There is no doubt that the recognition of a talent is a complicated and heavy work. It needs lot of theoritical as well as practical knowledge from the coach. Although the science has already been very much developed in other sports, in table tennis this field remains unclear. The prognostics about the development of a boy or a girl in table tennis are very dangerous and unfortunately not been very impressive. In today table tennis there little possibility to give exact prognostics about the development of a player based on objective measurements. However some factors which should have to be taken into consideration during this process and characterize the possible future champion are:

• The high quality in the first training steps.
• The quick progress.
• The ratio between the good results and the time of training.
• It is generally believed that the player who has achieved good results in a rather short (but logical) time will continue with the same progress.
• The consistency in training.
• The discipline.
• The concentration during the training and the match.
• The achievement of the highest quality game in official matches (no match stress).
• The psycho-kinetic profile.
• The motivation and the desire to win (fighting spirit).
• The ability to overcome difficulties in competitions.
• The technical knowledge.
• The physical abilities.

But again, you have to be careful on this because there is a definite lack of valuable scientific tests designed for table tennis. You have to think that table tennis is a very complex game which demands a lot of efforts and sacrifices and always the coach's eye and experience will remain, at least for the moment, unchangable.

© Denis TT World

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