Philosophical question about training

It really depends on so many things, there can be no general answer, but I always work around the question of what is the intended goal, what is the level of the player in question, and how much time/commitment is there going to be to training. 

In our area there are two main coaches.  One is Sean O'Neil and the other is Tim Aikey.  The two coaches are completely different.  One of my practice partners goes to both coaches.  Sean O'Neil is the perfectionist whereas Tim Aikey is more pragmatic or compliant.  I use Tim for a couple of reasons.  I am 60 years old so trying to make my strokes 'perfect' is futile not that they are that bad.  When I started with Tim I wanted to approach the problem like an engineer, naturally.   In other words start with the biggest flaws first or what we would call low hanging fruit.  Essentially this means getting past the first four strokes of a rally.   As APW46 mentioned serve and serve returns are very important because all rallies start with them.  That is where we started and the main focus for 10 months now.  Tim has very nasty serves.  He practices his new ones against me.  In club round robin play I have been made essentially immune to serves and that is one of the goals.  Once I get past the first four strokes my relative strength increases a lot because I really do think like a chess player and think in terms of maneuvering  my opponent out of position more than just raw speed.

I have told my coach to not hold back and treat me like another 2100+ player even though I am not.  I am not even close but I try to make my coach work for each point.  If I make a good serve return he knows he will have to work for the point.  I don't ask for mercy and I give none.  For the most part he waits for me to self destruct but often I surprise him.  I am very good at analyzing things He doesn't have to tell me much. If my coach wins a lot of points the same way it is obvious to me I must adapt and learn how to adapt.  I also know my coaches weaknesses.  My problem is that I have to execute to take advantage of them and that is hard to do.  At first I had to adapt to his massive top spin but not that I have I can block or counter hit much of the time.  This approach would not work for a young kid that needs to be spoon fed.

I would like to take a lesson or two from Sean O'Neil just to see what he thinks but I have been told his schedule is full.

I am 60 years old.  I don't like drills in the normal sense.  I do drills to lean how to create a weakness and usually I can do that with a robot.  In real life everything is chaos and the goal is to impose you chaos on the opponent before he imposes his on you but I realize that to impose my chaos on the opponent that I have to execute.

Let me as a closely related practical question:  how do people who don't have access to coaching improve a weak stroke? 

APW46 wrote: Baal wrote: Let me as a closely related practical question:  how do people who don't have access to coaching improve a weak stroke?   The best way is to film it and be self critical.

APW46 wrote: Baal wrote: Let me as a closely related practical question:  how do people who don't have access to coaching improve a weak stroke?   The best way is to film it and be self critical.

Yes I think this is the only way.  Otherwise all you will do is reinforce the bad habits.