Technical, Tactical, and Temporal Notational Analysis in Youth National Table Tennis Teams

Table tennis players need to integrate technical and tactical aspects across different temporal and spatial scales in a short amount of time. Traditional approaches are often insufficient to achieve this performance, creating the need to use competition and/or training tools that involve technical, tactical, and temporal aspects, thus improving game strategies such as notational analysis. This study aimed to analyze the technical, tactical, and temporal performance of national teams in the 2024 South American Junior Table Tennis Championships. A notational analysis focusing on technical, tactical, and temporal aspects was conducted for six games involving six national players (three men aged 18.6 ± 0.7 years and three women aged 19 ± 0 years) in six different matches at the 2024 South American Junior Table Tennis Championship using the Lince Plus software. Men exhibited an offensive game style, while women displayed a defensive or mixed style. Both genders adopted the European grip and were right-handed. There were no statistically significant differences in technical aspects between sexes. The number of strokes was influenced by technique. Our results are similar to those in the literature, but only two studies report values for female athletes. Considering the limitations, the data suggests similar technical, tactical, and temporal actions by gender for national team athletes.