Make It Simple

Historically, since the very beginning, I was told that table tennis is one the most difficult disciplines over the planet. As a result its entry ticket is considered as pretty high, it is supposed to require a high investment to new practitioners. That is ok, but then a reflection (perhaps too simplistic) came to my mind, why was table tennis chosen as national sport by Chinese at the time? Of course, the fact that Chinese implemented an homogeneous sport policy across the nation helped but, in my opinion, it was not the only condition that justified the spread of the sport at this massive scale. In fact, table tennis was probably perceived by national leaders as an sport easy to develop for various reasons:

1. Easy for beginners.
2. Cheap.
3. Funny.

But, wait a minute … we started saying that table tennis is one the most challenging disciplines and now we are stating that it was chosen because it was easy for beginners! One possible explanation is that people just practice for fun and did not develop a good technique. Might be, but graphical documents show that there was some education around the practice of table tennis, population in average showed some basic skills that can be seen across generations until our current days. From my point of view, what happened is that there was an intention to make this sport simple. Let me explain … Chinese played, at the time, 99.9% with a single side/short pimples/pen-hold style. Start playing this way summarize the goodies of table tennis:

1. Pen-hold style requires an easier and faster learning curve at the beginning.
2. One side short pimples is extremely cheap (just one cheap blade and an extremely cheap short pips rubber is necessary).
3. And funny, because people rapidly develop a basic technique that is a good basis to improve rapidly as you play with your peers. As you improve you get more fun and you keep exploring your limits (in addition to the inherent social dimension).

Based on the above, I think, that is important to learn from these early ages, when table tennis was popularized, as a way to tackle the present situation. A landscape where there is, certainly, a decline of table tennis, at least, in the Europe zone.Following this reasoning, what can be the keys that we can follow to, at least, make table tennis more approachable to people? I do not hold any magic formula but I can share with you some ideas:

1. Table tennis is way easier when you have a good trainer on your side. This point involves 2 different aspects, on one side having trainers, on the other having good trainers. On the first aspect, there is an evident lack of trainers today as obviously there is little budget in the clubs to pay them and/or volunteers, as a result there are few table tennis schools out there and most clubs just get older. On the second aspect, there are even fewer good trainers and, when I mean ‘good trainer’, I do not necessarily refer to a trainer capable of dealing with the elite team of the club, but more with a trainer that is capable to generate enthusiasm on new kids joining the club and teach them some basic technique that allow beginners to have a basis to get fun pretty quickly.
2. Table tennis is way easier when we make it easy. This is a kind of criticism to many trainers and even advanced players that somehow want to make appear table tennis as something only reachable to a few chosen. Getting the best in a discipline that only a few practice, it is like becoming the king of a dessert island. Those who loved this sport have (somehow) a moral obligation to make it accessible to other people. This is only possible with an open and didactic attitude based on teaching kids and adults (especially kids) few simple technical elements that can be understood by anybody following a kind of Chinese school learning path.

This was everything for this time. As I always say, please, do not take any of these entries in the blog too seriously. They are just personal opinions, many times linked to the circumstances of the moment where they were written, as, in the end, we are just human beings conditioned by our environment.