Good at practice, bad at matches..

[oksa]

What would you recommend a player who can do everything at a training session but when it comes to matches he ain't even close to the game ha has at the trainings?

 

[ProPetrov]

Just play more matches, it's all about practice

 

[Sali]

I also have this problem. But it depends on what your problem is. For instance when you practise topspins FH and BH always from one place (like pro's warmup before match play), then you will find not easy to repeat it in game play, because you can get the ball in many different places. And the most important thing is that you never know where the ball goes and what kind of spin it will have. It all goes to the problem of reaction time, which is much less in game play. Other thing is reading the spin, during warm up it is clear, but in match you never know if you do not observe your opponent, his racket and the ball all the time.
The best solution is to practise mutliball as much as possible. Your partner should give you the balls in different directions and spin.

 

[Dan]

Hi Oksa, we had a very similar discussion about this topic here: http://www.tabletennisdaily.co.uk/f...1011-Practice-play-and-game-play-so-far-apart!

I hope this helps

 

[Ilia Minkin]

Analyze rallies where you lose points. Then turn those rallies into drills and play them. Make service return mistakes off a particular serve? Go practice return of that serve. Your opponent easily counterloops your opening attacks? Go practice changing of direction of open-ups. Make a mistake when playing follow-up ball after the first attack? Go practice sequences when you serve, loop a push, then loop off a block and then play free. Something like that.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Here is a video that explains why random training is valuable.

Ilia already explained some random drills. Any game simulation drill, any serve and receive drill will help you get better at match play. What you are asking about is common. But the good news is, your technique is decent if you are good at practice: now it is time to do game simulation training.

Some of the stuff Ilia mentioned is very intelligent because it would have you training things specific to what you need to work on. But there are many different kinds of serve and receive drills that would help you your game skills.

The key thing is to have some element of randomness in the training so that you have to read what you are given and decide instantaneously how to respond to it.

In random training you are training your stroke technique, your reset, your ability to adjust to random placement and spin, your reading all of that and your decision making as you are faced with the problem of adjusting to whatever is coming at you in real time.


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[NextLevel]

The key as Illia pointed out is to start by analyzing why you are losing points - are you losing points because of things you have not faced before or losing points despite having practiced certain things? That usually explains what you need to work on. If you play well in practice matches or drills but do badly in competitive/league/tournament matches with the same kinds of points, that is when mental/psychological/tactical factors are at play and you need to review what changes between both. If you are facing new problems in competitive matches, your drills need to be changed to incorporate them and solve them.

Once you have reached a decent level, every analysis should start with serve, receive, third ball and fourth ball. If you are not controlling the point by 3rd ball on your serve or by 4th ball on your receive, then you should lose the match unless your opponent has poor finishing skills or you have extremely strong rallying skills.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

I will give a story with this.

About 3 years ago I was about 1600 but my strokes sucked, my shots were dead, a lot of the time a looper would come up and look at my racket after a few shots to see what kind of anti-spin or pips I was using only to see that I used smooth rubber and got the effect from bad technique. LOL.

It worked well in matches and I was good at match play but knew that I was not going to get much higher the way I played. So for about 2.5-3 years I undid my bad strokes and my old habits and just did a lot of block training and almost no match play.

At a certain point people would watch me play and think I was good and then they would see me play matches and realize I sucked pretty bad at match play and just looked good in practice. I was okay with it because I knew that I was trying to undo bad habits that resurfaced every time I played matches.

Anyway, in learning better technique I looked way better in practice but my actual match play level probably dropped down to about 1400 even though my strokes were good.

At a certain point I noticed that in match play, the few times I would play matches, I wasn't good but my technique stayed stable. I stopped reverting to most of the old bad habits.

That was a bit over 6 months ago and I realized I was ready for more full on randomized training. Since then, when I started doing a lot of different versions of game simulation drills, my level has jumped up and I am definitely better than I was before I rebuilt my game. In the last 6-8 months my level has probably gone up from 1400 to 1700-1800. Not sure the exact level.

At first any randomized drills, any serve and receive drills any different versions of drills that added a random element were good. At this point I do need to get more specific and do a few particular drills to get me better at a couple of specific skill issues. But at first any and all randomized drills were exactly what I needed.

Even though I have a couple of friends who have given me coaching none of the coaching has been consistent or sustained. Most of my improvement has actually happened as a result of me trying to figure out what I need to work on. It probably would have happened way faster with good coaching. But I am okay with the process I have used.


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[UpSideDownCarl]

Btw: NextLevel's technique of using video to analyze what he needs to work on is a really great idea. So effective and efficient.


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[NextLevel]

Btw: NextLevel's technique of using video to analyze what he needs to work on is a really great idea.


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You don't always need video to do it, though video can help because your view can be colored by subjective pressures during the match. My favorite example of this was playing a guy who liked to play me a lot because I always struggled with his serves. One match, he beat me 3-0 and I struggled with his serves. Before reviewing the match, I thought I had the whole story and that I needed to just return his serves better. But when I watched the match, I realized that after the first game and a half or so, I did start returning his serves better. What I did that really caused the problem was that I let the struggle with his serve influence my mood about how to play on my serve, so I was costing myself points.

Then I watched a couple of other players play him at other events and they all struggled within reason for their level for the first game, but as the match went on, they dominated him because they got better at returning his serve (one even won the last game 11-0).

So when I faced him in a rematch, I lost the first game. But at this point, I didn't even lose any sleep over it, because I knew I would get better at doing that as the match went on. And even in the 4th game, I was down 4-8 and came back to win that game and the match 3-1 because I realized that I just had to accept the struggles on his serve, but play the points on mine competently.

Without video, if a friend/coach is watching, or if you remember what you struggled with, that can always help. Points tend to have similar patterns. But like I said, you run the risk of subjective bias and can't as easily re-frame the experience in your head like I did if necessary. We also all run the risk of visualizing ourselves in our heads differently from how we actually played. In my head, Ma Long is looping when I play, but when I watch myself, I wonder who this old man with jacked up knees running around like a headless chicken is.

But it's par for the course - I am sure Ma Long feels that way when he watches himself play sometimes. And if not, he will do so in a few years. That's why I love this game.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

When I was inline skating we used to do a lot of film analysis after sessions. It helps a lot. Your internal imaging of what you are doing is always a bit off. Film really helps you see what you are actually doing. At a certain point, with skating ramps, what I thought I was doing and what I was doing were pretty close. If you do enough analysis of footage you start getting better at doing with your body what you have in your head that you think you are doing and that you are trying to do.

In any case, video can really help. I learned a lot from seeing those matches you filmed. I haven't seen footage of a full match before.

Here is an example of something simple and silly that film can help with.

In this photo, you can see that I was pressing my tongue into my cheek. The first time I saw a photo where I was doing that I thought, "no way, I'm not doing that."

But seeing photo after photo and reel after reel where I could see myself do that, I had to acknowledge that I was doing it. Then I started feeling myself do it. Then I stopped doing it and was more relaxed and my whole body was less tense in the air.

Those little details like thinking your stroke is finishing above your head or thinking you have more wrist in your serve, or that you are low when you are not quite low enough: seeing them on film helps you start improving on those things a bit faster.

Interesting though, how some people can't even tell what they are doing when their own video footage is trying show them and help them.


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[Ilia Minkin]

More serve and receive are at Ben Larcombe's playbook.

 

[Der_Echte]

Carl and Next Level are dispensing advice that you couldn't get in 10 sessions of $75 USD an hour coaching in USA...

and YET you could follow EXACTLY what Carl and NL are saying and still struggle to successfully apply what you are learning in match play right away.

This is a FACT.

WHY?

No matter what you do in training, it takes many months, sometimes longer for what you are doing successfully in training to become instictive and more functioning in match play.

It's like that... and that's the way it is.

There is an American saying:

No matter how much you shake and dance, the last few drops fall down your pants

That parrot is one wize-azz, but he is right.

Don't sweat it and follow the kind of things Carl, NL, and many other reasonable posters here say, and have a good bullcrap filter to srot it all out for yourself. You will know what/how to do it with enough time.

Heck, you even gotta use the bullcrap filter for what Der_Echte hiz-self sez... he is so full of crap, he is reminded of it daily as he has to declare a national emergency halfway through the morning and make a life or death dash for the restroom toilet to take care of the problem of being too full of crap.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Man, I can't believe how smart that NSA phone is. I wish I had thought of that response on my own. But credit goes to the phone. And Der_Echte, it is true got that phone for me for surveillance and increased intelligence purposes.

 

[Der_Echte]

Nah... I pulled that phone off Jimmy Hoffa last year when no one was looking...

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