ETTU/ITTF ANNUAL COACHING CONFERENCE

There were 15 different countries represented at this conference and the top coach from France and Germany were present.

This was held in Paris on the 22nd -24th October 2018. Paul Rawlings-Jackson attended, supported by ETTU and TTS .

 

There were 4 main sessions covering Techniques/Tactics which was in 2 parts and Development of young players and Neurophysiological studies related to reaction time. I will summarise the main points that hopefully Scottish coaches will find useful and informative.

 

1st session was from Chinese coach, Liu Yam Jun who is the ladies coach for Austria.

 

The main topic was to get players to concentrate on 4 aspects:

WATCH – to work out spin & placement as soon as possible

MOVE – fast footwork to get to ball

HIT – as hard as possible

PREPARE – to get into a balanced ready position

 

The new ball has led to hit and spin technique where the movement is straighter through the ball than the spinnier low to high movement of the past. The back movement depends on the speed of oncoming ball. Fast punch when close in and powerful hit when slightly back off the table.

 

Lower body from the legs (not hips) and get the action to work in unison from rotating feet/legs/hips/torso together.

Serving requires pressure on the rubber as well as Spin and more serves as long chops with great speed than previously.

Recover quickly from serve with a ready position with weight on back foot. Backhand drives should be with an open rather than square stance to generate rotation and power.

 

HIT shots hard into the middle of the table to prevent power from returns. Interesting fact I enjoyed hearing was the use of CHOPSTICKS creates good feeling in the thumb and forefinger, so maybe getting rid of FORKS & KNIVES, is the answer for Scottish players, LOL!

 

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The 2nd session concentrated on changing weight from back foot to front and allowing space away from table to allow a powerful transfer to happen.

 

Take the ball in front off the body in a position where the arm is bent and not straight to create power.

CURVE body, don’t have an UP & DOWN movement. Move with small steps so player is balanced when ever they play ball.

 

Session 3 was about developing players (14-18yrs old)

 

The presenter was Mikael Anderson , High Performance director for Sweden. His main point was that the journey to the top level is long (10 years) with many of the world class players being around 30 years old.

 

Goal setting targets

12 month calendar with training every day

Learn to travel/eat and sleep well

Manage intake of confusing information from many coaches/Youtube/etc

Pride in their own style

Technical, talent & GRIT

Enjoy physical fitness

Concentrate well and willing to adapt to changes

Plan for life in TT

 

Survive massive drop off rates

Lowering finance from tournaments

From dependence become more Independant

Manage without a personal coach at events (skyping)

Personality battling Performance results

 

Feet more parallel for forehand to allow switch of feet for backhand.

Spin flicks with pace and no pace

More players using backhand grip

Tempo change and angled placements on drop shots

Fast aggressive slide serves

Use opponents speed to their advantage

 

Session 4 

 

With the title – Neuralphysiological correlations and training of vjsuomotor reaction in sports,

I was ready for for some deep theory lecture but was pleased with the presentation from 2 young professors from Cologne and Luxembourg. One discussed how parts of the brain take in messages of colourc and speed and store then in BA6 to send them to the muscles to react.

 

It was proved athletes perception and transfer times were faster than non athletes. This could be because of generics or training but this was to be studied in the future! A person was fitted with an electro skull cap and reaction times were monitored on a computer. This showed the complexity of the study.

 

The only thing I could conclude is that players could improve their reaction time more by having more irregular practices in their training to speed up their reaction times.