March 4, 2015

Eleven Questions with Larry Hodges

Here's the USATT interview with me yesterday. Not a policy interview, but hopefully some interesting stuff. I had a lot of fun with it, but hopefully some of it is informative as well.

Upcoming Events and Back Problems

Tomorrow we have another 3-5 inches of snow scheduled to come in - yeah, these days we schedule these things. (So it's likely school and all coaching will be cancelled tomorrow.) There's also a USATT teleconference at 8PM where we appoint committee chairs. I have to go over dozens of applications. Alas, not a single worthy bribe. And then on Saturday there's a Super League Organizing Committee Meeting at 7PM. ESPN and USA Today just did interviews with Crystal Wang at our club, so those are coming out soon, plus the Washington Post is doing a feature soon on Crystal and Derek Nie, so more on those when they come out.

Mixed in with these, of course, is the usual private and group coaching, and several writing projects. I've also got the MDTTC March Newsletter to finalize. I normally send it out at the start of each month, but we decided to wait until after the USA Team Trials this weekend so I can put info from there in it, and send it out probably next Monday. Plus I have a dentist appointment today at noon, and see my tax accountant next Tuesday. Yeah, things are busy here.

Worse, my back just started acting up again for the first time in months. I woke up this morning with it pleading with me to spend the day in bed, but I had to overrule that. Hopefully I'll get through the two hours of coaching I have scheduled today, and then I'll likely be off on Thursday (snow), and have only a one-hour multiball session on Friday. But I just put new sponge on my racket, and having extra bouncy new sponge always takes some of the strain away as the sponge practically does the playing for me as I stand around and make stroking motions. (I use a Timo Boll ALC, with black 2.1 Tenergy 05 on the forehand, red 2.1 Tenergy 25 on the backhand, all from my Butterfly sponsor.)

I was going to blog this morning about a coach's and parent's responsibility to their kids in regards to teaching them to win and teaching the ethics, but I'll save that for another day when I'm not having a heated spear jabbed into my back repeatedly.

Three Things Never to Tell an Eight-Year-Old Before a Training Session

  • Never try to explain the Borg from Star Trek with an 8-year-old just before a training session. There will be no real training session afterwards, just lots and lots of Borg-related questions.
  • Never tell the story of a junior who once jokingly aimed a realistic looking squirt gun at a ticket agent at an airport and said "I have a gun!" to an 8-year-old just before a practice session, or you'll end up with him saying "I have a gun!" the entire session, including a toy gun made from aluminum foil.
  • "I have a blade and I like to kill." That's what I told one of my students yesterday. That's all I heard from him the rest of the session. Then he told it to another. Soon it was the favorite quote of the 8-year-old crowd.

ITTF Legends Tour

It starts again today in Halmstad, Sweden. Here's the home page, the Facebook page, the draw, and here's an article on it from Tabletennista. Interesting note in the article - Waldner was originally seeded #1, and would have had a bye in each event, thereby playing one less match than others. He didn't think this was fair, and asked that the seeding be done randomly. The article includes a picture of him drawing his seeding number out of a hat.

Here's where you can watch it live, starting at noon Eastern Time. Playing in today's event is Waldner, Gatien, Rosskopf, Persson, Jialiang, and Saive. If you tune in at the start, you'll likely get to see the first two matches - Rosskopf vs. Persson, and then, in a rematch of the Men's Singles Final in 1987, Jan-Ove Waldner vs. Jiang Jialiang. For showmanship, I hope Jiang does his infamous "fist-pumping walk around the table" thing. Up 2-1 but down 16-20 in the fourth, Jiang scores four in a row. Here's the point at 19-20; watch what Jiang does after the point!

Former Table Tennis Champ Enjoys Career Rebirth

Here's the article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "At 44, Jimmy Butler, whose career was left for dead because of a debilitating muscle condition, has not only returned to an elite standard of table tennis competition, but he enters this week’s Pan Am and National Team Trials at Texas Wesleyan as the reigning U.S. men’s singles national champion."

World Table Tennis Day

Here's the ITTF press release on this inaugural event on April 6.

2015 Hopes Camps in the U.S.

Here's the announcement - they are at the Alameda Club in California and Atlanta International Club.

Technical Training for Table Tennis

Here's the new coaching article from Expert Table Tennis. "I believe to become an expert table tennis player you must master the four aspects of the game (technical, tactical, physical and mental). An expert is proficient in all four areas and can be described as a ‘complete’ player. The first and most important aspect of the game to master is technique." (In this context, technical means technique.)

Backhand Serve Against a Lefty

Here's the video (2:05), demonstrated by Victor Tolkachev. A similar pattern is effective against a righty, except there you often vary between short to the forehand, long to the backhand (the reverse of what is shown here).

Ma Long's Serve

Here's the video (2:13), shown from different angles. The quality of the video isn't great, but you can see what he's doing, especially when it goes slow motion.

Table Tennis Serves in Slow Motion

Here's the video (7:24).

Ovcharov vs. Jung Youngsik

Here's video (50 sec, including slow motion replay) of a great point between these two. Ovcharov is #6 in the world, Jung #39 in.

Segun Toriola vs. Ning Gao

Here's video (66 sec, including replays from different angles and slow motion) of a great rally between these two.

Diving, Rolling Return

Here's the video (55 sec, including slow motion replay).

Evolution of Table Tennis

Here are the five volumes for the historically minded. Some great stuff here!

Chase Free Commercial with Table Tennis

Here's the ad (30 sec). About 12 seconds in you see someone receiving and playing with a rather interesting paddle with lights on it!

Chimpanzee Pong

Here's video (24 sec) from two years ago of a chimpanzee rallying backhand to backhand! (I have suspicions on whether this might be faked - look how mechanical looking the chimp's backhand is. But it's probably for real.) Here are two other videos from Japan where they try to teach a chimp (in overalls!) to play table tennis, here (2:15) and here (4:01) with more dubious results.

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