A Tip of the Week will go up every Monday by noon.

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Published:

04/13/2015 - 14:13

Author: Larry Hodges

If you watch the top players you'll notice that most have only one or two basic serving motions that they use over and over. The majority just do forehand pendulum and reverse pendulum serves. This allows them to do every possible type of spin, including sidespin both ways. Most have a few "trick" serves they'll pull out sometimes, but the large majority of their serves are almost relentlessly the same few motions, though the spins vary quite a bit.

But they are world-class players playing other world-class players, who are not particularly vulnerable to trick serves or varying service motions. That's not true of the large majority of players. Against them, you should also have only one or two basic serving motions that you use most of the time. But you will have a huge advantage if you can regularly pull out other serving motions, as long as you can do them effectively.

After a game or so, most players adjust to an opponent's serving motion. But what if you are able to pull out other ones, and keep them guessing? For example, after a few forehand pendulum (or regular or reverse), throw in a backhand serve, or tomahawk serve, or any of a zillion other possibilities. They key is not just throw out these serves as just "trick" serves, but actually learn to do them well. Otherwise they are one-serve wonders, which have value if used perhaps one time, but not much beyond that. Instead, develop these other serves so you can pull them perhaps out a few times each game, and perhaps get a few "easy" points.

It takes a lot of practice to develop multiple serving motions, and just as much time getting comfortable using them in games (where you not only can do the serves, but get used to the various returns). It's a lot of work for a seemingly small return. But is it really a small return? Players spend years improving parts of their games only marginally. Perfect a new serving motion, and you may find opponents struggling against your serves later and later into games, including those all-important points near the end of a close game. 

Published:

04/07/2015 - 01:20

Author: Larry Hodges

It's always been strange to me how a problem faced by so many players is so rarely dealt with. And that is dealing with distractions. Over the years, how many matches have you lost because something distracted you and you lost your focus? What did you do to solve the problem?

Most likely you just tried to keep your focus in practice matches. That's like developing your loop only by looping in practice matches. It's part of the solution, but you'll develop it a lot faster by doing drills that allow you to focus on that one aspect of your game. Similarly, if you want to work on your focus, find drills that allow you to focus on that one aspect.

I'm going to give one example of how to work on this. When Tiger Woods was developing and practicing his strokes as an up-and-coming junior, his dad would sometimes jingle keys or do other distractions. Tiger learned to focus completely on what he was doing, and the result was nothing could cause him to lose his focus.

You can do the same. It may seem silly, but why not sometimes practice or play practice matches where someone does exactly that - jingles keys, plays distracting music or news, or just talks to you. Your job isn't to just ignore him; that's not the point. Your job is to tune him out so you don't really notice him, so that your entire focus is on what you are doing, like an absent-minded professor who doesn't notice his house is on fire. You need to be so focused and inside yourself that you truly don't pay attention to outside distractions. When you can do that, you'll never have a problem with distractions again. 

Published:

03/30/2015 - 14:27

Author: Larry Hodges

If you think about it, this is somewhat obvious - and yet most don't really think about it when fixing a technique, leading to great difficulties in making these changes. They'll try to fix one part of the technique, but unless they fix both parts at the same time, the technique won't work properly.

Imagine a player with perfect technique. Now imagine changing something so his technique is no longer perfect. He'll likely have to compensate somewhere else in his technique for this change or his shots will no longer hit the table. Similarly, a player with one poor part of his technique will almost always have at least one other poor part to compensate.

For example, let's suppose a player's backswing is too short on a loop. To compensate, the player will likely swing more violently to gain the racket speed, leading to a poorly-controlled jerky stroke. To fix this he has to both extend the backswing while slowing down the acceleration to a smoothly controlled swing.  

Or suppose a player hits or loops forehands with his right foot (for righties) too far back. To compensate he'll likely have less waist rotation (since otherwise he'll literally be facing backwards during the backswing, leading to an awkward and less-powerful stroke. To fix the problem he has to both bring the right foot a bit more forward while increasing the waist rotation.

Or suppose the opposite, that the player hits or loops forehand with his right foot slightly forward (i.e. a backhand position) or even with the left foot (for a player who doesn't have a supple waist and/or spend many hours each week training like top players who correctly do this). The player will likely find it difficult to rotate the body properly in the time needed in a rally, and so will tend to stroke with only the upper body and arm, again leading to an awkward and less-powerful stroke. To fix the problem he has to both adjust the foot position and increase the body rotation. (Note how both improper foot positions lead to difficulties with using the lower body and proper body rotation.)

The same is true of a player who plays with his two feet parallel to each other, which makes it harder to rotate the lower body, and so leads again to an awkward and less-powerful stroke. Again, both the foot position and the body rotation need to be adjusted. Telling him to do one without the other won't help.

Or imagine a player who stands too far off the table when forehand looping against backspin, a common problem. He'll have to reach forward too much in his swing, and so to keep his balance will have to pull back with his left side, and so fall backwards slightly, leading to a loss of power and balance. Telling the player not to fall backward won't help unless you also tell him to stand closer to the table. His contact point with the ball may be the same, but it won't be so far in front of him.

Another common problem is the player who lifts his elbow during his forehand drive, leading to the racket angle changing from too open to closed during the stroke, making it hard to control what the angle is right at contact. If you tell him to stop lifting the elbow without also focusing on starting the forward swing with the racket in the proper angle he'll have great difficulties.

Sometimes there are more than two roots to the problem. If a player stands up too straight, this forces all sorts of adjustments to compensate. When the player tries to stay lower with a wider stance and knees more bent (as he should), he'll have to change a number of aspects (for the better) to his stroking technique. But if he doesn't make these changes, his new stance and stroking techniques will be awkward.

There are many more examples like this. What technique problems do you have in your game, and is the root of the problem singular or plural?

Published:

03/23/2015 - 15:39

Author: Larry Hodges

One of the toughest decisions a player has to make when serving under pressure - or at any other time - is whether to go "macho" or "tricky." Here's a Tip of the Week on the topic, Trick Serves and Third-Ball Serves, with third-ball serves the same as what I'm calling macho serves here.

Going macho means you serve mostly to set up a third-ball attack, knowing that you will have to follow it up with a strong attack. Most often these serves will give the server a return he server can attack, but the receivers generally don't miss these serves outright, and the server does have to make a good shot or sequence of shots to win the point.

Going tricky means pulling out a serve where you are trying to win the point outright with the serve, either by the receiver missing the serve or giving an easy pop-up. The weakness of these serves is that if the receiver reads them well, they are often easier to attack then third-ball serves. They tend to be all or nothing serves, where either the receiver misses, or the receiver attacks the serve. (Of course, if the opponent plays passively, then things are different - challenge them over and over with trick serves, since there's little danger of them attacking them.)

So which should you choose? First off, you should have complete confidence that you can win by going "macho," knowing that you can follow up your serve. At the world-class level, theses serves dominate. At the same time, you want to play the percentages - that's all tactics is, playing the percentages, and so that's all you should be thinking about here. You can't put an exact percentage on it, but you should be asking yourself, "Do I have a serve he keeps missing?"

Sometimes you might even have a serve you haven't used yet, and pull it out at the end - but I don't recommend that. If it's such a good serve that it should win you a point, use it earlier, both to win the point and to verify it'll work. If it does, then hold back on it for a time until the opponent isn't ready, then pull it out again. Why pull out a tricky serve at deuce when you could pull it out early in the game and perhaps again in the middle (and perhaps not go to deuce), and again late in the game if needed?

Some players prefer to go to simple "macho" third-ball serves under pressure because they are more likely to give predictable returns, which simplifies things. And most of your serves should be of this type, with the trick serves thrown in for a few free points.

So it's all about the percentages. With experience, you'll get a feel for which type of serve to pull in those pressure-packed moments. 

Published:

03/16/2015 - 14:53

Author: Larry Hodges

One of the most basic concepts in sports is that you must practice what you want to do in a match. The corollary to this is that what you do in practice is what you'll tend to do in a match. And yet, when it comes to ball placement, these are two of the most forgotten concepts in table tennis.

It's a basic tactical principle that most of your shots should go either to a wide angle - often outside the corners, to force your opponent to move and cover more ground - or at the opponent's middle, which is usually his playing elbow, the midpoint between his forehand and backhand, where he has to make a quick decision on whether to play a forehand or backhand, and then move into position. (There are also short balls, but that's a separate issue.) And so it's somewhat obvious that you'd want to practice putting balls to wide angles and to the middle, right? And yet, watch most practice drills, and you'll see that in the overwhelming majority of drills, players play to the corners, but no wider, and almost never to the middle. And so they are 1) not practicing what they want to do in a match, and 2) since what they do in practice is what they'll tend to do in a match, guess what they'll tend to do in a match?

So perhaps add two types of drills to your practice regimen. First, instead of drills where (for example) one player loops and other blocks, and it's all corner-to-corner, do this same drill, except both players go as wide as they comfortably can. The looper should try looping the ball outside the corner, often with hooking sidespin to go even wider. The blocker should take the ball quick off the bounce, which gives him the widest angle into the looper's forehand, and so he should block the ball as wide as possible. This doesn't mean going for risky extremes; it means going as wide as you comfortably can go. If you go too wide, you get less and less table, and will lose consistency.

You can do many similar drills. For example, when going backhand to backhand in a drill, why not focus on hitting balls a little bit outside the corners? There is an obvious advantage to going right at the corners, since it gives you more table and so it's safer, so you should find the right balance of when to go to the corner, and when to go for more angle.

Second, do drills where you go to the middle over and over. The most basic way is one player attacks the other's middle, while the other blocks from the middle, either forehand or backhand. The blocker can do this drill either by blocking with just forehand or just backhand over and over, or he can move back into a neutral position after each shot, and then react to the next shot with forehand or backhand. The result of such a drill? The attacker gets in the habit of attacking the middle, and so is able to do so in matches. The blocker practices something he will often see in matches - attacks to his middle - but rarely practices against, and so is rarely prepared for. And so both players improve their middle play.

So try out these drills, or come up with your own that allow you to practice placing the ball at wide angles and to the middle, perhaps by matching patterns you see in matches. And then do in matches what you do in practice!