How do i stop being passive as a player and become the offensive player?

[Zandastu]

I feel like i have trouble playing against other players on when i'm not going to my club but at college. Like i push long on the serve and it enables them to forehand topspin to my side leaving me no choice to play the ball back but safely. I go far from the table when i do this from numerous experiences in college and i feel like i ain't improving my technical skills as much as i would want to. How can i rectify this problem and i feel like its a mental thing with me as well i'm person who doesn't take chances and plays it safe.

If you got any advice for me to inherit to improve my play and my mental state be my guest and fire away appreciate it guys

 

[Old School]

I find that when I start to play safe shots I care to much about winning and I stop trying to playing my best game. So when I stop trying to hard to win and just try to play each shoot to my full ability I start to hit more winners. It may sound easy but the need to win for the wrong reasons can be a big hurdle to get over.

 

[Der_Echte]

You know if you push long you get attacked and lose the point. You know if you attack wildly off balance out of position off time you lose the point. That can be rough.

The obvious thing to do is join a real club and get real coaching. for a good many of this, we don't have clubs and coaches near us, so we gotta deal with what we got without a coach. Tat can be rough too.

Right away, I can say a few things to help your situation.

Take the ball earlier. When you do this, you take away time and add more pressure to opponent, even if you are pushing the ball back, taking it early and bumping it back fast at their crossover is one way to stop getting attacked for easy points. if the opponent can handle that, then he or she is a lot higher level than you bargained for anyway.

make the opponent move You get better angles when you take the ball early, so why not take it early and make him go way wide FH and see if he makes errors? Either way, if you feed the came place predictable, he will get more rhythm and higher consistency. break it up however you can, faster, slower, shorter, longer, WIDE angle. make opponent move at your level and you will see errors. if they can move and still pound it in, then you gotta work on making a mre quality shot or opponent is simply way better.

 

[Der_Echte]

Those two thing I said above are a couple of things I can say you may do right away without having to change your skill level.

If the trouble is mostly from service return, then obviously with time one must learn to read the ball better and be ready to receive with different options, short bump, half long bump, fast long bump, dead flip, spin flip. Improving those takes time and learning. I myself am still learning and it is taking more time 'cause I can't practice or even play much until I drive 6 hours. I feel ya.

Also keep in mind, any of the stuff you do manage to improve upon in practice will take MONTHS to show itself in more points won in a real match.

On defense, if you block and want to be more aggressive, take the ball early and go through the ball a little more to create a faster block. You can also take it later and push through the ball with your block to make a counterattack, even if it isn't heavy topspin, it is still a quicker shot than a block and when you learn to pplace it better, that is one nice offensive shot.

Sometimes, just pushing the ball and allowing opponent to attack is a good thing. Why? if you are able to place the ball where you want it, hopefully where opponent will get there off balance off time, you create more misses and you have less work, less risk. or you push the ball where opponent moves a little and can still attack. You get better at reading opponent and you are parked there ready to block ball where he isn't and watch him watch the ball go by him or scramble for it in futility. Then you get to snicker like Muttley as the you get another point added to your score. You are controlling when and how he attacks and have a good chance to be there on first attack to control the point. Blocking is still offense, even if it involves using a few blocks to move opponent to where you want them for you to finish or opponent to miss and smash his bat like John McEnroe.

Defense isn't a whimp's play if you have a plan of attack, it can be very aggressive, especially our punch blocks when opponent unwisely chooses to attack with too much pace or leaves heavy spin ball too high.

 

[izra]

imo, not being able to play offensively enough is often a problem of bad technique. i had this problem on the forehand side before i identified that all too often my stance was off (my right leg was forward), i was starting my swing too low (the mantra should be "keep hand high and body low"), and i mostly used my arm for the backswing. using more body to produce the stroke while shortening the swing of the hand does wonders for timing.

 

[Outerveneer]

I often get passive when I play to much backhand, try to work around and play as much forehand as you can it works for me.

 

[Zandastu]

Thank you guys this will guide me and yeah Out i feel the same when it comes to overplaying my backhand as i enjoy my backhand more than forehand for some reason as i can utilize it more now since i have started to become consistent with it but the problem with my college is that they only have 3 tables in my sports hall which really sucks as previously they had more table but the seniors broke them from sitting on them or whatever. For now when i play its if you win u stay on or you lose then the next person jumps on. I will try mix my backhand and my forehand evenly and think how i will play my turn when i serve Der_Echte.

 

[CroneOne]

Like i push long on the serve and it enables them to forehand topspin to my side leaving me no choice to play the ball back but safely.

I can help with this one. If you notice that pushing back long enables your opponent to topspin FH back your push it means that your opponent has a good forehand loop. Remove this long serve return from your strategy on this opponent. Either that or you can brush your push more, adding more spin and forcing your opponent to 'lift' your push more. A better solution though is to cushion the serve, take the pace of it by absorbing it into your bat and return it short - just barely over the net. This forces your opponent to make a defensive shot instead of a nasty FH loop. Another strategy is to push long towards their backhand and see if their BH is their weakness. Or push long and fairly quick towards the body, disabling a perfect FH.