Table tennis is the most difficult and frustrating sport I have ever played

[SleepyMaster]

Just learn, how to serve properly, pendulum or backhand (those are the most easy to learn) heavy side spin, for example. Or combination of a heavy under/sidespin and you will take a W, at an office tournament 9,5 times of 10. And try to play as simple as you can, don’t get bothered on result too much. Focus on a next serve and that’s it. Servers are really important even on a pro level, on an office level, good serve with some variety - its an easy win, almost every time. It will helps you to quickly grow out, especially if you keeping it plus practice with a coach

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Table tennis....enjoyment.

sounds like what ChatGPT's would say...

 

[Migzkulit]

sounds like what ChatGPT's would say...

Probably is

 

[ML fan]

I learned a lot from this thread. Thank you so much! I am also disappointed in myself when playing matches. I am training hard, yet I still lose in matches in the club. It's easy for me to get angry to myself and got disappointed on few errors. I am wondering why even I trained hard compared to them, I still lose. I feel tired of training and yet losing matches. It seems like I wanted to quit. But now, I learned so much from this. Maybe, because I trained hard, I want to win, I am pressured, disappointed and always losing. I should have train myself not to care of the outcome and have fun. There are this matches that I know the player is so strong, so I don't care, I just do my best, and I won sometimes. But on the other side, the player that I think with the same skill level, I got pressured and want to win, and yet I lose most of the time. I have problem in my mental game that I need to improve now. Thank you everyone!

 

[Sherpa]

A good way to practice is to find a partner who is willing to do the same. You have two serves each and play the point out as if you were in a match, but you don't keep score, which relieves the pressure. You can ask your partner to serve all the serves to your BH if that's what you want to practice. You can also play some points where you only defend, it depends on what you want to practice/improve. Just bashing the forehand to forehand or backhand to backhand is fun to practice, but it is not realistically what you are going to do in a match. You need to be able to serve and return serve competently to setup how you want to construct the point in your favour

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

A few years ago, my company had a table tennis tournament and I finished in second place. Then came the pandemic, and we didn't have another tournament until this year.

For the past 6 months, I've been going to the local table tennis club, getting lessons and coaching, thinking that it would put me over the top. I felt like I was improving and learning new skills. Of course, it's easy to do well in drills and practice, when the coach tells you exactly where he'll hit the ball and with what kind of spin. I still struggled in games, because the opponent doesn't tell you that stuff beforehand.

But still, I figured with my new skills I should do well in this year's tournament. One of my coworkers who saw me practicing at the club said he thought I would win the tournament. Then the tournament came and I lost my first and only match! It was definitely a choke job. My normally reliable serve either went into the net or went long countless times. I felt nervous and was afraid to attack and to use the new skills I had learned. Even with all that, I had a 1-0 lead (best of 3) and had a couple match points in the 3rd game. I blew it. Doesn't matter though, even if I had won that match, I don't think I would have won the next match given how scared I was playing.

So it's quite shocking to me that I would spend 6 months training at the club and spend almost $1000, and I have nothing to show for it. In fact, I ended up doing worse than in the last tournament. That is just inconceivable and unfathomable to me.

It's not just in a high pressure tournament where I come up short. Even when I'm playing meaningless games, I haven't done very well. In the days before the company tournament, I was practicing with some coworkers who used to be around my level and who said they hadn't played ping pong in 3 years. I figured with my 6 months of training, I would have put some distance between myself and them. Nope. They were still able to beat me. And at the club, they have you play matches against people around your skill level. I'll watch some of those people play and I'll think "I can definitely beat them", and then of course I lose to them. I end up losing maybe 75% of the time. And there are literally 5 year olds who can beat me.

I'm not trying to become good enough to make the Olympics. I just want to win this stupid office tournament. But now I have to stew for another year. I can't imagine being an Olympic athlete who loses. Then you have to wait FOUR years for your next chance - insanity!

I feel like in order for me to get a lot better (and I just mean to become a very good beginner player), I'd have to spend maybe 8 hours a day, 7 days a week training, and I'd have to spend several thousand dollars. I'm generally good at sports, but table tennis definitely seems like a very difficult sport to become good at, and it has definitely been the most frustrating for me.

I think I'm going to take a break from the lessons/coaching, but I'll still go to the club to play games. I think I need more game experience than lessons at this point. They started me out with a 600 rating, but that may have been too optimistic. I'll probably be under 400 in no time after some more 5-year olds kick my butt.