Archive for the 'Deliberate Practice Principles' Category

Squash Vision Training: How to anticipate shots without guessing

The two previous posts focused on two different, but related Deliberate Practice Principles; the first to watch your opponent while he/she hits the ball and the second, to ANTICIPATE his/her next shot. Admittedly, the second is a lot harder to master. You’re in luck, you can learn to do this even when you’re not on […]

Deliberate Practice Principle: Focus on one element/component at a time

This is one of the more contentious aspects of Deliberate Practice Principles. Focusing on ONE element or component of the skill you’re trying to acquire. For example: For a table tennis serve, focusing… JUST on increasing spin or; JUST on hiding your racket behind your body or; JUST on the racket contact point to affect […]

Is Your Table Tennis Robot Damaging Your Table?

If you’re using a table tennis ball-feeding robot to practice your return of serve, you might be seeing this damage to your table… There is a simple solution: Use a wood plank to cover the service contact area on the robot’s side of the table. It needs to have a smooth surface to avoid altering […]

K.I.S.S. Keep It Super Simple

We’ve all heard the idiom: K.I.S.S. Keep It Super Simple. But what does it mean in our day-to-day lives? Today’s 1% Improvement is to be creative and use what you have. My community table tennis “room” has a white ball “scooper” to get the balls from under the table (shown below). I used a marker […]

Sore knees playing table tennis on carpet?

We can’t all have fit-for-purpose training facilities for our chosen sport. Often, when it comes to table tennis or ping pong, rooms are unfortunately carpeted. If you’re more than a casual social table tennis player, you’ll soon start to have sore knees! There’s a simple solution, get yourself bowling shoes! These are “KR Strikeforce Aviator […]

Deliberate Practice Principle: Observe the changes you’re making

One of the key foundational concepts of Deliberate Practice Principles is to observe the changes you’re making, as you’re making them. The before and after images below reveal the changes to a table tennis serve tactic to increase spin by adjusting the ball’s contact point towards the tip of the racket. This allows for the […]

Deliberate Practice Principle: Mental Models to accelerate complex skill acquisition

Deliberate Practice Principles are how World Champions and Olympians consistently out-perform the average elite, competitive player by accelerating their skill acquisition – systematically and predictably. One of the CORE FOUNDATIONAL principles is the use of Mental Models. In table tennis, for LONG/FAST serves The Mental Model is NOT about the intended targets (green and yellow) […]