Missing the Ball

Hi guys, first of, like everyone else said: this website is the best that has happened to me in a long time ;-)

Now I've been playing tabletennis for something like 7 years now (I'm 21), for the first 4 years I had a decent coach, after that our youth section and now the men's section doesnt have a proper coach or any coach at all, so that my improvement slowed down, which is not surprising. I did however do training plays and stuff and kept to them most of the time, so that I now say I'm am able to do most strokes in a decent way, some more than others of course. 

 But I am experiencing a problem more and more lately, which concerns my hitting the ball properly ratio: I didn't notice this as much earlier, because I thought I just needed to train harder, but I have been training almost 4 times a week for a couple of months now and it doesn't improve: when trying to loop or topspin, I miss  a lot of balls (i.e. I don't hit them at all, they pass my bat without touching it)  or hit them very poorly (meaning It's more like I'm lucky to hit them as well). Now I considered it's got something to do with my eyes, but I had them checked an they are ok. When I do hit my spin-balls, they are very powerful, due to the high miss-ratio, I do not have the confidence to play as aggressive as I'd like to, when I hit a first ball and it comes back, I'm often not courageous anough to try to topspin another time. I don't know where the problem lies, and it's driving me crazy, because I really want to improve and spend a lot of time. 

Are there any special trainings that I could do? Some common mistakes that I could consider?

 Thanks for your answer in advance, best Regards, Lukas

Hi Lukas,

Without seeing it is difficult to judge exactly but it may be that your backswing is inconsistent.

Try having a simple preparation for your stroke.  So a smaller backswing with the face of your bat flatter facing the ball and showing the ball morre of the bat surface.  This will allow you to hit the ball more consistently.

Often when players are trying to get more spin and speed their backswing gets too floppy.  The first important thing is to make sure yo hit the ball.  If you don't do that then the rest of your stroke is obviously not much use.

Always remember the 3 PingSkills principles of leg position, start position and finish position and you can't go too far wrong. 

Thanks for your kind words about the site.