Grantham College coach Natalie Green recently attended the ETTU women’s coaching conference in Bratislava. Here, she writes about the experience.

It was a great opportunity for me to gain further knowledge from some of the leading coaches in Europe, and develop myself as a coach to help the players I work with at Grantham College and Charles Read Academy. There were representatives from 15 nations across Europe.

There were two topics on the agenda which were:

• Coaching of young Table Tennis players, Major Technical mistakes and early detection and correction methods.
• Footwork learning methods with young Table Tennis players.

The guest speakers were Jaroslaw Kolodziejczyk (Austrian U18 boys coach) and Lara Broich (German U15 girls coach). They each led two sessions each on the topics above which were a mixture of theory and practical sessions where we could listen to their experiences, have open discussions within the group about our own experiences and also take part in some of the practical exercises.

It was a great experience to learn how other coaches in different countries run sessions, how they develop technique and movement patterns and ultimately work with their players to get them to reach their potential.

One of the main areas that I took away from the course is the amount of strength and conditioning work the European players do within their warm-ups, focusing on functional movements and specific areas around the hips and shoulders to prevent future injuries.

There is also a lot of focus on learning the correct movement patterns off the table, without the ball to ensure that they are correct before getting on the table and introducing the ball.

There was also a representative from the ITTF there who spoke about developing females within table tennis and what the ITTF are doing to promote equality in our sport.

Overall, it was a fantastic experience and one that I am grateful to have had the opportunity to attend.