Month: November 2019

How to overcome “3rd game syndrome”

How to overcome “3rd game syndrome”

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One of the players I coach often struggles when he gets to the 3rd game in a match. He told me… “I have found that I quite often win the first 2 games comfortably maybe 11:5 or 11:6 but then in the 3rd game I lose. I am sure this is a psychological thing. I have asked around and even some much better players than myself experience this from time to time. What’s going on? How to beat this?” In this blog post, I explain how you can overcome “3rd game syndrome” and win the 3rd game and the match. Keep reading

Why is backhand topspin vs backspin so difficult?

Why is backhand topspin vs backspin so difficult?

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A few days ago I had the pleasure of coaching at the Top Edge & Gertsen Training Camp at St Neots Table Tennis Club. Part of my role was to do 1-to-1 sessions with some of the players. In these sessions I asked the players what they wanted to work on. The players were a mixture of ages and standards, but strikingly most of them wanted to work on the same thing – backhand topspin vs backspin. This is consistent with my own coaching sessions in Cambridge. Backhand topspin vs backspin seems to be a shot which is very difficult for a lot of players (myself included) at the amateur level. Why is this? Keep reading