I wanna play with the big boys!

[FrenchFrog33]

I'm a 62 year old who is playing at a USATT level of 1300. I want to play at the club's A-league, which is a minimum 1500 rating.
What do I need to do to get to 1500 and beyond?

thanks in advance!

 

[Gozo Aruna]

Long Pips one side, short pips the other side.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

a lot of money.
money buys everything

 

[TensorBackhand]

Long Pips one side, short pips the other side.

Probably this is your best bet to beat 1500 guys.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

I'm a 62 year old who is playing at a USATT level of 1300. I want to play at the club's A-league, which is a minimum 1500 rating.
What do I need to do to get to 1500 and beyond?

thanks in advance!

1) stop changing equipment
2) get a coach and focus on areas that "wins" points

1300 to 1500 should be a quick and easy jump if you did it correctly.

my end, we work on a 0 to 1470 in 1 year, and then to 1760 in the 2nd year.
At WTT Youth Contender Hong Kong, the kid lost to a USATT 2000 player very narrowly.
We feel he is closer towards 1800~1900 now, and can knock on doors of 2000 player.

if you do things correctly, the climb is fast

 

[SleepyMaster]

Just play as much as you can, try to analyzing why you losing points, where you winning them.
Accept your strongest and weakest sides and improve it.
Get a coaching lessons regularly, working on your serves regularly - get a good quality and variety of them, then you will progress much more quickly. It should be not so hard to get from 1300 to 1500

 

[Der_Echte]

I'm a 62 year old who is playing at a USATT level of 1300. I want to play at the club's A-league, which is a minimum 1500 rating.
What do I need to do to get to 1500 and beyond?

thanks in advance!

Hi FF,

In 2007, i was in your shoes in the same boat pretty much. One thing to do is LEARN HOW TO SERVE, so your attacks are winners.

I was midwest 1400s rates as a recreational player zero coaching and I wanted to get better. (yet there was no TT club within 2 hrs driving)

On an east coast visit, I ran into the famous "Bogeyhunter" from the forums... he took 20 minutes to show me the fundamentals of short and long serves... my session was a disaster - any poor spectator with 15 meters of the court would require the wear of ballistic eyewear to prevent injury.

I practiced 3 minutes a day when i was in an Army camp in Iraq for one year... I was unable to play anyone - everyone was 200 level or below... I got done with that and was suddenly 1600+ after my first tourney back.

That is a 150+ point jump in one tourney zero match practice, but being able to serve what I wanted where i wanted when I wanted went a long way.

Trouble Maker MaTT Hetherington made a lot of serve vids in early 2020 on TTD that are worth looking at.

This is a big angle to consider, give you might not be around a real club or effective coach.

 

[FrenchFrog33]

1) stop changing equipment
2) get a coach and focus on areas that "wins" points

1300 to 1500 should be a quick and easy jump if you did it correctly.

my end, we work on a 0 to 1470 in 1 year, and then to 1760 in the 2nd year.
At WTT Youth Contender Hong Kong, the kid lost to a USATT 2000 player very narrowly.
We feel he is closer towards 1800~1900 now, and can knock on doors of 2000 player.

if you do things correctly, the climb is fast

Tell me more!

 

[BaRanchik]

1) stop changing equipment
2) get a coach and focus on areas that "wins" points

1300 to 1500 should be a quick and easy jump if you did it correctly.

my end, we work on a 0 to 1470 in 1 year, and then to 1760 in the 2nd year.
At WTT Youth Contender Hong Kong, the kid lost to a USATT 2000 player very narrowly.
We feel he is closer towards 1800~1900 now, and can knock on doors of 2000 player.

if you do things correctly, the climb is fast

You should share what exercises you give to these kids to make the jump from 0 to 1470. That's great progress for one year. I've been playing over a year, plus getting coached for almost a year, and I still suck.
Slowly catching up to all the kids who are playing for +3 years though.

Do you focus on the basics with them, or do you make them do complex/random exercises?

 

[NextLevel]

Tell me more!

The *most* important thing is to get a good coach/mentor. As you can see, DerEchte needed Bogeyhunter. I was lucky to have coaches and mentors in my table tennis club who never charged me a lot and often nothing at all. In fact, the player I play the most like now is a player that never charged me for a lesson, but whose serve and thirdball style is what I deploy. Just about everyone who improves as an adult has someone who cares about their game to help them. If you find a high level coach or player who invests in helping you improve and you take what he says to heart, it is almost always worth 200 points because they can see what causes opponents at your level problems and teach you how to do it. It doesn't mean you can beat everyone, but you will be able to beat quite a few players by exploiting the typical problems at that level.

They will take you through basic drills, but they will also help you establish point winning patterns and tactics. You have to know how to serve to get weak returns, and then you have to practice putting away the returns you get that are weak. The serve and third ball practice is probably the biggest thing you have to establish and the thing you have the most control over. Rally strokes are important but highly overrated, because the serve and return always comes first, you rally if you are forced to.

Then if you are lucky and have tons of time, you can work on serve return. Serve return strokes are the most unique strokes in table tennis after they serve, they are the only strokes you play vs a ball that bounces twice on the table, so you need to treat them appropriately. Also the opponent has more control over the spin they place on serve, so if you know how to do something to the serve that neutralizes that or which puts the opponent under some pressure, it helps your results a lot.

IF with the help of a coach, you build a lot of your game around serve and serve return, your game improves fast, of course there will be holes, but those will depend on you and how much time you have. But the biggest return on invested time is always in serve and serve return because you are doing them on 50% of the points and 100% of the match, while rally, you may never see.

 

[piligrim]

1) stop changing equipment
2) get a coach and focus on areas that "wins" points

1300 to 1500 should be a quick and easy jump if you did it correctly.

my end, we work on a 0 to 1470 in 1 year, and then to 1760 in the 2nd year.
At WTT Youth Contender Hong Kong, the kid lost to a USATT 2000 player very narrowly.
We feel he is closer towards 1800~1900 now, and can knock on doors of 2000 player.

if you do things correctly, the climb is fast

You compare kid to 62 years old?

 

[TensorBackhand]

You compare kid to 62 years old?

yes, it won't be the same at all.

If all you want to do is to take down a 1500 once in a while, your best bet is to use an unusual setup like short pips and long pips. Most 1500 guys are totally unprepared for this and unpracticed against this style. If you just learn to keep the ball on the table with this setup, you can do a lot of damage.

If you want to improve with your regular setup, then my advice would be to invert your problem. Don't think about how to win more points. Think about how not to lose easy points. Learn to just do 2 or 3 things right that can win you a lot of points. Having a good serve, having a stable return, and having a solid push are probably the 3 quickest ways.

 

[NextLevel]

yes, it won't be the same at all.

If all you want to do is to take down a 1500 once in a while, your best bet is to use an unusual setup like short pips and long pips. Most 1500 guys are totally unprepared for this and unpracticed against this style. If you just learn to keep the ball on the table with this setup, you can do a lot of damage.

If you want to improve with your regular setup, then my advice would be to invert your problem. Don't think about how to win more points. Think about how not to lose easy points. Learn to just do 2 or 3 things right that can win you a lot of points. Having a good serve, having a stable return, and having a solid push are probably the 3 quickest ways.

I agree with this, but I would add that unusual styles are not the sole province of pips rubbers. You can play unusual hitting styles with inverted as well and even chop block and hit dead balls, you just need to embrace the riskiness of your style and use rubbers that make it easier, maybe even old traditional unboosted inverted. There is a 2200 level player that plays this style in NY, he chops the ball to make it dead when he hits on the backhand and mostly smashes on the forehand. He can topspin once in a while but it is not his thing.

I used to be a dead ball blocker/hitter against most players until I hit broke 2000, only looping on backspin balls and occasionally on topspin counters with my backhand, my forehand was mostly a block and a hit. Some people didn't find it fun to play me then, and I did it with sticky rubbers too, which made the ball a bit deader against some players.

A lot of things are possible in TT, you just need to decide how you want to win points and execute it.

 

[piligrim]

I agree with this, but I would add that unusual styles are not the sole province of pips rubbers. You can play unusual hitting styles with inverted as well and even chop block and hit dead balls, you just need to embrace the riskiness of your style and use rubbers that make it easier, maybe even old traditional unboosted inverted. There is a 2200 level player that plays this style in NY, he chops the ball to make it dead when he hits on the backhand and mostly smashes on the forehand. He can topspin once in a while but it is not his thing.

I used to be a dead ball blocker/hitter against most players until I hit broke 2000, only looping on backspin balls and occasionally on topspin counters with my backhand, my forehand was mostly a block and a hit. Some people didn't find it fun to play me then, and I did it with sticky rubbers too, which made the ball a bit deader against some players.

A lot of things are possible in TT, you just need to decide how you want to win points and execute it.

Immediately Richard Dewitt come to mind when talking about unusual style )))

 

[NextLevel]

Immediately Richard Dewitt come to mind when talking about unusual style )))

Yes, I was talking about him.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

You compare kid to 62 years old?

kid will learn faster
62 slower
but no matter the age, if changing equipment every week, there won't be solid progress (i've seen a lot of threads open by OP on equipment hunting)
its the same fundamentals, same basics, same mindset

1300 is really very close to total beginner, get the basics right, then 1500 is really easy to get too.
we not talking 1800 or 2000

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

yes, it won't be the same at all.

If all you want to do is to take down a 1500 once in a while, your best bet is to use an unusual setup like short pips and long pips. Most 1500 guys are totally unprepared for this and unpracticed against this style. If you just learn to keep the ball on the table with this setup, you can do a lot of damage.

If you want to improve with your regular setup, then my advice would be to invert your problem. Don't think about how to win more points. Think about how not to lose easy points. Learn to just do 2 or 3 things right that can win you a lot of points. Having a good serve, having a stable return, and having a solid push are probably the 3 quickest ways.

do you play with pips??

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

You should share what exercises you give to these kids to make the jump from 0 to 1470. That's great progress for one year. I've been playing over a year, plus getting coached for almost a year, and I still suck.
Slowly catching up to all the kids who are playing for +3 years though.

Do you focus on the basics with them, or do you make them do complex/random exercises?

kid was unranked/unrated
went coach hunting for a year, had a lot of bad habits.
joined our team to train 6 days a week (come over after school). say 15 hours a week or so, he did this for a year and went to US Open in 2022 (Dec) and came back with a 1470 rating.

He went to US national and came back with wins against 1900 players, so push his rating up to 1750 or so.
from 2 months ago, he changed to home schooling, to train full time (actually trained more hours than the team, so closer towards 35~40 hours a week)

Just focus on basics, in and out every single day.
Once basics is there, then focus on quality of shots and game play.
No trick to development, same drills for every player in the team, and he is just a hard worker (at 11 years old) that cherish every hour of training more than other players.
I think growing from 0 to 2000 is the easy part.
the tough part is now to push in beyond 2000 and see how far he can go (he started pretty late)

 

[hclnnkhg]

kid was unranked/unrated
went coach hunting for a year, had a lot of bad habits.
joined our team to train 6 days a week (come over after school). say 15 hours a week or so, he did this for a year and went to US Open in 2022 (Dec) and came back with a 1470 rating.

He went to US national and came back with wins against 1900 players, so push his rating up to 1750 or so.
from 2 months ago, he changed to home schooling, to train full time (actually trained more hours than the team, so closer towards 35~40 hours a week)

Just focus on basics, in and out every single day.
Once basics is there, then focus on quality of shots and game play.
No trick to development, same drills for every player in the team, and he is just a hard worker (at 11 years old) that cherish every hour of training more than other players.
I think growing from 0 to 2000 is the easy part.
the tough part is now to push in beyond 2000 and see how far he can go (he started pretty late)

15 hours/week with coaching...that's not a negligible amount of time and money.

 

[piligrim]

kid will learn faster
62 slower
but no matter the age, if changing equipment every week, there won't be solid progress (i've seen a lot of threads open by OP on equipment hunting)
its the same fundamentals, same basics, same mindset

1300 is really very close to total beginner, get the basics right, then 1500 is really easy to get too.
we not talking 1800 or 2000

62 won't have progress no matter change equipment or not. Even if he will go to coach every day