December 30, 2013

Tip of the Week

Do Something Different. (This is an expansion of what was originally a blog entry.)

MDTTC Christmas Camp

We're down to the last 1.5 days of our Christmas Camp. We have a full day today, and a half session tomorrow, and then we're off to celebrate the New Year.

So far I've given lectures on the grip, playing stance, forehand drive, backhand drive, forehand loop (against backspin, block, and topspin), backhand loop (against backspin, block, and topspin), backhand smash, footwork, and serving. I still have lectures coming up on pushing and receive. However, once we get through the lectures, my group is all kids from 6-8 years old, as I once again agreed to take on the younger beginning kids. (How did I go from being a Hall of Fame coach and writer to being a kindergartner teacher? Just kidding - but sometimes during a session it seems that way.)

This week's overall diagnosis: Lots of good backhands, but some problems on forehands. One kid insists on hitting his forehand like a Seemiller punch block. Another bends her wrist back about 180 degrees; my wrist would break if I did that. Another can only do about five minutes practice before running off to the lounge area to read "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." One girl, age 8, seems to have promise and works pretty hard - she's the one I blogged about before, who worked so hard on serving. For someone that's played only four days now, she's pretty good. She's already the best in the group at hitting targets during multiball, and today led her team to victory in "Froggy." (This is where they keep track of how many times they can hit a big rubber frog.) The youngest kid in the group, age 6 but big for his age, is easily the most advanced as he's had a number of private coaching sessions and I've coached him in camps and other sessions a few dozen times. He's got nice shots, but no real control yet, so he often loses points to beginning kids since he's spraying his shots all over - but they're hard-hit shots.

You'd be amazed at how much destruction a pair of 6- and 7-year-olds cause during a break between sessions - I should give an itemized list. And they did this while mostly playing hide and seek, which seems to be the game of choice during break. Yes, the club is that big! The kids are getting good at finding ingenious hiding spots - in our closets, storage areas, under boxes, in trash cans (!), or just between barriers. I had one kid simply sit at a table between some older kids, and it took a long time for the others to find him even though he was in plain view - they weren't expecting that and so didn't notice him!

Yesterday I brought out the serving pole, which is a device (created by John Olsen) that puts a bar over the net at variable heights. The object is to serve under the bar, so it's great practice in learning to serve low. When I first put it out, the kids didn't know what it was, but one of them ran around the table screaming, "He's putting up something new! He's putting up something new!" The kids loved it; one of them kept track of how many times he served under it, and kept at it until he did it 150 times (in about 15 minutes). Then the kids made a weird discovery. The bar is hollow, so you should be able to see through it like a telescope without a lense. But for some reason, perhaps because of the reflective properties of the inside of the pole, you get a kaleidoscope effect when you look through it. So the kids spent another 15 minutes looking through that while putting up various objects on the other side, just like any other kaleidoscope. It was pretty weird looking through it.

Coach Jeff Smart spent the day with us on Saturday, and helped with my group. He's working on his ITTF Level 2 certification, and needed five hours of "supervised" coaching, which I provided. He's now finished all his requirements and should get the certification in a few days. He spent most of the day working with two girls, including the hard-working one mentioned above.

We go to the 7-11 across and down the street every day (except yesterday, when it was raining). One day we had 13 kids. They know me at 7-11, and every time I bring in a group they give me a free Slurpee. The kids are jealous. However, I've never eaten (drank?) more than 1/3 of the Slurpee; I always give the rest to someone.

Four players missed Saturday so they could go downhill skiing. They were Crystal Wang, Derek Nie, Amy Lu, and Darwin Ma. All survived without injury, though exhausted and sore. Only Derek came today while the others recuperated; it was a very rare day off for Crystal!

My arm is holding out, though I'm just feeding multiball 90% of the time, and when I do hit, it's with beginners. I'd cancelled all my private sessions until January to rest my arm, but forgot about one, and so did one private session on Saturday night. It went fine, but I avoided hitting backhands, which aggravate it, and instead hit forehands from the backhand side when needed, plus lots of multiball. Hopefully I'll start up on private coaching again early in January.

Sports Psychology Sessions

I've always worked with students on sports psychology. Regular readers of this blog probably know that I've said that coaching during matches is at least 50% psychological; so is the pre-match coaching. Preparing a player for his match psychologically is huge.

Recently I've been doing more regular sports psychology sessions with some of our junior players - three sessions with three different players recently. I've got a lot of experience in this, though not as much as a sports psychologist, but we have to make do with what we have. I did zillions of sessions at the Olympic Training Center during my four years there, have read the major sports psychology books, and above all, have loads of experience over the years working with players. I've put together my own set of notes on how to run these sessions. For now, I'm keeping those notes private, since I don't want opposing players to know exactly what I'm telling our players before the match, but I might make them public later on after I've honed them a bit more. We'll see.

The Forehand Loop

Here's a video (4:01) that demonstrates the forehand loop. (I may have posted this once before - not sure - but it's worth viewing again.) It has Chinese commentary, but the video is enough by itself.

The McLaughlin Group

I read this on the hardbat forum, from "Wallyswoods":

On Friday Dec. 27 the McLaughlin group on TV named the people who died last year and would be missed.  Mort Zuckerman said "Marty Reisman, the best ping pong player in the world."  The other group members named more generally famous people, and McLaughlin looked like he had never heard of Marty.  He said, "Do you play ping pong?", and Zuckerman said, "Yes, I do."  He may be a member of the Pen and Paddle Club which was written about in The New Yorker Magazine a few years ago. The members are people in the publishing world who meet in an apartment building where there is a ping pong room.  Marty would be there.  Anyone bringing a sponge paddle had it taken away at the door, and they had to play with a hardbat. I wonder if we will see Mort at a Nationals someday with a hardbat or sandpaper bat?

Air Pong

Here's the video (11 sec)! 

Table Tennis Players Karaoke

Here's a video (13:57) showing a number of top players singing Karaoke after the Nationals, including Adam Hugh, Han Xiao, Larry Bao, Calvin Chan, Tina Lin, and Leslie Liu. Enjoy! (If you watch the whole thing, then you have too much free time. Go practice your serves!)

Amazing Table Tennis Tricks 4.0

Here's the video (3:04)!

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