Win in table tennis? Whom do we want to beat? Why not the best in the world? So this is how it's done.
The most important requirement is to start young. Preferrably before you are born. People are known to get married so they can breed the next world champion. Starting the indoctrination at the fetus stage is also not uncommon. Doing situps at three-week-old may be already two weeks too late. Hitting a ball before you can walk is almost a must. Too bad, though, all these are beyond your control. It's already too late when you realize what it takes.
But if you are a parent, there is still hope. You should start when the future champ is still in the cradle. Train the eyes to estimate motion by exposing the baby to toys that have some forms of movements in them. Let the little one watch any kind of ball bouncing on the floor or take him to ping pong clubs and ball games. By the time the baby starts to walk, make a small table for him to play on. The nerve and muscle development at this stage would translate to what the public called "natural talent".
For the player himself, this is called the identity factor. He may claim that he plays because he loves the sport. But mostly any one, after going through two weeks of professional training, will find his interest quickly flying out of the window. The only hold on him is his identifying with the sport. Therefore, before the kid finds out what he's getting himself into, you better have this identity well planted into his head.
The second most important requirement is the design of the playing style. If you don't have anything revolutionarily new, don't bother even start. Parents are best at doing these. A father-daughter team or mother-son team is most ideal. Throwing an older brother into the mix can help out a lot. The point is that all those involved must have the interest of the player at heart and be willing to sacrifice themselves unconditionally. Hired coaches may be a suspect at this stage. A case in point is the teaching of male-oriented, power-hitting styles to female students. In such a situation, the parents must come to the rescue.
The third and last most important requirement is the access to "punching bags". Each punching bag is a player with one particular shot-making style that is best in the world. Practicing against the punching bags, a player can learn to neutralize and then attack such shots. This is the secret behind the success of the Chinese players. Supposedly, when a player has been trained to dominate all the possible styles of play in the world, he is the next world champion.
A good sparring partner is the second best choice. Fathers and brothers, and even coaches, come in handy but they get used up quickly as the player improves beyond the basics.
The above three requirements provide a recipe for making of a champion. Competitive sports, however, are the toughest career you can choose. And table tennis is the toughest of them all. There are many traps and hurdles to overcome. Here are the major ones.
(1) The most difficult thing for improvement is the ability to handle setbacks, especially when the setbacks are intentional, because they are necessary. A player needs to continually throw away his cherished skills and replace them with something better. This can cause havoc in staying sharp and confident. Most player would not dare to let go anything that has raised him to the current level and is responsible to keep him there. Even for the rare few who dare, the inner conflicts can become too much for the mind to bear. Whereas in reality, a champion almost have to develope this one-step-back-two-step-foreward ability to improve.
(2) Speed is the king, and mental toughness owns the match point. It's an eternal struggle for a player to force himself to play fast and play gutsy. For ordinary players, physical exhaustion and psychological boredom are the major hurdles. But wait until they have to play fast and gutsy, they would have arrived at a time for second thoughts,
(3) Your serves and the returns must be good enough to dictate the ensuing rally. You need to have a fast and sudden serve in your repertoir. And in returning a serve, you must be able to attack any kind of serve. But most players would avoid the whole issue and indulging themselves in rally practices. Rally practices can actually turn into a luring deadend on the road to world championship.
(4) Spinned shots are effective only if they are deceptive. Otherwise they become setup shots when the other player knows how to rub it. Those, addicted to spinning the ball, are embarking on a career as good punch bags.
In America the conditions are simply not there to produce a world champion. Drawing from a pool of less than 10,000 table tennis players is like hoping to hit the lotto. Our best chance is to first mobilize the 20 million ping pong players and to get them all to play not only for fun but also improvement. Our handicap system is designed for this purpose. May be somewhere down the road we would get enough crazy parents to get their kids to make realistic shots at the world championship.
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WHY CHAMPION IS BEYOND REACH