New Back Problem

I live life by several rules. And one of the main ones is never, Ever, EVER carry heavy objects with my playing arm. On Tuesday I broke that rule and paid for it. I went grocery shopping. Normally I'm careful not to carry anything heavy with my (right) playing arm. I own a townhouse and live on the third floor, and rent out the first two floors. When I was about to carry the groceries out of my car and up the stairs to the third floor, I picked up all of the bags in my left arm. But I also had a case of Deer Park water. They normally come with 24 bottles, but this one was some sort of special, with 28, each of them 16.9 ounces. That's about 30 pounds. No problem, I picked them up with my right arm. It wasn't until I was nearly at the third floor that I began to feel the strain behind and to the left of my right shoulder. I made it to the top, no problem. None whatsoever.

Yesterday I only had two sessions. The first was with a beginning-intermediate player, age 11, rated about 800. He'd just played a tournament and had had trouble blocking. So near the end of the one-hour session I did a multiball drill where I stood near the end-line of my table with a box of balls, and tossed balls up one by one and looped them at him so he could practice blocking. At first I didn't notice the strain, but after a few minutes of this the pain in my back began again. I'd hurt it the day before, but now I'd aggravated it pretty badly.

How Can You Practice By Yourself?

"Seeknshare" asked me this question on the forum, "How can one practice alone (all by himself). I do not have a partner...but would like to better my skills. I remember seeing Tom Hank's 'Forrest Gump' movie where he practices on his own..not sure if it was real or meant as parody. Any help/suggestions?"

There are a number of ways you can practice by yourself. Here are a few:

Covering Up the Weak Spots Against Fast Hitter/Blockers

Here is an excerpt from Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers, from Chapter Seven: Tactical Examples, pages 78-79. Recently I've been using this tactics a lot against our top juniors, to great success. (Maryland juniors, do not read this. Go play video games or do homework or something.)

Here is an unconventional tactic I and some players I coach have used for years against fast hitters and blockers, especially in fast exchanges with junior players. Typically these players hit hard, quick shots over and over to the wide backhand, middle, and wide forehand. The tactic assumes you have a decent forehand and backhand, and can keep the ball in play pretty well, and can attack with your forehand against a quick shot if you see it coming and know where it’s going to go.

Tip of the Week

Covering and Recovering From the Middle.

Stellangie Camp

Who/what is "Stellangie"? That's the combination of Stellan and Angie Bengtsson's first names. Who are they? Stellan is the 1971 World Men's Singles Champion and hugely famous coach from Sweden. (I went to one of his camps for two weeks, and can verify it's well deserved.) Angie's a U.S. Hall of Fame player (formerly known as Angelita Rosal) who married Stellan and moved to Sweden for many years. Now both are coaching in San Diego. ITTF Coach John Olsen went to their camp last week, and here's his report, which he wrote for this blog.

I want to give people some idea of what a great table tennis camp is like. I recently attended the Stellan/Angie Bengtsson Training Camp at the Willamette Table Tennis Club, Salem Oregon from March 27-31, 2013. If you ever get the chance to attend one of these camps I highly recommend it.

There were 14 player slots for the camp. The camp had 2 sessions a day, 3 hours each session with a 2 hour break for lunch. A 3 hour session contained 5-6 drills. Most drills had multiple components, such as initially hitting cross court and then down the line. Each player did the drill, Stellan and Angie would tell you when to switch.

At certain times one or two people (depending on whether the camp had an odd or even number) would be taken over to do multiball drills. Angie did multiball in the morning and Stellan did the afternoon sessions. During these multiball sessions you worked on specific things you had asked to improve (in my case return of serve).

Each day followed a similar pattern:

Equipment Reviews

Long ago I decided not to do equipment reviews here at TableTennisCoaching.com, because 1) it involves too many conflicts of interest, since I'm a sponsored coach; and 2) I'm more interested in technique and tactics than equipment. But I'm aware that I'm somewhat in the minority on this, as most table tennis players are divided into two camps: those obsessed with equipment, and those REALLY obsessed with equipment. For those EJ's ("Equipment Junkies"), visit Table Tennis DB, which specializes in equipment reviews - about 8000 of them!

When I meet a player who's obsessed with equipment and rated under 2000, I have a simple cure. I play them with a clipboard. I rarely lose. Technique and tactics beat equipment every time. (I've been playing with a clipboard during breaks in our junior sessions and camps for over 20 years, and am about 2100 now, mostly chopping and pick-hitting.)

It is important to get good sponge, especially for loopers. As I've blogged before, some of the modern looping sponges practically loop by themselves, and are well worth whatever you pay to get them, at least for serious players of the looping species. I often wish I could take a stack of these sponges and bring them back to the 1980s and early 1990s for myself.

And it is important for players to experiment with equipment to know what's out there. If you go to a club, there's a whole club full of players with rackets and sponge you can ask to try out. Once you find something that works for you, stick with it unless and until they come out with something truly better for you.

Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook

Different Serving Motions

I had a long, animated discussion last night with a pair of our top juniors and their parents about serves. It's always bothered me when a junior spends so much time developing high-level strokes and footwork, but not a strong serving or receiving game. The discussion ended with a mutual agreement on specific service goals for one of the players - certain serves that he'd have ready by specific major tournaments. The other player had to leave to play a match during the discussion, but I'll speak with her later on her own service goals. (When I say "ready," this means done at a high level with lots of variation and control, which takes many hours of practice. Control means keeping it low while controlling both the direction and, even more important, the depth of the serve.)

It's so easy to fall into the habit of "simple" serves, where a player masters a few basic serves that sets him up for his game, at least against lower-level players, and perhaps against peers - but of course part of the reason they are his "peers" is because they haven't developed their service game, and so aren't really controlling play when they serve.

The part that is most often missed isn't that these simple serves aren't effective, to a certain extent; it's all the points being thrown away by not having a bigger service threat. Often their "peers" are only playing them close because they are winning 2-3 points a game on tricky serves. The irony is that players often complain about losing to an opponent's serves - but make no serious effort to learn these serves themselves.

Update on the Plastic Ball

As some of you know, the ITTF has plans to replace the celluloid ball with a new plastic one. (Yes, celluloid is a type of plastic, but let's not get technical.) This is apparently because they believe the celluloid ball is too flammable, causing problems in shipping. (Put in "Plastic ball" in the search engine on the left to see previous articles on this topic.)

Readers, feel free to comment below with your opinions and any links you have on this topic. This could be a big change to our sport.

ITTF Coach John Olsen was able to try them out this past week. Below is his report, and here's the picture he took of the "new" plastic ball, where you can see the seam.

I recently attending the March 2013 Stellan and Angie Bengtsson training camp at the Willamette Table Tennis Club in Salem, Oregon. The subject of the new plastic balls came up, and Stellan had a surprise for us. Not only did he have one of the plastic balls passed out at the 2012 Worlds, there was also a new one he had received from Japan just a couple of months ago.

Reprint - Derek Nie Wins Coconut Cup Article

There was so much interest yesterday in 12-year-old Derek Nie's upset wins at the Coconut Cup that I thought I'd run the article again. After all, he keeps quoting sections in my Tactics book, even the section on Playing Bratty Kids! Here's the segment from yesterday (April 1):

12-Year-Old Derek Nie Defeats Three 2600+ Players to Win Coconut Cup

Tip of the Week

The Many Ways to Receive a Short Backspin Serve.

12-Year-Old Derek Nie Defeats Three 2600+ Players to Win Coconut Cup

Spring Break Camp

Yesterday was Day Four of our Spring Break Camp, which finishes today. My main lecture was on the backhand attack, which covered both the backhand drive and especially the loop, against backspin and topspin. This time I had Roy Ke (age 13, rated 2209) as my hitting/demo partner. His backhand loop has improved dramatically over the last few months.

The first highlight of the day was an amazing shot by a beginning junior girl, age around nine, who had just started playing on Monday. I was feeding multiball to her while she practiced her backhand, and she kept saying "Faster! Faster! Faster!" Finally, as a joke, I fed her three balls at once. They arrived at her very close together, and, unbelievably, she stroked and returned all three with one shot!

The second "highlight" of the day was an accident where, right at the end of the morning session, one nine-year-old player got too close to another who was hitting forehands, and got hit in the face, just above the right eye. It left a severe wound which bled pretty badly for a time. His father came in, but for the moment they didn't think he needed to see a doctor about it. We were worried he might need stitches. We have a pretty safe record at MDTTC, and I can't remember anything like this happening in our 21 years, though of course there have been occasional cases of players accidentally hitting others when they get too close. The injured player sat out the first half of the afternoon session, but joined in the second half. I'm always harping with the players to stand back when others are hitting, but now I will redouble that effort. Up until age 12 or so, kids seem to have no awareness that they are standing in someone's way in table tennis.