USA Nationals Entry Form

Here's the home page for the 2012 USA Nationals, with a link to the entry form. I'll be there mostly to coach, though I'll probably enter one event - Hardbat Doubles with Ty Hoff, which I'll try to win for the 14th time, including ten with Ty. (I'd like to play other events, but there are just too many conflicts with all the junior events I'm be coaching in.)

Neck Problems

As I noted in my blog on Aug. 9, I was in a car accident on Aug. 8, two weeks ago. The other driver was at fault (she pulled right in front of me as I was driving to the club), and their insurance will be paying to repair my car. I also said no one was hurt.

Not so fast.

About a week ago (I'm not sure exactly when) my neck started bothering me. At first it was more an irritation, and I kept massaging the neck muscles, trying to get them to loosen up. But it got worse and worse. By Monday, the first day of the last MDTTC camp of the summer, it was painful, and by Tuesday morning it was excruciatingly painful just to hold my head up - meaning it was excruciatingly painful ALL THE TIME. I went to see a doctor during lunch break on Tuesday, but had to leave before seeing him when things ran late and I had to get back to the camp. But I found one who saw me that night at 7PM. The x-rays were negative, and there's no apparent nerve damage, so it's probably muscle and tendon problems.

I'm now wearing a neck brace, along with various medications (pain relievers and muscle relaxants). When I go to the camp this morning, there'll be some stares because of the neck brace, but it should allow me to at least do multiball and complete the camp through this Friday. The odds are I'm going to have to cancel all coaching for at least a week after that, though I may be able to do multiball - we'll see.

I'm starting to miss the back problems I had last year.

MDTTC Camp, Week Eleven, Day Two

Yesterday I gave lectures on the backhand, on receive, and on ball placement. For ball placement, I talked about the three or four placements for nearly all shots: to the forehand corner, to the backhand corner, and the middle. What's the fourth placement? Against a ball that goes to your wide forehand or backhand, you have an angle outside the opponent's wide corner, so you can go down the line, to the middle, to the crosscourt corner, or crosscourt wide outside the corner. You should normally go for such extreme angles only if you use lots of topspin to pull the ball down, or against a short ball. I also talked about moving players in and out, and how to be deceptive with your placement by aiming one way, and at the last second rotating your shoulders to change directions. (Here's a Tip of the Week on Forehand Deception with Shoulder Rotation.)

The afternoon session had me with two tables (one with a robot) and eight kids, and was excruciatingly painful - see "Neck Problems" above. Most of the kids understood what I was going through and were on good behavior - not only was the pain obvious, but I told them that today was not a day to give me any flak. (But you'll note I said "Most" above. Maybe my wearing a neck brace today will get through to the one or two not in the "Most.")

A relatively new ritual is the daily five-minute trek to 7-11 after lunch. Yesterday 15 of us made the trip; on Monday we had 13. The 7-11 manager gives me a small mini Slurpee each time I bring in all these kids.

Table Tennis Music Video

On Saturday, Sept. 15, we'll start (and hopefully finish) the band Edie Sedgwick will be filming a table tennis music video at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. The video will star 11-year-old Derek Nie, who will play and defeat the band members in the video. I'll be along as a consultant, and will be well paid in pepperoni pizza. Here's an example of another music video they did.

Team USA in London

Here's a video (1:50) of USA Olympians Ariel Hsing, Lily Zhang, and Erica Wu doing interviews, exhibitions, and promotional work in London.

Top 50 Points

Here's a video (18:36) that shows the "Top 50 Table Tennis Points."

Justin Bieber Playing TT in Commercial

Here's a commercial (2:01) starring Justin Bieber for a medicated cleansing bar that shows him playing table tennis. He says, "After a concert or playing ball I use the bar to shower." He's playing table tennis as he says this, for about two seconds starting at second 21.

Table Tennis Rules

Here's a video (6:26) from PingSkills that explains the rules - with a panda. Really! I like it.

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MDTTC Camp, Week Eleven, Day One

It's the first day of the last week. This camp is full - well over 30 players. I gave lectures on the forehand, on doubles, and on serving. Sometimes I only coach in the mornings at our camps, but because of the numbers, I'll be there all day all five days.

In the first half of the morning session I did multiball with seven players. One was a "blast from the past" - sort of. Back when I was in North Carolina from 1979-81 (when I was 19 to 21 years old), I used to hit a lot with Walter Wintermute, a 1900+ lefty all-out attacker, who was two years younger than me. (He's now rated over 2000.) He was a really nice guy, and we even played doubles together a few times. Now his son, David, 14, already rated over 1800, is at our camp and was in my group. He looks almost exactly like his father 30+ years ago! They even have the same long hair style. According to David, however, his dad is on him to cut it. Walter, by the power invested in me as a table tennis coach, I hereby give David permission to keep his hair long at least until the age when you cut yours!!! (That should bring him at least into his 20's.)

I spent much of the second half working with two new juniors. One was a lefty penholder who wasn't sure whether to play his backhand conventional or reverse penhold. I recommended he learn the reverse version, and he seemed to do it pretty well. On the forehand, however, he had this nasty habit of lifting his elbow and wrist as he stroked, and so his racket would close as he hit the ball. We spent a lot of time trying to undo that habit. We're going to focus on that for a while.

The other new junior hit forehands with just his arm, and had an awkward low grip, with a big gap between his hand and the paddle, and his finger almost straight down the middle. We fixed the grip, got him to rotate his shoulders, and his forehand really came alive - he was smacking in shots by late afternoon. On the backhand, however, he tended to sort of slap at the ball, often hitting with backspin. We fixed that, but he's still having trouble generating any pace - most of his backhands are pretty soft. But the technique is now sound, and I'm confident his backhand will really come alive in the next few days. One thought is to have him hit some with pips-out sponge, which forces a player to stroke more. But we'll see how he does tomorrow.

The Legend of "B"

"B" is a player whose name I'm not going to give out, but we're having a lot of fun with it. He's a little kid who started in a group session. He's doing fine. However, a couple other kids who knew him but were in different group sessions asked about him. I told them how "B" was incredible, how his forehand was already as good as the coaches, and went on and on. And so the legend of "B" began. Now we take turns talking about The Legend of B as we take turns exaggerating his greatness. We're at the point where the best players in the world can sometimes see his shots, but usually can only hear them as they go by for winners.

Drill Your Skills with the Chinese National Team

Here are a couple of nice coaching videos on serving. They are taught by Chinese National Team Member Xu Ruifeng.

• Part 1 - Forehand Serve (7:42)
• Part 2 - Backhand Serve (6:36)

Washington Post Feature on MDTTC on USATT Home Page

Yep, we're famous now! (Presumably we'll still be on the USATT front page when you read this.) Make sure to check out both the video and article.

Levitating Table?

Here's the picture. The online translation (Spanish to English) of the caption says, "Bureau in period of experimentation. Is installed with a remote control, and it picks up on the wall in the same way. The technique to keep it in a permanent state of levitation and leveled to the ground 0.76 cts prosecutable parallel to a agency to the NASA that has been inspired by the utensils used for their huge ships."

Outdoor Ping-Pong

Umpires - don't you need a free hand?

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Tip of the Week

Covering the Middle.

Table Tennis Busy

Today starts the last week of our eleven weeks of camps at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. It's going to be a pretty strong camp, with I believe eleven players over 2050, seven players over 2250, and six over 2330.

It's going to be a very busy week for me as well. Besides coaching at the camp and some private and group coaching, I've got a junior player from out of town staying at my house, so I have to take care of him. There's a local cable TV show coming in to film us on Wednesday. A local music group is doing a table tennis music video, and tentatively will come out sometime this week or next weekend. Plus this blog and other writing work. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to get back to work on the page layouts of my Table Tennis Tactics book.

By the way, if anyone has any suggestions for a cover for the book, let me know! I'm still not sure what the cover picture should be. (The book is tentatively titled "Table Tennis Tactics: A Thinker's Guide.")

I've gone through approximately 15 bags of candy (Jolly Ranchers and Chocolate Kisses) during the summer camps in my now expected Friday morning 30-minute candy giveaways, where I put piles of candy on a table and feed multiball, and if you knock one off, you get it. (You can trade for a different one on the table if you choose.)

Meanwhile, I'm still actively writing science fiction and fantasy - see segment below. In fact, I'm about to start work on one for an upcoming Halloween story contest. Hmmm . . . maybe I can do the first Halloween table tennis story? (I wonder if any kid has ever dressed up as a ping-pong player for Halloween?)

An Endangered Ping-Pong Species

Back in April during our Spring Break Camp we were running out of training balls. At the time we had only used orange balls for all of our twenty years. However, Butterfly (a club sponsor) was temporarily out of orange training balls at the time, and so we had to make due with white ones. We discovered the white ones actually showed up better against the new red flooring, and decided to stick with them. Slowly, very slowly, the orange balls have been breaking - we go through about 100 balls each week, with 5-6 full-time coaches plus group sessions and open play, seven days a week. We're now down to about five. The deathwatch has begun to the final orange ball, after which they will join the trilobite and the passenger pigeon and be extinct at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. (Perhaps we should send the last few to a zoo so they can breed them and try to recreate a viable population?) Perhaps I'll post pictures of the final aging orange ball as it struggles to survive in a club of young, up-and-coming white balls, and of course the final funeral pictures as we pay our last respects.

Ariel and the North American Championships

Here's an article about Ariel Hsing and the upcoming North American Championships in Cary, NC, Sept. 1-2. Includes links to videos of defending champion Mo Zhang against Ariel and Lily Zhang.

Bjorn Borg vs. Jean-Michel Saive

Here's a video (1:25) of the superstar tennis player versus the superstar table tennis player playing ping-pong for a hospital charity.

The Onion on Table Tennis

The Onion has done a few table tennis parodies. I did a search of their site, and came up with the following.

• Dec. 20, 2000 - Ping-Pong Somehow Elicits Macho Posturing
• Feb. 13, 2007 - Ping-Pong Rules Adjusted For Girlfriend
• July 20, 2009 - Table Tennis Star Wang Hao Out 4 Weeks With Sprained Knuckle
• July 20, 2009 (Audio) - Ping-Pong Champion Credits Victory to Diet of Nutritious Fish By-Products

There were also these two excerpts from articles:

• Aug. 28, 2008 - Great Olympic Moments From The Lesser-Known Sports -
  "China wins gold medals in every table tennis event at the breathtaking $120 million Basement Stadium."
• Aug. 13, 2010 - Recent Highlights From Lesser-Known Sports
  "The 2010 Hong Kong Junior & Cadet Open international table-tennis tournament is delayed indefinitely, even with the officials also getting down on their hands and knees to look for the missing ping-pong ball."

And Jerry Goldman emailed me about two pop-up headlines:

• "Table Tennis Refs Will Rely on Replay to See What the Hell Happened."
• "Table Tennis Final Delayed as Storm Floods Olympic Basement."

Non-Table Tennis - Email from Publisher

I wrote two novels in the last three years, a SF political satire/drama ("Campaign 2100") and a humorous fantasy ("The Giant Face in the Sky"). (Both feature table tennis, especially the SF one.) I was actually made an offer by a small publisher for the latter, but they gave me the okay to spend some time sending it to the major publishers first. I'm toying with just going with the small publisher offer, however, and just publicizing the heck out of it. However, the breaking news is an email I just received from a somewhat larger publisher about Campaign 2100. Here is what she wrote - I'm crossing my fingers!

"I've been reading through the manuscript you sent me, and so far, I'm liking what I'm reading! I've not finished making a first pass through the novel, and unfortunately I can't estimate when I'll have word back to you. CAMPAIGN 2100 continues to hold my interest, and it's far and away the best science fiction manuscript I've received thus far. I remain hopeful as I make my way through the novel. Please keep me appraised if you receive an offer from another publisher or if the manuscript becomes unavailable for any reason."

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Weird Camp Happenings

Lots of strange things happen in regard to table tennis camps. Here's a sampling.

• Someone once emailed interest in our camps, and asked if they could stay at my house to save money. I reluctantly agreed (since I didn't know the person). They thanked me profusely, and then asked me to arrange their travel and every other aspect of the trip. I emailed back agreeing to let him stay at my house, but that they'd have to make their own travel arrangements. I didn't hear back from them.
• A player made all the arrangements to attend one of our camps, and only at the last minute emailed asking if we really were teaching table tennis. He thought he had signed up for a tennis camp.
• Over the years I've received dozens and dozens of emails from Nigeria and other countries trying to arrange for large numbers of players to attend our camps. All involve me sending out invitations, after which they'd send payment. Of course they only wanted the invitation so they could get into the country. We went along with this a few times in the 1990s, then were contacted by the State Department, who asked us to stop.
• Every few months we get an email from someone letting us know that a "top junior player" from some other country would like to attend our camps, and asking us how much we'd pay for the honor.
• One 1800 player caused great havoc in our camp. He refused to do the drills, instead insisting on randomly hitting the ball all over the table with a hardbat while aggressively lecturing others about the wrongness of their using sponge and other apparent shortcomings. After two days of this, a delegation of players approached me and said they'd no longer hit with this player. I was going to have to talk to the player the next morning, but he didn't show up. I later learned he'd gotten into his car and driven halfway across the country to another camp, where he caused equal havoc.
• During lunch at Lake Forrest Mall, one kid disappeared. After an hour we asked security to search for him. They searched everywhere, and couldn't find him. Finally, after several hours, we called his parents, who said "Oh, we didn't tell you? We picked him up at the mall."
• At the end of one camp we arranged for a group to go to Kings Dominion. While there one player disappeared. After a few hours of looking for him along with security, I finally called his parents to ask if he'd called home. The mom went into hysterics. We finally found him - he'd wandered off and had spent the day on his own in the water park area, ignoring all the very loud announcements calling his name.
• There are many more - perhaps in another blog. I have to go coach.

2006 vs. 2012

Yesterday I blogged about how much junior development has improved in the last six years, and compared the junior top 15 rankings from the Nov/Dec 2006 issue to the current one. Here's a chart that shows this even better, comparing the #1 and #15 then and now, showing just how dramatic the improvement has been since the advent of full-time training centers all over the country. It's amazing to me that, for example, the #15 junior in the country today would be #2 in 2006! The depth has exploded.

ITTF Coaching Seminar

Here's an ITTF article about the recent ITTF Coaching Seminar Richard McAfee ran in Austin, TX, the ninth one to be run in the U.S. (I ran one of them.)

Waldner - Through the Years

Here's a video (6:21) that shows Jan-Ove Waldner through the years, starting when he's a kid, including interviews and showing his development. (Doesn't actually start until 18 seconds in.)

Owen Wilson's Late-Night Ping-Pong

Here's the article from People Magazine.

Bryan Brothers to Play Table Tennis for Charity

Here's a very short article about the Bryan Brothers (world #1 tennis doubles team) playing in a charity ping-pong tournament at Spin NY on Aug. 23 to benefit FDNY.

Hardbat From the Past

Here are three clips I saw recently posted showing hardbat from the past.

• 1933: Victor Barna vs. R. D. Jones (2:27)
• 1940:Stanley Proffitt vs. Norman Evans (1:53)
• 1947:Ferenc Sido vs. Lou Pagliaro (10:05)

The Movie Ping Pong

You can now watch the movie online - but it'll cost you 9.99 pounds (about $15.68). The documentary features "8 players with 703 years between them compete in the World over 80s Table Tennis Championships in Inner Mongolia." More info, and a preview, are at the link.

A Handy Table Tennis Racket

Let me re-emphasize - this is a Handy Table Tennis Racket!

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Training Centers and Their Impact

Yesterday, in the Washington Post article on MDTTC (see yesterday's blog), it said, "Hodges campaigned for the U.S. Table Tennis Association to copy his blueprint, which he believed was the way to expand the sport." I'm going to expand on that.

In December, 2006, I spent a huge amount of time putting together a proposal to USATT to start recruiting and training coaches to set up junior programs and training centers. At the Board meeting at the Nationals I made the proposal. The response? Two board members ridiculed the idea of "full-time training centers," saying there weren't enough players to support such a thing, and so it wouldn't really affect the development of players in this country. The others in the room were mostly quiet.

The mind-boggling ignorance of such statements from people with no experience in such full-time training centers was, well, mind-boggling. The whole point of the proposal was that you'd recruit the players (especially juniors in junior programs), and simply do what MDTTC and several other training centers had already done successfully.

After I was done with my proposal, there was polite applause from the Board, it was checked off the agenda, and they moved on to the next item. I went through a very similar experience at the 2009 Strategic Meeting. The leaders of our sport, both then and now, just don't get this aspect of our sport (or about developing leagues, anther topic I've blogged about in the past), and so the development of our sport is really left up to those of us with the entrepreneurial spirit to do it on our own. This usually means having to reinvent the wheel over and over since there is no organization to oversee the recruitment and training of such coaches and promoters.

At the time of my presentation there were about ten training centers in the country, as I noted in the proposal. Now there are over fifty. I'm looking over the listing of top junior players for the various age groups from the Nov/Dec 2006 USATT Magazine, and comparing it to the most recent ones, July/August 2012. Each listing shows the top 15. (There are some foreign players listed in both listings, but they do not greatly affect the overall picture. I did a similar comparison in my blog about a year ago, but the comparisons are so stunning they deserve repetition.) Especially look at the added depth by comparing the #15 then and now! Nearly all of the addition players in the rankings come from full-time training centers, where large groups of junior players train together with full-time professional coaches. And the result? (And note that the finalists in Men's and Women's Singles at the last Nationals - Peter Li and Han Xiao, and Ariel Hsing and Lily Zhang - all came from full-time training centers.)

Under 18 Boys: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 2418, which would have been #13 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2625. The #15 player in 2006 was 2159; the #15 now is 2387.

Under 16 Boys: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 2418, which would have been #6 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2522. The #15 player in 2006 was 2087; the #15 now is 2310.

Under 14 Boys: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 2323, which would have been #6 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2420. The #15 player in 2006 was 1870; the #15 now is 2153.

Under 12 Boys: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 2044, which would have been #10 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2235. The #15 player in 2006 was 1440; the #15 now is 1916.

Under 10 Boys: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 2044, which would have been #1 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2008. The #15 player in 2006 was 620; the #15 now is 1170. (Addendum: the #2 player in 2006 was only 1495, while the current #2 is 1920.)

Under 18 Girls: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 2330, which would have been #4 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2548. The #15 player in 2006 was 1811; the #15 now is 2112.

Under 16 Girls: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 2113, which would have been #7 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2329. The #15 player in 2006 was 1620; the #15 now is 2002.

Under 14 Girls: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 2029, which would have been #7 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2261. The #15 player in 2006 was 1432; the #15 now is 1786.

Under 12 Girls: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 2029, which would have been #3 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2105. The #15 player in 2006 was 553; the #15 now is 1213.

Under 10 Girls: In 2006, the #1 player was rated 894, which would have been #12 in the current listing. The current #1 is 2105. The #15 player in 2006 was 80; the #15 now is 372.

The Difference Between Ignorance and a Moron

See this article in Time. "The table tennis players don’t have to run, jump, or be particularly strong. They don’t have to move around all that much. They just don’t pass the Olympics smell test." A person who doesn't know about something is ignorant, and there's nothing wrong with that; everyone is ignorant of most things. A person who is ignorant of something but believes he knows all about it is a moron. You, Sean Gregory, are a moron. 

Futuristic Table Tennis

Yesterday I linked to the video showing players playing on a table that seemed shark infested. The sharks were actually projections from a projector. Here's another video showing this (2:09). About 48 seconds in they change to projecting the path of the ball onto the table. Somehow they have equipment that detects the path of the ball and projects it onto the table a split second after the ball has traveled that path.

China Brings Its Past to Ping-Pong’s Birthplace

Here's an article in the New York Times about Table Tennis, China, England, Ping-Pong Diplomacy, and some history.

Iran Trailblazer

Here's an article about Neda Shahsavari, the first Iranian woman to compete in the Olympics.

Highlights from the Worlds

Here's a highlights video (10:57) of the best points from the 2012 World Championships.

Three Limericks

There once was a player whose smash,
Was so good that he always talked trash,
"I'm the greatest!" he cried,
And his sponsors replied,
By sending him boatloads of cash.

There once was a player who cheated,
And worse still the guy was conceited,
His bearing was regal,
But his serves were illegal,
And so he was never defeated.

There once was a player whose serve,
Had so much sidespin it would curve,
To the left and the right,
And then out of sight,
Leaving us with no balls in reserve.

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Try a New Style

Why not experiment with a new style? Add some variety to your game? You could do something really crazy, like a shakehander playing penhold or Seemiller style, or try out some weird rubber. But why not try out a style you could actually use in your game? You'll have fun as well as adding a new dimension (i.e. tactical tool) to your game.

I suggest chopping. It's a nice weapon to have both as a variation and when you are out of position, especially on the backhand. Some players really have trouble with sudden chops, and it's a crime not to have this skill against these players. Plus, next time you are out of position against a ball wide to your backhand, just chop it back. Just as importantly, you'll quickly see the game from a chopper's point of view, and become a lot stronger playing choppers as a result. (Your biggest shock will probably be how weak a chopper can be on receive - yet many attackers assume choppers can just chop any serve back, and so don't take advantage of this.)

Though most choppers use long pips on the backhand, that's mostly to chop back loops. If you are only going to chop as an occasional variation or when you are out of position, any surface will do, including super charged-up inverted. That's what I have on my backhand, and I regularly throw in chops.

Table Tennis Foot Dream

Last night I had one of those weird table tennis dreams. (Warning - this is sort of gory.) I was battling with "the enemy" (not sure who my opponent was, it was never clear) at ping-pong on a table in a street. Bullets and bombs were exploding everywhere as soldiers ran about shooting at each other. And then my left foot got shot off! I grabbed it from the ground and tried jamming it back on, and it sort of stuck, but kept falling off as we played. I finally just held the foot in my non-playing hand while hopping about, still playing, as an ambulance arrived. I handed them the foot and asked them to sew it back on, but only after I finished the match. I woke up about then, and had to check my foot to make sure it was still there. (Obligatory bad joke: I had not been defeeted.)

Maryland Table Tennis Center in Washington Post

It's on the front page of the sports section this morning. Here's the article, and here's the video (3:26). Featured are Nathan Hsu, Derek Nie, Amy Lu, and I'm quoted quite a bit. A few corrections: the article has me founding MDTTC, when Cheng Yinghua, Jack Huang, and I did it together. It also has me saying there are 11 full-time centers in the country, but there are now about 50. (I may have said there are about 10 that could be considered really strong. And I never was able to get USATT interested in promoting these training centers, alas.) Also, I think the $100,000 investment mentioned was by several owners, not just one.

Pictures from the Southern Open and Junior Olympics

Here are some pictures taken at these two tournaments, mostly featuring MDTTC players.

Olympian Diana Gee to Run Clinic in Cary

If you are around Cary, NC on Sept. 1, you might want to join Olympian Diana Gee ('88 and '92) for a pair of one-hour clinics. Here's the info page.

Can Ping-Pong in the Office Increase Productivity?

Yes, according to this article in the Enviable Workplace. "With a game like ping pong you can get up, play for 20 mins, break a lil sweat, get your brain racing and come back to work refreshed." Here's another segment:

Dr. Daniel Amen, a renowned member of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, specifically points out that table tennis:

• Increases concentration and alertness
• Stimulates brain function
• Develops tactical thinking skills
• Develops hand / eye coordination
• Provides aerobic exercise
• Provides social and recreational interaction

Chinese Blitz at the Olympic Games

Here's a video from PingSkills (7:01) where they discuss Chinese dominance at the Olympics.

The Duchess of Cambridge Playing Table Tennis

Yes, that's "Smashing Kate" rallying with kids at a sports project. She's pretty good - can keep the ball in play.

Ping-Pong with Sharks

At first you only see the sharks swimming around. It's not until the camera pulls back in this video (1:18) that you realize that they are playing ping-pong on this shark infested table!

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The Flat, Regular, and Topspinny Backhand

In my Tip of the Week yesterday I wrote about the Racket Tip Angle on the Backhand. I also referred to the various types of backhands, such as flatter ones and "topspinny" backhands. What exactly are these? Here are three ways of hitting a backhand drive; all are done mostly on the rise or top of the bounce. (Note that the three terms below are my invention, though most coaches would recognize from the meaning what they are.)

• The Flat Backhand. This is probably the easiest way to hit a backhand, where you hit the ball with little topspin. A good flat backhand isn't completely flat; it almost always has a little topspin, but the key is that it has very little. This makes it easy to learn, since you simply start with the racket behind where contact will be and drive forward. This is how I hit my backhand, and I consider it a weakness in my game. The lack of topspin means precision and timing are key, and if you are 1% off, you are completely off. At the higher levels, players with flat backhands are often turned into blockers. However, backhand kills are often done flat as they maximize the speed, and players known for their backhand kills often have flat backhands. But often they either become hit or miss types, unable to rally consistently, or they become very consistent, but mostly just keep the ball in play. (The latter is me, alas). It's a dying style at the higher levels as backhand loops dominate (see Topspinny Backhand below), but there are still many who play aggressive flat backhands quite successfully.
• The Regular Backhand. The difference here is that you start with the racket slightly below where the contact point will be. As the ball rises after bouncing on your side of the table, your racket rises to meet it. Contact is a bit more upward, which creates more topspin and, once mastered, more control. This is how I generally teach the backhand to new players. As they develop, they often hit the ball harder and harder (and sometimes flatter), or they start increasing the topspin, and develop topspinny backhands. Others simply stick with regular backhands, where they can be both steady and aggressive.
• The Topspinny Backhand. This is the same as a Regular Backhand, except that you bring your wrist down and back, and snap the wrist through the ball to increase the topspin. It is essentially a mini-backhand loop off the bounce. This is what most top players do these days. Often there's no clear distinction between a "topspinny" backhand and a backhand loop.

However you play your backhand, make sure to do something with it. This means speed, quickness, spin, placement (both direction and depth), consistency, or some variation of these elements. Put pressure on your opponent or they will put pressure on you. Focus on developing to a high level at least one of these elements so that you'll have something that you know you can do that's better than your opponent. (Note that most of this applies to the forehand as well, except players tend to do that anyway; it's the backhand that's often underdeveloped.)

ITTF Coaching Seminar

Here's an ITTF writeup of the recent ITTF Coaching Seminar run by Sydney Christophe at the Westchester Table Tennis Center in New York.

Sidespin Push Return

Here's a video from PingSkills (1:33) about pushing short with sidespin.

Table Tennis Perfection

Here's a highlights video (14:40) of table tennis shots.

A VW Bug Covered with Ping-Pong Balls

It's colorful and with a happy face!

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Tip of the Week

Racket Tip Angle on the Backhand.

Table Tennis Records

11-year-old Sameer Shaikh, while on break in our camp on Friday, bounced a ball on his paddle 1210 times in a row. Is it a world record? Probably not, but I'll let someone else google it. But it does bring up the question of table tennis records. Unfortunately, I haven't kept track of who did what and when. For example, in our camps I know the record for completely knocking over a pyramid of 10 and 15 cups is 2 and 3 shots, respectively, but I don't remember who did it. These may sound silly, but they are actually great practice. I remember when Sameer couldn't bounce more than a few in a row; now he has good racket control. (When you start a little kid on table tennis, start him with ball bouncing, and see how many he can do. This is how he begins developing the hand-eye coordination to actually rally.) Hitting pyramids of cups may sound frivolous, but it challenges them to be accurate, besides being a fun way to end a three-hour session in a training camp. 

I have a few personal records which may or may not be "records": 2755 backhands in a row (at a Seemiller camp in 1978 when I was 18); 14 consecutive bounces up and down off the edge of my racket; 14 consecutive "come back" serves (i.e. high backspin serves that bounce directly back over the net after hitting the opponent's side of the table); and blowing the ball back 33 consecutive times in a rally. So what are your records?

Busyness

My todo list is bizarrely long. Every five minutes I seem to get another email asking questions (often very involved ones), requesting letters of recommendation for green cards or college (I have two to write today), news interviews or questions, stuff about my blog, MDTTC and USATT stuff, not to mention all the correspondence regarding my outside science fiction writing career and complications with insurance after my car accident last week. Plus all the usual coaching in camps and private sessions. It's getting way out of hand. I was up late last night getting things done, and the result was I woke up with a headache this morning. That's why the blog and weekly tip went up late today.

2016 Paralympic Hopeful Timmy La

Here's an article and video (1:55) from Channel 9 News/WUSA, featuring 2016 Paralympic hopeful Timmy La, who trains at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. (I'm interviewed about him throughout the article and video.)

Table Tennis in The Daily Beast

Here are two "dueling" articles in The Daily Beast about the state of modern table tennis in the USA. Most of you know probably know of the flamboyant Marty Reisman, champion player and champion of hardbat (and sandpaper) table tennis. (Here's his U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame Profile.) Matt Simon is a former Junior Olympic star who came to a number of my table tennis camps back in the 1990s, when the Maryland Table Tennis Center was known as the National Table Tennis Center in Maryland (as it is referred to in the article).

• Ping-Pong's American Style: The Most Unifying Social Sport, by Marty Reisman, Aug. 4, 2012
• Ping-Pong: America's Most Overlooked Sport?, by Matt Simon, Aug. 12, 2012

Coming Soon: Spin LA

There's already a Spin NY, Spin Milwaukee, and Spin Toronto, all courtesy of actress and table tennis entrepreneur Susan Sarandon. Now comes Spin LA, which opens this fall. Here's an article about it in The Huffington Post.

Rhode Island Table Tennis

Here's an article and video (2:44) in "The Rhode Show" about Rhode Island table tennis, which features their club, top player Grant Li, and President Chuck Cavicchio.

Crazy Kids Playing Table Tennis

Here's a video (5:45) of some Japanese show featuring the apparent trash-talking hosts taking on two girls about 4 or 5 years old. The kids are pretty good! If you know Japanese, feel free to post what they are saying!

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MDTTC Camp, Week Nine, Day Four

Yesterday's focus was forehand loop and pushing. That was supposed to be the focus on Wednesday, but because of my car accident (see yesterday's blog), it was postponed a day. Friday's focus is usually pushing and "Player's Choice," and while we'll give that option, today's focus will be Backhand Attack, which is usually the focus on Thursday. I gave my lecture on pushing yesterday, which I normally give on Friday. Yes, these traffic accidents can throw an entire camp schedule off!

I think the loop is the shot that coaches are most picky about getting right. Most players can get away with, say, minor technical problems with the forehand smash because, by the intermediate level, most players are mostly looping on the forehand side, and when they smash, it's mostly against easy balls where you don't need technical perfection. The same is true of many other techniques. But the loop needs to be done really well or it can become the limiting factor in your game. There are two kids I'm working with right now who are probably a bit exasperated on how much I'm harping on some minor technical changes in their forehand loops, but they also understand the importance of getting it just right.

Teaching the backhand push to beginners is relatively easy since it comes naturally to most. Teaching the forehand push is trickier. Beginners almost always want to take the ball from way off to the side (i.e. way to the right for a righty) when you actually should be facing the ball when you forehand push. It's also trickier to teach because you really want players to push only against a short ball, since deeper ones should be looped, but to learn the forehand push beginners have to push long to each other. (This is also true on the backhand, but you can get away with pushing more on the backhand side since at least you have an angle into the opponent's backhand if you push wide, and most opponents are weaker looping on the backhand side.) Here's a good tutorial with pictures and video of the forehand push, and here are three articles I've written on pushing.

• Push with Purpose and Placement
• Pushing: Five out of Six Doesn't Cut It
• Stopping the Third-Ball Loop Versus Push Attack

Today is also candy day. That means that at 12:30 (half hour before lunch break), I bring out several bags of candy (Jolly Ranchers and Hershey Kisses), pile them all over the table, and the players line up taking turns trying to knock them off the table (two shots each, then go to the end of the line and wait for next turn). Anything they knock off the table they win. It's the single most popular thing we do; heck, it's the single most popular thing done anywhere in the universe, based on the reaction of the kids in the camp.

It's also going to be an exhausting day. Last night I discovered some moron had trashed me in an online video. It was a straight personal attack, calling me names I won't repeat here (is this kindergarten?), making up stuff about me, and done in front of an audience for laughs. I was pretty irritated, and couldn't get to sleep until well after 3AM, giving me less than four hours of sleep. It even "quoted" a friend of mine trashing me, though like much of the other stuff he said he probably made that up.

The good news is that we have a smaller than usual number signed up for next week (week ten out of eleven weeks of consecutive camps), so I may get some of next week off to rest, work on my Table Tennis Tactics book (see below), visit the zoo, and perhaps write a new SF story that'll no doubt feature morons who go after others in online videos. (On an interesting side note, one of the top junior players in the U.S. has begun writing SF, and I'm helping him with his stories.) 

Car Crash

Yesterday in my blog I wrote about the car accident I was in Wednesday morning. Here are two pictures of my poor car, which is now in intensive care at the auto body shop. To survive it's going to need a massive infusion of life-giving cash. Hopefully the insurance company is of the right cash type.

1. Picture One
2. Picture Two

Status of Table Tennis Tactics Book

My own upcoming book, Table Tennis Tactics: A Thinker's Guide, has been done for a couple of months, but due to the summer camp schedule at the Maryland Table Tennis Center (i.e. complete exhaustion each day) I haven't been able to work on the page layouts. I decided to self-publish it rather than spend a long time going through publishers, who'll want to change it for the mass audience, rather than keep it as it is, written for all levels, including advanced players. Plus, of course, I'll get a much higher percentage of the profits, since I'm doing all the work.

How to Win at Table Tennis

Australian player and about.com table tennis moderator Greg Letts has come out with a new ebook, "How to Win at Table Tennis" - and it's FREE!!! (It's 145 pages, 16MB in PDF format.) Greg, sometime soon I'll explain the basics of capitalism to you. :)

Chinese Unbeatable in Table Tennis?

Here are two Associated Press article that were published in the Washington Post, with a self-explanatory titles.

• China delivers sweep of all 4 gold medals in table tennis at London Olympics
• China unbeatable in table tennis and some _ including Chinese _ worried about domination."

Olympic Photos

Here are some nice photoshopped table tennis images (19 total) from the Olympics.

A Man Eating a Ping-Pong Ball

I may have linked to this once before, but here is a video of a man eating a ping-pong ball (0.31), in honor of the moron who trashed me in an online video (see above), who symbolically here is eating his words.

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Car Accident

It happened yesterday morning at 9:35 AM, while I was driving to the club to coach in our training camp. I was just driving along, minding my own business, and about to go through an intersection (Middlebrook Rd. and Century Blvd.) when a Metro Access mini-bus suddenly pulled right in front of me from the left. I swerved to the left, trying to go behind it, and would have made it except the driver, compounding her error in pulling into my lane, panicked and rather then rushing to get out of my way, put on the breaks, stopping right in the middle of the road and blocking two lanes. I had nowhere to go and so plowed right into it, near the back on the side.

I had the right of way, with a green light. The bus driver had been coming from the other direction and was making a u-turn. There was some construction going on in the road on her side, and she claimed a worker had waved her through.

No one was hurt (the bus had I believe three passengers), but the front of my car was smashed in. The bus had little damage, comparatively, other than a surprisingly small dent. (The advantage of having a higher mass.) Though it looked like something from The Living Dead, my car seemed to drive okay, and I was able to pull into an Exxon station next to us, where we exchanged contact and insurance info. Then I drove to a local auto body place. From there I spent about an hour on the phone with my insurance company (Geico), which will deal with getting the Metro insurance company to pay for the damages to my car.

Someone from the auto body place gave me a ride to the club, and I showed up at 11:20AM. (Camp started at 10AM. I'd called right after the crash to let the other coaches know I'd be late.) The rest of the camp went pretty much normal, other than Channel 9 News filming us (see below), and the camp ended at 1PM. I stayed late to do one private coaching session, and then went home to deal with the paperwork involving the car crash. Around 4PM I got a rental car (insurance will pay), and at 6PM I was back at the club coaching.

MDTTC Training Camp Week Nine Day Three

Yesterday's highlight was Channel 9 News/WUSA coming in to do a feature story on Timmy La, a local who is training for the 2016 Paralympics in Standing Disabled. They took lots of pictures, and Timmy and I were interviewed. Afterwards, the reporter got a kick out of watching (and videoing) one of the games at the end, where I put a giant rubber frog on a table, divided the beginners into two teams, and they took turns trying to hit it, with the first to hit it 20 times winning.

One of the kids I was working with made a big breakthrough on the forehand loop. After struggling with technique for quite some time - always rushing, off balance, flat contact, etc. - things suddenly came together. The key seemed to be a focus on "rocking" into the shot, which took out some of the more spastic elements of his stroke which led to the problems. We did a bunch of extra multiball on this to make sure it was ingrained. We'll work on it more tomorrow.

Olympic Coverage

As noted in previous blogs, you can get full Olympic Table Tennis coverage at the ITTF page.

China Falling Out of Love for Table Tennis?

Here's an article in The Atlantic on whether China is losing interest in their "National Sport."

Table Tennis in the Times

While it has a few inaccuracies (Ariel Tsing?) and hints that table tennis isn't much of a physical sport, here's an otherwise interesting article on table tennis from the Washington Times, "A sport for nerds maybe, but Ping-Pong makes Olympians of us all."

Journalists Take Up Olympic Sports

NBC15 assigned 15 of its reporters to take up an Olympic sport and do coverage of it. (Guess that's why they are NBC 15.) See the link to the table tennis video. 

Grubba-Saive Exhibition

Here's a hilarious and spectacular exhibition (7:36) by Andrzej Grubba and Jean-Michel Saive. You know it's going to be good when 18 seconds in Saive's sitting in a chair and lobbing.

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