Training Methods Worldwide (Japan, China, Sweden, Korea, Germany) etc

[Xavelha]

Hi all

Last weekend took place the Cadet and Junior Portuguese open, and the french cadet kids ruled the tournament with great technique, pace and strenght despite being very young.

So I started thinking, as a coach, what methods other countries use to train kids...this includes:

How many hours...
Time spent in each type of training(phisical, technical, psicological, tactics)
Types of exercises
Management of different training partners
Selection of players
Blades and rubbers used
Other resources used to improve technique and fisics.

I'm particularly interested in methods used in China, Japan, Germany, France, korea, Sweden for example.

But I would like to know about other countries too.

Enjoy and debate

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Great topic.

I'm also a coach (new one) based in Cape Town, South Africa.
However I have friends who are current provincial coaches in China, including head coaches of the province etc.
I also have coaching friends in Europe, and have chated to French club coaches as well as the Chinese coaches that host the French players in China.

I didn't know of the tournament you mentioned or follow much of the junior circut, but from what I heard, I knew France will be the strongest in juniors for a long time to come.

I think it is very important to know that everyone (coaches) has a limit, you can only do so much for your player, and after that you need to learn more or get outside help. Many old or stubborn coaches are too proud to think like that, and the players will suffer in a long run, because table tennis technique is non stop improving and players and coaches require to upgrade very often.
So I am very happy to see that you are not one of those stubborn coaches (by starting this thread)

Different between China and Euro:
- China focus on basics, on movement and footwork. Euro focus on feel, spin and power on the ball - while basics, movement, footwork is not correct.
- China has an almost 1 on 1 (coach/feeder/practice partner), where Euro is 1 to many. So in 1 hour training, The Chinese is doing more "hits" than Euro
- China has huge discipline, it is easy for 1 coach to manage 30 kids. In Euro, kids are very spoiled. Not easy to "ask" them to do certain things.
- China has huge support and trust from parents. In Euro, coach need to obey parents or something like that.
- China does a lot more multiball than Euro
- China does a lot more service and service return drills
I think this is enough comparison for now.

Are you asking to improve your students, or just for a discussion on the forum?

 

[Xavelha]

I was hopping for a descussion since we have a variety of people from different countries.

And man...you are so right about kids in europe, the main problem is their behaviour, and parents dont want to recognize that, i'm trying to improve that , but it's really difficult.

thanks for your reply.

 

[Der_Echte]

Korea does it like China in many aspects, but on a lower scale. Students are identified early as "Athletes" and going to school has less emphasis than their training for sport. Coaches on both amature and pro side has the same strong emphasis on training the basics to repeat them successfully hundreds of times consecutive without error. That is why some want to call thee athletes robots. many top amature players come to Korea to hookup for some serious training and get latched onto a program training juniors. They end up disappointed that they are not immediately practicing complicated multi-movement powerful single ball combination drills. They do hour after hour after hour of striking the ball and moving time after time after time. it is quite boring and requires a lot of personal discipline or a coach "motivating" you... Yes Virginia, coach motivating you isn't asking you politely to do something.

Even if the popularity of TT has greatly declined since the 70s/80s in Korea (carom billiards is wildly popular though with a club on every street corner building!) even so with a much lower player pool, Koreans still get the job done. They have a very small country and infrastructure that allows them to move around easy enough to get stuff done. In USA, it would cost so much money to do this you gotta fly across the country, only good centers of excellence are on either coast, many thousands of km away and you need a car to go everywhere in most places.

Being supported at least minimally by the government with sports associations for pro development paying coaches and some companies sponsoring events, it is way easier to have a path to professional TT there than say USA.