We’re into the last week of summer now (it’s absolutely boiling today) and the new table tennis season is almost upon us. Personally, I’ve had a very chilled out few months – you may have noticed I haven’t written a blog post for a while. If you ignore the stress of moving house (I now live in Tunbridge Wells); I’ve spent the summer on holiday, visiting friends, going to weddings, and generally enjoying the sun.
I often have a long break over the summer and then come back in September full of energy and ready to get to work again. I guess it comes from enjoying long summer breaks at school and university. The only problem is… plenty of other people have spent the summer working hard!
I’m not saying it’s bad to take a break or have a rest – of course, it’s not – but I’ve come to see that, due to detraining, prolonged breaks can have a seriously negative effect on your long-term improvement.
Detraining in table tennis players
Because table tennis is more of a skill-based sport than a purely fitness-based sport the effects of detraining are less severe. For example, you could probably take 3 months off from table tennis entirely over the summer (like I used to do when I was at Grantham Academy) but get back to your pre-summer performance level after just a month of retraining.
In fact, I barely played any serious table tennis throughout the first 6 months of 2014 because I was spending all of my time coaching Sam for The Expert in a Year Challenge. I could feel that my game had deteriorated as a result.
However, when we both attended the B75 Summer Training Camp in Denmark in July – and I spent some time focused on my own performance instead of Sam’s – I found that by day three I was playing some of the best table tennis of my life. I had managed to reverse six months of detraining in roughly 15 hours!
I’m sure you’ve seen the same thing in your own game. Perhaps you’ve taken six weeks off over the summer but then after a couple of weeks hard training in September you feel like you are back to your previous best.
The only problem is your competitors! If they are continuing to train diligently over the summer then you are going to be in for a nasty surprise when you return from your break.
I was very impressed to follow Rory Scott’s journey around Europe this summer, going from one table tennis camp to the next. As far as I can tell, he must have been one of the hardest working players over the last couple of months. I’ve lost track of how many different training camps he’s attended.
Year-round training can’t be beaten
Despite the fact that we can get back to our pre-break performance level fairly quickly, the chart below highlights the vast difference between year-round training vs taking a long 3-month summer break.
This is exactly what happened to me during my two years training at Grantham Academy. I would hardly pick up a bat during my ridiculously long university summer holiday (July, August, and September) and would then spend the whole of October feeling pretty rubbish and fighting to get back my pre-summer level.
Sure, by the end of October I was playing decent table tennis again. But players that I had been neck-and-neck with in May/June were now beating me comfortably. That’s pretty demoralising. I remember that I struggled to improve for much of my second year at Grantham and I now believe that my long summer break was partly to blame.
Some of you will know that I’ve been doing a lot of running recently. By April, I was able to run a 5K in less than 19 minutes (the photo below shows me about to cross the finish line) – which I thought was a pretty decent achievement. I also finished a 10K in 39 minutes and a half marathon in 88 minutes.
Since then my running has been sporadic, to say the least. I’ve only run about 60 miles in the past four months, whereas I was doing 30 miles a week when I was training. That’s some serious detraining! My fitness has obviously suffered.
I’m sure I will get it back when I start training again in September – but when I look at other runners who have been training hard all summer I feel embarrassed. They have improved so much and are running so well. I’ve gone backwards.
Planning your season
With the 2016/17 table tennis season just around the corner now is the perfect time to plan your season of training, competitions, and breaks.
How many hours a week do you want to practice this year? Which coaching sessions will you attend? Should you start working one-to-one with a coach? When are the big tournaments/matches that you want to peak for?
These are just some of the questions you should be asking yourself.
Regarding breaks, I would recommend taking a week off from table tennis at various points throughout the season. Perhaps you might like to have one week of complete rest over Christmas and then another around Easter-time. It might be a good idea to have two weeks off over the summer next year – to allow your body and mind to fully recover from the season.
That would be 4 weeks of total rest out of 52. Roughly 8% of the year spent resting and recovering. I think that is probably a good amount.
From my own personal experience, my advice would be to try and avoid taking more than two weeks off from table tennis in a row. Of course, if you get injured or sick then that might be outside of your control.
Instead, if you feel tired or like you are lacking motivation during the season, consider decreasing your training intensity (having a “fun” session) or your training frequency (skipping a couple of sessions in a week) instead of taking a break altogether.
And if you need any motivation to keep going; have another look at that chart I shared earlier and imagine your nemesis outworking you and continuing to improve until they become just out of your reach. That should be enough to get you back on the table!