waldner – 360TT Blog

SpongeBob, Waldner and Taleb: Table Tennis Lessons

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:57:00 -0300

Quick question: what kind of sponge is SpongeBob?

If you answered “a kitchen sponge”, you’re in good company. Yellow, square, full of little holes — the very image of the sponge next to the sink. And that’s exactly how I used Bob in a text I wrote in 2021 that only circulated in WhatsApp groups: as a symbol of resilience. Squashed, he always bounces back to his original shape. “Be a SpongeBob player,” I said.

Five years later, rereading that text, I realized I had gotten two things wrong.

The first: Bob is not a kitchen sponge. He lives in a pineapple at the bottom of the sea. He’s a sea sponge — and not by accident: the creator of the cartoon, Stephen Hillenburg, was a marine biologist before becoming an animator. Hold on to that, because it changes everything at the end of this text.

Kitchen sponge or sea sponge? The difference is the subject of this text.

The second: resilience is not the goal. It’s the middle of the road.

This post is a rewrite of that old text — now with the help of an author who changed the way I think about training, competition and growth: Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

TL;DR: resilience, going back to normal after pressure, isn’t enough: the goal is to come out better than you went in, which is what Nassim Taleb calls antifragility. Stress in the right dose, with recovery, makes you stronger; changing everything out of anxiety (switching rubbers after every loss, tinkering with technique before a tournament) is iatrogenics, the remedy turning into the disease. It all comes down to the 8 to 10 seconds between points, and you can train it: there’s a table to find out which level you’re at, training ideas, Waldner in 1997 and the truth about SpongeBob.

Fragile, resilient, antifragile: a recap

In May, when China lost two matches in the group stage of the World Team Championships and still left London as champions, I wrote about it here on the blog: The Antifragile China: From Chaos to the World Title. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth it — but here is the three-line summary:

Fragile is what breaks under pressure.
Resilient (or robust) is what withstands the shock and goes back to the same state.
Antifragile is what comes out of the shock better than it went in.

The idea that hit me hardest in the book is simple and uncomfortable: the opposite of fragile is not resilient. Taleb uses the example of a package sent by mail with the label “fragile — handle with care”. The opposite of that would not be a package labeled “I don’t care how you handle me” (that’s the robust one). The opposite would be “please, mistreat me”. Something that gets better when it’s shaken.

In my 2021 text, I defined resilience as “going back to your natural state after suffering pressure”. And right after that, I asked the athlete to change, leave the comfort zone, adapt. I was asking for antifragility without having the word for it. Going back to your natural state is great — but whoever only returns to the same place after every loss is, deep down, standing still.

A little more Taleb

Taleb is a Lebanese-American essayist and former financial trader who has spent his life studying uncertainty, risk and chance. He is the author of The Black Swan and Antifragile (2012), the book where everything I’m using here comes from. Nothing in it is about sport — and, at the same time, almost all of it is useful for anyone who trains.

Damocles, Phoenix and Hydra

The Hydra: for every head cut off, two grow back.

Taleb uses three mythological figures to explain the triad:

Fragile — Damocles: lives with a sword hanging over his head by a single horsehair. One shock and it’s over.
Resilient — Phoenix: dies and is reborn from its own ashes, but is reborn the same.
Antifragile — Hydra: the serpent of Greek mythology: for every head cut off, two grow back. The attack makes it stronger.

Think of how many athletes you know who are Phoenixes: they lose, they suffer, they come back to training on Monday exactly the same. Resilient, yes. But the same loss will happen again at the next tournament, because nothing changed.

Hormesis: the dose makes the medicine

Antifragility doesn’t mean “the more suffering, the better”. Taleb relies on a concept from biology called hormesis: small doses of a stressor make the organism react and get stronger; doses that are too large, or continuous with no rest, break it.

Any coach knows this under another name: it’s the basic principle of training. Load, recovery, adaptation. The muscle doesn’t get stronger during the workout — it gets stronger afterwards, in recovery, as a response to the stress it went through. Without stress, there is no adaptation. Without recovery, there isn’t either.

And here comes the part many people ignore: depriving a system of stress also makes it fragile. The player who only does comfortable rallying, only plays people he already knows, only enters the tournament where he knows he’ll do well, is protecting himself — and getting more fragile every week.

The three players at the table

Picture the scene: fifth set, 8-9, you’re serving. Your opponent’s ball hits the edge of the table and goes off. 8-10.

The fragile player explodes. He complains about the edge, looks at his coach, slaps the racket against his thigh. The point is already over, but he keeps playing that point in his head. He serves fast, in a hurry, with no plan. 8-11. On the way home, it’s the edge’s fault, the ball’s, the table’s, the umpire’s, the new rubber’s.

The resilient player breathes, accepts it, goes back to his routine. He keeps his head up and plays the next point well. He may even turn it around. But, winning or losing, he leaves the match the way he came in.

The antifragile player does everything the resilient one does — and one more thing: he turns what happened into information. That edge teaches nothing (it’s luck, and luck can’t be trained). But the previous point did teach something: the opponent returned my short serve to the forehand with an aggressive flick (what Brazilians call a harau) twice in a row. So the next serve will be different. And after the match, win or lose, he leaves with a new note for Tuesday’s training.

Brazilians have a great expression for the fragile type: the “Gabriela syndrome” — from a famous song by Dorival Caymmi, for people who think they were born one way and will die that way (“I was born like this, I grew up like this, I’ll always be like this”). And there is also the antidote, sung by Raul Seixas: being a metamorfose ambulante, a “walking metamorphosis”. The American psychologist Carol Dweck, of Stanford University, arrived at the same place by another path, researching how people deal with failure: in the book Mindset (2006), she separates the fixed mindset — “my talent is what it is” — from the growth mindset — “my talent is the starting point”. Gabriela is fixed mindset. Raul is growth mindset. Taleb goes one step further: the antifragile doesn’t just believe they can grow — they use stress as fuel for it.

Which level are you at today?

Read the table below honestly. There is no pretty answer: most of us are fragile on some lines and antifragile on others. The goal is to know where you stand, so you know what to train.

Situation	Fragile	Resilient	Antifragile
Training	Prefers what he already knows how to do; avoids drills where he makes many mistakes	Completes the proposed training with discipline	Looks for the drill that exposes the weak spot
Uncomfortable opponent (pips, chopper, left-hander)	Avoids; “I don’t like playing against that”	Plays when he has to, no drama	Asks to train against it
Net and edge	Complains, gestures, carries it into the next point	Accepts it and moves on	Accepts it and moves on — luck isn’t analyzed
Your own bad point	Berates himself out loud; the mistake lasts several points	Returns to the routine quickly	Returns to the routine and extracts information from the mistake
Opponent’s good point	Gets rattled, changes the plan in desperation	Acknowledges it and keeps the plan	Asks “what is he seeing that I’m not?”
Defeat	Blames something external (table, ball, umpire, equipment)	Accepts it, rests and comes back the same	Leaves with 1 or 2 concrete adjustments for training
Equipment	Changes rubber after every loss	Keeps the equipment	Keeps the equipment and only adjusts with a reason and a deadline
Between points	Serves fast, with no plan; the heart races	Has a routine and follows it	Uses the routine to read the game and decide the next point
Inner voice	“It’s not working”, “today’s not my day”	“Calm down, next point”	“What did that point teach me?”

Tip

If most of your answers landed in the first column, start with the basics: a between-points routine and stop changing equipment. If they landed in the second, you already have the foundation — the next step is turning every match into data. If they landed in the third, watch out for the trap in the next section: even the antifragile can get hurt by too much intervention.

Between points: where antifragility really happens

All the reasoning above fits into 8 to 10 seconds. That is roughly the average time between one point and the next in a match — and it is there, not during the rally, that it’s decided whether you’ll be Damocles, Phoenix or Hydra on the next point.

In the post Your heart lost the point, I talked about the physiological side of this: how a racing heart steals decision-making clarity, and how breathing between points helps you regain control. Here, I want to show the other side: the mental structure of those seconds.

The model I use with my athletes — adapted for our table tennis — comes from the work of Hungarian-American Dora Kurimay, a former player and sports psychology specialist, in the book Get Your Game Face On Like the Pros!, which in turn draws on the research of psychologist Jim Loehr with professional tennis players. It has four steps, the 4 R’s:

Reaction — the first 3 seconds after the point ends. Firm posture, head up, no “celebrating the lost point”.
Recovery — breathe, step away from the table, drop your shoulders. Give your body and your head a real pause.
Readiness — two questions: What is the situation? What is my job? Which serve, where, and what I do after it.
Ritual — the fixed gesture before serving or receiving, which tells the body: “now it counts”.

One reference I love from this method is the 80-10-10 rule for reaction: in 80% of points, a neutral reaction (anyone watching can’t tell whether you won or lost the point); in 10%, an energetic celebration on the points that change the momentum of the match; and in 10%, a defiant response after a mistake — a “let’s go!” that pulls you up, instead of a “how awful” that pulls you down.

Between points: 8 to 10 seconds that decide the next point.

Notice how the 4 R’s fit the triad. The fragile player jumps straight from the stimulus to the uncontrolled reaction. The resilient one masters Reaction and Recovery — he returns to normal. The antifragile uses Readiness to turn every point, even the lost ones, into information for the next.

Note

I have a much more complete material on this, which I use in talks and hand to my athletes, with exercises to build your personal between-points routine. It will become a post of its own soon.

Iatrogenics: when the remedy becomes the problem

Of all the concepts in the book, this is my favorite — and the one I see happening most in table tennis.

Iatrogenics is a word from medicine: the harm caused by the treatment itself. Taleb defines it as the harm from a treatment that exceeds its benefits. The classic example is bloodletting, which doctors used for centuries to treat almost everything and which, in many cases, killed the patient faster than the disease. Taleb extends the concept to any field: whenever someone intervenes in a system without knowing whether the benefit will outweigh the damage, they are practicing what he calls naive interventionism.

In table tennis, iatrogenics has a name, a surname and an address:

1. Changing equipment after every loss. It’s the most common case. The player loses a tournament, concludes that “the rubber isn’t working”, and switches. Three weeks later, still adapting, he loses again — and switches again. Technique and muscle memory take, on average, 60 to 90 days to adapt to new equipment. Whoever switches before that never gets to play adapted to anything. The treatment (the switch) became the disease (the inconsistency).

2. Tinkering with technique on the eve of a tournament. Fixing a stroke is necessary — but the week before a competition is the worst possible moment. The player goes into the match thinking about his elbow instead of thinking about his opponent.

3. The coach who corrects everything at once. I include myself here. The wish to help makes us point out ten things after a training session. The athlete can’t process ten things. One or two at a time, at most.

4. Volume without recovery. Training more is the automatic answer to any loss. But, as we saw with hormesis, stress without recovery doesn’t strengthen — it breaks.

5. Changing tactics after every lost point. It looks like flexibility, but it’s anxiety. Adjusting the plan because you read something in the game is one thing; abandoning the plan because you lost two points in a row is another.

Notice an apparent contradiction: in the previous section, I argued that the antifragile changes, adapts, moves on. Now I’m telling you not to touch anything. It’s not a contradiction.

Important

The antifragile changes based on information; the iatrogenic changes based on anxiety. The filter question is always: “am I changing because I learned something, or because I’m uncomfortable?”

Via negativa: improving by subtracting

Taleb defends an idea he calls via negativa: often, the way to improve is not to add something, but to take something away. When in doubt, don’t intervene.

Applied to the table, this becomes three practical rules:

One change at a time. If you change the rubber, your backhand technique and your training time all at once, you’ll never know what worked.
With a reason. Every change needs a motive you can explain in one sentence.
With a deadline. Decide beforehand how long you’ll give the change — and don’t reassess before then.

And sometimes the best change is to stop doing something: stop berating yourself out loud, stop looking at the coach after every point, stop reading rubber forums every night.

Antifragile training: stress in the right dose

If hormesis says that small doses of stress make you stronger, training needs to have those doses — on purpose, controlled, with recovery afterwards. A few ideas I use:

Start the set behind. Play sets where the opponent already starts with a 3 or 4 point lead. You train exactly the situation that scares you most in competition.
Multiball with random placement. Instead of a predictable sequence, the feeder varies without warning: one or two balls in one spot, then another elsewhere. He decides the location; your brain learns to decide under uncertainty.
Look for the style you hate. Pips players, choppers, left-handers, blockers. If you avoid it, it becomes your Damocles.
Vary the conditions. A different table, a different hall, a different ball brand. The fragile depends on ideal conditions; the antifragile gets used to not having them.
Play points that count at the end of training, tired. A controlled dose of the fatigue you’ll feel in the fifth set.
Treat competition as a dose, not as a final exam. Every tournament is a stressor that brings information. The result matters, but what you learn from it matters more.

And remember: after the dose, recovery. Sleep, rest, hydrate, eat well. That’s where adaptation happens.

Waldner, Manchester, 1997

In my 2021 text, I said Jan-Ove Waldner had been “crushed” in the team event at the 1997 World Championships in Manchester, and then became champion in the singles. I researched it again for this rewrite — and the real story is even better.

A parenthesis: you’ve probably noticed I quote Waldner a lot — and there’s a reason. Table tennis is divided into before and after him. If you never saw him play, I can only feel sorry for you.

Waldner’s Sweden had been three-time world team champion in 1989, 1991 and 1993, and runner-up in 1995, losing the final to China. In Manchester, the campaign fell apart early: in the group stage, Sweden lost to Belgium, with Waldner beaten by Philippe Saive in the deciding game. In the quarterfinals, they fell to China — even with Waldner beating Kong Linghui. For the first time in years, Sweden went home without a team medal.

And it didn’t stop there: in the doubles final, Waldner and Jörgen Persson lost to Kong Linghui and Liu Guoliang in five games.

At 31, with all of that on his back, Waldner entered the singles tournament and did something that had never been done at a World Championships and probably never will be again: he became champion without losing a single game. In the final, he beat Belarusian Vladimir Samsonov 21-12, 21-17, 21-13. It was his second world singles title, eight years after the first, in Dortmund.

That is not a Phoenix, reborn the same. That is a Hydra. And all of Sweden seems to have learned the lesson: three years later, in 2000, it became world team champion again.

Almost three decades later, the China of 2026 repeated the script, only from the other side of the table: it lost to South Korea and to Sweden itself in the group stage, finished third in the group for the first time in the modern era — and left London as champion, with Liang Jingkun turning around a 3-8 deficit in the deciding game of the final against Tomokazu Harimoto. I told that story in detail in the post about the antifragile China.

But Auad, what about SpongeBob?

Remember that Bob is a sea sponge, not a kitchen one?

The kitchen sponge is resilient: you squeeze it, it returns to its shape. Until the day it tears — and then it goes in the trash.

The sea sponge is another story. Marine sponges are animals, and they are among the living beings with the greatest regeneration capacity on the planet. If a piece breaks off, that piece can become a new sponge — the farmers who grow sponges at sea do exactly that: they cut pieces and let them grow. In 1907, the American biologist H. V. Wilson ran a famous experiment: he pressed a sponge through a fine cloth, separating it into loose cells, and watched those cells regroup and form a sponge again.

Cut a sea sponge and you may end up with more sponges.

In other words: cut a sea sponge and you may end up with more sponges. That is Taleb’s Hydra, in real life, at the bottom of the sea.

And there’s one more detail I ignored in 2021: a sponge doesn’t just serve to return to its shape. A sponge absorbs. When it is squeezed, it lets go of what no longer serves — and gets ready to absorb again. That is exactly what the antifragile player does with every loss: squeezes, lets go of the frustration, the excuse and the blame on the edge, and absorbs what that match had to teach.

How about being a SpongeBob athlete — the real one, from the bottom of the sea? Or, if you prefer, a Hydra athlete: every loss cuts off a head, but what matters is how many grow back.

So, have you ever had a loss that you squeezed until you got a lesson out of it? Tell us in the comments — let’s swap ideas. I’ll read and answer every one.

Waldner's 10 Tips | Special Content

Sun, 17 May 2026 20:11:00 -0300

Jan-Ove Waldner is considered by many to be the greatest table tennis player of all time. In When the Feeling Decides, written by Jens Fellke, Waldner closes the book with a special chapter: 10 straight-talking pieces of advice for anyone who wants to reach the top. We translated and commented on each one for you.

TL;DR: Waldner’s 10 pieces of advice mix technique, tactics and mindset. At the table: be a complete player, have weapons that win points, play relaxed and master the three distances. To keep improving: play a lot while you are young, study good players and analyze your opponents. And above all, use your head, be respectful and think long term.

1. Become a complete player

To win big titles, you need to master the game against every style of opponent. That is why it is essential to train and compete regularly against different profiles. The most important styles to master are loopers (maximum topspin), attackers (maximum speed) and choppers (maximum backspin).

Another fundamental aspect is learning to play against left-handers. Keep in mind that both right-handers and left-handers spend 85% of their playing time facing right-handers. So being successful against both types takes a well-developed technique and very sharp balance.

Waldner says he had the advantage of training a lot with left-handers from his very first club, Spårvägen, where he played with Mikael Appelgren and Ulf Thorsell. Later, on the Swedish national team, left-handers were well represented: Appelgren again, Stellan Bengtsson, Erik Lindh, Ulf Bengtsson, Thomas von Scheele and Peter Nilsson.

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How many times do you avoid playing against a style that bothers you? The discomfort in training is exactly what prepares you not to be surprised in competition. Go looking for the tough opponents, not the easy ones.

2. Develop weapons that win points

Table tennis is a tough sport, played under a lot of pressure. Many times you have to play several matches in a single day. That is why it is important to be able to win points simply and quickly.

Waldner could always count on his serves, which were often decisive and won the point outright. On top of that, he worked hard to complement his serves with a varied and unpredictable forehand. He recommends taking time to analyze which point-winning weapons you already have, and remembering that new weapons can always be developed.

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Every weapon starts with a conscious choice to develop it. Have you ever stopped to analyze what your current strengths are and what new weapons you could build? This self-assessment exercise is well worth it.

3. Develop a relaxed technique

Table tennis demands an enormous amount of practice. Always try to play as relaxed as possible. This increases your chances of keeping your quality even in tough situations and, at the same time, lowers your susceptibility to injury.

Waldner says that he personally managed to avoid injuries throughout his career, and he believes this is one of the reasons he was able to stay at the top for so many years.

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Tension is the enemy of technique. If you notice that you freeze at decisive moments, the problem is rarely a lack of skill, it is too much tension. Working on relaxation in training is as important as working on the stroke itself.

4. Play a lot while you are young

Table tennis demands advanced motor coordination and dexterity. That is why it is essential to learn as much technique as possible before the age of 13. As long as it is fun, train and compete as often as you can.

Use your imagination by constantly trying new strokes, even during matches. Try a new strategy in the middle of a game. Treat a 10-10 in the deciding set as a challenge to test your most effective serve or a new kind of serve return.

Remember that a table tennis career is quite long. When you feel bad about a loss, try to think about the next tournament and how you can improve.

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Parents and coaches, this tip is especially for you. A free, exploratory play environment in childhood is fundamental, but be careful: fun and seriousness have to go together. Playing with a light heart is essential, but without real commitment to development, the young athlete does not move forward. The balance between the two is what makes champions.

5. Master the three distances / timings

Many players dominate the game from only one or two distances. Waldner’s recommendation is that you consciously practice playing at all three distances after the ball bounces:

Distance 1 (timing 1), rising ball: you must hit the ball before it reaches its highest point after the bounce. You need to learn to use short, fast strokes with little backswing.
Distance 2 (timing 2), ball at the top of the bounce: you must learn to use a relaxed technique when hitting the ball exactly at its highest point after the bounce. A wide variety of strokes can be applied successfully at this distance.
Distance 3 (timing 3), falling ball: you hit the ball after it has reached its highest point, already on its way down. This distance calls for a technique with a big forearm movement before impact.

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Playing well at only one timing is a blind spot that any experienced opponent will exploit. And here is a fundamental principle: if you do not decide when to touch the ball and do not position yourself for it, your opponent decides when you touch the ball. Consciously choosing your timing is part of the tactical game, not just the technical one.

6. Study good players

Watch as much table tennis as you can. Study recordings of yourself and of high-level players. Waldner used to study the Hungarian player Tibor Klampar, whose wrist movements and ball striking were of extraordinary quality. By studying Chinese players, he learned to value the importance of developing effective serves.

Try to imitate certain players to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of different playing styles, grip types and movement patterns. On the Swedish national team, the squad always had a lot of fun imitating opponents over the years, and Erik Lindh was a master at imitating them.

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It has never been so easy to access high-level videos as it is today. The question is: do you watch as a spectator or as a student? Change the lens and you will notice how much you learn.

7. Analyze your opponents

Only when you face a player for the first time can you get a real sense of the quality of, say, their forehand loop. So rely on the help of teammates who have already played against that opponent. Bring every relevant detail into the conversation. Remember that there are many ways to win in table tennis. The more prepared you are, the better your chances. The margins in this sport sometimes seem tiny, but it is always the more complete and professional player who benefits from them.

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Tactical preparation is not cheating, it is competitive intelligence. At tournaments, arrive early, watch the matches of your possible opponents and write down what you notice. That information is worth its weight in gold when the moment comes.

8. Use your head

Mental strength is a vast and extremely important topic, and perhaps the hardest quality to develop through training. Over the years, Waldner developed a way of thinking and acting that he believes fits his personality. For him, the starting point has to be yourself.

Mental strength is based on experience and accumulated knowledge about your sport. Listen to the advice of people you trust, but remember that, in the final analysis, you have to trust your own judgment.

When he was younger, Waldner studied great Swedish athletes in detail, such as Björn Borg (tennis) and Ingemar Stenmark (alpine skiing), and was impressed by their calm during competitions. Over time, he learned to analyze his losses and forget them as quickly as possible. On the other hand, he carries the memories of his victories with him to strengthen his self-confidence.

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There is no universal formula for the mind, but there is practice. Working on the mental side is as legitimate as working on your backhand. Meditation, visualization, talking with a good coach or sports psychologist: all of it counts.

9. Be respectful

A table tennis match is decided in a short time, and underestimating your opponent can be costly. It is essential to accept defeats with grace and show respect for your opponent. Waldner’s strategy, regardless of the result, was always to keep a low profile.

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Respect, at the table and away from it, is a trademark of the greats of the sport. It is no accident that Waldner is revered all over the world not only for his talent, but for the way he always carried himself. That is a lesson too.

10. Think long term

To conclude, Waldner stresses that becoming a good table tennis player takes a long time. There will always be new things to learn. Try to think long term and avoid focusing too much on results while you are still young.

If you aspire to compete with the best, you will have to walk a narrow path. Only a large volume of training, and hard training, will get you to your goal. This principle applies just as much to training at the table as to physical conditioning.

But do not forget, every now and then, to have fun and experiment a little. Eventually, you will discover something that will be useful in competitive play.

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This is perhaps the hardest tip to follow in the age of social media, where everything seems instant. But champions are built over years, not weeks. Trust the process.

Conclusion

Ten pieces of advice from one of the greatest geniuses our sport has ever produced. What stands out most is that Waldner does not talk only about technique: he talks about mindset, process, respect and curiosity. These are lessons that work for players at any level, from the beginner to the experienced competitor.

At 360TT, we believe exactly that: that development in table tennis goes far beyond hitting the ball. It is a path of self-knowledge, dedication and love for the game.

Now I want to hear from you: which of these tips best fits where you are right now in the sport? Tell us in the comments, we love learning from our community!