After quite a few recent blogs focused on tournaments, results and what I’ve been doing, I’ll be shifting the focus to more tactical and educational musings. Having gone back to full-time work after the excitement and bright lights of the Olympics, I am now back into the daily grind of trying to fit it all in. I am training mostly in the morning with a 6:30am start and 8:30am finish before I rush off into the traffic and try to make it to my desk by 9. I’m trying to do 4 – 5 table tennis sessions per week.

I have to be very selective about what I am working on and what area of my game I’m attempting to focus on. Training full-time allows you much more time to work on all the individual details and I just can’t do that anymore.

Recently I’ve been putting a lot of effort, thinking and precious training time into improving my change of shot direction. 99% (or more) of table tennis exercises are played to the one spot (ie attack all my shots to the opponent’s backhand). Those exercises are great and certainly serve their purpose however the ability to vary the placement of your shots is underestimated and not given the understanding or prominence that it deserves.

Sure, if you are able to blast five or six topspins in a row as hard as you can to the same position then the opponent will probably eventually miss their shot. However I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that (as I’m sure very few other people can either) so I need to try to be smarter and play more effectively.

The ability to easily and quickly play your shot to any position on the table sounds simple enough however it is more difficult that what most people think. Most shots in table tennis go back to the same spot the opponent’s shot came from and most of the time, that is cross court. Anything you can do to increase your ability to change that position, the more effective you will be as a player.

You will greatly increase the range of shots and positions the opponent has to cover which will make his shots weaker as he has to prepare for a greater number of possibilities. He’ll have less time to prepare for his shots and will have to focus more of being reactionary rather than being able to predict where your next shot will be coming.

That takes practice – believe me it takes practice! And it’s not a talent that comes to you; it needs to be worked on. If players get a shot deep to their forehand, the most common response is to play the ball back cross court. But if you create exercises where you are being forced to constantly change the position of your shot, you begin to notice the adjustments and adaptations needed to go against what feels the easiest and most natural solution. The more you do it, the easier it becomes to choose where you are going to play your shot rather than your placement being dictated by the opponent. I’ve been doing the same couple of exercises every session for the past couple of weeks and I feel it’s paying off.

In the first exercise I am getting two shots to my backhand to start with. I play the first shot cross court and the next shot down the line. From then I can get the ball either to my forehand OR to my backhand. Again, I play one shot cross court and the next shot down the line. Again, I can get the ball either to my forehand OR to my backhand and I play one shot cross court and the next shot down the line. It’s what I’d call a semi-regular exercise as I know I’ll always be getting two balls to the same spot. The difficulty in the exercise is having to make the small body position and feet adjustments to be able to change the placement of your shots.

The next exercise sees me getting every ball coming randomly (over the whole table) and I must play one shot to the backhand, then the next shot to the forehand, then the next shot to the backhand and so on. This is tough and you are going to feel useless the first few times you attempt to do it. You’ll feel like you have no time and you are constantly out of position. But then something happens: you begin adjusting your body position earlier than you were before and you feel like either you got faster or the rest of the world got slower. You are no longer allowing yourself to take the easier option and in doing so, you force your technique to become more efficient.

Good luck!