(By Larry Hodges, Member of US Table Tennis Hall of Fame, www.tabletenniscoaching.com/blog)
Before any practice session, you should ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish.
1. What weaknesses are you trying to overcome?
2. What average shots are you trying to turn into strengths?
3. What strengths are you trying to turn into overpowering ones?
You should, of course, start with a warmup. (If you are practicing with a coach or strong player, you may save yourself some practice time by warming up with someone else first, so your practice time can be 100% devoted to improvement.) Get into the serious training as quickly as possible.
The biggest problems I’ve seen with most practice sessions are:
1. Players practicing the same things they’ve always practiced, and so re-enforcing the strengths those drills develop while ignoring everything else, including weaknesses.
2. Generalized drills that don’t focus on the specific area you need to work on. For example, if you have a good counterloop but have difficulty counterlooping an opponent’s first loop against backspin, then incorporate that into your drill. If you just serve topspin and go straight to counterlooping, you won’t be addressing the actual problem. (An opening loop against backspin is different than a loop against topspin – it has more spin and a shorter arc.)
3. It’s not just about improving weaknesses – you also need to make your strengths overpowering! Do game-type drills that allow you to do this. This includes focusing on developing serves, receives, strokes, and footwork that set up those overpowering strengths.
4. Practicing shots at a pace where you aren’t consistent. If you do that, you are just practicing being erratic. Focus on consistency and good technique, and build up the pace as you improve.
Here’s my tip, Killer Practice Sessions. Make sure to adjust to what you are trying to develop in your game.
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