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Rally vs Kill Shots - Practice Rallies for Success

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    Posted: 04/26/2015 at 12:27pm
While there are many important things to practice in table tennis that are at least if not more important than your main shots (like serve and service receive shots), main shots are what many if not most people practice most of the time at the table.  

What I realize when hitting with my people at my club is that they are focused on practicing kill shots and not rally shots.  This, IMO, is a big mistake for practicing adults especially those with limited practice time and I will explain why I believe this is the case.

Usually, a kill shot is designed to end the point.  It is a shot you take and make against an opponent when you have time to assess and understand the quality of the ball and you know what you want to do with it.  You will get this kind of ball fairly often vs. lower rated players and far less often vs. peers and better players.  

Moreover, you may get a ball in practice that seems to be like this kind of ball against your practice partners in a club - however, it is not this kind of ball for a very important reason - your practice partner is giving you a ball to rally with in your comfort zone.  Over time, you get used to manipulating the shots your main partners give you in practice better as you get used to how they time and spin the ball and their usual practice placements.  In a match, you are unlikely to get the same kind and quality of ball against an unfamiliar opponent.  If you do, you will perform well.  But if you don't, you will then need to be able to add margin and safety to your shots.  And this is more often the case against unfamiliar opponents.

The way many players practice kill shots introduces pressure into their timing and their game in matches.  They are trying to swing at higher levels of power than they are comfortable doing in practice, talk less of a match.  While this should be practiced, this should be no more than 20%-30% of your rally practice at most.  Most of your rally practice should be dedicated to playing at a speed at which you feel  relaxed and comfortable.  At this relaxed rate, you should be making more than 80% of your first two shots in this zone and should have at least 50% of your rallies go 4-5 shots against placement in your strike zones.

At this pace, you should be able to focus on placement and putting the ball in specific spots within the drilling area of your practice partner.  You can also vary the speed and spin of your shot, which is helpful when rallying as tense shots tend to be hit hard to the same part of the table over and over again and eventually, your peers or higher rated opponents will notice and pick up on these patterns.

One of the benefits of practicing at this pace is that over time, the quality of your rally shots will get better as your timing and muscles get better co-ordinated.  This is underestimated in table tennis - we tend to want the power and quality to come first rather than waiting for it to come at the end of patient learning and practice of proper technique.  You can practice making your rally shots more powerful by being forced to move while making them.  This is the real way to improve the power of your rally shots, and not to tee off on static balls.

In tournament matches, playing at kill shot speed without the need to do so being forced upon you by the quality of your opponent's play introduce errors and raises stress because many players don't practice killing the ball while moving to it.    A player's desire to hit the ball harder and his missing of the power/kill shots cause a feed back loop that raises the anxiety tied to the misses and creates an illogical desire to swing harder and play faster.  While against higher rated and unfamiliar opponents, it might seem like the best way to play them is to hit the ball harder and cause them trouble, it is usually best to try to rally with them early and make them have to make good shots to win points.  If you are a third ball attacker who doesn't like to rally, it is best to at least get the first attack into play with spin and see what the opponent does before going all out with powerful shots that miss the table entirely.

Plenty of your results in table tennis against unfamiliar peers/superiors are determined by what you do when you are late (moving) to the ball.  IF you do not practice playing a decent rally shot from this position, you will often be unable do well against unfamiliar opponents.  Playing tournaments is a good way to learn the importance of rally shots (and serve and receive as well, of course).  However, we can do something similar on practice.

If you want to raise the quality of your rally shots, don't kill shots all the time time and wonder why your shots don't improve.  Take comfortable shots and then practice moving to the ball while hitting it, or making shots while late to the ball.  This will impress upon you the difference between rallying and killing the ball and will add a significant skill to your game by keeping you in more points and reducing your stress level while playing.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote blahness Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/26/2015 at 2:09pm
Now, I totally agree with NextLevel on this. Medium power rally shots should be practiced most of the time. However, for beginners, they sometimes resort to another extreme, and opt to reduce weight transfer and waist rotation, and use the half hearted shot which will in fact have even lower consistency.

This is quite prevalent to those who are explosive (they don't really know how to tune down their power). 

The answer of course is to convert more of their power to spin/control rather than speed. Why tone down something that is a natural advantage and turn it into a weakness (hesitation and half hearted shots)? 
This can be achieved by having slower blades/rubbers, or by technique (focusing more on spin).

So I think the focus should be twofold, not just to recover and be in a balanced position (rally mode), but also to use proper weight transfer and waist rotation to maximize the amount of spin to keep the ball onto the table. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote vanjr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/26/2015 at 3:42pm
We should all practice the strokes that we play in matches to the proportion that they are used in matches. Try getting someone at your club to push short for more than a stroke or twoCry
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote NextLevel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/26/2015 at 5:23pm
Rally shots focus on recovery, which is what I forgot to mention. It isn't so much the power of the shot as that recovering for the next shot is a focus.

Beginners trying to get better should be getting most of their reps in multiball or coaching, IMO. Proper technique is a prereq for proper strokes if that is the concern.

Practicing kill shots against rally balls puts a player's game under pressure in matches when the kill shots don't go in or get returned. This happens often against better players and then the player wonder why he feels like he is under pressure vs better players - well, this is one of the common reasons : using shots you can't recover from.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote mjamja Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/26/2015 at 6:03pm
VanJr has a poor memory. At least twice in the last 6 years I have pushed back short to him 3 times in a row without trying some sort of flip kill. Does he think he is practicing with the CNT and deserves that kind of respect from his practice partner (not to mention having the ability to actually do what he is suggesting).

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Ringer84 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/26/2015 at 7:05pm
NL,

Do you do any of what Samson Dubina describes as Open-Ended drills?

"This drill starts out as systematic but ends with a game-like situation.  For example, I’ll start out with the drill pattern backhand, middle, backhand, forehand; on the eighth ball (second forehand), I’ll hit anywhere.  From that ball forward, my opponent will play anywhere and I’ll play anywhere.  The point becomes like a game and I can play any stroke.  This drill combines the fitness of footwork with the creativity of a match."

I was thinking these type of drills might be a logical way to combine rally shots and kill shots at the more appropriate ratio that you're talking about.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote kenneyy88 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/26/2015 at 9:25pm
Its important to practice rally and ending with a loop kill. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote NextLevel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04/27/2015 at 12:51am
Originally posted by Ringer84 Ringer84 wrote:

NL,

Do you do any of what Samson Dubina describes as Open-Ended drills?

"This drill starts out as systematic but ends with a game-like situation.  For example, I’ll start out with the drill pattern backhand, middle, backhand, forehand; on the eighth ball (second forehand), I’ll hit anywhere.  From that ball forward, my opponent will play anywhere and I’ll play anywhere.  The point becomes like a game and I can play any stroke.  This drill combines the fitness of footwork with the creativity of a match."

I was thinking these type of drills might be a logical way to combine rally shots and kill shots at the more appropriate ratio that you're talking about.

Open-ended drills work well when plays have good control.  In reality, it is usually better to keep the closed part of the drill to less than 2 shots per player or you will have a lot of lost drills.  

I don't consider them that different from random drills.  As someone who used to not like open-ended or random drills,  I used to go back and forth about doing random drills because of my knee issues, but now, I do them, only that I do them with weaker players who will feel challenged by moving me around, as opposed to players my level who feel bored and just want to smack the ball by me in ways that push me too hard for my current physical level.

My main point is not so much the practicing of kill shots or that there is no place for them in warm up rallies or drills, but that I notice that people who practice kill shots all the time tend to get stressed out by missing shots which they rush to because they often need to get to the ball early to have the timing for their shots.  Since they are focused on kill shots which need you to get to the ball on time, rather than rally shots, which need to you get to the ball and make a play that requires the opponent to make a good shot to continue the point, this stress is almost always the result once the match isn't going their way.

The last is my main point.  When I play a better player, I accept that he is better, but consider it my job to make life difficult for him, partly by taking advantage of my chances, but mostly by making sure that I am putting the ball into play and making him make shots that prove his superiority.  Some people take the other approach and try to end the point early in order to prove that they are better.  IF the better is truly better, neither approach will make a huge difference.  But one approach relies upon you to have a good day, while the other approach relies on the opponent having a bad day.  Since you are unlikely to win even if you have a good day, you need to give your opponent a chance to have a bad day.  So how much of a mix of strategies you use is up to you.

That said, I have seen too many players crumble, myself included, when playing lower players, because they are trying too kill everything, rather than looking at the nature of the rallies that follow the serve and the receive, and figuring out how to get into them or work them to an advantage.  If you practice shots that require you to control and place the ball during practice, those 50-70% effort shots allow you to manipulate balls when your opponent is hitting the ball hard at you as you take the opponent's ball and give it back to him to a better location.  You don't get good at doing that by practicing loop kills all the time.
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