How to Improve Quickly in Limited Time?
This is a brand-new, technique-focused column in a question-and-answer format. The mystery figure answering is a former national team member, a veteran coach. So the “Reaching the Summit” column was born.
As an amateur expert and also middle-aged, how do I keep improving technique in limited time?
At this age, playing eight or ten games should not be tiring. Very likely the main issue is wasting too much energy. Table tennis should be played with “inch power.” If your feet, body and arm all fire early, you easily feel tired. You must learn: only at the instant of striking do you tense the parts of the body needed to fire — then the ball quality is very high. Usually, besides a bit of force in the front foot and knees, relax everywhere else.
If it really is a physical issue and you cannot produce power, learn to borrow pace, using spin, angle, rhythm, long-short, serves and other one-directional techniques in combination — for example, serve spin/no-spin, rip one ball; combine return speed and angle, spin with placement long-short, and other tactics, also very effective. Use more technique-tactic combinations to avoid monotony.
When playing, I always feel my power level is insufficient and I cannot drive through — what do I do?
You seem to have entered a misunderstanding. Driving through actually does not need much power — one finger is enough. It is the same principle as pushing. When you push, you surely do not grip the ball solidly. First, you must practice the feel of gripping the ball solidly; if you push solidly, you will surely loop solidly too.
Feel more the moment the fingers receive the ball — shoulder, upper arm, forearm and wrist all relaxed; when the fingers receive the ball, go from loose to tight, from slow to fast to a sudden brake. You must find this feel, and then playing is very effortless with very high quality. Driving through the blade does not need much force — it needs a clever knack. You must clearly feel that one moment of grip-plus-brake going from loose to tight, the feel of relaxing then accelerating. What you should learn now is not firing — first learn to relax.
We generally say strong spin generation comes from deep ball-holding. That feel is actually: the ball stays on your blade for a long time before coming out, but once it does, the ball speed is conversely very fast and sharp. The feel of relaxing then exploding — feel it more.