Frustrated & Confused

[Gozo Aruna]

Hi everyone and Happy New Year,

As a new year reso, I wanted to better my TT and up my game to take on my club Tier 1 players. Hence I sign up with a coach one on one lessons. This coming weekend will be my sixth lesson.

I am doing well in my coaching lesson. The coach goes through the usual ball feeding multi-ball session. FH drive, BH drive, FH loop against backspin ball, BH loop etc. Then we proceeded to combination exercise like push then loop then kill drive for a winner. Everything seems fine and I am doing well in the coaching session meaning I can perform these drills relatively well, say above 50% margin or higher. The coach even congratulate me for having good strokes.

Now what is the problem you may ask? Everything seems hunky-dory right? Why should I complain right?

Wrong! Herein lies my problem.

Whenever I got back to my club to play matches with my clubmates, I am doing worse than before I get the coach. I am losing to even players that I used to beat. My score line against my on-par players is going downhill. For example, there is this guy who my usual score line is like losing to him 11-9, 11-8 etc, these days I am like losing to him under five CONSISTENTLY!

Why oh why?

If I am doing shitty during my coaching and I carry these bad habits to my game I can accept it, meaning I SUXS!

But now the problem is I am doing OK'ish on drills but I just cannot seem to carry these skills to game play, and it seems to be even worse than before.

Coaches & experienced players: HELP pls.

 

[brokenball]

I have had 3 coaches. I hated multi ball. I could do that with a robot. My third coach was a 2500 player and fun to play with but he wasn't that good at evaluating what I was doing wrong. Cameras are brutally honest at show what you are doing wrong as along as either you or the coach can see the flaws.
I was able to see mine and it made a big difference.

Playing people requires the ability to quickly figure out your relative strength to their relative weakness. Right now my best practice partner has a very effective BH flat hit where the ball just clears the net and lands close to the edge of the table. Since he plays with 802-40 I know he doesn't loop with his BH so simply keeping the ball low works when hitting to his back hand. Hitting to is pocket works too. He avoids my FH. So I am often being forced to play my BH ( my weakest ) against his BH ( his strongest ). He is also more mobile than me but I have reach and better serves.

This is easy for me because I play against the same guy every week. The problem in a tournament is that you need to figure out your opponent quickly.
You say you are playing at a club. If so you should have plenty of time to figure out everyone's strength and weakness. At some point you will find there are some that are better than you and you will struggle. When I played against my 2500 coach with a 5 ball handicap I would lose. I would win with a ball handicap because I have nasty serves. Another advantage I had was reach. Playing the short game near the net was a more favorable play for me to play because he was small and could reach close to the net. I had to avoid open rallies. However balls hit to his pocket were still effective.

My point is that you need to evaluate everyone and learn their strengths and weakness..

 

[Lazer]

Don’t worry, that’s expected when things are changed. It will come around,

Cheers
L-zr

 

[Funk Fu Master]

Hi,

What you are going through is not uncommon .. a lot of players (even at high/pro levels) go through this, and quite understandably, it can be frustrating ..

Maybe, you're just going through, a low-phase, in your game.. Happens to the best..

Have you been able identify any weakness in your game .. ? Is your coach present, during your match-play ? If not , then I would suggest that you request him to be present during a couple of your matches/.. He should be able to spot the gaps in your game .. If your coach just cannot be present during your matches, I would then suggest that you get a friend/club-mate/practice-partner to record a few of your matches.. You can then see for yourself and/or show your coach, and identify the gaps, and work on improvements..

The mental & mettle aspect of your game, is as important as the skill aspect .. Stay positive..

 

[Dominikk85]

It is actually normal that your game results initially get worse if you make changes to your stroke technique because you were used to your old technique plus you are likely taking more risk if you play "properly" (topspin instead of push) thus making more errors.

Ignore results for a couple weeks and instead focus on playing like you practiced even if it means you are losing initially, especially going from pushing to topspin will take an adjustment period
​​​​​​

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

@GozoI've been working with different coaches for YEARS, and its hard to see the results in matches. Although there's definitely real progress at doing drills, at technique itselfI think there's many factors at play:

- matchplay and drills are 2 different things. its good to have basic drills to improve technique and footwork, but some of your drills should look more like matchplay, with elements of randomness. You may want also to do some starting with serve or receive as well

- in match, there's the mental pressure, its easy to get nervous, or to get distracted, and you don't play the same than when practising

- is your coach watching you play in tournaments ? LIVE ? or at least RECORDING ? that would be a good thing, he would understand better what you need to focus on and improve during matches

- then of course, every opponent is different, and many will propose tactics or some ball quality that you've little experienced before, or that you've not practised enough against to feel comfortable. Its part of the game for your opponent to find those balls that you don't like and to play them again and again, and thats the ball probably you're not doing with your coach.

- also a piece of advice that one of my coach said: its always pleasant and easy to play against a coach, because he feeds you nice balls, so you can execute nice shots and feel good about it. But in match play you have to deal with many "dirty" or "dead" balls. Even if they look short, its not that short. Even it looks long, its not that long. Even if it looks like underspin, it may be floating a lot. and so on.. so you have to accept that a dirty or dead ball is coming, and make all the necessary efforts, to anticipate and move to the correct position to play a quality shot. its often either not possible nor desirable to try a big shot against those. Maybe during match, we should focus just more about keeping on moving, and keeping the good posture (stay low) and be aware of the opponent, and not overthink about the rest.

 

[cytivrat]

6 lessons is not a period of time you should be worried about. Technique changes takes time.

Those are pure guesses, but maybe it helps somehow. So if I were you, I would try to look for changes in three components: mentality, technique and tactics (assuming you are at the same physical conditions as you were before those 6 lessons)

1. You lost concentration or mentally not strong as usual. Sometimes when you are expecting to fight against strongest people in your club and then you play with someone weaker than those strongest one, you could underestimate them or expect a win come easily (even if you know those people quite good) making you play weaker when it doesn't happen. Were you tried to play your best? Was you mentally strong or you were tired at that moment?

2. This is more common on low levels, probably not about you (since you want to fight against Tier 1 in your club), but it is possible that some of your strokes were to far away from classic ones or were not very consistent, making your opponents always guess or adjust and making mistakes. Now your strokes are more consistent and more "standard" ones and are easier to return. If this is the case, then you just need to be patient to develop them to another level.
And similar problem, that maybe coach is giving you "good" balls, while your usual opponents return "bad" ones (either not that consistent in placement or in spin/speed) and it is not comfortable to return for you after coaching lessons. In this case you will need more movement drills and maybe random ones and some time to develop your skills.

3. Maybe playing those combinations made you less creative and more predictable for your opponents. Have you changed tactics with your opponents? Maybe you started placing your balls in 3 standard points?

Also do you play with coach only or you have your usual training schedule + coach lessons?

 

[Brs]

+1 to what Lazer and Dominikk85 said: if you didn't play worse at the beginning it would be a sign that nothing was changing about your game. And you are paying the coach to change how you play, right? So at first you will play worse because change is hard.

One other thing that can happen with coaching is you get mentally very focused on your technique. In lessons that is good. But in matches you have to be all focused on the play, your opponent and the ball. If half your brain is examining your technique and trying to make corrections like you were in a lesson then you will. not play up to standard. It is not easy, but try to examine your technique very closely when you are with your coach, then in matches turn that completely off and just play freely.

 

[Tembel]

Maybe after these training sessions you are starting to play a game a bit over you ability(I.e. maybe you are trying to open up on third balls that are too difficult for you). Maybe as someone before here stated you are becoming predictable if you are treating a match as a drill.

Try playing a game with a bit lower margin of error and let your opponent give you a few points from unforced errors instead of the other way around. Focus on the tactical/strategic parts of the game (opponents weaknesses, serve placements, amount of spin, tempo shift, ...) and I think the results will be better.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

A lot of Golden advises here. I am at work now and will read through these superb advises tonight when I am more free. Thank you all in advance, friends.

 

[Dominikk85]

Keep in mind I'm a low level beginner table tennis player but I'm coaching a high level of baseball and learning from there I think you need to try to implement the stuff from training into your matches even if you are losing initially.

For example if your goal is to loop long pushes instead of just pushing or flat driving it back there will be more errors but you want to learn that so you have to practice.

That doesn't mean to go berzerk, probably better to focus on technique and hit at 70% force first but still there probably will be more errors.

Of course you could also continue your old game in matches and practice a new way but there really isn't a point in that.

 

[Der_Echte]

Gozo,

You said a number of things in your opening post that provide enough information to answer your question of WHY you match performance is even worse now vs same/similar players than before. I will quote and provide commentary, but the short answer first...

The short answer is that when a developing player begins to receive structured professional training, the player will never in any short time frame improve something in practice to a certain standard of consistency and quality and then be immediately able to apply those things in a match the same way.

The truth is that such technical improvement in training takes many months, sometimes years to show in points in a match, especially important competitions. The reason for this is that training is not a match, it is way different. You can expect certain things in training and it makes it much easier to perform. In matches, you have a much more difficult time than training to see what is happening and be decisive and in position. Then there is the emotional/mental component - players who are not fully technically developed and are playing equal/better players are under pressure - players tighten up whether they realize it or not.

It is unrealistic to expect your progress in training to translate immediately into points won and games won. Often, the player is trying to apply things in matches like in practice, but like I explained earlier, matches are way different than training, so there will be MORE ERRORS from the player. This means players actually lose more points/games/matches than they did before when trying to apply their improvement in training to match play.

Many players see this happen to them, question what is going on (without knowing why/how) get discouraged, then stop lessons thinking coach is not helping them.

This coming weekend will be my sixth lesson.

In fighting and developing fighters, we would call such an amount of training (the six lessons you indicated)... we would call that enough training to get your azz kicked in a fight.

I can perform these drills relatively well, say above 50% margin or higher.

50% landing percentage (at likely not a very good quality - but that quality is likely improving) is not a very high percentage for training. When a player gets 80-90% landing percentage with a way higher standard... that is pretty much the baseline for when we see players only begin to break even in a match. That means a player makes such great improvement in practice to win only HALF the points using the improved training things. Why? The ball comes back sometimes and you have to make another attack where you may or may not anticipate what is coming at you. The opponent is not gunna ask you where you want the ball either.

The coach even congratulate me for having good strokes.

A good coach will provide feedback, so if your quality and consistency on something are improving, coach should tell you that. However, do not confuse that with improvement in match play and what things improve match play and how/when/to what degree improvement in match play happens. Your understanding of how this works is all wrong right now, but this is very normal for developing players early on. You also have the wrong expectations (that you will have almost instant improvement in points won, games won, and matches won). it is a very long road to improvement in match performance that has so many factors.

I leave you with one example of my own improvement. I am currently an old dude 55+ started as a rec player at average USATT club level of playing standard and began improvement when I was able to live in Korea 4 years and get lessons. My improvement curve happened the way I described it - a lot of forward-backward, more forward, then backward.

My example in recent times are that now, even if I am at a standard of cracking into the top 10% of active players, my improvement still follows the pattern. ALWAYS when I have a match where I REALLY put things together... where I GREATLY improved the QUALITY of a shot (meaning I made some great shots that were huge pressure or should have won the point better than before) but I am playing vs players 2 levels better than me (like vs Tsos) so this player might get the shot back, then the next one, even if barely. Sometimes, your opponent still plays way better than you, even if your shots improved to his standard of play.

Big point is that EVERY TIME that I play great shots, great shot combinations, play shots with way higher quality than before, play shots that are better decisions and way better structured, even if I can that a lot more often in a match and to a way better standard than before... I STILL LOSE 1-3 with same or even less points per game. Why is this? Well, the other player 2 levels better than me can step up his game too. That is sport.

 

[Der_Echte]

That is sport.

THIS is Sparta dammit.

 

[NDH]

Hey Gozo,

People have already given solid advice, so I'll not repeat it.

The only thing I'd say is that time is everything (especially when you have a coach teaching you properly, so we can rule out bad coaching).

You probably want to be thinking in years, not weeks - Although this will depend on how much you play outside of your coaching sessions.

You are absolutely doing the right thing in getting the coaching, and you'll look back on this situation in a few years time and wonder what all the fuss was about!

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Hey Gozo,

People have already given solid advice, so I'll not repeat it.

The only thing I'd say is that time is everything (especially when you have a coach teaching you properly, so we can rule out bad coaching).

You probably want to be thinking in years, not weeks - Although this will depend on how much you play outside of your coaching sessions.

You are absolutely doing the right thing in getting the coaching, and you'll look back on this situation in a few years time and wonder what all the fuss was about!

Thank you all for your wonderful feedback to a forumer who is overwhelmed with doubt. You guys step up to assist.

After some pondering, I think my problem as follows:

My ego part is telling me, hey Gozo, you have beaten this dude before. You should repeat this again easily. My logic part then tells me, hey Gozo, you have paid good money to learn from a coach, why waste that good money and not use it. Then why waste the money in the first place. And then my mind goes forth and back, forth and back on this. My ego desire to win, my logic wants to try this new stuff. These indecision is slowing down my reflexes and is killing my game.

If I follow my ego and use back my old tactics just to win, then my logic will tell me, this is where you shall stagnate and not progress further. You will win the battle but end up losing the war. I guess I have to listen to my logical mind and ignore my ego mind.

I have a much clearer mind now. I need to lose some battle but never lose sight of the war.

Oh! btw NDH, my coach is contemporary of Ma Lin. He told me he has trained with Ma Lin in China before. He was active in the mid to late 90's representing my country in international tourney. He told me his most memorable game was against Kim Taek Soo. He gave it all he has but still lost to KTS. He currently uses BTY Kim Taek Soo One Ply Hinoki with Dignics 05 on his FH. He uses one side rubber only. He swear by BTY products. Sorry for the digress.

 

[dajdosta]

You had 5 lessons during 2 weeks period and expect immediate improvement?!?
Unless you're a sport genius that is impossible for any human.

As others pointed expect to have worse results at the beginning. Maybe for months or years there won't be significant improvements.

Techniques practice is a long term project.
​​​​
Immediate results would provide only if experienced player or coach is coaching you strategically in matches.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Maybe after these training sessions you are starting to play a game a bit over you ability(I.e. maybe you are trying to open up on third balls that are too difficult for you). Maybe as someone before here stated you are becoming predictable if you are treating a match as a drill.

Try playing a game with a bit lower margin of error and let your opponent give you a few points from unforced errors instead of the other way around. Focus on the tactical/strategic parts of the game (opponents weaknesses, serve placements, amount of spin, tempo shift, ...) and I think the results will be better.

Yeah, you are right, I am trying to open up with my BH with chiquita ala FZD'esque instead of my usual safe pushes. But this is what I am told to do in my drills.

 

[NDH]

Thank you all for your wonderful feedback to a forumer who is overwhelmed with doubt. You guys step up to assist.

After some pondering, I think my problem as follows:

My ego part is telling me, hey Gozo, you have beaten this dude before. You should repeat this again easily. My logic part then tells me, hey Gozo, you have paid good money to learn from a coach, why waste that good money and not use it. Then why waste the money in the first place. And then my mind goes forth and back, forth and back on this. My ego desire to win, my logic wants to try this new stuff. These indecision is slowing down my reflexes and is killing my game.

If I follow my ego and use back my old tactics just to win, then my logic will tell me, this is where you shall stagnate and not progress further. You will win the battle but end up losing the war. I guess I have to listen to my logical mind and ignore my ego mind.

I have a much clearer mind now. I need to lose some battle but never lose sight of the war.

Oh! btw NDH, my coach is contemporary of Ma Lin. He told me he has trained with Ma Lin in China before. He was active in the mid to late 90's representing my country in international tourney. He told me his most memorable game was against Kim Taek Soo. He gave it all he has but still lost to KTS. He currently uses BTY Kim Taek Soo One Ply Hinoki with Dignics 05 on his FH. He uses one side rubber only. He swear by BTY products. Sorry for the digress.

I'm just going to be repeating what you already know at this point, but.... I will anyway 😀

Looks like you have not just a good coach, but possibly the best coach you can get - This is a major step in improving your long term game, and I'd 100% trust what they have to say.

A comparison I can make with myself, is that my backhand about 5 years ago was the weakest part of my game (and this is at the top level of local league in the UK).

My Forehand was always good, but I could get stuck on my BH, just pushing, blocking and not being massively aggressive.

I spent an entire summer (6-8 weeks) playing 3 times a week, and predominantly playing on my backhand as much as possible.

At first, I'd lose to people I used to beat quite easily - I was being aggressive, trying to open up on my BH and stay aggressive.

This probably happened for the first 4 or 5 weeks.

By week 6, I was more consistent, more aggressive and a much better player.

5 years down the line and it's one of my best shots and it's made me a much better player.

You will improve over time, and the more you get coaching, the better you'll be!

 

[latej]

Rhetoric question: Is there something independent of the match result? You know, something you can always go back to ;-)

Happy New Year too.

 

[IB66]

Hi Gozo,

Enough said already!! make sure you stick with the coaching it's defo a long term thing!!
Since I started playing again 3 years ago, being coached 2 times a week, but not intensive 1 to 1 coaching, I have improved but it's still yet to really show in match results. It just takes time to come together. you may start putting together more really good 'high quality strokes' in a row, 2 instead of one, 3 instead of 2 etc but it may need 5 to win the point against a better player.
when I was a junior I attended a 5 day intensive training course, after which i was pretty dam poor in matches for 6 - 9 months and then things improved. things are easier when you are young!!!
This season I'm playing in higher divisions of leagues and struggling!!!!!😭🤬
I've just started some 1 to 1 coaching as well, so once that kicks in, it's likely I will drop in level as well !!!!! double😭🤬 😭🤬!!!!!!! it sucks, but stay determined and focused and eventually you'll reap the rewards!!!