how the piece needs to sound (e.g. having listened to Grigory Sokolov ...). I have to record myself and listen to the recording. Same for table tennis, I could have sworn that my movements now are like say YangYang's for topspin but sadly the video proved otherwise. So I have to analyze things again and find the right body image to find out what the coach is trying to tell me. The other problem I had was that my movement looks perfect in front of a mirror but when a ball comes at me I fall back to the wrong movement.

I think at the end TT is the most fun and safest at old age when played technically correctly so recording and pattern matching to a great player (e.g. YouTube Kai Zhang for topspin) is probably best.

I found that my way of learning is based on pattern matching so you need to find out what your way of learning is. So e.g. for learning a new programming language I need to see good code and this is how I learn. Also age is relative, I am perfectly comfortable learning Full Stack Web Development right now (my sons told me what I need to learn).

Another point is that a great coach can at least tell you how to get from current point A to desired point B and has many options to get you there... For short pips I cobbled the knowledge together from YouTube and web sources mostly, and from my last 2 coaches.
 
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* As an adult any input first goes through the cognitive filter. Your subconscious mind filters out the info which doesn't fit your overall mental state. For example, I can play a piano piece and not hear the wrong notes, as I know how the piece needs to sound (e.g. having listened to Grigory Sokolov ...). I have to record myself and listen to the recording. Same for table tennis, I could have sworn that my movements now are like say YangYang's for topspin but sadly the video proved otherwise. So I have to analyze things again and find the right body image to find out what the coach is trying to tell me. The other problem I had was that my movement looks perfect in front of a mirror but when a ball comes at me I fall back to the wrong movement.

Agreed. I would say that kids mostly go with intuition, and adults try to go more cognitive and analyzing way.


Slight offtop
So e.g. for learning a new programming language I need to see good code and this is how I learn. Also age is relative, I am perfectly comfortable learning Full Stack Web Development right now (my sons told me what I need to learn).

Don't agree. I don't want to sound like a douche but after working with 2 dozen programming languages, I can see that most of them are doing same. Slightly different way, some times with added layer sugar, but they are after all almost the same. I think that learning TT is much different than learning new programming language. I usually do just fine in first days with new language just by using docs as a "dictionary", assuming you already have experienced with said paradigm. If that is not the case good code will not be enough, since they differ on conceptual level. (having 7-8 years experience, as 25 y/o, and working with more than 15 languages over that time professionally).
 
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To clarify, I know the main programming paradigms already (from Pascal, Lisp, Perl, Python, C, C++, bash, ...) and use pattern matching to put the new language/pattern in the correct bucket. I agree you need to learn the paradigms first. So I'd say for a complete beginner a good coach is a necessity but as an adult you can use the cognitive skills with the key YouTube videos so at least you understand where you are going to go. Also you can use prior sport experience where it applies (Tennis is dangerous but Karatedo fits pretty well). A good coach would need to assess how to get an older (potentially too heavy) body into better shape without getting hurt given the explosive movements in TT.
 
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I know a guy named Randy Hou who started in his 30s and by 50 was nearly 2300 US level. My guess is that's about the best possible for somebody starting then*. He's a little older than me. I've played him many times, came close once or twice (deuce in the last game), never beat him. Lost badly several times (annihilation might be the accurate description). Weird shot pips penholder who can hit from both sides balls you wouldnt think were possible, great defense, deceptive serves, calm as a stone, always plays his best on the important points. Sadly, knee problems really curtailed him at a point. I wonder how good he'd have gotten if he had been serious as a kid?

* All Chinese people play some in school, but he didn't get serious until his late 30s.
 
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To the OP, play a lot. And as someone else said, find a coach who knows how to teach older players. They don't grow on trees.
 
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From a practical standpoint, there is finding a coach who will care enough about coaching a beginning adult.

Maybe it's different in Germany but I've had absolutely zero issues with this during my short 3 year career as an adult semi-beginner*

I've tried quite a few different coaches and pretty much all of them really seem to enjoy coaching adult beginners as long as the pupil is serious in his/her ambition. Some of these coaches are pro coaches and some of them are "normal" coaches that normally coach developing kids/teenagers. Chemistry is everything so I've settled with a guy with a cool caribbean accent.

* I don't really count the 2 years that I played between the age of 10 to 12 with minimal coaching
 
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