Hey, I think all the submissions so far are good ones. I will add a few comments myself. But not too many. Most of the important stuff is covered.
Except the dancing naked part!
No, the first thing to understand is that having those matches that you should win and end up losing and having those matches where you just play like shyte under your belt, in the long run, all help to increase your match play experience so that, at a certain point you pull off the matches you should have lost instead of the other way around. To stop playing matches would only cause part of your TT development to be delayed. There are plenty of players with good technique and bad game strategy. That stuff should develop as you put yourself in those situations more and more.
In match play, at a certain point you want to be able to shut off the analytical process and just focus on going for your shots. You may not be there yet. But think of matches as practice and play every point as though nothing else exists but that point. In other words, regardless of the score you could play each point as though the score is 5-5 or even 9-9 regardless of the actual score.
Here is the video I keep posting on this subject of training and the random element. It has important information for your development.
If you have not watched this video yet, watch it. If you have, watch it again.
Then choose someone you know as a training partner and start doing game simulation drills. Do a couple of hours a week of game simulation drills.
I will give you two drills to practice. Do both.
Drill 1:
a) Server serves short backspin
b) receiver pushes long
c) server tries to loop vs the long push
d) open play
Side note: with this drill, you can start with the person pushing to a particular spot like the middle of the table or wide FH or BH. In the end it should progress to where the long push placement is totally random.
Second game simulation drill:
Players alternate 2 serves each and play exactly like a match without counting points. A serve that misses the table should be played as a net so the receiver gets the opportunity to receive 2 serves that are in play.
In this drill, try to be creative. Try things you may not try in a match. Work on things.
You probably should find as many different training partners to do game simulation drills with as possible. There are so many more drills. Start with those two.
If you don't incorporate any training that duplicates match scenarios, it is very hard to improve your match play at least until your technique gets vastly better. But then your technique will still be way better than your game skills.
All that being said, remember, as someone else said in this thread, this should at least in part be about having fun. Try to find the fun in play. Even when you lose.
Yoga Sutra 1:12 says "abhyasa vairagya tan nirodhah". That means, practice without attachment to the results is what gets you the results.
Sorry to go eastern on you. But practice, and don't worry about the progress. It comes in strange jumps. And it is supposed to. Don't worry about the points where you plateau for a while or even when you feel like you have gone backwards. Those periods actually help set the stage for the next jump in level.
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