What should you work on?

[speedplay]

I was talking to a high level player here about this and he shared some interesting thoughts about this. To me, it seems like it's been common forum knowledge that you should always work on your weaknessess to try to eliminate them, but when I spoke to this guy he said that when he was younger, he constantly went up and down between first grade and elite grade, with elite grade being the highest here. He said that every time he went up to the elite grade, he decided he needed to develop his bh and worked really hard to imporve it. Then, when he got to play, his bh was better then it used to be, but since he had spent so much time working on that, his fh was weaker then it used to be, but still stronger then his bh. So, the aim with his game was to use his fh, which was now weaker then it used to be so he finally figured out that he should work on his strengths as it was those that won him the matches. Now, I'm sure you all understand that he wasn't saying that you should neglect your weaknessess and I also think that this adviceis only valid once you have solid shots from both wings, but it still raised some interesting thoughts for me.


He went on to talk about tactic and he said that he had overheard players talking about how they should play to beat that guy and how they should play to be this guy, but he never understood it, cause he said that he played his game, which was suitable to his strengths, cause if he couldn't beat them using his strengths, then he surely wouldn't be able to beat them by playing a game that didn't suit him. I found this to be really interesting since I've read several treads on how to play different opponents. Again, I'm sure you all know that this was generally speaking, some minor changes in tactic depedning on the opponents is always useful, but no dramatic changes to his own game.
 
We went on to talk about why Europeans are no longer able to compete with the Chinese, and once again, he had some interesting thoughts about this. All I've ever read on this subject is that we should practice harder, start out at younger age and spend more hours with the ball box. Well, his thought was that we had forgot about the playfullness where we allow people to develop their own style. Now we all try to play the same way and from early ages, player's are taught the "correct" way to play and practice. With such methods, a country with the most players are always likely to bring out the best players, but he said that if we looked at our golden generation, with Waldner, Persson, Appelgren and Lindh, they played very different to each other and they each developed their own style and this is what made them so successfull. He said that if he was a kid today, with the current methods, he would never have become as good as he is, cause his game is unconventional, but it works for him. He could never play like Waldner and by trying to do that, he wouldn't reach his full potential and if Waldner had been forced to play like Persson instead, he wouldn't have become as good as he was/is. We've forgotten about individuality when it comes to practising and this is why we no longer produce great players. I think there is a lot of truth to this and even if individual training probably wouldn't see us challenging China decade after decade, I think it would help us to compete and challenge them every now and then.

[RebornTTEvnglist]

Individuality makes some sense, except that China trains robots, not individuals!

[blocker]

interesting topic Speedplay. China is certainly ultra dominant at present but they have been before and historically Europe always manages to comes back (sweden 1973, Hungarians 1979, then Sweden later on etc).  i agree with Reb that the chinese players are robots. they are obviously vg but they all more or less play identically and after a while they become a bit boring to watch (even tho we can appreciate their skill). i found TT far more exciting before around 2000 where there was a greater diversity of styles. i like Speedplays idea of letting individuality blossom and i suspect that is why Europe does make the periodic challenges to China. its also makes the game far more interesting to watch.

[RebornTTEvnglist]

I mainly work on having fun while getting some exercise! If my game improves during this, goodo!

[pingpongrob]

Everything you said Speedplay makes 100% sense to me, but I must say the players you mentioned all have wonderful stroke - yet differant. No need to change their strokes, but sometime a bad stroke must be changed to improve - for instance my forehand was very bad, I got taught the incorrect stroke from the begining, and it has take 3 years of work to rectify it, and I must say I still have a way to go. Whilst I've been working on my forehand, mu backhand which was always my strenght has dropped in standard a little, not enough to lose game, as I've picked up points with my newly developed forehand.

I believe that strokes actually seasaw there way to improvement, that is your forehand might improve by three rungs on a ladder, but your backhand goes down one rung - then you work on your Backhand and it improves 3 rungs, and your forhand goes down a rung. Overall there is an improvement.

I actually think and its been said many times, that my serve should be worked on, although its about 20 times better than 10 years ago, still not a point winning serve by a long shot.  In doubles, my serve rarely gets attacked even by the top players.

[Der Echte]

Everything you said Speedplay makes 100% sense to me, but I must say the players you mentioned all have wonderful stroke - yet differant. No need to change their strokes, but sometime a bad stroke must be changed to improve - for instance my forehand was very bad, I got taught the incorrect stroke from the begining, and it has take 3 years of work to rectify it, and I must say I still have a way to go. Whilst I've been working on my forehand, mu backhand which was always my strenght has dropped in standard a little, not enough to lose game, as I've picked up points with my newly developed forehand.

I believe that strokes actually seasaw there way to improvement, that is your forehand might improve by three rungs on a ladder, but your backhand goes down one rung - then you work on your Backhand and it improves 3 rungs, and your forhand goes down a rung. Overall there is an improvement.

I actually think and its been said many times, that my serve should be worked on, although its about 20 times better than 10 years ago, still not a point winning serve by a long shot.  In doubles, my serve rarely gets attacked even by the top players.

That is a very good indicator. At least of the serve being tight or unpredictable. A poor server makes too many mistakes or simply cant keep it tight to save his life. I see a LOT of USATT 2000 level players here in Korea with poor serves. Their rallying is usually very strong and makes up for that. Myself, I play above my level the first few times I play against anyone as my serve is good and I attack the long serves. When I quit attacking, the number of points I win usually goes way down the tube.

[speedplay]

Everything you said Speedplay makes 100% sense to me, but I must say the players you mentioned all have wonderful stroke - yet differant. No need to change their strokes, but sometime a bad stroke must be changed to improve - for instance my forehand was very bad, I got taught the incorrect stroke from the begining, and it has take 3 years of work to rectify it, and I must say I still have a way to go. Whilst I've been working on my forehand, mu backhand which was always my strenght has dropped in standard a little, not enough to lose game, as I've picked up points with my newly developed forehand.

I agree, there is no need to change the strokes of the player's mentioned, neither their style, but the current school of thought is to teach every one to play a fh-loop the same way, regardless of their natural style. It's almost as if it is more important to look good then to really be good. People need to have the currage to challenge the traditional styles/techniques and come up with something new. How ever, this is not the way coaching is done at the moment.

I believe that strokes actually seasaw there way to improvement, that is your forehand might improve by three rungs on a ladder, but your backhand goes down one rung - then you work on your Backhand and it improves 3 rungs, and your forhand goes down a rung. Overall there is an improvement.

I'm sure this is true for player's who still work on getting their strokes right, but once you have the strokes and try to turn them into lethal strokes, I think the amount of practice you need to spend on them makes it really hard to improve 3 rungs and will take away valuable time from practicing your best shot. Also, if you mainly use your fh, and you bh is there to cover up but not to finish the point, then you might gain more from working even harder on that shot to make it even better. Look at it this way, if you use your fh 90% of the time when you try to finish a point, then by losing 1 rung, you are losing 9 rungs in total on 10 shots. At the same time, you use bh 10% of the time, which increased by 3 rungs, so you go 3 rungs forward but 9 rungs back. Not a good trade according to me. This is all provided that your bh is good enough to keep you in the rally, which I assume all people have at the level mentioned here.

I actually think and its been said many times, that my serve should be worked on, although its about 20 times better than 10 years ago, still not a point winning serve by a long shot.  In doubles, my serve rarely gets attacked even by the top players.

I've got a horrible serve in doubles   mainly because I rarely work on it. I prefer to serve from fh from my bh corner and this makes my serve vulnerable in doubles. A funny thing about serves is that I've always considered my own serve to be really bad, while I have a team mate who have great serves. Then we faced the same guy in a league match, a guy none of us had faced before. The result was, my team mate got a couple of points straight of his serve, but most of the time, the opponent attacked his serve. I didn't get any free points at all, but the opponent rarely got the chance to attack it. So, perhaps my serve isn't as lousy as I think it is. For those of you who wonder about the result, we were both destroyed in 3 straight sets by this guy, who was clearly a couple of levels above us.

[speedplay]

I was expecting Biggy to have some input on this topic. I know I was a bit surprised when he said he worked mostly on his strenghts, cause those where what won him the points and his aim was to play to them all the time. While it made sense, Ithought he would talk more about working on his weaknessess to eliminate those.

Then again, I'm sure he talked about how he did it, at his level. For player's who still haven't fully developed strokes, I'm sure he would agree that we should work on those first.

[big ears]

I think it all depends on how much time you've got and how dedicated you are. If you have the time then you can work on your weaknesses, but every aspect of the developement of these areas will bring a new challenge to your game, especially if it is already developed.
So for example, if you have an established constructive game, based around a serve and f/hand opener, it could be said that you have a weakness opening with your b/hand, this is because you are comitted to using a f/hand for the third ball, with the neccesary preparation of the stroke and required footwork being key to the consistency of this part of your game, and the more you play this way the better you get.
Then one day you are absolutely roasted by a higher level player who exploits the fact that you only open with your f/hand, allowing him to dictate every rally. What is your strength at YOUR level, now becomes your weakness. You identify the fact that this area of your game needs to be worked upon, and start working towards being more two winged especially when opening. Easy isn't it? exept that 6 months later you have totally screwed your game up, you sacreficed a settled game for the unknown, you now have something you did not have before, a decision point, do you play a fh or a bh, and you need to be in the correct place with your weight on the correct foot, with your body prepared correctly, to play the stroke with any kind of consistency at all, some thing which is difficult to achieve in 6 months even if you are a full time player. You end up with a weaker f/hand and b/hand, because you are polished at neither, you are not accomplished enough to play an even winged game and your results will suffer, in any case, you will almost certainly resort to the f/hand orientated game you had in the first place when under pressure.
So what is the answer? don't try to make radical changes to your game once the mould has been set, unless you have a hell of a lot of time on your hands, can take the losses, and are completely dedicated. A better way around it, is to work with what you have already got, could your serves be better? could you be fitter? could your sh/game be improved, and could your tactical awareness be improved? I have found that altering a players thinking can often bring better results, going for more topspin instead of looking for clean winners, soft flicking instead of pushing etc. Don't worry about the guy who roasted you, he's probably always going to whatever you do, unless you change everything by going virtually professional.

[RebornTTEvnglist]

Sounds like a fair strategy Biggie. Polish the assets you have so they gleam and overshadow the weaknesses to a point that only players way above your level will be able to really take truly advantage of the weakenesses. Is that the nutshell?

[big ears]

Sounds like a fair strategy Biggie. Polish the assets you have so they gleam and overshadow the weaknesses to a point that only players way above your level will be able to really take truly advantage of the weakenesses. Is that the nutshell?

 Yep, the bonus being, you will rarely lose to players you should not, ie you become more consistant.

[speedplay]

To me, the cheese of the cake is to work on the strokes you use in a match. If you constantly try to avoid using, say the fh push in matches, why work on it? Wouldn't you be better served working on the prefered fh flick instead?

Still, this only applies once you have solid strokes, if you can not loop at all from the bh, I think you need to work on this, as this is a weakness that can be exploited by most, but if you can loop with it, al though it might not be a powerful winner, you are fine and if you prefer to step around and use fh instead, then that is what you should work on.

[big ears]

It all depends on how radical the resultant change is to your game, as to how much you want it to distrupt your game (if it is settled) If you are not protecting anything like a local status or your average you can do anything you want, if you mess with your game too radically, you are likely to go backwards a little, before you go forwards. Most players, once they are established in a standard, find any backwards steps, even for a short period, difficult to cope with, unless they are on the initial improvement curve (3 steps forward 1 step back) or they have just had a long lay off so have low initial expectancy.

[1NsAnE]

first of all is physical condition

[PocketRocket]

I disagree with the Chinese being robots. Yes they train a lot and if you stare blankly at them they look similar, but when you really get down to looking closely at how they play, they are all radically different. Each one has a different style of play and have developed different strengths. What makes the Chinese different is that its difficult to peg there weaknesses as they are so well trained.

For example you may watch me play and say my service return is clearly garbage, and then watch a Chinese player play and not be able to say anything remotely like that about any part of there game.

If you still think all the Chinese player play the same then watch Ma Lin, Ma Long, Wang Liquin and Wang Hao one after the other. Some of there tactics may overlap but that's where the similarities end.

Also, lets get some tactic talk going.
What do you do at 9-9, 8-10 down, ect