Let us talk about the mental / psychology aspect of the game.

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A lot of recommendations have been posted in other threads. I suggest searching and reading those threads. What you experience is very common, and there is no simple easy fix. All players have these issues, manifested in different ways.

I have previously recommended "Golf beneath the surface" as a good resource. You need to invest the time and effort to train your mind, just as you invest time and effort into your physical skills.

To answer point 3, it is probably because of the pressure you put on yourself to perform like you did previously, and you are also possibly attaching your performance to your self-worth. When combined with an absolute mindset ("I should be able to do this shot"), all hell then breaks loose when you inevitably make mistakes - your performance challenges your thoughts about what you should be able to do, so are essentially attacking yourself with doubt and negative feelings of the self. You are flooding your mind with these, which means you are now essentially multi-tasking between those thoughts and table tennis. Your focus is now split. It's not going to go well and will just spiral out of control.

These thoughts need to be replaced with something more flexible, such as "I would like to do this shot", as this doesn't pile pressure on yourself if you don't. Your performance needs to be disconnected from your self-worth. You need to recognise those thoughts as they are popping up, so you can change them. The above mentioned book has exercises that help with all these things. Once you do the written exercises, it's much easier to be self-aware and make a change. But you can't just read a forum comment like this and expect changes, you really do need to do the work.
 
says Making a beautiful shot is most important; winning is...
says Making a beautiful shot is most important; winning is...
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Went back to the gladiatorial pit and recommence my fight. Better result, not 100% satisfaction, but 80% pleased.

I observe the following:
1. I enter the gladiatorial pit knowing I could be defeated by anyone. There is no guarantee I can win against this guy or that guy, neither will I guarantee I will lose either. Basically I treated each opponent as it is, without prejudice.
2. Without prejudice, I played each point as how I trained. If the point is mine, I mentally note, this is how it should be done.
3. If I lose, I will mentally note just trust my training. I do not need to strive for perfection. 51% is still a win.

Thanks people for your lesson. I am taking note.
 
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Went back to the gladiatorial pit and recommence my fight. Better result, not 100% satisfaction, but 80% pleased.

I observe the following:
1. I enter the gladiatorial pit knowing I could be defeated by anyone. There is no guarantee I can win against this guy or that guy, neither will I guarantee I will lose either. Basically I treated each opponent as it is, without prejudice.
2. Without prejudice, I play each point as how I trained. If the point is mine, I mentally note, this is how it should be done.
3. If I lost, I will mentally note trust my training. I do not need to strive for perfection. 51% is still a win.

Thanks people for your lesson. I am taking note.

I like your "gladiatorial" approach, it is the right approach for fight... BUT ;-) But you're not fighting, you are training, and your mind is occupied with win/loss idea - I think it's a waste of time... You can reserve this for real matches, where you want to win (and there we could speak about how to ideally achieve flow and good state of mind), but during training all this is secondary... During training, the good thing is that we can always easily learn from better players nowadays and know how it should be done, so at any level, yours, mine, anybody's else, we can always find things to improve and focus on those and only on those during training... There is sooo many of them... DO IT ;-)
 
says Table tennis clown
says Table tennis clown
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I like your "gladiatorial" approach, it is the right approach for fight... BUT ;-) But you're not fighting, you are training, and your mind is occupied with win/loss idea - I think it's a waste of time... You can reserve this for real matches, where you want to win (and there we could speak about how to ideally achieve flow and good state of mind), but during training all this is secondary... During training, the good thing is that we can always easily learn from better players nowadays and know how it should be done, so at any level, yours, mine, anybody's else, we can always find things to improve and focus on those and only on those during training... There is sooo many of them... DO IT ;-)
and remember the gladiators saying: """We who are about to die salute you""" 🤣
 
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Went back to the gladiatorial pit and recommence my fight. Better result, not 100% satisfaction, but 80% pleased.

I observe the following:
1. I enter the gladiatorial pit knowing I could be defeated by anyone. There is no guarantee I can win against this guy or that guy, neither will I guarantee I will lose either. Basically I treated each opponent as it is, without prejudice.
2. Without prejudice, I play each point as how I trained. If the point is mine, I mentally note, this is how it should be done.
3. If I lost, I will mentally note trust my training. I do not need to strive for perfection. 51% is still a win.

Thanks people for your lesson. I am taking note.
This is a great, positive outcome. Point 1 is about respecting your opponent, instead of assuming you're better than they are. This is a great attitude. If you don't respect them, then when things don't go your way, you will begin to panic, as self-doubt creeps in about your own abilities. Point 2 is great too, there is a saying that goes something like "the best players have a short memory", or something like that. What it means is that they don't dwell on the disappointments of previous points and let it influence future points. This can be difficult to master for a lot of people, including pros in all sports. The point 3 about perfectionism is also great, it shows a change in attitude from should to like to. I have suffered from all these issues and more, still sometimes do, but awareness mitigates against turning a bad point into a bad game into a bad match into a bad night.
 
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You were tired from the day before -- your twitch muscle fibers were not firing as quickly as your brain structure is trained to respond given the same visual cues. Then, your rational brain made up a story about psychology after the fact.

... we need stories in order to give meaning to our lives so we make up stories where there are none.
 
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