UKC

I realise this may make me sound like I am slightly over competitive but...

I've recently started a new job; they have an office table football league, I'm a smidgeon competitive:

What training would you suggest for improving my table football form, I suspect that bouldering is already benefiting my wrist strength a bit but is there anything else I should be doing?

In reply to Reach>Talent:

There is a saying in table football, the best table football player is the one having the most fun.

That is all. HTH.

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Wrist strength isn't everything in table football, you need to be the ball.

Read 'The Art Of War' Sun Tzu

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Practice, practice, practice!!

I spent a couple of Summers working in the stores at HMP Doncaster and we had an old table that had come out of one of the wings down the bottom of our yard. We spent hours playing in the afternoons and I didn't realise until I went back to Uni that I had become an animal at it, I am still pretty good 6 years later.

Think about technical skills and tricks rather than all out power and "spinning". Practice cutting the ball at an angle and "step-overs".

In reply to Reach>Talent:

nothing you're not doing already i'd recon

In reply to Reach>Talent: its all about the angles

In reply to Reach>Talent:
Tragically (or otherwise, depending on your viewpoint) I used to compete nationally and occasionally internationally at table football tournaments! If you want to know more about the UK scene or skills etc, there's the British Foosball Association website with a forum that has lots of helpful and enthusiastic people on it: http://www.britfoos.com/
The skills forum is here: http://forum.britfoos.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3
There's also some stuff here: http://www.britfoos.com/playing-guide/basic-rules

From experience, strength isn't that useful, more helpful is being able to strike the ball with a fast flick (power, I guess), but more than anything technique and control are the most important things to improving your game. With these you'll be able to strike the ball harder than you'd think was possible

Oli

In reply to Reach>Talent:
I'm an out-of-work freelancer. This thread might just change my immediate future.

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Great thread, reminds me that I should try the new table in our institute (the old one and most of the competitive players have gone to Munich...).

Speaking from years misspent at our local youth club´s table (and after winning our institute league for several years running):

Practise pulling the ball sideways with your attacker and shooting in one continuous movement without losing contact to the ball. Try either shooting directly after passing the defender, or after moving the ball for some distance. Learn aiming at either corner after both moves. Do the same by pushing the ball.

Play with little power in your hands, aim for speed instead. Especially when shooting with the left, slapping the grip with your half open palm is going to be much faster than rotating your wrist.

CB

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Fred Nicole had this to say about table football “it’s not so much the level of strength but the timing of it”

In reply to Reach>Talent:

When you get better at this (which I never was, but a lot of people in videos on Britfoos are) I suspect games are mostly won and lost on the passing, rather than the shooting.

In reply to Reach>Talent: You can't score without possession and that starts with ball control. Do you have got room to get a table? A 2nd hand Garlando G500 would set you back about £150, just spend the time dribbling and passing the ball between your rows. If you want to showboat, master the snakeshot. Between that and good posession, you'll crush most apponents.