Should I start taking coaching lessons?
It’s never too late to learn anything. Whether you are an eight or eighty-eight year old person, at any age you can play and improve your table tennis game.
Let me tell you a short story about myself. I played soccer a lot when I was in my school and college years. At that age I thought I was very good at it, because I was playing soccer a lot, and thought I was better at dribbling the ball than other players. I thought I was the best player in the group.
One day my father told me, if you really want to learn and play soccer properly then go to my friend who is a soccer coach and take some lessons from him. At that time I thought I would know everything the soccer coach would teach me. However, I listened to my father and went to see the coach.
On my first day of the coaching lesson, I was unable to steal the ball from him when he started teaching me the basic skills of soccer. At that moment I thought “I don’t know anything about soccer”. No matter what sport you want to play or learn, you need to learn the basics of that sport properly through a coach.
As this is my first blog post, let me tell you the “The Fundamentals” of table tennis. I will discuss each of them in my future blog posts. Learning the strokes properly will help you improve your game. The fundamentals are the core of table tennis. At any level a player must know how to execute the basic strokes properly (the forehand and backhand drives, the pushes), etc.
Let me list the basics of table tennis:
Racket grip
Ready position
Forehand and backhand drive
Forehand and backhand push
Serves
Basic footwork
Mental preparation
Let’s look at the example of backhand or forehand strokes. You need to know how to move your wrist, forearm, or whole arm to execute the proper stroke. You need to learn the right direction and angle of a stroke. By hitting the right stroke you will be more consistent and gain more confidence. This will motivate and encourage you to improve your game performance and skill-set.
Coaches are experienced and knowledgeable. They will provide you with loads of different drill sets, ball placement and much more in order to improve your game. They will point out your weaknesses, help you enhance your game, and have the proper tools and techniques to improve your strokes.
There are so many articles and video links on the internet that you can teach yourself to learn the basics of table tennis. But self teaching won’t help you enhance your game because you don’t have someone there to tell you your weaknesses and how to execute the correct strokes. You need to have a coach who can understand those weaknesses and help improve upon them. Once your basic skills are developed you are on the right path to learn sport of table tennis. As a professional coach and a player, I too am always trying to improve my game and enhance my coaching skills every day.
For the players who would like to learn the fundamental skills, stay tuned for my next weekly blog post.
New: Limited Free Video Coaching Available for June Only
I’m offering some free video coaching sessions (1 on 1 for 30 minutes). If you’re interested fill out the form below. Space is limited and I’m accepting only 8 total players.
Once you submit, I will email you the details on how it works & to coordinate a time.
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