TTS Summer School 2021

Inverclyde National Sports Centre, Largs

If you are wondering how to improve your table tennis game, meet enthusiastic, like minded table tennis players and learn from very experienced coaches, then sign up for the next TTScotland Summer School Camp at Inverclyde Sports Centre Largs. I did sign up this summer and I was not disappointed.

The camp ran from Tuesday to Friday, with 3 sessions every day, so there were plenty of opportunities to learn, practice and improve all aspects of your game.

Head Coach Colin Wilson prepared a fantastic program for the week. He delivered it with very clear, logical explanations with excellent demonstrations. Along with his team of coaches David Fairholm, Sue Collier, Senga Thomson, Gordon Fearn, Gordon Muir, Iain Rhind, Roy Claxton, Peter Shaw, Lindsay Muir, the players were treated to top class coaching, demonstrations, advice, tips and feedback.

Every day was different and often started with (young coach and player) Gordon Muir who took us through a thorough warm up to prepare our body ready for action. For the very keen, Gordon Muir also offered an early morning run every day to loosen up and you could join him and young player Kieran Walker for some yoga to stretch out the tired body at the end of the day. Following on from that coach Gordon Fearn led a variety of different and very interesting warm-ups on and off the table with wobble boards, balloons, cones to scarves to get us thinking out of the box about core strength, movement and balance.

Throughout the week there were individual and group coaching sessions, multiball and robot sessions, regular and irregular practices with an emphasis at all times on tactical awareness. We were treated to a top-class demonstration by Peter Shaw (a top defender) who fed heavy chop for Colin to loop. After an excellent demonstration, we were sent around 7 stations set up around the hall with coaches at each station. There was a variety of back spin feeding going on with multiball, robot and individual feeding, helping us to improve our forehand loop. After another demonstration by Colin and Peter, we headed off to practice our backhand looping at every station.

We had the opportunity to work on stroke production; movement and recovery; when to play the ball; irregular practice; anticipation – watching opponent for clues; serves and returns; match related practices and tactical awareness; anticipation and building rallies through service. There were fun games up and down the tables to put everything into practice each day. On the last day there was a tournament followed by analysis and a feedback session. Colin summarised these key points when considering playing a ball – length, width, speed, spin, variation and deception. He finished with another excellent demonstration and explanation of having 9 opportunities to reading spin from your opponent’s ball.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this 4-day camp and I would highly recommend this to anybody.

Joan Smith
Shetland