Tactics for beating a good junior player

Tactics for beating a good junior player

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Any adult who has played competitive table tennis at any level has faced the unnerving and unglorified challenge of trying to beat a junior player. And not just any junior player. A junior who has been coached. A junior who has good technique and some great shots. A junior who plays without fear. It’s a difficult situation. There is no glory in beating a junior, but if you don’t try your best, you can easily get beat. In this blog post, I’ll give you some tactics on how to beat a good junior player. Keep reading

Why learning to play table tennis is like learning to drive a car

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Most players I coach have at some point had to listen to my dreaded table tennis car analogy. I usually reel it out when a player is having difficulty learning a new stroke. The player says something like “it’s difficult to think about what I need to do and watch what you’re doing at the same time”. Ding! This is my cue. It’s time for my table tennis car analogy. For your benefit, here it is… Keep reading

How to warm-up before a match (if you only have five minutes)

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One of the challenges of local league table tennis is that you often don’t get very much time to warm-up. By the time you get to the venue, you may only have five minutes to warm-up with your team-mates, and then it’s straight on with the matches. Your first match isn’t great. You’re a bit tight and tense and you don’t play anywhere near your best level. You moan to yourself about the fact that you haven’t had a proper warm-up. What can you do about this? In this blog post I explain how you can improve your warm-up routine, even if you only have a few minutes to warm-up. Keep reading

The backspin serve challenge

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Here’s something fun for you to try. Ryan Jenkins, a Welsh international table tennis player, has set a challenge. You have to do a backspin serve which bounces once on the server’s side, once on the receiver’s side and then bounces back over the net to the server’s side again. You get five attempts. Every time you do a successful serve, Ryan will donate £1 to Pink Pong. Ryan got 3 out of 5. Will I get more? Keep reading

Review: Palio Expert 2 Table Tennis Bat

Review: Palio Expert 2 Table Tennis Bat

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One of the most popular table tennis bats for beginners is the Palio Expert 2. As there is a lot of interest in this bat, I thought I would write a review. I also have a Palio Expert 2 table tennis bat, which I sometimes use in coaching sessions with beginners. As I’ve had many hours of playing time with the bat, I feel well placed to give my expert view. Here’s my review… Keep reading

Tom’s Table Tennis Quiz 2016

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It’s quiz time! How good is your table tennis knowledge? I have 20 questions about table tennis during 2016. Each question has four possible answers for you to choose from. If you don’t know the answer, just have a guess. You have 1 in 4 chance of getting it right! At the end of the quiz you can compare your score to others and you can even add your score to the quiz leader-board. Keep reading

Lessons learnt from 1000 hours of coaching

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Over the past two years, I’ve given over 1,000 hours of 1-to-1 table tennis coaching lessons. That’s a lot of coaching. Even though every session is focused entirely on the needs of the player I’m coaching, I’m also constantly learning. Learning how to be a better coach. Learning how to improve my instruction and drills. Learning more about table tennis. Since I’ve reached a 1,000 hour coaching milestone, I thought it would be useful to share some of the lessons I have learnt over the past couple of years. Keep reading

How to attack more during matches

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Players learning the game (and also some players who have been playing for 30 years) can find it difficult to attack during matches. Is this you? You may have the aspiration to attack. You may tell yourself that you want to attack. But the opportunity never seems to present itself, especially against a better player who doesn’t give you any easy balls to smash away. In this blog post I explain how you can attack more during matches. Keep reading