“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Ping-Pong Perfection
The quest for perfection in table tennis is one that many of us players are engaged in, although some with more success than others! But is practice the only way to achieve excellence?In recent weeks, I've been making some refinements to my own table tennis game, mainly by stripping away a variety of techniques that I had been using on the backhand side and replacing them with one main technique that was more effective. I won't bore you with all the details here, but I was mulling over the simplification of my game and the quote by Antoine de Saint Exupéry came to mind (I think I first encountered the quote when playing Civilization IV, which says something about my geek status).
As I continued to ponder the subject of the quest for table tennis perfection, it struck me that this quote has multiple applications in regard to table tennis, which I'm going to discuss below.
Perfection - Points to Ponder
- Strokes and Techniques I - While we can debate forever on which particular technique is the best - take for example the forehand loop drive - it's hard to argue against the idea that for any particular technique that is chosen, the best version will be the one that has a minimum of unnecessary movements made during the stroke. Take a look at the top Chinese players sometime - a number of different techniques at work, but ruthlessly simple and efficient strokes. Watch your own strokes on video sometime - how many little extra flourishes and movements are you adding to your own shots?
- Strokes and Techniques II - compare matches between top level players to those between intermediate level opponents. Note that while the top players have a wide variety of strokes at their disposal, in actual matches 90% of their time is spent playing a few strokes which they perform at a high level. In comparison, a match between intermediate level players often involves a number of different strokes and techniques, mostly played at a mediocre level of performance.
- Footwork - the least amount of steps you can take to arrive at the ball in a comfortable and balanced manner is best practice. Watch some video of Jan-Ove Waldner in his prime - he almost seems slow when compared to his peers, but in fact he is almost always beautifully balanced and moving just enough to be at the right place at the right time.
- Coaching - Coaches often start by teaching their students a few basic techniques, then steadily add to their student's arsenal of strokes over time. While there probably isn't time to start a new player off by teaching them every stroke in the book and then removing the shots that the player doesn't need, perhaps as a player moves up in level some thought should be given to which strokes can be ignored in favor of more important techniques, rather than trying to master every stroke?
- The ITTF - I finally understand why the ITTF is favoring power loopers over all other styles - they believe that table tennis perfection will be achieved, not when there are no more styles to add, but when there are no other styles left to take away!
