Improve Stroke Timing and Anticipation

Hey guys and welcome back to Peck Pong, a channel where I talk about matches that I play, things that I do to try to get better, and some information stuff. Today we have a bit of both, the information and the things that I'm trying to do to get better. So the reason for me making this video is that I think that sharing ideas and concepts can be very useful and that's something that I wish that someone would do for me. So here I am sharing the way I practice for anyone out there who would like to see it. Hitting the ball on the table is like stacking a deck of cards, you know, each little thing has to go right in order for the ball to end up on the table. So I'm not too big a fan of grading myself whether I hit the ball on the table or not, I'm usually more focused on little things that will lead up to that. The more complex or specific information will be later on in the video, probably the things that you'll find more interesting are a little bit further in, so don't be taken off by the first few drills that I do because those are just standard warm-up procedures and things like that. But those can also be really good too to look at and maybe you get something from it. So first we have our warm-up strokes and these are good to get the body moving. I like to do, I really actually like the warm-ups because it's really important to have a very good blocker so you can just get dialed in for the day. It's very hard to do anything well if you don't have a good warm-up so it's a really, really important part of the practice routine. And I like to do from different distances and different places on the table and things like that. Here are some counter loops, which is also good. Okay, the first drill, three-point moving drill. This one's probably my favorite one to warm up just because it has you moving left and right and it has you hitting forehands and backhands. So yeah, it's a really great warm-up drill for anyone who wants to just get things going and I think it's probably one of the most common ones for top level players as well, for the exact reasons I stated. Okay, backhand timing and moving in. I usually have trouble with hitting backhands with good timing because the window for hitting a backhand is very small, much different than the forehand which the window is very large. So yeah, most of my time is on backhand is spent with timing drills. So here I have chance hitting faster balls and slower balls to my backhand and the key for me is on the slower ones I have to wait for the ball a little bit more and on the really slow ones I have to step in even and wait for them. So it's really good for my time. Okay, next we have short or long whole table random. This one's multi-ball. So here are some key things that I like to focus on to do well with that. I like to stay low for a low center of gravity. I like to keep the racket high so that I can move in and out very well and then it's really important for me to step in with my right foot first and as you can see when I keep my hand high it really lets me step in really well. A lot of times before I would keep my hand a little bit lower and then every time it was short I had to come in and raise my hand up but now I've learned better that keeping it high lets me step in very efficiently and catch the balls earlier and just more effectively. All right, short or long whole table random starting with serve. So it's the same drill just starting with serve and it's really important. The difference is that you have to move from your serve into your ready position very quickly. So yeah, that's really important. It's just serve and get into ready position very fast. If you're not doing that you're probably going to be playing catch-up and you're not going to be very proactive when you're playing. So yeah, I think that's the most important thing when you're doing this drill and for me I like to keep the drill pretty simple. So sometimes I have the opponent push long to backhand or short to backhand only or I like to do short to forehand or long to backhand only just because it makes things simple and it lets me kind of have success. All right, stepping back if I see opponent about to flip. So here you see Lin about to flip to Fan Zhendong and he kind of takes a step backwards once he sees that Lin is about to make a good banana flip and that does a couple things. That gives him more space and time to make a good stroke because he knows it's going to go to topspin. So this drill really requires you to be very attentive with your eyes to see if your opponent is going to flip or push. If they're going to flip you need to be able to step back and if they're pushing you need to not be able to step back because you assumed they were going to push. So I basically just served, got in my ready position very quickly and then was very attentive to see what my opponent was going to do. And it's very important to move back very quickly after you step in because you're going to get pressured the next ball. And that was the practice for that day. So I did another practice which I'll be uploading very soon with new stuff, very new material. So yeah, let me know in the comments below if you got something from this video and I'll see you guys in the next one!