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11 Ways of Improving While At Home

Newgy Robo-Pong

Do you have a Newgy table tennis robot? Is your robot training boring? Yes, possibly, if you are knocking the same ball into a machine for 6 hours/day. What can you do to make your robot sessions more interesting and more effective for your improvement during this lockdown? In this new coaching article, I'm going to briefly outline 11 things that you can do to make your robot sessions at home more effective! Try them out and let us know what you think!

#1Add Variations
There are two aspects of rallies - adjusting for the incoming ball and making the opponents adjust to your shots. The same thing applies to robot training - you need to setup drills that give variations to you so that you need to adjust, and at the same time giving variations to the imagined opponent... speed variations, spin variations, placement variations, height variations, depth variations, and shot type variations.

#2 Simulate Real Games
You will have your most focused training sessions when you picture a real opponent - think about your current rival - Kanak Jha or Matt Hetherington or Adam Bobrow or Roger Dickson or Chester Taylor or Erick Chamblee on the other side of the table. Setup scenarios that they often play, such as... short serve to the forehand followed up by consistent rally to the backhand followed by a fast punch to the middle. Setup 4 or 5 or 6 ball games. In order to score, you need to make the 5 balls on. Keep score to 11 and see if you can make progress during the coming days in beating Mike Boyd

#3 Be Efficient
Before starting any robot training day, make a plan to what you are doing. Start off with doing 20-30 min/day with goals for each drill and times for each drill. Between drills, use the time efficiently and mix in serve practice and/or fitness training.

#4 Count Your Hits
When playing against an opponent, you realize that you lost the first game 11-1 and are down 8-2 in the second. When playing with the robot, you don't get feedback on your successes. So start counting. Do a drill with 20 balls and see if you can land 16/20 every time. If you are getting 20/20, then push the limits for added speed, added depth, or different variations on your own shots. If you are getting 8/20, then focus more on consistency aspects - are you getting in the right position, are you timing it correctly, are you watching the ball fully to your racket - are you playing within your most consistent zone. If you aren't counting, you probably don't know exactly how you are doing.

#5 Record Yourself
You likely have a smartphone or tablet. Record your drills and watch them during water breaks. Learn to coach yourself. No matter what level you are, it is important to have a personal coach. In addition to your personal coach, you also need to be giving yourself advice session by session... drill by drill... and even hit by hit! What kinds of thing should you be looking for? The list is endless, by here are a few things for starters.
How is your distance from the table?
How is your response to the incoming ball?
How is your feeling or action on the ball?
How is your placement?
How is your recovery for the next hit?
How is your breathing?
And thousands of other observations...

#6 Have Fun With Robot Positions
The most underused aspect of robot training is changing the position of the robot in your table tennis room. Try putting it on a chair and moving it back from the table - move it to the side of the table - even move it on the floor and have it throw lobs to the ceiling. Different positions give you a different feel, and that is really what you want. You don't want to be getting the same exact ball again and again. You want variations... sometimes simulating Sarah Jalli firing hard from point blank range and sometimes simulating Chance Friend at mid-distance and sometimes simulating Sid Khandelwal lobbing sidespin from the barrier. The more variation you get, the more you are practicing for real opponents - it makes it more challenging and more enjoyable.

#7 Try Something New
Are you stuck at home for weeks on end with no tournaments in sight? Well NOW is the time to try something new. Develop an off-speed block or learn a sidespin push or experiment with a backhand chop or practice looping around the net or learn to loop from different positions to different positions or experiment with the Yoshimura serve. Adding some new things to your game could pay off BIG TIME in the future and now is the season to try it.

#8 Focus on Placement
When playing against a human, it is vitally important to be consistent so that you can both get a good training session. It is tough to push the placement limits during a footwork drill trying to go for extremely angled shots or extremely deep loops in the last 4" of the table. However, the robot doesn't care if you miss!!! Think about that. Now is your chance to really learn to hit wide with precision. Consider even adding targets to the table. Just make sure the targets aren't too small. I once had to do a robot repair with someone who got an action figure jammed in the robot!

#9 Do It Together
Now is the best time to connect with your family. Instead of doing robot training by yourself in the garage, ask your wife or son or daughter to join you! Set the robot up for a beginner drill - they do a 2 min beginner drill and you do a 2 min advanced drill. Robot training is something fun for the whole family!

#10 Take Notes
You will have better sessions if you spend just a few minutes on note-taking! Before you begin, take 1-2 min to write down some goals for the session, write notes on your progress during the session, and write some closing thoughts. You have heard the expression, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." This is true for your robot sessions as well. Map out your session and see if you can reach your goals!

#11 Upload Your Session to Social Media
We would love to see what you are doing at home. Record a 1-min session and upload it to Instagram or Facebook or even Youtube. Send us a link and let us know how your sessions are going. We would love to see how this article impacted your robot sessions and would love to see you having FUN and making progress during this difficult time! Be safe & stay home!

Samson Dubina

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Drills / Training Newgy/Robo-Pong Robot Set-Up / Alternative Uses Samson Dubina Table Tennis Tips table tennis training

Table Tennis Rally Statistics – Samson Dubina

Jena Newgarden1 comment
Statistics were taken for the length of the rallies at a professional table tennis tournament.  These statistics are fairly common across the board for all levels but differ based on game-style.

On average:

12% of serves are not returned

18% of points are won on the 2nd ball

26% of points are won on the 3rd ball

13% of points are won on the 4th ball

11% of points are won on the 5th ball

6% of points are won on the 6th ball

4% of points are won on the 7th ball

10% of points are won after the 7th ball

So as you can see, the serve, serve return, and 3rd ball attack are critically important during a table tennis match.  56% of the points do not last more than the 3rd hit.  For this reason, I would recommend practicing at least 56% of the time on the serve, serve return, and 3rd hit.

Serve

One of the best ways to improve your serve is to do it during a drill.  Instead of starting the drill with a warm-up serve, start each drill with a tournament serve such short backspin.  Ask your table tennis training partner to push long, next you loop the push, then you begin the footwork drill.

Serve Return

You probably have some serves that give you problems.  Ask your training partner to serve those problem serves again and again while thinking of new ways to return them.  Experiment by attacking slightly stronger or slightly slower, by pushing instead of looping, by adding to or stopping the sidespin, or countless types of returns.  In order to properly read the spin on a serve, you should watch the racket motion, listen to the contact, watch the bounce, and look for the logo on the ping-pong ball.

The 3rd Ball

Even if your opponent doesn’t miss your serve, he might give you an easy return in which you can attack.  If your 3rd ball attack is strong, it will put more pressure on your opponent to return more precisely.  When he tries to return shorter or lower or faster, he will begin making more mistakes.  Remember, it isn’t just about your serve in a table tennis rally. It’s also about what comes after your serve.

Samson Dubina

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match rally serve serve return statistics table tennis tournament

What Age to Start Playing Table Tennis by Roger Dickson

Jena Newgarden
As the head coach at the Newgy Table Tennis Center, I get this question quite often. There really is not a simple answer as the motor skills of all children develop differently. In China they may test motor skills for sports as young as five years old!

Under Age Eight

My general rule of thumb is to introduce some basic racket skills and have a lot of fun for the younger ages. Remember that the attention span is very short with younger players, so short and simple instructions are very important.

Using the Newgy Robo-Pong table tennis robot is actually quite good as the ball can be adjusted to bounce twice in front of the player with good depth and height. Control the racket for the student when you first start until they can maintain the position by themselves to simply block the ball back over the net. This is just basic racket/ball control and will help them gain confidence. If you have a group of kids, using the Pong-Master with your Newgy Robo-Pong will allow them to compete against the machine and each other!

Eight to Ten Years Old

Starting to learn table tennis in this age range, the players will start to be able to do more active programs with footwork and racket position changes very quickly. Some of the first pre-programmed drills on the Newgy Robo-Pong 2050/1050were thought of with this age group in mind. Just add time to the WAIT ADJUSTMENT to give the kids a chance to learn the drills and speed them up to challenge them as them reach an 80% success rate.

Table tennis is a great cross training sport for all sports, so you can’t really start too young or too old!

Roger Dickson

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Roger Dickson Table Tennis Tips