JOOLA USA

{mosimage}Hey, my first blog post for Joola. Today, I'm going to dispel a very popular but mistaken notion: that table tennis is at its essence an individual sport.

Now, some of you might be confused. After all, other than doubles matches, table tennis consists of one player competing against another. And no, I'm not talking about team matches either. What I'm talking about is training

, not competition. A look around the world of table tennis today will quickly reveal that different countries and different regions tend to have very different training methods, especially when it comes to junior players. However, the same concept holds true for the elite junior development programs worldwide: the team concept.

 

Training as a team has multiple benefits. First of all, it usually ensures that players will always have a comparable practice partner. Seemingly small differences in skill level often are much larger than they appear, making it difficult to find a worthwhile training partner when players reach high levels. When training as a team, players often improve at similar rates, ensuring that there are almost always comparable training partners for every team member, especially when there is the option for the coach to bring in new players and to drop players who consistently underperform in training. The larger the size of the team, the more likely it is that there will be multiple players who are at a similar skill level. An additional benefit is that the coach can give important advice to every member of the team, as well as give 1 on 1 advice when needed. The coach's time in a team is spent very efficiently, as he can address the whole team or move from player to player as needed.

The team is also a pipeline in itself. Younger and lower level players are able to emulate, learn from, even practice with higher level and more experienced players, making every player's improvement potentially that much faster due to the fact that those younger players can feed off the experience of the older players.

Further adding to the benefits of the team concept is that players are exposed to a variety of styles. In any team there will ideally be a variety of styles. If a rotation system is used to determine training partners, players will get to practice with all of these styles and will develop a more complete repertoire, learning in the process to deal with attacking players and defensive players alike. Of course, maybe it's hard to find a junior chopper to develop, but the team concept still beats training with the same coach and same few practice partners.

 There is also of course the issue of motivation. Players will often push themselves harder because teammates are in friendly competition, and everyone is aspiring to improve. Players who are simply going through the motions, or are not trying to improve their game, are generally not included in the team. This goes back to point number one as well, that players will improve at similar rates. When you practice often with someone who is improving, if you're using the opportunity to improve your own game, you will tend to improve just as quickly. Physical training is especially enhanced when conducted in teams as players really tend to push each other.

 Finally, the team atmosphere or team spirit should not be overlooked. In competition, team spirit definitely provides a boost to performance, but the same can be said for training. It can make training fun, and make practicing less of a chore. Camaraderie can go a long way.

 All these factors contribute to table tennis being a team sport, not entirely an individual event. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but team training has been proven superior time and again. The best non-Chinese model is the dominant Swedish men's team of the late 80s and 90s, which had its players (Waldner, Persson, Karlsson, etc.) training together as a team from a young age. Too often in the US junior players and their families feel like they are in direct competition with other local and US juniors, which can be detrimental to the development of the sport. It is imperative that the team concept be fully utilized in coaching and training in order for the sport to flourish in the future.