If you are putting in hours and Hours and HOURS of training, you should improve, right? And you likely will. But are you improving as fast as you could? Or are you just putting in mindless hours that’ll lead to advanced mediocrity, as opposed to really improving to your maximum potential? For many players, alas, it’s the former.

The idea of “Deliberate Practice” was pioneered by Psychologist Anders Ericsson, who found that real progress comes from structured, focused training designed to push you beyond your comfort zone. It is a type of training marked by:

• Clear, measurable goals
• Tasks that stretch ability
• Immediate feedback
• Focused repetition
• Reflection and adjustment

Many or most players, especially those below the elite level, spend much of their practice time mindlessly hitting balls back and forth, which may not address weaknesses or build up strengths in a way they can be used effectively in a match situation. To reach a higher level, you should have sessions that address each of the above.

EXAMPLES of Deliberate Practice for Table Tennis
(NOTE – the following drills, Keys to Effective Deliberate Practice, and Common Mistakes to Avoid come from Sean O’Neill, with his permission.)

• Serve placement focus: Spend 20 minutes aiming for one small target on the table. Get feedback from a coach or even a camera. Track how many land where you want.
• Footwork patterns with video review: Work on side-to-side movement while looping forehands. Record the session and review whether you maintain balance and timing.
• Serve receive against spin: Ask a partner to serve heavy underspin, sidespin, or no spin. Repeat until you can return 8 of 10 balls consistently with the same technique.
• Short ball control: Practice pushing against a variety of serves, adjusting placement and depth until you feel confident under pressure.

Each of these drills has a purpose, a feedback loop, and a way to measure progress.

KEYS to Effective Deliberate Practice

• Set specific goals: “I want to improve my third-ball attack against underspin” is better than “I want to get better.”
• Seek immediate feedback: Ask a coach, use video, or review results on the spot.
• Push yourself: If practice feels comfortable, you’re not stretching your limits.
• Measure progress: Track consistency percentages, point outcomes, or even how relaxed your body feels under pressure.

COMMON MISTAKES to Avoid

• Practicing only what you’re already good at.
• Playing “fun” matches without focusing on weak areas.
• Ignoring feedback or failing to review video.
• Training without a clear objective for the session.

CONCLUSION
Quality practice is far more important than quantity. Using deliberate practice will allow you to step-by-step work your way up as you focus on each aspect of the game. It’s the best way to improve at the fastest rate possible to your highest possible level.

You probably have a regular forehand pendulum serve, or backhand serve, or perhaps a forehand tomahawk serve, or something else. These are all good serves. But if that's all you use, then it's pretty much an announcement about what type of sidespin will be on the serve. Your opponent is grateful for making things easier for him!

It's good to have a few variations of these regular serves as your front-line serves - perhaps side-backspin, pure side, side-topspin, a super-heavy pure backspin, and a no-spin. But why not learn an "off" serve as well, by developing the reverse sidespin version of these serves? Not only do opponents have to learn to handle these serves, but they have to now adjust to your regular serves when you go back and forth. Think of all those close matches you’ve lost, and imagine the outcome if you’d had a few more serving variations to confuse your opponent.

Reverse serves aren't hard to learn. It's just a matter of hitting the ball in the opposite direction you normally would, thereby giving the reverse sidespin from what you normally use. While it would be nice to develop these reverse serves as alternate front-line serves - top players do, and it takes a lot of practice - but what's more important at most levels is just the variation that they have to look out for. You might only be able to do the reverse sidespin with one or two variations - perhaps pure sidespin and side-backspin - but if you develop them and use them sparingly, they become highly effective - often free points. 

I’ve coached many choppers during a match, and coached even more matches against them. I've also chopped a lot myself, in practice and in tournaments. Chopping is one of the most “tactical” of styles for the simple reason that you need to score most points by finding a way to make the opponent miss. Overall, I’ve found that there are three key things a chopper should focus on during a match.

1. Get everything back. It sounds simple, but this is the mindset a chopper must have.
2. Never give an easy shot. No cheap or easy points for them - make them work hard for every single point. Again, this is the mindset a chopper must have.
3. Once you are in a rhythm and comfortable against their attack, that’s when you start really mixing things up. Vary your spin, placement, contact point, and perhaps look for balls to attack. The mindset here is that you can force your opponent to miss with subtle changes in your game (plus the sudden attacks that win points or throw them off).

One could write a book on how choppers win points, but these three aspects are the first three to focus on – especially the first two. But it’s hard for a chopper to win if he can’t master and have the right mindset for all three of these. Proper mindset is important for all styles, but even more so for choppers – it might be the most important thing of all for them, and a defining trait for all good ones.

Now, let’s switch sides. Suppose you’re playing a chopper who rarely misses and rarely gives you an easy ball? (We’ll focus on those two since there are a zillion variations for #3.) What can you do?

A chopper (except when he attacks or gets lucky) can’t score unless you make a mistake. So . . . don’t. Sure, that’s easier to say than to execute, but the key thing is that, just as a good chopper has a mindset of never missing and never giving an easy shot, you have to have a mindset where you won’t miss. That likely means changing from your normal game. An aggressive loop that might be high percentage against most players becomes a low percentage shot against a chopper since you have to do it over and Over and OVER. So, you have to change your mindset and focus on more consistent attacks and pushes until you get the right shot. Then, when you get that shot, take it! You have to be able to go from the mindset of playing consistent to the mindset of ending the point with decisive shots – which means you have to go back and forth between the two mindsets. The changing mindset, and knowing when to do so, is why many players have trouble with choppers.

But guess what? With experience, it becomes much easier, and you learn how strongly you can attack with consistency, and when it’s time to take the winning shot – and that becomes your mindset.

So, whether you’re a chopper or playing a chopper, just remember - it’s all about the mindset.

"I had trouble with his serve" is likely the most common reason given for losing a competitive match. There's a good reason for this - receive is the only time when the opponent can throw just about any spin at you, along with varied serving motions, placements, depths, and speeds. I know when I don't play for a time, returning serves is the most difficult thing to get back.

So, when you go into a match, when the opponent is serving, your first priority should be to get used to his serves. At the start, that usually means focusing on pure control. Just get it back at first, playing it mostly safe but with good placement, without worrying too much about being aggressive. If the opponent has tricky serves, then you may have to play much of the match that way.

It's only when you feel comfortable against the opponent's serves that you should begin to up your receive game. If you are playing someone you are used to, it might be from the very start. If the opponent has very good serves and perhaps not an overwhelming attack, you might play safe the entire time. But once you do get used to an opponent's serves, then it's time to consider turning your receive into a weapon where you use it to control the point, whether it be by playing aggressive with loops and flips, or controlling play by varying short and long pushes.

But only after you are comfortable with the opponent's serve! If that never happens, then you need to find someone with good serves like the ones that gave you trouble, and practice against them.

The stronger the player, the more predictable their attacking shots tend to be. Why? Because that’s what makes them consistent. They may be able to make a dozen strong loops in a row, but they often all come out about the same.

So, guess what? All you have to do is make one good block. Just one. Then remember the feel and contact of that one. And repeat. This is true of most shots, but even more true for blocking.

Two tips here. First, keep the racket low when blocking  or you’ll tend to loft the ball off. Second, the sound of your block should be the same each time. But that sound should also match the “feel” of the shot – if you get one, you get the other.

Once you’ve made that one good block, often all you have to do the rest of the way is that same block, over and over. The main adjustment is moving to the ball, i.e., footwork, especially side to side. (You also have to move or reach in for shorter loops.) If your opponent is making lots of strong loops, you can’t get to all of them. But once you make that one good block, then you should be able to block most of them.