Your level in practice and your level in a match are often not the same level.

A scene you see all the time in the club: in practice you can return anything, but in even a slightly serious match you can’t generate power, your palm sweats on the big points, and you lose to yourself despite a technical edge. Most people put it down to “poor mental toughness” and leave it there — because no one ever told them mental toughness can be broken into specific actions you can train.

This article covers three things: being positive, seeking improvement, and never giving up. Not slogans — actions you can carry out on every single point.

1. Being Positive: Not Hitting Harder, but Making a Decision Every Point

The amateur misunderstanding of “positive” is: hit hard, swing with force, dare to go for the kill.

The result is usually more errors.

Real positivity looks different — making a conscious choice on every point: what to serve, whether to push or long-push the return, which side to press in the rally. Even a wrong choice beats sending the ball back without thinking.

To judge whether you were positive this match, use one simple standard: after a game, can you name the three spots your opponent feared most? If you can, you were reading and judging; if you can’t, you were just reacting.

2. Seeking Improvement: Treat the Match as a Test, Not a Verdict

The easiest burden for an amateur to carry is “losing means I’m no good.”

Once you carry it, you pick the most conservative tactics: just get the ball on the table, try nothing new. Short term, fewer errors; long term, your level stays stuck.

A different frame helps a lot — treat the match as a test. Before each match, set yourself one small goal; as long as it’s met, the win or loss doesn’t count. The goal should be specific enough to check with a number, for example:

  • In this match, attack the serve return at least 5 times on my own initiative;
  • In this match, take everything on the backhand side with the backhand — no stepping around;
  • In this match, send the weight forward before every contact.

Setting goals like this has a hidden benefit: it moves your attention from “will I lose” to “did I do it.” Shift the attention, and the tension drops.

3. Never Giving Up: Break the Score Down Into One Point at a Time

When you fall behind, two reactions come most easily: panic and giving up.

Panic shows up as going for the kill, trying to end every ball in one shot; giving up shows up as softening the stroke, not recovering, not bothering to run. Both roads lead to the same place.

What the pros actually do when behind is simple: it doesn’t matter what the score is — play the point in front of you. The score is a statistic you can’t change directly; the only thing you can change is the next point.

Concretely, give yourself a “climbing rhythm”: when behind, say “get one point back first,” then after that, another. Go from 3–8 to 5–8 and the whole situation changes. That’s the fun of table tennis — until the last point, nothing counts, and comebacks happen more often in this sport than most people imagine.

4. The Big Points: Three Fixed Actions

Big points (game point, match point, after 9–all) are where the hand tightens most. The more you think “don’t miss,” the stiffer you get. What you need here isn’t willpower — it’s a routine practiced in advance.

Action one · One long exhale. Between points, deliberately take one slow, deep exhale. Exhaling calms the heart rate more than inhaling, and that’s especially clear when you’re tense.

Action two · One fixed small motion. Touch the handle, wipe the racket face, take two small steps on the spot — any of these works, but it has to be the same between every point. A fixed motion pulls your drifting attention back.

Action three · One phrase that’s only yours. Silently repeat “just this point,” and shut out the score and the win or loss for the moment.

Fix these three during ordinary practice, until you can do them without thinking. Come a real big point, the body runs the routine on its own.

One more easily missed point: don’t try anything new on a big point. Use your most reliable serve, your most solid way of attacking. Big points are decided by who can produce what they know, not by who’s more creative.

5. After a Miss: A Three-Step Reset

How you handle a ball you’ve missed directly decides the quality of the next point. Many people agonize over one lost point for a whole game, their attention still on the last ball, and then lose three or four straight.

Three steps clear it:

  1. Finish. Get your body back to the ready position; the motion first “ends” this point.
  2. Exhale. One long exhale, let that breath go.
  3. Set up. Stand at your usual serve-receive spot, glance at the opponent, and get ready for the next point.

The order is fixed; one pass takes a few seconds, but it’s enough to pull your attention back from “the last ball.”

A counterintuitive reminder: a badly played point is also acceptable. Fear of missing is itself a source of misses — the less you want to miss, the more conservative and stiff you get, and the more likely you are to miss. Accept that “I might lose this point,” and you actually play freer.

6. After the Match: Three Notes Are Enough

The amateurs who improve fastest share one habit: what they review afterward isn’t “I lost” but three specific questions.

  • Which shot worked today? Write it down; use it again next time.
  • Where did the points go? Serve receive, rally, or big points? Pin it to a specific phase.
  • What one thing will I change next time? Only one. Change three at once and you change none.

Writing it down is far more useful than running it through your head. Look back after a quarter and you’ll find the spots where you lose points have moved several times over — that’s your level shifting.

Further Reading

One line: Being positive is making a choice every point, seeking improvement is treating the match as a test, and never giving up is playing the point in front of you first. All three can be broken into actions, and all three can be trained.