April 13, 2015 | TableTennisCoaching.com

Tip of the Week

How Many Serving Motions Should You Have?

Weekend's Coaching and Arm & Cramp Problems

Well, I did it again - I hurt my arm. I think I did too much looping during a coaching session on Friday so a student could work on blocking. Then on Saturday I did a lot of multiball, and feeding backspin put some strain on the arm. At the end of the session I served to a student for about ten minutes straight, and that's what finally killed the arm. (Advanced serves can put a lot of strain on the arm!) I thought I'd be okay the next day, but on Sunday I quickly discovered it wasn't. I had 3.5 hours of private coaching and 3.0 hours of group sessions scheduled. The group sessions were no problem, but I finally had to hire Derek Nie to do some of my hitting in one session. Even blocking was a problem as it put a strain on the arm reaching for shots. I ended up teaching a lot of serves, pushing, lobbing, and lots of multiball - mostly topspin since feeding backspin hurt the arm.

Since I was on my feet coaching almost continuously all day Sunday, I paid the price - at about midnight, a few minutes after I put aside the book I was reading to go to bed ("Ogi: The Life of Ichiro Ogimura"), my right leg cramped up. It got so bad I had to get up and walk around for ten minutes until it stopped.

Meanwhile, between cries of pain, I did some coaching over the weekend.

In the Adult Beginning/Intermediate Class on Sunday I taught them how to feed multiball to each other. This allows them to do a huge number of drills - but in particular, it allows them to rapid-fire practice their loops against backspin. As I demonstrated, you get about ten times as many loops against backspin as you get if you do it one ball at a time by serving and looping and then either playing the point out or chasing after the ball. It wasn't easy for a lot of them, but most got the hang of it. The biggest problems were a tendency to pick the ball up out of the box of balls, bring it back to the racket, and drop the ball straight down. It's much easier and realistic to throw the ball backwards with a low bounce, and then hit it with essentially a regular forehand drive or push shot. Also, many would bounce the ball high instead of low.

I put them in groups of mostly three so one could feed multiball, one did the shots, and one picked up balls, rotating every three minutes. First they did simple topspin, side to side, doing forehand footwork practice. Then we did a recap of forehand looping against backspin, which we had covered last session, and we did the rotation again, three minutes each. Then I gave a demo and lecture on backhand looping, and then one more rotation, three minutes each. (As usual, Raghu Nadmichettu and Josh Tran assisted.)

I did a lot of multiball over the weekend, both scheduled a non-scheduled due to my arm. I do a two-hour session on Saturdays with John & Kevin that's essentially all multiball, with receive practice at the end that's essentially me serving multiball fashion as they practice receive. Alas, the net I'd bought about four years ago to catch the balls for these sessions broke, and so I used a robot and its net to catch the balls. But the robot had a plastic basin for catching the balls, plus the robot itself, so balls were ricocheting all over the place as I fed the balls, which was both distracting and irritating. After mishitting still another ball due to a ricochet, I finally said, "These working conditions are intolerable!" Yes, I'm at war with the robot. Or at least its "bouncy" net construction.

I'd be amiss if I didn't also mention another great quote, when John mentioned a local player and said, "He has a penholder strawberry." For those not in the know, a "strawberry" is a backhand flip where you sidespin the ball the opposite way as the more standard backhand banana flip.

USATT Stuff

Meanwhile, my USATT todo list is growing. I'm working on three new bylaws proposals, which I'll blog about later; a serving rule proposal (to eliminate hidden serves by making it illegal to hide the ball from any part of the net - more on this later); sample Regional Association Bylaws; and compiling lists of current State or Regional Associations, State Championships, Team Leagues, and full-time Training Centers, with the plan to dramatically increase the number of all of these. I've blogged a lot about setting up regional and state association, team leagues, and training centers. One more goal I've added - I'd like to see state championships in all 50 states and DC in 2016. (I'll blog about this latter item, and my current listing, probably later this week.)

U.S. Open Entry Form

Here it is! And here's the U.S. Open page. A lot of changes this year. We're back to Caesar's Palace! (Along with the Linq, which is across the street.) Lots of new events, 94 in all - browse the list!

U.S. College Championships

They were held this weekend. There was a surprise in Men's Teams and Doubles! Who won? Here are complete results, here's the official page, and here's the USATT page with lots of video.

Learn the Backspin Serve - Like a Boss!

Here's the coaching video (3:15) by Brett Clarke - covers both backspin and no-spin serves.

New Coaching Articles from Samson Dubina

Kids - Read 5 points about junior table tennis

Beginner Coaches - How can the new-coach-on-the-block establish credibility?

Table Tennis School

Here are some new training videos from Table Tennis School.

Forehand Topspin Training (11:59). Note the body rotation and constant balance.

Footwork Left and Right (12:45).

Training an Offensive Player (12:15).

Training a Defensive Player (21:28).

I Love What I Do Because I Do What I Love

Here's the table tennis coach's poster.

Jim Butler vs. Larry Kesler Intersection

Here's video (1:30, but you only need to watch the start) of Jim Butler forehand looping in a serve from his wide backhand, and following through into the umpire, Larry Kesler.

Massive Table Tennis

Here's a new highlights video (5:41).

Capital Area Super League

Another week of action in the Capital Area Super League! Here are two Division One results this past weekend - the other divisions were off this week. (Complete results are here.)