#TTT8 Beyond the Paddle: Anastasiia Rybka on Table Tennis, Coaching, and Mastering New Skills

July 6, 2024 Ian Dawson Mackay ALL PODCAST EPISODES, LEVEL UP YOUR SPORTS PLAYING, REAL-LIFE INSPIRING, TOP-TIER TALENT 0:50:38 0 Comments

TODAY's GUEST IS Anastasiia Rybka!

Today’s guest is Anastasiia Rybka! 

Anastasia Rybka is a Ukrainian-American table tennis player and coach.

Anastasiia started her table tennis career at the age of 9.

She became the #1 player in her age category in Ukraine and under professional contracts, competed for different clubs in Ukraine and represented the Ukrainian cadet and junior National team at the European Youth Championships. Her best rating result was #3 in the Ukraine at the age of just 16. In her last Junior Championship, at the age of 18, she became absolute champion of her country winning a gold medal in each category.

Anastasiia also participated in European Cups representing the number one club in Ukraine “NORD.”

Rybka got her bachelor’s degree back in her country in Physical Education and Sport.

She then moved to the United States in 2014. Her US career began in Texas where she was completing her Master’s degree at Texas Wesleyan University. While in Texas she played for a table tennis team and they became National Collegiate Champions. She also achieved first place in women’s doubles and 2nd in singles. Rybka was chosen as MVP player for two years in a row from 2015-2016.

Since being a professional table tennis athlete Anastasiia naturally started coaching while in the United States. While still in Texas she provided instruction and training direction to children in tutoring academy, to adults at the table tennis club and also helped in Para camp where Paralympic players prepare for Paralympic Games to represent USA.

She moved to LA in 2017 and has been coaching children and adults at Gilbert Table Tennis Club. 

In this interview, we discuss her story, table tennis, the skills brain and reaction time, coaching and competing, learning new skills and so much more. 

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KEY POINTS, Links & Actions

Here are some key points that I would advise you to concentrate on

  • Anastasia started training to pass some time, and fell in love with the sport. I always recommend that people try a variety of different things, as you never know where it might take you.
  • Muscle memory is the key to developing your skills, but you need to ensure the skill techniques you are learning are correct, and that is where a skilled coach comes in. 
  • Anastasia will change her opponent mentally if she is struggling, to view them as an opponent she can beat, and it allows her to play more positively against the opponent she mentally knows she can beat.  
  • Anastasia talks the merits of eating correctly, healthy sleep patterns and a good warm-up and mentally preparing herself for competition. By establishing good working routines, you control the controllable in your life, allowing you to focus on your game and forget the things you can’t control.   
  • Anastasia played when she was younger for the love of the sport and not to win. She used her talent and love for the sport to play well, and develop as she played without putting additional pressure on herself. This relaxed approach allowed her to develop her skills and game-play without having comparing herself and putting too much pressure on herself. 
  • Anastasia plays other sports like soccer etc, to help develop her footwork. By playing a game like soccer, you get to learn foot control, movement to find space, developing leg muscles by running and playing with the ball etc, in a fun activity that doesn’t feel like training. 
  • Anastasia utilises living and training with multiple nationalities and playing styles, as it helped her learn new striking methods, game-styles, and a mesh of techniques and skills.
  • It is important to find practices and approaches to competing that work for you, not ones set by everyone else. Your training and game is unique to you, so your training and mental prep has to be unique to you too, you need to find the setup and style of focus that works best for you. 
  • Anastasia highlights the importance of having a coach to develop your skills. You can be extremely talented, but never reach your potential as without true focused practice you won’t get anywhere. You don’t need to know everything, but having a coach will allow you to focus on improving and leaving the training, skill development etc to her coach, and she can focus on just playing.
  • Anastasia moved to the US from the Ukraine at a young age. She lived with a lot of international students, which allowed her to find a supportive and familiar  base to operate from. By keeping her curious and outgoing attitude, she was able to adopt the US culture quickly.   
  • Anastasia found that by coaching, she got to see table tennis in a new unique way, she saw where people struggled, learnt techniques in a deeper way so she could explain things better, and understood people and players better, all which helped her develop her own table tennis game.  
  • Reviewing your progress and training is a big factor in whether you improve or not. Through reviewing, you find energy leaks in the movement and techniques, where you need to work to move out a development plateau and so on. Through review you get a chance to see things multiple times, in slow motion etc, to allow you to fix areas that are holding you back, so review is a key area to help you go from good to great. 
  • Anastasia states how it is important to get your grip correct, as all your shots come from the basic grip, and without the correct grip, you won’t play well and build in poor habits. 
  • The way we speak to ourselves is a key to our ability and attitudes. If you stop and truly listen to the way you talk to yourself, you wouldn’t let a friend talk to you like that, so why do you let yourself do it? Looking at training like cognitive behavior therapy and neuro linguistic programming are a great help in improving your mental health and promoting positive thinking. 
  • The best players approach training with a positive attitude, listen and follow their coach, and practice, train and compete all the time. To find out who you are, and your true ability, you need to compete to know yourself. 
  • No matter how you play, you will eventually have a bad competition, a bad training session, a bad day … week or even year! You need to find a way to forget about previous sessions, and focus on the present, the past is gone, you can only affect the present, so focus on making it the best you can. 

LEVEL UP Time WITH THIS KEY LESSON!

Key lesson from this interview 

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About the Author
I’m a podcaster who interviews great examples of people to discuss and highlight the methods, hacks, tips and procedures you can use in your own life to help you develop and better your life. I would definitely not consider myself an expert, so to improve, I ask them and action it in my own life! My personal journey has been marked by awkwardness and awesomeness, OCD and ‘OMG’. I have suffered with depression, shyness, unhappiness and lack of focus and motivation so I know what’s it like to feel lost and hopeless. Back then, I wished I had a podcast to listen to and find actual fixes and concrete action steps and not just unobtainable suggestions and promotion of their products but couldn’t find it … so I made my own!

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