Perfecting your serve

Samson Dubina (2009 USA Nationals Men's Singles Finalist and full-time coach) explains how to perfect your serve, breaking it down point by point. I've always said serve and receive are the most under-developed parts of the game for most players. And serves are the easiest part to develop since you can practice them alone. To quote Nike, just do it!

Here are some articles I've written on serving:

• Serves to Help You Win
• Ten-Point Plan to Serving Success
• Deception on Serves: Using Semi-Circular Motion
• Maximize Your Service Play
• Serving Short
• Serving Long
• The Fifteen Fast and Deep Serves
• The High Toss Serve
• The No-Spin Serve
• Contact the Ball as Low as You Can When Serving
• Holding Back on Serves
• Hardbat Serving Tips
• Strengths and Weaknesses of the Four Major Serves

Here are some videos on serving:

Celebrities Playing Table Tennis

Yes, it's that time of month again - the Celebrities Playing Table Tennis site gets updated around the first of each month. There are now 1234 pictures of 720 different celebrities playing table tennis - and any short listing of the Who's Who of Celebrities Playing Table Tennis just wouldn't do it justice! There are sections on Politicians/Leaders; Actors and Actresses; Athletes; Musicians; Talk Show Hosts; Writers; Cartoon Characters; and many more!

New celebrities playing table tennis pictures this month include actors Tom Hanks, Haley Joel Osment, Justin Timberlake, Sam Rockwell, Claudette Colbert, Esther Williams, Broderick Crawford; Prince Akihito of Japan (now Emperor); Ed Lee, Mayor of San Francisco; John Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister of England; Ed Nixon, brother of Richard M. Nixon; golfer Tiger Woods; tennis players Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs; Chinese Olympic Gold Medalist Hurdler Liu Xiang; pool star Mika Immoren; talk show host Regis Philbin; singers Lil Jon and Anne-Marie Godart; English socialite Lady Norah Docker; and cartoon character Donald Duck.

Short sidespin serve to the forehand

Can you serve a short sidespin serve to the forehand that breaks away from a right-hander? A LOT of players have great difficulty with this serve, and many can't return it except crosscourt, i.e. into a right-handed server's forehand. If you play one of these players and can't do this, you are handicapping yourself. Shouldn't you be ready to throw this serve at these people? Three common ways of doing this serve: the forehand tomahawk serve (i.e. racket tip up); reverse forehand pendulum serve; and the regular backhand serve. (This may be expanded into a Tip of the Week.)

New USATT logo

Tip of the Week: Jerky Strokes and Jerkyitis

Yes, you can cure that terrible disease that plagues table tennis - Jerkyitis. Here's how.

Comments on this Blog

While there are a lot of readers on this blog - we're averaging well over 300 per day - there are few comments. Feel free to express yourself! It doesn't have to be Q&A, where readers grill me over what I wrote. Feel free to comment with your own experiences, suggestions, dumb puns or jokes, etc.

Funny table tennis terms

Table tennis has some funny terms. Here are three examples:

• Heavy no-spin - a serve where you use an exaggerated motion to make it look like there's spin but instead serve no-spin.
• Fishing - if you don't know what this is, it's explained here.
• Inside-out off-the-bounce sidespin forehand counterloop - say that fast five times.

What are your own favorite table tennis terms, either real or made up?

Americans in China

A lot of USA juniors are training in China this summer, and it's getting lonely at the club without the pitter-patter of their feet as they race around ripping winners past me. Six top juniors from the Maryland Table Tennis Center (my club) are in China training this summer - Tong Gong, Linan Liu, Pamela Song, George & Derek Nie, and Crystal Wang. Others, like John & Nathan Hsu, stayed home, and are training daily with Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, Jeffrey Zeng Xun, Sun Ting, and others.

Table tennis movie

Sometimes play into an opponent's strength

Something that needs re-emphasis - if something your opponent does give you trouble (other than serves), play into it until you are comfortable with it. Then, just when the opponent has gotten comfortable doing this thing, avoid it like the plague. He'll still probably get to use it, but now you'll be comfortable against it, and he'll have to adjust his whole game in mid-match to find ways to use it. How many times have you come off a table with a loss still feeling uncomfortable against whatever it was your opponent was doing and feeling like you have no answer for it? That should never happen in any match that is remotely competitive.

A classic example is playing someone with short pips on the backhand. If you have trouble with the short pips, play into it until you are comfortable.

Why you choke

Fixing the backhand

I had an interesting coaching experience yesterday with a new ten-year-old student. He'd picked up the forehand pretty well, but was struggling on the backhand. Over and over he'd stick his elbow way out to the side and drop the racket tip during the forward swing, contacting the ball with an awkward downward backspin swat, and follow through with his arm extended completely forward, as if he were lunging for something. Over and over I went through the stroke with him, but nothing worked. I told him to keep the racket tip up, keep the elbow in, hit the ball with a slight upward swing with topspin, and not to follow-through with his arm lunging forward. The problem was that all these were symptoms of the one actual problem. I suddenly realized he was contacting the ball too far out in front. When I told him to take the ball closer to his body, in one swoop all the problems disappeared - instant good technique as frustration on both sides of the net changed to sheer glee. Within minutes we were smacking backhands back and forth like pros.

A National Table Tennis League?

Your "Go To" serves?

What are your "go to" serves, the serves you use whenever possible both to build up a lead and to win key points? These could be set-up serves that set you up to attack or to get into your favorite type of rally, or they could be trick serves designed to win the point outright or set up an easy winner. I have zillions of serve variations, but here are some of my major "go to" serves. Most of my serves are forehand pendulum serves, but I use different motions to fool opponents.

Set-up Serves

Table tennis equipment reviews

I have a new student who is interested in table tennis robots. While I'm familiar with them and have hit with most of the major brands, I'm no expert. I told the student I'd investigate them and see what the best values were - he was hoping for one under $1000, and I was hoping for one that could alternate hitting the ball in at least two places (i.e. one to forehand, one to backhand) so he could do a side-to-side footwork drill on it. And lo and behold, I was referred to Denis' Table Tennis World, which reviews just about all table tennis equipment, including robots. Very useful! If you are interested in equipment reviews, then stop by this site and browse away.

I've browsed the robot reviews, and later today plan to go over them more carefully so I can make a recommendation to the student. (They don't seem to have a review yet for the ipong, the newest but coolest looking low-end model.) No, I'm not going to make my recommendation public; I don't have enough first-hand knowledge of the robots to do that. All I can do is go by what others say.

Two Months Notice to USATT

In exactly two months, it'll be two years since USATT finished its "Strategic Meeting" at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs on Sept. 25-26, 2009. The focus of the meeting was how to increase membership. Everyone agreed our membership (in the 8-9000 range) was a "round-off error." Many slogans were created (*sigh*), and three strategic priorities: Juniors, Grow Membership Through Added Value, and Communications. (I consider the Communications priority pointless unless one of the first two gives USATT something to communicate about.) Three task forces were created for these three priorities.

Tip of the Week

In this morning Tip of the Week, I write about the importance of serve variety.

Looping against the block

Almost nobody loops a block into the net; when they miss, it's almost always off the end. Part of this is because they are attacking the ball, and so driving it deep on the table, and simply drive it too deep on the table. Part of it is because they drop their back shoulder, lifting the ball as if it were a backspin. (I wrote a short article about the proper use of the back shoulder for smashing and looping.)

Since most players learn to loop first against backspin, when they start looping against a block (or an incoming topspin), they tend to drop that back shoulder too much. While dropping a little is okay if you are away from the table - key word is "little" - most do it way too much. Instead, you want to keep the back shoulder mostly up, and loop almost the top of the ball. It helps to hook the ball a little as well, dropping the tip down so it contacts the ball on the far side.

And yet players often have trouble doing this, especially right after looping a backspin. And since a disproportionate number of rallies start with a player looping against a backspin, invariably players find themselves looping a backspin and then a block consecutively.

The standard way to practice for this is with multiball. For example, the coach would feed a backspin ball to the middle backhand, and player forehand loops; then the coach feeds a topspin ball to the wide forehand, and again the player loops. And this is great if the player can afford a coach to do this endlessly until they have it down, and then still more to keep it tuned up.

Topspinny backhands (Topspinny ®2011 by Larry Hodges)

Yes, I'm trademarking the term "topspinny." Any time you say it, you have to pay me a quarter. (To the humor-challenged: I'm joking.) I like to use the term to describe players who use a lot of topspin on their backhands, as opposed to others who hit flatter, such as myself. Flat backhands used to be the norm, but these up-and-coming junior players are mostly taught topspinny backhands, sort of half drive, half loop, right off the bounce. I can demonstrate the shot easily, but I don't naturally use it in a match, not after 35 years of hitting "normal" backhands. The shot is highly effective; the ball just jumps at you like a normal backhand loop, with all the quickness of an off-the-bounce flat backhand.

Adjustable height device

On Wednesday, I blogged about new training tools, including a serving height device made by local player and coach John Olsen, with adjustable brackets that hold a pole over the net. We've used it as an exercise both for serving and stroking low to the net. Here are two pictures, set high and set low.

100 degrees

That's how hot it got yesterday here in Maryland, and it's supposed to get a touch hotter today. Aren't we glad table tennis is an indoor sport, and that the Maryland Table Tennis Center bought a new $8000 air conditioning system a month ago? For the last twenty years our air conditioning left something to be desired, but now it's nice and cool inside. Then you step outside and it's like walking into a furnace.

When humidity strikes

Deliberate Practice to deliberately become good or great

So you want to be good at table tennis? Then learn about Deliberate Practice. Not everyone can put in 10,000 hours and be great, but if you apply the other seven principles in whatever practice time you have (make time), you can really improve. And the hours do add up. Below are the eight main principles; the article elaborates on them. Why not print out the article's eight main points with short explanations (they'll fit on one page), and put it on your wall where you can see them regularly?

1. Deliberate practice is highly demanding mentally, requiring high levels of focus and concentration.
2. It is designed specifically to improve performance—to strengthen it beyond its current levels.
3. It must continue for long of periods of time.
4. It must be repeated.
5. It requires continuous feedback on results.
6. Pre-performance preparation is essential.
7. It involves self-observation and self-reflection.
8. It involves careful reflection on performance after practice sessions are completed.

The back doctor