(By Larry Hodges) “Tactics isn’t about finding complex strategies to defeat an opponent. Tactics is about sifting through all the zillions of possible tactics and finding a few simple ones that work.” “Strategic thinking is how you develop your game. Tactical thinking is how you use what you have to win.” “Tactical thinking is a […]

(By Larry Hodges) On the forehand side, when someone pushes long, it’s almost always a good idea to loop. Because of this, many players are not comfortable forehand pushing except against a short ball. Against a deep ball, they almost always loop, and that’s usually a good thing. The problem is when they play a […]

(By Larry Hodges) A warm-up is different than practice. Practice is to improve, maintain, or fine-tune a technique. Few players improve unless they do lots of this. However, the focus of this tip is on warming up. Warm-up is to groove your shots before playing matches. (You also warm up before a practice session, but […]

(By Larry Hodges) It’s wise to approach a match with the idea of using your strengths, but don’t forget to test your opponent as well. You don’t want to lose a match because you didn’t know about a glaring weakness in his game! This is why it’s often good to scout out an opponent in […]

(By Larry Hodges) When playing close to the table, you have very little time to make a transition from forehand to backhand shots, and vice versa. If you are playing a relatively quick backhand or in a fast rally, there’s no need to go into a backhand stance for this shot. Therefore, learn to play […]

(By Larry Hodges) There have been numerous discussions over the years over what is the most important part of table tennis. Many say the serve, or receive, or the forehand, or footwork, or consistency, or tactics, or mental strength, and so on. Of course, many of these discussions are like arguing which link in a […]

(By Larry Hodges) It’s often difficult to judge how much spin you are putting on the ball when you practice serves. Without this feedback, it’s not easy to improve your serves. So try this – find a large, carpeted room, and practice serving there. Spin the ball as if you were serving and try to […]

(By Larry Hodges) If you don’t have something that threatens your opponent, then you can’t threaten the opponent.  So, how do you develop something that threatens an opponent? You can’t do it by just training everything equally each session. You need to spend a huge amount of time developing the things you can do that […]

(By Larry Hodges) A major weakness of many players is an inability to change the pace, and thereby throw their opponent’s timing off. Not doing so is a quick way of helping your opponent’s timing. Many players try to change the pace, but do so unsuccessfully – either because they don’t know how to do […]