10 Tips To Become A Better Table Tennis Player Quickly

What's up guys it's Dan and Tom here from the table tennis daily academy.com and in today's video we're gonna take a look at the 10 best ways to improve your game quickly. We definitely are. Now here at the Academy we're passionate about helping people learn and improve their game. Now you can also buy the Academy now as a gift option which is perfect for Christmas or birthdays so check that out in the links below. But for now let's check out the top 10 tips to improve your game. Okay guys so tip number one is nail the basics. Now many players neglect the basics early on and the problem with that is long term it's very hard to have shot efficiency and consistency you can break down very quickly. Yeah exactly so you want to make sure you've got these fundamentals right before moving on to more complex shots. Let's just take a look at the forehand drive. So the forehand drive is the building block to a forehand topspin. Now many players do the forehand topspin but can't do this well and this is so key. Getting the right touch, movement, this helps timing as well. And you can see here we've got short and efficient shots, the consistency is high and we're not going too fast, we're playing at a slow and controlled speed. Now if we move across to the backhand, the same on the backhand, short, efficient, the ball placement is good and the rally doesn't break down. That's it and like what we're trying to highlight here is that develop the basics, spend a lot of time on the basics. The reason why Chinese players for example in China and Asia they spend hours, some people in China, they spend hours just knocking the ball on the table, consistency, getting the reps up. They don't drop off and play the big swinging stuff and just try and hit the ball 100 miles per hour. We don't do that, we want to nail the basics and get them solid. Yeah so that is our first key tip to improvement is go back to basics and get these fundamental strokes right and really nail them down. So tip number two is feeling the ball. Now we want to develop this nice soft touch and light feeling as we contact the ball. Without this it's very hard to have control and consistency so we want to have this feeling the ball, light touch and good brushing action as we contact the shot. Alright so a lot of players tend to hit the ball far too thick and hard so to develop this ball feeling a real nice drill is dropping the ball on the floor and then brushing the ball over onto the table. This is going to force you to get that arc in the ball and in that spin. So drop the ball on the floor and brush over. You see I'm getting that light brush there and getting that contact. As you can see Dan wouldn't be able to hit the ball over if he didn't brush the ball with that nice feeling. If you hit it flat or hard the ball is going to go long so it does develop that soft touch and control. Yeah so Thomas should we take a look at a really good drill we have on the Academy the 30-60-90 drill which helps really develop your different variations of spin and understand that contact. Yeah so it's a really good drill so going to keep it really simple. I'm going to backhand block. Dan's going to play one forehand at 30% speed, one at 60% speed and one at 90% speed and then again back down to 30. I love this one. So 30, 60, 90, 30, 60, 90, 30, 60, 90. So there a really good way of developing feeling the ball not going one hard firm speed. You're actually learning to control the tempo and the way you contact the shot. Yeah so many players just play at one tempo and that's really difficult to develop the feeling and touch. Variation is absolutely key in your shots. This is a fantastic drill because being able to control the speed of your shots means you develop that touch and feeling on the ball and adds a lot of control. Okay tip number three is developing weight transfer of your technique. A lot of players avoid this. They end up using a lot of the arm when they're playing and they're quite stiff upper body. Now practice using the legs and hips, trunk and rotation as you play shots. So if we take a look at the forehand topspin I've got a good bend in the knees and I'm putting my weight into my right hand side as a right hander. My weight goes to my right leg, hips turn and then the weight goes into the left leg. So the energy comes from the ground up and then my arm is relaxed into the ball and that's really important developing that in your shots. Same with the backhand, turn with the hips and then play into the shot. Then the arm comes in. Rather than the arm on its own statically it's very difficult. So using the body it's gonna give you that energy. Let's use the forehand topspin as an example without any weight transfer and let's see what happens to the shot quality. So no weight transfer, just the arm on its own. It's actually quite hard to move the feet as well. This is very tiring just using the arm. Now let's do the shot where I use my legs and body and shoulders going into the ball and let's see the difference. I'm looking to get power from the ground up and then the arm staying nice and relaxed. So turn the body and hips and now it's nice and effortless and I can get that feeling on the ball as well. Yes you can see the legs is driving into the ball and that's where you can really get a lot of power and acceleration long term. So developing weight transfer is key to have nice effortless consistent shots. So tip number four is footwork. Now a lot of players may think that they missed you to having poor technique and it breaking down. However quite often it can be because they're not getting into position with the feet. So they're reaching outside the body or they're simply too far away from the ball to play a quality shot. So footwork is key. So let's have a look at a quick simple footwork drill. Two backhands, two forehands and I'm going to try and move efficiently. So as you can see I'm nice and low. I'm on the balls of my feet. I'm light on my feet as well. You don't hear any loud stomping on the ground. My weight's forward and it's allowing me to get close to each shot and not get caught out of position. Tip five guys is timing point. Now a real common error in table tennis is players playing their shots at all different timing points. It means you can break down really quickly. You're not training your shot at the same timing point which helps you be consistent. Exactly right Dan. Now the optimum timing point is of course at the top of the bounce. So the highest point and that gives us the most safety over the net and allows us to hit the ball in front of the body. A lot of the time players are hitting the ball level with the body or even behind and it makes it very difficult to get control. So we're looking for top of the bounce and in front of the body. Okay Tom, so I'm going to do one quick exercise. Backhand, forehand middle, backhand, forehand wide. All at the highest point with my shots. So here, top of the bounce, taking the ball in front of my body. Now I can be nice and consistent. If I take the ball late, now we can break down from here. See how quickly the rally deteriorated there. Yeah. When Dan was maintaining that same timing point and the same rhythm without speeding up which is key, keeping the same timing, same rhythm, the rally stayed nice and solid and consistent. As soon as the timing point changes it becomes too quick or too late like Dan demoed, the rally breaks down and consistency goes straight downhill. Tip number six is practice under pressure. Now we all know we have to practice to improve but practicing under pressure will help you transfer your skills and training into match play. So for example setting yourself little goals like 20 serves in a row without a mistake and then you've got that pressure to try and reach a certain target. For sure Tom. Now a lot of players say I play so well in practice but I can't transfer that into a match. Exactly. One of the biggest reasons for that is not practicing in a high competitive environment. So you've got to, when you're practicing with friends you've got to put some targets on it. Maybe you play a lot of deuce matches or you know play lots of local league, play lots of tournaments. You go up the competitive environment you know and then that's going to help you really improve your game. If you just practice always in a calm environment it's very hard to bring that into a competitive environment like a match. Exactly right. Also plenty of irregular training drills. It's all very nice playing regular drills where you know where the ball's coming but irregular practices where you're not sure about the ball placement really helps you transfer those skills. Puts a bit more pressure and decision-making on you to take forward into your games. Now Tom a good exercise that a lot of pros do and even just from all abilities is one side doing a backhand block and then blocking anywhere on the table. That randomness is so good for developing those strokes. You're not sure where the ball's going and it improves decision-making. So practice under pressure. So tip number seven is video analysis and feedback. Now watching yourself play is a fantastic way to improve at table tennis. It's quite underrated. Tom here he's got a recent match in the Swedish League and he's analysing himself. He's seeing if he's attacking first you know looking at the mistakes he's making. Also you can record yourself in training, you know analyse your technique, learn from the mistakes. It really is a great way. I mean a lot of people don't like recording themselves or seeing themselves on camera for the first time but it's such a good way to improve. You know you can just see exactly where you're going wrong but also where you're going right you can get a lot of confidence from it. Tip eight is have a game plan. As you go into matches it's important that you play to your own strengths and obviously try and avoid your weaknesses. So having a game plan gives you a good tactical understanding of what you want to try and do and not do in your games. It sure does Tom. It's almost like having a philosophy how you go about your structure in the points. Exactly. Recently I played a league match and one of my teammates was playing so well of his attacks right but all his shots was going straight to the opponent's bat and I said hey look find the crossover find the elbow and thinking about this while you're playing is so important so the more you think about your game plan the more you can bring the right tactics to the table. Exactly so it's really important to know your own strengths know how to get them in play in matches and don't just simply go into a match blind without thinking or without having some sort of formula to win your points. So tip 9 guys is have a weapon. Now for me it's to try and get my finding especially on the fifth ball and play strong and hard. Yeah now by having a weapon what we mean is having a unique area of your game that is a strength to you personally. So as Dan said for him it's his strong forehand it could be your backhand block is really good it could be your service game is really strong but if your game is very evenly all-round balanced that's fine but what we want to really emphasize is have something that's unique and strong to you. Whatever area of that game it is you want to work on it and pinpoint it as your unique weapon. You're right there Tom there are some players out there who are very neutral among all the shots so nothing really stands out so they're very solid but having something that is awkward almost or something different yeah that makes it very tough against the opponent also it could work very well in the tight points of the game deuce in the fifth if you can try look to get your weapon in the opponent can be under a lot of pressure and under a lot of threat. Definitely and if you feel you don't really have a weapon or something unique to your game there's no reason why you can't develop this. Serve practice is one easy thing you can do you can do it on your own and you can really develop unique and dangerous serves you can also work on other areas of your game so there's no reason you can't develop this and build it into your game. Finally tip number 10 and that is have fun and enjoy it there's no point going to practice and trying to improve if you're not enjoying it so it is important after all that you're going there and having fun and enjoying yourself and that will in turn help you improve. For sure and I think also by having fun it also means don't take things too seriously where you end up worrying or getting discouraged that you're not improving having fun and really enjoying the moments will make you improve quickly because as Tom says you enjoy it then what happens is you're practicing you start relaxing up more and then you really find your way in the game. Exactly so be sure to check out the Table Tennis Daily Academy where we go into all these details on finer points technical areas the mental aspects and serve and return so check that out in the links below but for now guys be sure to give this video a like let us know in the comments what other tips you use to improve your game subscribe for more videos thanks for watching