Transcending Levels

I am a penholder, which it seems leaves me with a bit less of an opportunity to get instruction in general. I have a club I go to about an hour away. I can only go 1 time a week at best. (I have a very demanding job as well as 5 kids so I can't do a ton of traveling) I have a table at home with a v300 ipong robot. 

I have a couple of guys here in town that play, but they are not super reliable. They like to play, but they don't have the drive I have to want to get better. We used to be the same level, but since I purchased my robot and have been going to the club from time to time they are being left in the dust. 

I would really like to be able to compete solidly on the club level. Right now I am only just sticking my toe in the door. I can play the lower guys, but I can't even really give them that great of a match. They win probably 75% of the time. 

I've been going over online resources to learn more, but does anyone out there have any suggestions for me to take it to the next level? Taking into account I'm a penholder of course! Anyway thanks for any help you can offer me.  

There are several on-line coaching sites.

www.pingskills.com - If you subscribe to the premium service it has videos, training programs, and some ability to get individual feed back.

www.ttedge - For the premium service they have a very nice series of videos of beginning players that show correct form, common mistakes, a training plan that can be done alone or against a robot, and they will review videos that you send into them and comment back to you.  Their emphasis on beginners and training by yourself with shadowing or simple robot training might be a good fit for you.

www.sampsondubina.com - Sampson Dubina who is well known American player and now coach offers lessons by video and by skype.  He has plans for people who need to train more or less alone using a robot.  He actually found himself in this situation in his playing career and did much of his training against a robot.

There are probably others, but these are the ones that came to mind when I read your last comment.

Even though you are a penhold player, much of the basic stuff applies to both shake-hand and penhold play.  Physics dictate how a ball reacts to contact with the paddle and it does not care how you hold the racket.  A given blade angle and  swing plane (path) produce the same results for a penhold grip or a shake-hand grip.  There are slight differences in how you have to  position your arm to get the same angles and swing plane for the two grip systems, but if you concentrate on matching the swing path and blade angle from a shake-hand video it should give you a pretty good result with a penhold grip.  Of course for more advanced play there are specialized techniques that are unique to the penhold style.

Good luck.

Mark