So Why Are Random Drills the Answer?
I'm not saying that the use of random variations in drills is the one true solution to all of your training problems. But their use does have the following advantages over just using fixed drills:- You have to stay alert - because you are never quite sure where the next ball is going, you have to keep concentrating or else you are likely to make a mistake.
- Decision making is involved - both players must concentrate on what is going on, the feeder on when to vary the routine, and the other player on when to react to the change. This helps cut down the boredom of fixed routines.
- Helps catch sloppy technique - the random placement can be used to catch players who get a little sloppy with technique or lazy with their footwork. For example, hitting balls to a player's forehand and occasionally placing a ball down the backhand will catch out players who are preparing to hit their forehand too early, or not recovering back towards a neutral ready position.
- More techniques are involved at the same time - very important to those of us short on training time. Depending on the random element used, several aspects of table tennis can be trained at once. A drill which uses placement of the ball to the player's general forehand, with occasional balls at his crossover point, will train his footwork, his forehand technique, and also his ability to recover to a neutral ready position as well as his ability to decide quickly and correctly whether to hit a forehand or backhand from the crossover point. A lot of extra training achieved by just changing the drill slightly!
- Closer simulation of match play - if you don't have a lot of time to train, you probably don't get enough match play either. And simply playing matches all the time doesn't always allow you to do the necessary work required on the parts of your game that need it. Using random variations gives you the ability to train certain aspects of your game that require improvement, while still retaining the need for quick decision making under pressure - a pretty good deal all round!
Conclusion
Hopefully this article has encouraged some of you to incorporate the use of random variations in your training. If you have a personal favorite random variation drill of your own, why not email it to me, or post your drill in the forum, and I'll add it below for everyone to see.
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