Well-Known Member
……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.
….. I don't think I would have won the next match given how scared I was playing.
NextLevel;387261
Nah, the full problem here isn't purely about mindset. Many people have criticized OP for training to improve. This is BS, part of the reason I started going to clubs to play was because I was tired of losing to people who I felt were not that more talented than I was but who had stepped into a club and had information I didn't.
The problem is a bit about mindset but to me more about the gap between how the OP perceives his level of TT stability as a player rated under 1000 and his true stability as a TT player. You can train for a long time in TT, you can still be unaware of how unstable your technique is without having the right foundation. You can underappreciate your ability to read spins, speeds and ball timing.
I had this discussion with someone else (Richie) on the forum recently about how players rated under USATT 1000 hit a ball off the table and complain to themselves because they are completely unaware of the gap between their technique and what it takes to put a ball on the table repeatedly and act as if the ball they missed is a ball they would have put away most of the time, while a technically aware watcher can see all the things they are not doing to maximize their ability to put away the shot and finds their miss totally understandable.
Some good players complain when they miss too, but the enlightened ones often shadow what they should have done to approach the ball correctly had their read of the ball been correct. After all, an enlightened player should be able to tell from the effect of the ball off his racket what spin was actually on the ball and how to adapt to it.
You need to be roughly USATT 1600 at a minimum to be almost unbeatable at an office tournament (assuming no other tournament level players show up) - at that level, you have competed enough to know how to win in various ways and against various kinds of opposition. Anything under USATT 1000 doesn't come close to that bar, doesn't mean you can't win or be one of the best, but you have a decent chance of losing to people because your level and technique are highly unstable.
Even at the highest levels, something like this is in play. Liu Guoliang often said that he only picked the players who had a stable performance on bad days - anyone can play well on a good day, he said, I need to see what you play like on your 40% days and how it matches up against the opposition on their 90% days. And then we can talk..
I do think you are hitting on the root cause of the problem: the nerves and mental issues in match play that the OP has described is the disparity between the level he thinks he should be and the level he is and the lack of stability of his skills.
If you are just flat out missing serve after serve and in the matches you feel afraid to even try to attack, that disparity you are talking about is also screwing with your head. So I am not sure those two issues can be separated. Even though the “scared to attack” issue really could actually be that the opportunity to attack is not there and the OP is not understanding why he can’t attack balls he just isn’t capable of attacking.
BTW: one of the things we cannot know is if the OP is playing anyone where he needs to respond to any level of spin at all. The only way we could really understand what is going on is if the OP posted some footage of training (maybe 30 seconds) and some footage of match play (maybe footage of 2 or 3 matches or even just one game each with 2 or 3 different opponents).
But it seems certain that his good opinion of what his skills should be and his high hopes for what he would like his skills to be are part of why he is even missing the one shot in table tennis where the opponent’s spin or placement do not effect the outcome of your shot. A player who is repeatedly not even putting the ball in play on his serve has something going on that is causing that to happen.