This is gold for intermediate player starting to control their shots and slowly climbing up whilst sometime playing against weaker/defensive players. Well done video. Simple and effective. Next, teach Martin to do legal serves :P
Great tips. One important thing you can ask yourself when you play this kind of player is "will they open against backspin?" If they won't then you can use pushes to get them out of position and create an opening. Examples would include pushing extra wide then attacking to the open court, pushing short way over on the forehand side then attacking long and deep to the backhand and pushing long and deep into the crossover then attacking into any opening you create. If they won't open you don't need to be in a hurry. You can use multiple pushes in a rally and wait for a good opening or attack when they least expect it.
Agreed. If you're opponent won't initiate an attack then you have a bit more time. You just need to be careful not to get bogged down in a pushing rally.
A good push-blocker can chicken-wing those pocket shots. Push-blockers typically don't move much so they are rarely that far out of position. I do agree that controlled shots at those 3 points are a good idea. My practice opponents are very good at hitting the white lines on the sides too. Another thing to consider is now mobile the push-blocker is. A mobile push-blocker can step to the side to use his FH against weak/cautious returns. Also, a push-blocker that can twiddle is a problem because then he doesn't need to move to hit weak/cautious returns. A good technique to use against anti/LP push-blockers is to loop then push then loop. After your loop the ball will come back with under spin which you push. When your pushed ball comes back it will have top spin on it. This ball can be attacked more easily. If this ball comes back it will have back spin so push it again. Repeat. Always keep track of the spin you applied to ball when the push-blocker hits with his anti or LP.
Thank you Tom, The tips you give us are great, I post your videos regularly in our club and also we practice them in our training lessons, where we learn to implement your tips. Regrads and many Thanks from Munich / Germany
good tactical play utulising placement another way is having a really good opener top spin decently fast but not super fast with focus on a lot of spin and maybe even some sidespin on it as well, making it really hard to return it well for the oponent and even if he does it usually opens up an easy attack afterwards to finish him or driving him back far behind the table
The player that I have trouble with is a blocker that somehow chops my topspin shots sideways and returns everything super low and fast as well. Very strange play style but works well for him, I beat him most of the time but in rallys I feel like I lose 75 percent of points. my serves carry me in the game because I can hit pretty good third ball attacks
Me too...Here's an option which often works..Try hitting a no spin low float to various positions ( forehand , backhand and crossover) until you find a weak one. That style of player is relying on you to provide speed and spin FOR HIM/HER - so dont. It will make you uncomfortable to begin with, playing such a nothing shot, but not as uncomfortable as your opponent! Experiment - and you will be amazed how many errors you force. Once you get a rhythm you can pick a ball to attack to mix things up and keep the opponent off balance -usually to a corner ! If you try it love to hear how it goes!
Martin clearly demonstrated how applying great tactics can help in your matches. I hope he manages to apply this in real matches and beats the annoying push blockers. But the services need to be legal. It's one of my pet hates.
Honestly, good amateur push-blockers never return like this, setting up for opponents comfortably aiming and shooting. In fact, they always borrow opponents' power and put the balls right on the corners, which makes opponents move more. Try to play with traditional pen-holder players from Asia, you will understand what I am talking about. In order to beat them, there is no shortcut to skipping many practices to improve footwork and drive and loop power.
Well it depends. If you play weak shots with poor placement, then a push-blocker will do as you describe - return your balls into corners and dominate you. But if you can use good placement first, with good speed and spin, then the push-blocker's shots will become weaker, as demonstrated in the video.
Great advice Tom, thank you!Crossover, Corner. "Construct" a point. Less power. I regularly get frustrated against player's who "dont want to play" as I put it.
Hi Tom 👋 thanks 4 these wonderful tutorials. Obviously real games demand more of everything. I'd love to play u a game when I'm back againn in Lonfon. Anywhere is Soth London is good. tantrikn t. 👉🏼😎 👊🏼✌🏼☝🏼❤️.
@@TomLodziak Hey Tom thanks 4 the invite mate, I shall certainly take u up on your offer. At the mo, I'm on a 4 month post covid vacation in India, should be back in Jan. 23. Will chat n have a knock then. Much love my tt brother, love all your u tube tutorials. tantrik t.👉🏼😎 👊🏼✌🏼☝🏼❤️💪🏼🏓
Tough opponent. I'm not too keen on playing flat hitters. You need to take away their slap shots. How do you do this? Play fast, play with good placement, keep him off-balance, keep changing the direction of play. Soft shots will be punished, so you do need to attack with good spin and speed.
If he doesn't counter-attack aggressively, keep the ball to his backhand. If he counter-attack aggressively, usually he would leave a bit of gap on his wide forehand.
Most close to the table players prefer to play BH and do not have the middle weakness you show (they perform chicken wing or banana push/flick from the FH if needed). If they have flank weakness it is extreme BH as they tend to stay more in the table middle. I suggest to play into short FH then to deep BH or just only deep BH series.
Not the kind of push blocking I wanted to find tips against. It's the dark side push blockers with OX long pips and/or other pips with reversal and returns they take right off the bounce that result in dead balls that come in low. Those are the true horrors. Inverted push blocking is mostly a simple style that is easy enough to overcome.
Hi there. But you are not really pushing so much here, mostly blocking. I'd have appreciated to see this with a "natural" pusher, you know the annoying kind who never heard about the word spin.
Well, I am pushing until Martin attacks. At this point it would make no sense to push. Martin is topspinning early in most rallies, to stop me from pushing. This is a key to beat a pusher type player. Once you topspin, then you force the pusher to play a different game. Then you can adopt the tactic I show in the video. You could take a look at this video I made a few years ago, which focuses more on how to beat a player who pushes a lot. www.tabletenniscoach.me.uk/video/how-to-beat-a-pusher/
Bob with the pushing try to place one short in the backhand after that the push is going to be returned short. Then go cross court deep in the forehand with a push or a flick it works good for me.
Played in a tournament last weekend. Only match I lost was to a push-blocker! Missed a couple of loops early and lost confidence in my loop. All downhill from there.
I can sympathise. It's easy to play more passively if you make a couple of errors. I tell myself to keep attacking, even if I miss, as once I find my attacking rhythm it does become easier. I'd much rather lose trying to attack, then going into my shell.
@@francodejj I am a big fan of "The Inner Game of Tennis". Teaches how to stay in the moment and quickly forget mistakes. It is hard to do though in a match situation
True. Martin wasn't struggling to overcome my pushes. He topspins well. But Martin struggled when I started blocking. And that was what we were focusing on overcoming in the coaching session.
Good video thanks Tom. Every club has at least one push blocker who just love you to attack them with speed as they use your speed against you, but what I do find is they hate heavy slower topspin and in general variation of spin, speed and placement.
This is true. I play with a very good blocker, but he often struggles to return my BH loop. Why? Because my backhand loop is a bit rubbish and has far less spin and spin than he is expecting. He usually blocks the ball into the net.
You know, this isn't going to be as effective against someone who knows to move back into position, rather than just stay still after being moved out of position. My advice for a normal attacking player in this situation has always been "Loop them to death until they miss, or they give you something you can definitely kill.", because it's extremely difficult to keep blocking loops with heavy spin on them effectively, especially when they're coming at different depths. Plus, this mindset makes you stop looking to blast it altogether and it makes you hit shots that you'll be much more accurate with. It puts you in the mindset of making them make mistakes, rather than being in the mindset of trying to beat them with your normal offense.
Nice video. Players can’t be reminded enough to tactically place attacks. I feel like his 5th ball should be more of a drive / smash or take half a step back and continue to loop.
Exactly what I try to do. But like Martin I often just to to hit it too hard and I lose the control to keep it on the table. Great video and prefect timing for this video for me - once again, how did you know? LOL
So Tom I am getting straight to the point: Your advice is useless, unless the player you coach has the ability to place the ball without making those kinds of errors. So here is what you should consider teaching: On your own serve, do not serve downspin, since that is where the pusher is in his comfort zone. Try to serve upspin or nospin. On return, try to return short or half long, since this takes away time and space for the pusher to generate downspin and also exposes him to your opening attack, which is a powerful long topspin. Finally you need to really outline the difference in technique between an opening attack topspin shot which is against (heavy) downspin where the ball has to be „lifted“ and the follow-up attack where the ball has to be „brushed“. Also consider blasting shots a viable option for players who lack consistency. Depending on skillset and level, a player may be able to string together a sequence of two or three hard shots way more comfortably then six to eight soft shots. Maybe you redo the session with the same guy using my content and ask him what pieces of advice he feels are most useful for him. Have fun! 😊
Thank you for your advice. My coaching session with Martin was one hour in length and we covered many things in this hour. I just showed a small element in this video. I could of course have published the entire one our long coaching session, but I don't think many people will have bothered to watch it. So for the purposes of making a RUclips video, I focused on one simple instruction.
This is gold for intermediate player starting to control their shots and slowly climbing up whilst sometime playing against weaker/defensive players. Well done video. Simple and effective.
Next, teach Martin to do legal serves :P
Great tips. One important thing you can ask yourself when you play this kind of player is "will they open against backspin?" If they won't then you can use pushes to get them out of position and create an opening. Examples would include pushing extra wide then attacking to the open court, pushing short way over on the forehand side then attacking long and deep to the backhand and pushing long and deep into the crossover then attacking into any opening you create. If they won't open you don't need to be in a hurry. You can use multiple pushes in a rally and wait for a good opening or attack when they least expect it.
Agreed. If you're opponent won't initiate an attack then you have a bit more time. You just need to be careful not to get bogged down in a pushing rally.
A good push-blocker can chicken-wing those pocket shots. Push-blockers typically don't move much so they are rarely that far out of position. I do agree that controlled shots at those 3 points are a good idea. My practice opponents are very good at hitting the white lines on the sides too. Another thing to consider is now mobile the push-blocker is. A mobile push-blocker can step to the side to use his FH against weak/cautious returns. Also, a push-blocker that can twiddle is a problem because then he doesn't need to move to hit weak/cautious returns. A good technique to use against anti/LP push-blockers is to loop then push then loop. After your loop the ball will come back with under spin which you push. When your pushed ball comes back it will have top spin on it. This ball can be attacked more easily. If this ball comes back it will have back spin so push it again. Repeat. Always keep track of the spin you applied to ball when the push-blocker hits with his anti or LP.
Thank you Tom, The tips you give us are great, I post your videos regularly in our club and also we practice them in our training lessons, where we learn to implement your tips. Regrads and many Thanks from Munich / Germany
Thank you very much for watching and sharing. Greetings from Cambridge!
good tactical play utulising placement
another way is having a really good opener top spin decently fast but not super fast with focus on a lot of spin and maybe even some sidespin on it as well, making it really hard to return it well for the oponent and even if he does it usually opens up an easy attack afterwards to finish him or driving him back far behind the table
Great thanks for that.
One thing - a lot of his serves don't look legal to me. Shouldn't he be throwing the ball higher?
Thank you Tom, good tips, gonna try this next saturday.
Thank you Tom. Can you also do a video on how to beat an opponent who is always returning with backspin (a sort of chopper style) ?
Yes. I have this on my list and will be hopefully filming soon.
The player that I have trouble with is a blocker that somehow chops my topspin shots sideways and returns everything super low and fast as well. Very strange play style but works well for him, I beat him most of the time but in rallys I feel like I lose 75 percent of points. my serves carry me in the game because I can hit pretty good third ball attacks
Me too...Here's an option which often works..Try hitting a no spin low float to various positions ( forehand , backhand and crossover) until you find a weak one. That style of player is relying on you to provide speed and spin FOR HIM/HER - so dont. It will make you uncomfortable to begin with, playing such a nothing shot, but not as uncomfortable as your opponent! Experiment - and you will be amazed how many errors you force. Once you get a rhythm you can pick a ball to attack to mix things up and keep the opponent off balance -usually to a corner ! If you try it love to hear how it goes!
Martin clearly demonstrated how applying great tactics can help in your matches. I hope he manages to apply this in real matches and beats the annoying push blockers. But the services need to be legal. It's one of my pet hates.
Thanks. This is a common problem for me.
A very helpful video. Thank you.
Honestly, good amateur push-blockers never return like this, setting up for opponents comfortably aiming and shooting. In fact, they always borrow opponents' power and put the balls right on the corners, which makes opponents move more. Try to play with traditional pen-holder players from Asia, you will understand what I am talking about.
In order to beat them, there is no shortcut to skipping many practices to improve footwork and drive and loop power.
Well it depends. If you play weak shots with poor placement, then a push-blocker will do as you describe - return your balls into corners and dominate you. But if you can use good placement first, with good speed and spin, then the push-blocker's shots will become weaker, as demonstrated in the video.
Great advice Tom, thank you!Crossover, Corner. "Construct" a point. Less power.
I regularly get frustrated against player's who "dont want to play" as I put it.
Hi good advice for beginners keep up the the advice cheers
Tom, am I seeing the video rightly that you are giving height while you are returning the ball?
Hi Tom 👋 thanks 4 these wonderful tutorials. Obviously real games demand more of everything. I'd love to play u a game when I'm back againn in Lonfon. Anywhere is Soth London is good.
tantrikn t. 👉🏼😎
👊🏼✌🏼☝🏼❤️.
Take a day trip to Cambridge and we can play some table tennis for sure!
@@TomLodziak Hey Tom thanks 4 the invite mate, I shall certainly take u up on your offer. At the mo, I'm on a 4 month post covid vacation in India, should be back in Jan. 23.
Will chat n have a knock then.
Much love my tt brother, love all your u tube tutorials.
tantrik t.👉🏼😎
👊🏼✌🏼☝🏼❤️💪🏼🏓
Hi Keith🙂
Good!
Long pipers will NOT be denied! LP players, unite against these tactics and rip FH winners against this tyranny!
Tom, the person im playing always push-blocks and slaps the ball on.
How do I counter this?
Tough opponent. I'm not too keen on playing flat hitters. You need to take away their slap shots. How do you do this? Play fast, play with good placement, keep him off-balance, keep changing the direction of play. Soft shots will be punished, so you do need to attack with good spin and speed.
Also, try not to use a slowish loop against them. Go straight from a push to a reasonably fast loop.
Thank you Tom, Can you tell me how to beat a push-blocker with pen hold? To place the ball in the midle of the table it's no problem for him
If he doesn't counter-attack aggressively, keep the ball to his backhand. If he counter-attack aggressively, usually he would leave a bit of gap on his wide forehand.
Against a pen-holder I often test out the backhand. It's usually a weaker spot. Wide backhand and then wide forehand.
I am push blocker chopper. Outdoor oponents have no chance. Unless i make mistake on the blocks. Indoor relatively easy they defeat me.
Most close to the table players prefer to play BH and do not have the middle weakness you show (they perform chicken wing or banana push/flick from the FH if needed). If they have flank weakness it is extreme BH as they tend to stay more in the table middle. I suggest to play into short FH then to deep BH or just only deep BH series.
Yes, that's a good tactic to use if you play someone who uses a lot of BH from the FH side.
Not the kind of push blocking I wanted to find tips against. It's the dark side push blockers with OX long pips and/or other pips with reversal and returns they take right off the bounce that result in dead balls that come in low. Those are the true horrors. Inverted push blocking is mostly a simple style that is easy enough to overcome.
Hi there. But you are not really pushing so much here, mostly blocking. I'd have appreciated to see this with a "natural" pusher, you know the annoying kind who never heard about the word spin.
Well, I am pushing until Martin attacks. At this point it would make no sense to push. Martin is topspinning early in most rallies, to stop me from pushing. This is a key to beat a pusher type player. Once you topspin, then you force the pusher to play a different game. Then you can adopt the tactic I show in the video. You could take a look at this video I made a few years ago, which focuses more on how to beat a player who pushes a lot. www.tabletenniscoach.me.uk/video/how-to-beat-a-pusher/
Bob with the pushing try to place one short in the backhand after that the push is going to be returned short. Then go cross court deep in the forehand with a push or a flick it works good for me.
@@TomLodziak Thanks for the explanation. I'll have a look at the video. I always have trouble beating pushers. And not only because I fall asleep.
Well, I love blasting my opponent mindlessly from the table... ;-) It's all about the power!
Well if you can do it consistently, then keep going!
Jeremy Clarkson: “More power!”😂
Played in a tournament last weekend. Only match I lost was to a push-blocker! Missed a couple of loops early and lost confidence in my loop. All downhill from there.
Totally understand….crazy how one’s touch & strategy can quickly evaporate, just due to some early misses 😞
I can sympathise. It's easy to play more passively if you make a couple of errors. I tell myself to keep attacking, even if I miss, as once I find my attacking rhythm it does become easier. I'd much rather lose trying to attack, then going into my shell.
@@TomLodziak Another tourney in November. Hope my nemesis shows up. Will take your advice and hit to different spots on the table. And keep hitting!
@@francodejj I am a big fan of "The Inner Game of Tennis". Teaches how to stay in the moment and quickly forget mistakes. It is hard to do though in a match situation
You really didn't push very hard for serves so it was really easy to open for top spin.
True. Martin wasn't struggling to overcome my pushes. He topspins well. But Martin struggled when I started blocking. And that was what we were focusing on overcoming in the coaching session.
hm
I have how older players serve from hand and dont throw the ball up
I dislike this video because I am a push-blocker and I don't want people to employ these tactics against me.
Good video thanks Tom. Every club has at least one push blocker who just love you to attack them with speed as they use your speed against you, but what I do find is they hate heavy slower topspin and in general variation of spin, speed and placement.
This is true. I play with a very good blocker, but he often struggles to return my BH loop. Why? Because my backhand loop is a bit rubbish and has far less spin and spin than he is expecting. He usually blocks the ball into the net.
great, hope to see more tactical content like this!
You know, this isn't going to be as effective against someone who knows to move back into position, rather than just stay still after being moved out of position.
My advice for a normal attacking player in this situation has always been "Loop them to death until they miss, or they give you something you can definitely kill.", because it's extremely difficult to keep blocking loops with heavy spin on them effectively, especially when they're coming at different depths. Plus, this mindset makes you stop looking to blast it altogether and it makes you hit shots that you'll be much more accurate with. It puts you in the mindset of making them make mistakes, rather than being in the mindset of trying to beat them with your normal offense.
Nice video. Players can’t be reminded enough to tactically place attacks. I feel like his 5th ball should be more of a drive / smash or take half a step back and continue to loop.
It's really hard to play against people who are using a simple racket as it kills the spin as well as they just block great shots. Spin doesn't work
Thank you Tom! You are great!
You're a fukn genius, man.
Exactly what I try to do. But like Martin I often just to to hit it too hard and I lose the control to keep it on the table. Great video and prefect timing for this video for me - once again, how did you know? LOL
Ha! It must be my mind-reading powers.
@@TomLodziak Yep - How did you do that? LOL - Take care, stay safe, play pong! :)
So Tom I am getting straight to the point: Your advice is useless, unless the player you coach has the ability to place the ball without making those kinds of errors. So here is what you should consider teaching: On your own serve, do not serve downspin, since that is where the pusher is in his comfort zone. Try to serve upspin or nospin. On return, try to return short or half long, since this takes away time and space for the pusher to generate downspin and also exposes him to your opening attack, which is a powerful long topspin. Finally you need to really outline the difference in technique between an opening attack topspin shot which is against (heavy) downspin where the ball has to be „lifted“ and the follow-up attack where the ball has to be „brushed“. Also consider blasting shots a viable option for players who lack consistency. Depending on skillset and level, a player may be able to string together a sequence of two or three hard shots way more comfortably then six to eight soft shots. Maybe you redo the session with the same guy using my content and ask him what pieces of advice he feels are most useful for him. Have fun! 😊
Thank you for your advice. My coaching session with Martin was one hour in length and we covered many things in this hour. I just showed a small element in this video. I could of course have published the entire one our long coaching session, but I don't think many people will have bothered to watch it. So for the purposes of making a RUclips video, I focused on one simple instruction.
"... capable of playing high level Tabletennos" 0:52 and is the capable of making a legal serve? 😅
😂😂😂
😂😂😂😂