Mid January 2023 logbook

I haven’t published anything about table tennis in a long time, but it doesn’t mean I’ve stopped playing. On the contrary, now in addition to me, my son and my daughter are playing as well. I will probably write about them at some point, but for now it’s about me!

I’m borrowing the title of this post from the great videos the guys at Monqui Pong are doing: This is about checking where my game stands by looking at the good and bad of the competition in Keila I played on Saturday.

It was my first competition in January, and I wanted to check how I was doing on a few specific points I’m working on since six weeks. Specifically:

Get faster into neutral positions after my serves: By looking at previous videos, I’ve noticed that behind some serves I’m too slow into getting into position after executing them. As a consequence, I cannot do a proper 3rd ball attack, even if the serve was good and I would have had the opportunity.

Be in a more relaxed position on serve returns: I used to be very low on my legs when waiting for my opponents to serve, with legs being quite tense. This was counter productive, as once the other player served, I would first get up and then only could I start moving. I figured out that it was much simpler for me on returns to be less low on legs, more relaxed.

Fix my forehand top-spin technique by mainly rotating my shoulders: Video analysis showed also that on forehand top-spins, my shoulders were not moving at all, only my arm was working. This made for an awkward move, not as consistent and powerful as it should be, and quite tiring. Turning my shoulders more is much better. I have been focusing trainings to making this into an habit.

I didn't film myself during this competition so I cannot reliably judge myself on all these points. What I can objectively say:

On the serve, I put a lot of intensity into them (good) and won free points that way. However I didn’t attack enough 3rd balls (bad). Without video, I cannot say if it’s because I wasn’t in position or I wasn’t in a sufficiently offensive mindset. My guess is that it’s a bit both.

On the return position, that is an easy change to do and overall I’m feeling fairly comfortable on serve returns lately (with some exceptions, see below).

On the forehand top-spin, that change is not yet sufficiently automatic to work well in a competition. I know that I’m on the right track, as during training drills I feel very good with the forehand. But I have years of bad habits to reverse and this will take more than a few weeks.

In summary on these 3 points, I think I need to do the following at training:

1. Keep the focus on the forehand top-spin shoulder turning. It clearly helps and once it’s automatic it will benefit a lot my game.
2. During practice matches, be more offensive. Specifically try to be the first to take the initiative as soon as possible, like on most 3rd balls after my serves.

While these 3 points were my main interests, there are some other interesting things I noticed in that competition.

I really struggle to win difficult matches. Against players of roughly my level or stronger ones, I’ve had a lot of cases where I start well, have some lead but I cannot finish it. Earlier it might have been simply because I loose concentration, but lately it seems more because my opponents change something (serving differently and/or returning better are typical problems). I don’t manage to adapt and get frustrated that my plan isn’t winning anymore.

One reason I can think of is that in many cases I amdominating these first part of matches mostly thanks to my serves and to a lesser degree my returns. But I’m not attacking enough. Once my opponents get used to my serves or find tricky serves for me, I loose my advantage. But at that late stage in the match, it’s hard to suddenly play more offensive.

Basically it comes down to the previous area of improvement: I need to work on taking the initiative first.

One opponent caused me a lot of problems by serving deep and fast into my backhand. When I don’t manage to backhand top-spin such serves, I usually fall back to chopping them. Depending on the opponent, this can be a very valid alternative. However Saturday my chops were of poor quality, erratic and too high. I need to practice this shot more often to be able to really use it as a backup plan and to introduce some variety.

In summary, my action plan:

• Keep working on improving forehand quality.
• In practice matches, work on attacking all 3rd balls.
• Return positively all serves.