good in practice, bad in tournaments

Hard to give advice without watching you. I would give you the following advice: Eighter make someone come with you or make theese notes yourself: HOW do you loose your points in a match? This is the most important thing to find out. Do you hit the ball out of the table, do you have trouble with serve returns? Do you hit your loops in the net? Do you block heavy topspins out of the table?

Find out where you loose your points first, then you try to make adjustments. One key element is: If you play mostly rule-bound exercises and you have a good couch, you know where the ball is going to hit, the first thing I would ask you is: Are you shure you track the ball with your eyes at all times? If I train with a good partner I don’t have to track the ball, because I know where it is going to hit. But if I don’t track the ball and I go into a tournament, I would react too slow.

Would be interesting to see 5 minutes from a training session and 1 set from a match.

You have to practice playing people you are not used to playing. Then you get better at it. There is no shortcut. Eventually your drill skills will transfer to real matches.

From my perspective: If your personal coach *knows* this but still coaches you in a 'rigid' way, trust your coach. It may be that he's more concerned with building your basic strokes, which in the long term is the best thing, rather than 'fooling around winning games by luck' :) Ultimately yes, you gotta play more people and join a club but there is a crucial stage in training where the basic shot is built and its the worst stage to screw up.

Edited by Lightzy - 12/19/2017 at 9:16pm

Lightzy wrote: From my perspective: If your personal coach *knows* this but still coaches you in a 'rigid' way, trust your coach. It may be that he's more concerned with building your basic strokes, which in the long term is the best thing, rather than 'fooling around winning games by luck' :) Ultimately yes, you gotta play more people and join a club but there is a crucial stage in training where the basic shot is built and its the worst stage to screw up.

Sorry, I can't go along with this. For one thing, I don't have that much blind trust in a lot of coaches, especially those who work with adult players. I have a lot of experience to support tbat. And if technique breaks down under pressure, it requires some analysis and new drills to fix that. And real matches are where that shows up. It is like a QC stress test. You need to learn to use what you are drilling. Finally some people lose in matches because they play like idiots in ways that don't show up in drills. And experience can get people past that. There is value in learning from mistakes. Even mental ones.

One last thing. If your coach is not already incorporating at least some random elements in sevefal drills, find a new coach.

Your level maybe lower than you think, I coach my wife she is over 50 and is learning and looks fantastic doing backhand returns wide on the forehand, she can handle speedy top spin rallies has a correct forehand but has sh/t serves and can't handle backspin so would hardly win a game against someone else, 

Thanks everyone for suggestions - a lot to think about!

Dmitry wrote: Thanks everyone for suggestions - a lot to think about! If I were to briefly summarize the main reason I lose games, it's my inability to start an attack by doing a topspin loop against a backspin chop. After a serve, we exchange chops with the opponent, and either he starts the attack and I tend to lose or I try to start the attack with a loop but the success % is very low. In training, however, both BH and FH loops against a chop I can do very well - success % is around 90%.  So, when I KNOW the ball I am about to receive is good for a loop and I have a "loop program " ready to be executed in my brain, everything is fine - and the technique is very good, as I am being told. But when it is a real game, I usually decide too late that the ball is good for looping, and so my positioning for the loop and the body/hand movement - much more poor than in training <div id="gtx-trans" style=": ; left: -61px; top: -25px;"><div ="gtx-trans-icon">

If your coach never watches your matches, he is doing you a huge disservice. A coach should take feedback from your actual play and provide insight into how he intends to address your problems.   I know many coaches don't invest the time tons this but those are uncommitted or bad coaches. Just about every semi-decent coach I know will ask for footage or watch your matches. And they may not agree on what the problem is but but they will at least frame it in the context of their expectations for you.

Dmitry wrote: Thanks everyone for suggestions - a lot to think about! If I were to briefly summarize the main reason I lose games, it's my inability to start an attack by doing a topspin loop against a backspin chop. After a serve, we exchange chops with the opponent, and either he starts the attack and I tend to lose or I try to start the attack with a loop but the success % is very low. In training, however, both BH and FH loops against a chop I can do very well - success % is around 90%.  So, when I KNOW the ball I am about to receive is good for a loop and I have a "loop program " ready to be executed in my brain, everything is fine - and the technique is very good, as I am being told. But when it is a real game, I usually decide too late that the ball is good for looping, and so my positioning for the loop and the body/hand movement - much more poor than in training <div id="gtx-trans" style=": ; left: -61px; top: -25px;"><div ="gtx-trans-icon">

This is about two things. There is a very good video on YouTube about block vs random practice.   Block practice is a rote drill where you just execute.   Random practice requires you to read the play, prepare your response on the basis of your read and then execute the shot.

The thing is that too many coaches give you block practice because it makes you feel better. You are playing the ball consistently and You feel good to be getting the ball back on the table.   But a good coach will try to help you build the transition from what you do in your practice to actual matches or random situations.

The truth is that a ball can have different degrees of spin and your stroke has to adapt to the ball. Then you have to read the trajectory and the placement. You have to do this in a match and if your coach isn't making you do this in practice, then the gap between practice and matches will be greater.

Don't get me wrong, I can see why some coaches don't do this.   I have students who when I try to get them to do random practice, they forget the point of the drill is to build their instincts and they start trying to end the drill early by hitting the ball as hard as they can to make themselves feel better that they are winning points. Or they get frustrated that they are not making shots when I mix up placements and spins and they complain about my quality of coaching and that I am not preparing them properly. But there is no way to begin random practice without some frustration.   The quicker you trust your coach and accept the failure as just being a stepping stone to better play, the better.

You learn a lot from your misses as well as your makes. In fact, in practice you have to deliberately put the ball somewhere other than the table in order to see whether you have precise control over the ball and understand your racket angles and swings. When I ask my students to do this, some of them get bored and think it is pointless.   But to me it is the fastest way to learn to control your racket and the ball. Just swing, see what the ball does, make an angle adjustment and see if you are more accurate. If Not, you will think that the only shot that puts the ball on the table is the one you always do in practice in response to your coach's spin and this is a mistake. You need to be adapting all the time. It takes a long time and smackman and Baal are right to ask you to be patient but it is much easier if you are willing to ask your coach to mix up things a little in practice to help you better adapt to matches.   Ask him to give you spinny and spinless balls for example so you can learn to read and adjust your strokes to them.

The most important thing is to always swing at the ball in matches the way you do in practice whether you make it or miss it. Over time as you understand your stroke better you will learn to adjust it.   But if you always focus on putting the ball on the table, you will use strokes that do so but which will not get better as you get better. And then you will have strikes in muscle memory that you wish you didn't have. I

Edited by NextLevel - 12/20/2017 at 9:38am

piligrim wrote: I have exactly same problem. advise to play more tournaments doesn't help. I played lots tournaments for many years and house-league. each time come for tournament feel like frozen :(

P, what do you do in a typical practice?

Practice without matches is not good.

Matches without practice designed to improve weaknesses is also not good.

Matches reveal weaknesses. They can guide your practice.

This next part is not directed at at Piligrim per se but it is amazing how many people I see who only practice stuff they are already good at. And looping.

That is a bit like playing matches all the time. Fun but doesn't do much to get beyond a plateau in level. This I know from personal experience.

I found over the years the stuff I had to do to really improve in some ways were less fun and really needed some honest assessment of where I was weak.

Crucislly, I also found a couple of psrtners into doing some hard disciplined drills and we helped each other get better. It is not easy to find partners like that. And I live in a place where I coukd see how 2500+ players train.

An injury can derail progress.

henningf wrote: ................ .......Are you sure you track the ball with your eyes at all times? If I train with a good partner I don’t have to track the ball, because I know where it is going to hit. But if I don’t track the ball and I go into a tournament, I would react too slow.

This is so important.
"Are you sure that you track the ball with your eyes at all times" This is the first thing that I ask myself  whenever I am doing badly against a contemporary.

This is a very common issue, well known to many amateur players. There is a LOT of factors... A HELL OF A LOT...

Major things to work on (besides technique, physical preparation etc)

a) psychology - maintain mental equilibrium, keep yourself focussed, do not let yourself get distracted by whatever noisy or uncomfortable things spectators or your opponents do. How to get yourself to the best mental state of mind for a match. Find out and remember circumstances and factors that help you as well as the ones that create problems for you.

b) strategy - learn how to come up with a plan for the game. If this is a familiar opponent, prepare a plan in advance. If you are playing an unknown, then you need to teach yourself how to make fast changes, how to decide on plan A, plan B etc.

c) tactics - play in a way that makes your opponent uncomfortable (for that you need to make quick assessment to see what are his/her strengths and weaknesses). Also try to play to your strengths, do not let him exploit your weak points. Change your serves accordingly, change your receives accordingly etc.

Finally, have a small notebook where after every game you write down a very short review: name, result, place etc. Main impressions from opponent - strong and weak points. Main reasons for win or loss. Short plan for the next match vs this same opponent.

And many more... Hope this helps a bit. Good luck!

Adjustments are the biggest thing I think, the conditions, light, friction of table are different in larger tourneys.