(By Larry Hodges)
If you can’t do it in your sleep, you can’t do it consistently in a match.
- Practice everything in your game, but focus on your strengths and weaknesses. Remove the weaknesses and turn the strengths into overpowering ones.
- At the higher levels, if you can see it, loop it; if you can’t see it, either reflex block or back up so you have time to loop it.
- Most players block better on the backhand. So focus on attacking the forehand and middle.
- If you push quick, heavy, low, wide, and deep, and can hide or change directions at the last second, and you do all of these things pretty well, you have a great push. If you do most of these things great but aren’t good at one or two of them, you have a weak push.
- There are only three things in table tennis: move to the ball, get the right racket angle, and stroke. Do these well and you’re the best in the world.
- If you improve your game, and start challenging better players, for about six months you will lose most close games in big matches to them because the other guy has more experience at that level. Keep at it and you’ll start winning those close games.
- If players spent as much time practicing serves as they did complaining about having trouble with the other guy’s serve, then the other guy would be the one complaining about having trouble with your serve.
- After every match ask yourself what you did to win and lose points. Then practice to do more of one and less of the other.
- There is no such thing as a weird style, just weak styles that you aren’t used to.
