January 22, 2013

A Six-Year-Old's Focus

Yesterday I had a one-hour session with a six-year-old I've been coaching regularly for a while. He always has a hard time keeping focused, not surprising at his age, especially for a one-hour session. Even though he's six, he looks more like four, and I think has more attention problems than normal for his age. I do a number of things to keep his attention, such as using various objects as targets (such as a large rubber frog and iguana he likes to hit), and mixing in game-type activities, such as knocking stacks of paper cups off the table). Getting him to listen and follow directions is like getting Democrats and Republicans to compromise. The fiscal cliff and debt ceiling negotiations have nothing on this kid.

A interesting thing happened yesterday. For the first ten minutes I was having the usual battle to keep his attention. Every minute or two he'd start singing or dancing or making up some weird story or who knows what. He kept grabbing a toy soldier that he claimed was a table tennis champion, and for some reason he kept putting scotch tape on the table, either because he wanted me to hit the tape or because he claimed it was holding the table together.

And then, suddenly, for perhaps the first time ever, he was totally focused. For twenty minutes he was nearly silent, in complete concentration. During that period he played by far the best he's ever played. He was smacking in forehands and backhands with ease and good form (I'm feeding multiball), and hitting the targets I put on the table.

Then the twenty minutes were up, and he was back to being a six-year-old. But at least now I know he can do it. We'll have to keep working on it.

Jack Huang Photos and Nostalgia

Coach Jack Huang (one of my fellow MDTTC coaches and a former member of the Chinese National Team) asked if I could find a series of old pictures of him during his playing days, as well as pictures of his top students and pictures of him coaching. It's for some sort of feature they are doing on him in China. So yesterday I spent about three hours pouring over old magazines and files searching them down. I tried to stay focused, but like the six-year-old in the segment above, seeing all the old articles and pictures was a bit distracting and I kept veering off to read or look at pictures. I managed to put together a good selection for Jack, which I emailed to him. (For some, I scanned directly from the magazine; for others, I found the original, and if it was a hard copy, I'd scan that.)

One photo he was hoping for was a picture of him and Cheng Yinghua winning Men's Doubles at the 1997 USA Nationals. If anyone can find a picture of that, please send it to me.

ITTF News Page

Interested in international news? Then you should be checking the ITTF News Page regularly.

Table Tennis Master Articles

Table Tennis Master has been running a contest for the best table tennis articles. (Deadline is Jan. 24.) Here's a link to the articles submitted so far. 

Reverse Pendulum Serve with Backspin

Here's a video from PingSkills (1:06) demonstrating the reverse pendulum serve with backspin. I'm a strong advocate of players learning both the regular and reverse versions of the pendulum serve as it allows you to use sidespin either way. But many players who learn the reverse version only do so with sidespin or topspin, which hurts them when the opponent realizes this. I like to do it mostly with sidespin-topspin, and then pull out the backspin version near the end of a game, where opponents either miss or give me a weak push almost always toward my forehand side.

Viktor Barna Tutorial

Here's a vintage video (1:42) that just went up, showing and explaining Viktor Barna and his stroking and footwork techniques. Barna was five-time World Men's Singles Champion back in the 1930s, using a hardbat like nearly everyone else back then.

Do the Ping Pong

Here's a new table tennis music video (3:53), with an original song. Not sure if it's going to be a Top Ten hit or Internet sensation, but it's ping-pong, and says "It's the greatest thing!"

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