Balancing drills and unstructured playing for beginners

My kids 7 and 13 have great fun playing table tennis and joined a local club. training units are 2 per week one and a half hours each plus lots of local club champioanship battles,regional ranking shootouts etc .This sounds good but I´m a bit concerned they play (or should I say fool)around much of the time as real training with the coaches is very limited 1 coach for 8 to 10 beginners and not many of the better players willing or able to help the starters in developing technique.  I understand every hour with the bat in your hand being in touch with the ball will improve your feel for the ball but progress of your skills will advance your game and help winning matches wich will inevitably be the goal and if the wins dont come frustration will ..

So my question is what your advise for absolute beginners and advanced beginners how to balance those training units and how to tackle the time when no structured training is offered most of the time.  Is it a good idea to try and give them targets or objectives for these units  (I´d rather avoid to be seen as an eager parent hustling his kids to perform -all I want them is to improve so to avoid the frustration of stagnation in development of skills which would help them win matches and keep the fire burning as long as possible.) Or would it be a better idea to try and find a trainer for one on one training units now and then to develop new skills and feed the desire to improve?

Hi Marcus,

I think it is both important for them to be enjoying the sessions and to have some structured play as well.  Especially for the 13 year old I think there can be mainly structured play with drills and then some games.

I think you can still make the session fun for them and give them targets for each drill they are doing.  This is a difficult thing for some coaches especially if they don’t have much experience.  You are in a difficult situation where you don’t want to be seen to me meddling, which I understand  

I think the solution is to give them some more structured play either by you organising a sessions for them by themselves or with a one on one coach.  If you have some experience in playing, then you could even do one session per week with them ether one on one or with them hitting with each other and you running the drills.