how to get better

gotta get a coach =)
or watch training videos, matches, etc and try to learn the strokes, but that's not nearly as effective as getting a coach.

you don't mean to tell me that schlager got good by watching videos do you....

here is my 2 cent
I have played for 1 year and 3 months now and I can compete and sometimes win against other people who have been playing for more thant 5 to 10 years. I don't have a rating but I have won games against 1700 players.  I never gotten a coach but occasional advised by one.  I think in order to improve, you must first forget about how your friends are better than you.  Start enjoying the game and love it more than your friends.  Ask good players about what they think you are doing wrong when you play.  foucus on the right forms and strokes instead of winning games.  if you do this for a while, you'll for sure get better and improve like me.

timtex37 wrote: here is my 2 centI have played for 1 year and 3 months now and I can compete and sometimes win against other people who have been playing for more thant 5 to 10 years. I don't have a rating but I have won games against 1700 players.� I never gotten a coach but occasional advised by one.� I think in order to improve, you must first forget about how your friends are better than you.� Start enjoying the game and love it more than your friends.� Ask good players about what they think you are doing wrong when you play.� foucus on the right forms and strokes instead of winning games.� if you do this for a while, you'll for sure get better and improve like me.

spot on good post

THANKS for agreeing what what i'm saying,
Maybe that is why I improved so fast that good players and coaches at my club couldn't help but to want to give me advice.  Except that they get a little annoyed when I'm having too much fun enjoying the game and pull off a wrong stroke while they are watching. 

ozjan wrote: coach helps, however i am 50/50 there, the thing with a coach is there r some coaches who will want to change ur style according to THEIR own style, and there r coaches who will build on YOUR style.  i recommend watching different pro players training videos, and different pros play, watch a lot of this and take to the one that most closely matches the style u have.  also, a robot helps tremendously to break ruts ur in, or just surpass ur peak, the rate of balls u hit is just too high to compare to standard practice... and will drill strokes into u   i have never recieved caoching yet, because i am comfortable with my technique, even though according to textbook table tennis it may be flawed... this is important to understand... even at the world class level, there r players that have awkward, non-conventional technique, but who r amazing players... best example is schlager, they and others got good by continual practice, over time

phil, instead of saying 'worst advice', y dont u elaborate on y that is bad advice.... i am not rated, but have played for 8 years, and beat 2100 players 50% of the time.

One reason why people dont get better is that train or play without any firm objective , focus .

a)Keep a goal during each training ,and work on those .
b) Identify how you performed & what went wrong in the last practice or game .
c) In next training work specifically on those area for some time .
d) Implement this , find how it went and then identify weak areas and go on this again .

The good point in this is that you can measure your improvements .

For e.g Lets take a scenario

During a hard fought game with a player , I lost the game narrowly . Later I sat down analysing what mistake I made & importantly what I did correctly , and how my training was implemented .

I came to acknowledge that my service returns were short & good , but during my service I did not always play a good 3rd ball . Also I saw that I was missing the wide fh occasionaly .

In next training I worked on the 3rd ball , wide fh and the service apart from working on the normal training schedule .

This helped in improving the game & next time I was able to win 3-1 instead of losing 2-3 against the same guy.

Even if you won't get regularly coached there is much to learn about the basics. It's really sad when a player thinks that "there way" is better. It's usually a result of crappy form, which will enable to be okay at a certain level but will not improve.

haha the teach that with its opposite the "serious" tag ie

<srs> that is not national H3 </srs>