On-table warmup with new opponents

Arjan van Luttikhuizen Asked 9 years ago

I really liked your thought of doing a simple "anywhere" warm-up instead of the traditional one-position warm-up.

There's some things about the on-table warmup that I still wonder about though.

Firstly, how can I convince players to try this "anywhere" style of warm-up, specifically during local competitions? I can imagine people who are used to doing cross-court counter hits aren't looking to comply with their opponent's style of warm-up.

Second, On my level I often encounter players who warm up without any pattern at all, just doing whatever they feel like.
I don't like this because they don't allow me to get into my rhythm. How should I deal with this?

Alois Rosario Answered 9 years ago

Hi Arjan,

With the first question I don't think this is possible as yet. Unfortunately, there is a bit of an unwritten protocol before matches. So you need to do this more in your training sessions. What you can do is move around a bit when you are warming up on one side.

With second question, utilise this as your anywhere warm up. It may not feel great but it will get you more ready for the match situations.

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Johan B Posted 9 years ago

If they don't warm up properly just power loop everything whether you miss or not :-) you'll get nice and calibrated whereas their warm-up is mostly just picking up balls. Mwahah.

Jean Balthazar Posted 9 years ago

The two minutes (at least that's the rule) you have with your opponent before a match shouldn't be considered as "warm up". It's purpose is to let you get a feeling for the table, the environment and your opponent's style and racket response before the match starts. Your actual warm up should happen before that, off the table by yourself, then on any free table with your team mates or anybody else. One thing that is never practised during the 2 minutes pre-match session is serving, and you should definitively not walk to your first match without having done any before.