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This is an evolving website and Table Tennis Community. Your suggestions are welcome.

Want a daily injection of Table Tennis? Come read the Larry Hodges Blog! (Entries go up by noon, Mon-Fri; see link on left.) Feel free to comment!

Want to talk Table Tennis? Come join us on the forum. While the focus here is on coaching, the forum is open to any table tennis talk.

Want to Learn? Read the Tip of the Week, study videos, read articles, or find just about any other table tennis coaching site from the menu links. If you know of one, please let us know so we can add it.

Want to Learn more directly? There are two options. See the Video Coaching link for info on having your game analyzed via video. See the Clinics link for info on arranging a clinic in your area, or finding ones that are already scheduled.

If you have any questions, feel free to email, post a note on the forum, or comment on my blog entries.

-Larry Hodges, Director, TableTennisCoaching.com

Member, USA Table Tennis Hall of Fame & USATT Certified National Coach
Professional Coach at the Maryland Table Tennis Center

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Recent TableTennisCoaching.com blog posts

Monday, May 13, 2019 - 15:36
May 13, 2019

Tip of the Week
First Block and First Counterloop.

USA Nationals
Here's the home page for the event to be held in Las Vegas, June 30 - July 5. Final deadline is May 20. You can see the current list of entries by player or by event. There are currently 673 players entered, and if you aren't there, we will be talking about you - and it won't be nice! I'll be coaching there, and playing in Over 40 Hardbat. (I normally use sponge, but hardbat is a sideline.)

Here are two articles by Matt Hetherington on players who will be competing at the Nationals:

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Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - 14:11
May 7, 2019

Tip of the Week
Playing Short Pips on the Forehand.

Sorry, no regular blog this week. I just went through the most painful 24 hours of my life. I came down with a "minor" toothache last week, but since I had a dentist appointment already for this week - ironically, at 9:40AM today (Tuesday), which is about when I'm writing this - I thought I could wait. But on Sunday it got very, very painful, and I barely made it through the two classes I teach those days.

I discovered that if I swirled room-temperature water over it the pain went away for about 30 seconds. So starting sometime on Sunday night, and until a little before noon on Monday (when I saw the dentist), I literally sat in my lounge chair with cases of water and some big plastic cups, and every 30 seconds or so would take a small mouthful of water, swirl, and spit out into the big cups. I kept that up for about 15 hours straight, never sleeping - I had no choice, it was either that or searing pain. I went through 47 bottles of water, was up for over 40 hours straight, and ate nothing but room-...

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Monday, May 6, 2019 - 13:10
May 6, 2019

This week's blog will go up tomorrow (Tuesday). I have an incredibly painful toothache and have an "emergency" appointment at noon today. Until this is fixed I won't be doing much of anything. 

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Monday, April 29, 2019 - 15:54
April 29, 2019

Tip of the Week
Rope-a-Dope Defense.

World Championships
Here's the ITTF home page for the event that finished yesterday in Budapest, Hungary, April 21-28, with results, and lots and Lots and LOTS of news articles, video, and pictures.

  • Men's Final (12:28, time between points removed): Ma Long (CHN) d. Mattias Falck (SWE), 5,7,-7,9,5
  • Women's Final (13:04, time between points removed): Liu Shiwen (CHN) d. Chen Meng (CHN), -9,7,7,-7,0,9
  • ITTF Videos from Worlds (including both finals above if you want to see the full version)
  • News articles
  • ...
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Monday, April 22, 2019 - 15:45
April 22, 2019

Tip of the Week
No More Excuses - Develop World-Class Serves with TNT. 

Serving Seminar at Maryland Table Tennis Center
Here's the info flyer for the Serving Seminar I'll be running at MDTTC in two days (Gaithersburg, MD, USA), on Wednesday, April 24, 7-8:30PM - hope to see you there! 100% of all fees will be donated to the HW Global Junior Program at MDTTC. I'm dividing the seminar into two parts - third-ball serves (serves that set up attacks, which should be the majority of your serves) and trick serves (serves designed to win the point directly, if not overused - I'll demonstrate a number of these). There is, of course, overlap between the two, as I'll go over. We already have a bunch of people signed up - hope to see you there! I'll likely stay late to work with players.

2021 World Championships - in Houston, USA!!!...

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Monday, April 15, 2019 - 14:13
April 15, 2019

Tip of the Week
The Lead Problem.

MDTTC April Open, Weekend Coaching, Tim Boggan's History of U.S. Table Tennis, and a Serving Seminar
It's been a BUSY week, finishing with an even busier weekend. Here's a rundown.

  • JOOLA MDTTC April Open - Here are the complete results, care of Omnipong. (It was a wild Open final, with Lidney Castro winning over Chen Bowen in a wild duel with lots and Lots and LOTS of wild counterlooping - but Lidney can also block and lob really well. I ran the tournament with Klaus Wood, who is gradually taking over as the MDTTC tournament director. We ran things together on Saturday, but he ran it alone on Sunday - smaller turnout - while I mostly worked on other things in the back room. On Friday night we had serious computer problems - it took me 90 minutes and five restarts to get my laptop computer to work! Klaus brought his laptop as a backup, but for technical reasons, it wouldn't print on our printer. We...
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Monday, April 8, 2019 - 11:38
April 8, 2019

Tip of the Week
Remember Your Best Match.

Miscellaneous Topics

  • Weekend Coaching - I was actually supposed to spend Fri and Sat at the Ravencon Science Fiction Convention in Williamsburg, VA, but had to drop out because I was sick. The only coaching I did was on Sunday, 3.5 hours of group sessions. We started a new ten-week Beginning Junior Class. The focus in the first class was grip, stance, ball-bouncing, and the forehand. We finished with games, with half the class playing real ones, the younger ones playing first around-the-world, and then taking turns trying to hit my Gatorade bottle, with me feeding multiball - if they hit it, I had to drink the "worm juice" inside.
    In the more advanced Talent Development Program, the younger kids usually do lots and lots of multiball, but this time we had them do footwork drills among themselves. For some of them, it was the first time they'd done footwork drills except with a coach, either live or multiball. They did surprisingly well - ingraining the strokes with...
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Monday, April 1, 2019 - 15:56
April 1, 2019

Tip of the Week
Positioning After Serve.

Donald Trump Visits MDTTC
We were all excited to welcome the President of the United States to our club. He played some matches, bragged about how good he was. Here's a picture of him playing. 

ITTF and USATT Rule Changes and Announcements and a Board Brawl
And so this is what happens the minute I leave the USATT Board of Directors? The ITTF
proposed and approved a new rule that says that the umpire, at his discretion, after a great
rally, may award both players a point. This has got to be the single most ridiculous rule
idea ever, and yet has been approved, first by the ITTF, and now by USATT. And so,
literally right after winning an incredible point, your opponent will now also get a point!
Foolishly, when I first heard about the proposal, I assumed it would be voted down,
or perhaps laughed into oblivion, but it passed unanimously. Suppose there is no...

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Monday, March 25, 2019 - 16:00
March 25, 2019

Tip of the Week
Advanced Sponge but No-So-Fast Blades.

USATT Committee Selection Task Force
Did your eyes glaze over just reading that headline? I'm on the task force, along with Eric Wu and chair Gary Schlager. We had three teleconferences, sometimes joined by USATT board chair Anne Cribbs and USATT attorney Dennis Taylor. The purpose of the task force was to sort through the 45 people who had volunteered for 19 USATT committees and make recommendations for the USATT board on who should chair and be members of each committee. It was a herculean task, made much easier by the herculean efforts of Gary and Dennis, who kept us updated on all the needed info. This weekend the board will meet for two days in the Bay Area in California where they will, among other things, finalize and approve the committees for the next two years.

As noted before, my latest two-year term as coaching chair ended recently, and Pieke Franssen has already been approved as the new coaching chair. I have agreed to stay on the coaching committee as a member, pending the...

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Monday, March 18, 2019 - 16:00
March 18, 2019

Tip of the Week
Challenge an Opponent's Strength.

USATT Election
As I write this, I am a member of the USATT Board of Directors. However, very likely later today I will no longer be on it as they will be counting the ballots in the current election. (I chose not to run for re-election.) The result will be announced on the USATT news page, though I don't know for sure if it will go up today. (I'll link to it directly from here when it goes up.) BREAKING NEWS - Bruce won, 260-208. Congrats to him!

The two candidates in the final runoff are Bruce Liu and Mike Babuin. While both have been sharply critical of USATT in many ways, I'm fine with either of them; I know I can talk to either of them. But that might not be the case for some of the people with USATT - there's going to be some friction involved with either of them. But maybe that's a good thing as it makes us really look at what we're doing.

When I ran for the USATT Board, I made it...

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