Tip of the Week

Five-Ball Attack.

Most Difficult Questions for Coaches and Players

For me, here are the seven most difficult judgment calls for each student. I could write entire blogs and Tips on each. Whether you're a coach or a player, you too should be thinking about these things. (Readers, let me know if there are any below you'd like me to elaborate on.) 

• When to stop serious tinkering with the forehand and backhand loops.
• How much to topspin the backhand.
• When to go to advanced tensor sponges.
• Whether they should play tournaments when working on something new.
• Balance of rote drills, random drills, and game-type play.
• How much to focus on counterlooping on forehand, as opposed to blocking.
• How to motivate them.

One-Day Camp

Today we have a one-day camp at MDTTC. Schools are closed because of President's Day. Come join us, 10AM-6PM! (There's a two-hour lunch break, with Chinese food delivered to the club.) It'll be mostly kids, but adults are welcome as well. No lectures today; just training.

Beginning/Intermediate Class

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here are Happy Valentine's wishes from around the world (15 sec video), care of the ITTF. Here are some Valentine's Day table tennis pictures.

• Valentine's Day Kids Playing TT
• Mice TT Valentine 1
• Mice TT Valentine 2
• The Perfect Match
• Ping Pong Ball Heart
• Ping Pong Paddle Heart
• Show You Care About Ping Pong
• Valentine's Day Paddles
• Valentine's Day Hearty Paddle

How to Practice When Snowed In

Snowmageddon

We have 15 inches of snow here in Germantown, MD, and it's still coming down, though slower than before. A member of our club, Hubert Noah Essomba, has been building this giant sled and collecting two of every style - two loopers, two hitters, two blockers, two choppers, etc. (Noah is from Cameroon, and was ranked #697 in the ITTF world rankings before dropped off the list in September, 2012, presumably to build his mighty sled.) This morning they all sledded off, leaving the rest of us to freeze in the snow. Except, of course, we have heated houses and heated table tennis clubs, so perhaps we'll survive after all.

Since everyone else in the region is taking the day off, I'm taking the day off too, and plan to spend it reading in bed and fighting the urge to go outside and build a snowpingpongball. So no blog this morning, other than this biblical ping-pong account of snowmageddon.

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Here Comes the Snow (again)

We've had several snowstorms already this year here in Maryland and much of the east coast. Tonight and tomorrow we're supposed to get another 5-12 inches. Plus it's 18 degrees out, and was 12 when I got up this morning. I stocked up with supplies at the supermarket last night, and have several great books ready, as well as work to do on my upcoming book, "Table Tennis Tips." Bring it on!!!

Quips and Quotes

My favorite quips while playing:

1. "Just because the point is over doesn't mean the point is over." (Said when my student hits a ball off the end, but I play it off the floor and the rally continues.)
2. "Here comes a pop-up. You're going to flub it. Prove me wrong." (Usually said near the end of a multiball session with a beginning student.)
3. "I'm too good to miss that shot." (Said by me roughly whenever I miss a shot.)
4. "I haven't missed that shot since 1987." (Also said by me roughly whenever I miss a shot.)
5. "Ten years ago I would have got that."
6. "There's a probability greater than zero that I won't lose another point this match."
7. "There's something you don't know. I'm really left-handed."
8. "I cannot be defeated."
9. "Time to pull out the unreturnable serves."
10. "Coaches from all over the world come here to study my [whatever shot I happen to be doing]." (I usually say this when blocking forehands, and often tell stories about how the top Chinese coaches journey to American to study my forehand block.)
11. "Balls in boxes!" (Told to students at the end of playing sessions, with balls scattered all over.)
12. "The most powerful loop in the world." (With a Dirty Harry accent).

Inspiring table tennis quotes from:

USA Table Tennis Magazine Going All Digital

Well, they've finally done it. USATT has cancelled the print version of its magazine and is going all online with a PDF version. (Correction: I'm told it's actually Flash.) Here's the new Winter 2014 issue (really the Jan/Feb issue), which will also be printed as the last print edition. And here's the home page for USATT Magazine. (Addendum - when you go to the new issue, just below it is a listing for "Related publications." USATT Magazine is the second one listed, sandwiched between two magazines with nude cover pictures. Great.) 

It's good that they now have an online version. But have they really thought through this decision to cancel the print version? It's impossible to tell, since no explanation is given on the USATT web page or the magazine page. If you go to page 8 of the new issue, there's a short explanation from the editor, but it doesn't really give any reasons, just basically tells us it's going all digital without explanation. This is one of the biggest decisions in USATT history, and it's been made without explanation, and without advance notice to the membership so they could give input on the matter. (We are a public organization.)

Presumably they are doing this to save money. They might. But I'm guessing that if they do, they'll save a lot less than they think. They'll save money on printing and postage. But they'll lose money on advertising and membership. (Isn't increasing membership a primary purpose of why USATT needs more revenue? It defeats the purpose when they increase revenue in ways that decrease membership.)

Tip of the Week

Never Give a Server What He's Looking For.

Developing Good Technique

Table tennis clubs are full of players with poor technique. And there's nothing wrong with this, if the player doesn't care, or at least doesn't put a high priority on it. There are also lots of good players with poor techniques, though few of them get beyond good and become very good. That's subjective, of course; I can name a number of players who have reached 2200 and 2300 levels despite poor technique. The key is they developed a game around that poor technique, and didn't get good because of the bad technique, but in spite of it.

Here's comes the part a lot don't realize, and it's a three-parter.

1) You will not reach your potential unless you develop good technique. This doesn't mean everyone plays with exactly the same technique. There are some techniques where there's clearly a "best" way, and there are others where there are multiple options. Often it depends on the rest of the player's game. Some players have developed such unorthodox games that what is proper technique for others might not be proper technique for them. But that's a rarity. Almost always, to reach your potential, you need to develop good technique.

2) Anyone can develop good technique. I don't care how poor your current technique is, you can fix it, and have good technique. This doesn't mean you'll have great technique - that's almost impossible once you've developed bad habits. But you don't need perfect technique in this sport (except in most cases at the highest levels), and good technique will take you pretty far.

How to Teach a Beginning/Intermediate Class

Starting on Feb. 17, I'm teaching a new Beginning/Intermediate Table Tennis Class at MDTTC. It's designed for adult players from beginners to roughly 1500 in USATT ratings. The class is every Monday for ten weeks, from 6:30-8:00PM. If you are in the Gaithersburg, Maryland area and would like to participate, contact me. We have an even ten already signed up, so I'm hoping for a good-sized group. (There's a whole chapter on teaching classes in my book Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook.)

The purpose of the class is to give players a complete introduction to the sport of table tennis. That means covering every major aspect, including grip and stance, the strokes, footwork, equipment, and tactics. But there's another reason for such a class. When new players come to a club, they often are a bit lost. They don't know the sport and they don't know other members of the club - they have no peers. By having a class, we get all of them together, and they not only learn about the sport, they develop their own peer group. I've taught a few dozen of these classes, dating back to when we started MDTTC in 1992. Some of the classes had over 20 players.

Backhand Games and Random Drills

It seems that recently half my students are challenging me in backhand-to-backhand games. These are games where we put boxes on each side of the table to block off the forehand side of the table, and play a strictly backhand-to-backhand game. If a shot doesn't go to the backhand, or if a player hits a forehand, he loses the point. You'd think I'd dominate this type of game since I can hit a million backhands in a row, but not really. The players quickly learn to match my consistency, while throwing speed, quickness, placement, and variation at me. I've struggled to win games (and sometimes lost) to 12-year-olds with ratings about 700 points lower than mine, as well as to adult players.

What does this mean? It means that, when isolated, they are developing very good backhands. They are learning to do all of the things mentioned above - consistency, speed, quickness, placement, and variation. (Yes, even with only half a table you can move the ball around.) There are times where I'm just pounding the ball with my backhand, and can't get through their steadiness. There are other times where I'm just keeping the ball going, and struggling to find ways to win a point since they aren't missing either, and they are pressing me with all of the attributes mentioned here. (As I regularly remind them, if they find they are pressing because I'm not missing, remember it works both ways - keep coming at me with the same consistency, and I'm the one who'll be pressing because they aren't missing.)

Today's Blog…

…will be shorter than usual. Because of our after-school program, and because I'm rather busy on weekends, I've worked every day this entire year (other than Jan. 1 and two days when I had the flu). Due to icy conditions, local schools are closed today, so no afterschool program. I normally have three hours of coaching on Wednesday nights, but two are off today, so only one hour today. (Plus a dental appointment at 11AM.) So I'm basically taking the day off, though I'll likely use it to catch up on things, such as working on my upcoming book Table Tennis Tips.

Poly Ball

Not Going Against or With the Spin

When counterlooping, you'll notice how top players tend to counterloop with lots of sidespin. They rarely counterloop with straight topspin. To do so would mean contacting the ball directly on top of the ball, and going directly against the incoming topspin. The ball would then jump off the paddle, and it would be tricky keeping it on the table. Instead, they mostly contact the ball on the far side, which avoids taking on the incoming topspin directly while putting a sidespin that curves to the left (for a righty). Some do the opposite, and contact the ball on the near side, and the ball curves to the right, again avoiding taking on the incoming topspin directly. (This is a bit more difficult.)

Of course once they are into a counterlooping duel, the incoming counterloop usually has sidespin, and if you counterloop it back with sidespin (assuming both are contacting the ball on the far side), you are taking on the incoming sidespin directly. But that's not much of a problem because by doing so it becomes trickier controlling the sideways movement of the ball, just as taking on the topspin directly makes controlling the up-down movement of the ball more difficult. But you have a much wider margin for error with sideways movement; few players miss because they go too wide, while many miss by going off the end.