How to Stay Relaxed During a Competitive Match

Originally published 2026-04-03 · Translated and republished by UltraSpin with permission

This column is dedicated to technical Q and A. The answers come from two former national team players — both now experienced coaches — who prefer to stay anonymous. They just want a quiet life and a good night’s sleep, with no desire for fame.

What can you do to effectively stay relaxed during a match?

Nervousness in competition comes from many sources: the venue, the environment, table space, table bounce, an unfamiliar opponent, and an opponent’s tactics, serves, style, and rhythm that you’re not used to.

What you can control:

1. Warm up your body before the match — loosen the waist, abs, legs, arms, wrists, and fingers with stretching to heat everything up gradually so the muscles relax and don’t stiffen.
2. Hit with a training partner. Don’t swing hard right away — start with forehand and backhand drives. Get a feel for the table bounce, the sense of space, and how the ball transmits through the arm on contact.
3. Topspin drills from a fixed position — feel the topspin arc at different heights and lengths, and adjust your forearm and body to control trajectory.
4. Push-loop combinations — control short, push long, link into the drive — to get both your body and your arm working in sync with no gaps.
5. Defensive drills against fast loops and high loops — to quickly calibrate your feel for how the venue space affects the ball’s pace, speed, and spin.

In other words, get your body thoroughly opened up before the match, then run through each technique and feel everything out.

Those are the things you can control. After that, it’s about studying your opponent’s technical tendencies.

During the match, don’t rush. Stop trying to win every point in one shot. If your body is still stiff, that’s a mental issue.

As for slow recovery — the causes are many. The most likely one is the absence of a small adjustment step to restore your balance and smoothly connect the next shot, which disrupts swing speed and continuity.

For the problem of overshooting after coming off a backspin ball, it’s not about being too far from the table. More likely your weight and footwork didn’t recover after the loop, and your opponent’s block came back and caught you leaning into it. One factor might be thinking you’d already put the rally away with that loop — and not preparing seriously enough for the follow-up.

What are the technical keys to smashing a high ball?

To smash a high ball, use your body weight combined with the forearm to drive downward. Everything leading up to contact is body-driven; the arm must not tighten prematurely. When you’re around 20–30 cm from the ball, the body weight and forearm accelerate and press down together — the forearm should have a feeling like you’re delivering a slap. Throughout the smash, the body weight presses down fast and keeps pressing until the ball leaves the blade, then snaps back.

Smashing a high ball is all about reading space and distance. Because it’s an active power shot, if you swing during the ball’s rising phase your arm tends to lock up and you’ll rush it and miss wide. Generally, you wait for the ball to fall from its peak to a height that suits your own stature, and attack from that sweet spot.

What does it take to become a truly advanced player?

Understand this: you can only generate power if you’re relaxed — otherwise the energy stays locked inside your body. The hands must be relaxed but not slack or unsteady. The core is engaged but not rigid. Only at the moment of contact does the power concentrate: foot, knee, hip, core, arm, wrist, fingers all flowing together through the body’s momentum. That’s how you explode.

To become the kind of player others call a high-level player, you must:

1. Toe pads and the ball of the foot are active, heel light — this lets the body move quickly.
2. Upper and lower leg taut but not stiff, so the knee stays springy.
3. Waist and core with controlled looseness — loose when moving and preparing, firm at the moment of contact — to ensure power transfer and stability.
4. The arm relaxed but steady, to maintain acceleration and power on receive — along with a stable elbow for clean power transfer and a reliable feel.