April 24, 2015

The Coaching Zone: The USATT Coaching Page

You're practicing to reach another level, a level not of rating but of improvement. A journey to advanced performance whose boundaries are how hard you train and how good your coaching. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the USATT Coaching Page!

Have you visited it recently? Here's a quick rundown, from the top:

  • Coaching Advisory Committee. The current listing is out of date. Federico "Fede" Bassetti is still the chair, but the committee is now made up of Britt Salter, Mike Lauro, and Marguerite Cheung. A player rep will also be added soon. Massimo Constantini and Richard McAfee are also unofficial "advisors" to the committee. (I used to be on this committee, and chaired it for four years back in the 1990s.)
  • Coaching Help & Support Page. Here's where you can Search USATT's Coaching Knowledge Base, Submit an email directly, (with a question), or go to the USATT Forum's Coaching Section.
  • Coaching Certification Program. This is where you can learn about the ITTF and USATT Coaching Certification programs. USATT is gradually adopting the ITTF program.
  • USATT Coaches List. Here's where you can find a coach.
  • Coaching Calendar. This looks empty right now, but I think there are some things coming up - stay tuned!
  • Coaching Opportunities. There are currently two items here, one a coaching conference, and one a "help wanted" for the Austin Table Tennis Club.
  • Coaching Courses. Here's a listing of upcoming ITTF courses, and links to past ones (including one I taught). Upcoming courses:
  • Coach of the Year Program. Here's all the info on the program, and a list of past winners. (I've won twice!!! I was also runner-up three times, grumble grumble….)
  • Olympic Coach Magazine. Here's where you can browse over the current past issues.
  • Coaching Newsletter. Alas, it was discontinued after 2012, but perhaps they'll start it up again sometime.
  • SafeSport. This is a USOC-mandated program where all USATT certified coaches get background checks.

Miscellaneous Stuff

  • The Washington Post: They are coming in today at 4:30PM to do a feature story on Crystal Wang and Derek Nie for KidsPost. I'm meeting them there to introduce them to the players, get them started, and (most important) to try to get in the background of the pictures.
  • Capital Area Super League: Tonight at 9PM we have another meeting of the Organizing Committee for the Capital Area Super League. We're meeting at Smash Table Tennis in Virginia, so it's nearly a one-hour drive for me.
  • "The Spirit of Pong": I now have critiques from all eight critiquers of my novella "The Spirit of Pong." I've already gone through most of them, highlighting the key issues. I plan to spend some of today and hopefully all of tomorrow trying to finalize it. (Due to my arm problems, I have no coaching tomorrow.) If all goes well, this will come out in early May.
  • It's a Dangerous Sport: One of my junior students, on the way to the table yesterday, walked into a chair and literally fell over it, hurting his leg. He had to take ten minutes before he was ready to play, but he's okay now. As I told him, "Table tennis is a dangerous sport. You never know when a chair is going to throw itself in front of you."
  • Table Court Table Tennis: Later, that same student said maybe tennis would be better, since it's a bigger, open area, with few chairs to walk into. I pointed out that he had the terminology wrong. We're table tennis; that version of our sport played on a court is court table tennis. And then I explained to him that if that were true, then that version of court table tennis played on a table must be table court table tennis.
  • Ineptitude the Universe: Since it was a group session, I had the same kid hitting with another, forehand to forehand. They were both relative beginners. I tried to convince them that the all-time world record for most forehands hit in a row was four, and the American record just two, which they thought was pretty funny, and they quickly broke both records and celebrated. I then explained to them about the alternate universe called Ineptitude, where everyone is ping-pong crazy, but so completely uncoordinated that in hundreds of years, nobody has yet made a single shot, and that there are games from a hundred years going on, one deuce after another, because neither player can make their own serve. I gave some play-by-play: "And Ding misses his serve, and so Dong is now up match point, ten trillion and six to ten trillion and five. Dong now serves - and he misses again, and it's all tied up at ten trillion and six to ten trillion and six!"
  • Arm Update: It's still injured, but yesterday I fed about ten minutes of multiball. I'm trying to gradually build it up. I've started using this long green elastic band to stengthen it with light resistance training. Hopefully it'll be okay by next week and I can return to normal coaching. 

Ma Long Practices Counterlooping vs. Liu Guoliang's Backhand Loop

Here's the video (27 sec). A coach feeds backspin to China's Men's Coach Liu, who reverse penhold backhand loops so Ma Long can practice counterlooping it. I've long been a proponent of this type of drill, though you don't normally need two coaches for one player. For example, I'll serve backspin to a student, he'll push it back, I'll loop, and he counterloops. As he does so, I'm already reaching for another ball so we can do it again. In this way the student or practice partner gets lots of rapid-fire practice against opening loops against backspin. (And the other player also gets lots of rapid-fire practice looping against backspin, so it's win-win.) It's also a good way to practice blocking. In both of these cases, think about it - if you are at the intermediate or advanced level, you probably spend most of your counterlooping and blocking practice against blocks and topspin. In a match, most often the first loop you see is against backspin, which is different. Result? You probably aren't as comfortable against it because you haven't practiced against it.

World Table Tennis Championships

They start on Sunday, and are from April 26 - May 3 in Suzhou, China. Here's the ITTF World Championships Page.

Dynamic Table Tennis Tip of the Week: Around the Net Serve

Here's the video (2:57) from Brian Pace. This is a big-breaking sidespin serve down the line that, while it doesn't (usually!) really go around the net, it often goes outside the table and curves back in, giving opponents great trouble. I use this serve quite a bit as a trick serve.

Decisions! Your major improvement starts with accurate shot selection

Here's the new coaching article from Samson Dubina.

The Tao of Ping Pong

Here's a really nice table tennis movie (20:11, need to put in password TTOPP) that just came out. It's a bit overdramatic at times, but pretty well done. It sort of covers two ping-pong players at three times in their lives, as kids, at their peak in their 20s, and as older men, with sort of a time twist at the end. "Fei Mo is an ambitious Chinese Ping Pong genius. In the midst of the U.S. Open Tournament, he unintentionally meets the superhuman American Ping Pong player Ethan White. When their contrasting personalities collide on and off the court, what appears to be only a game becomes a matter of life and death..."

There's also a Behind the Scenes with James and Henry (3:44), the two kid stars. They are James Stout, 14, rated 1595, and Henry Luo, 12, rated 2030. Both are from Carmel, Indiana.

The Final Countdown to Allen Wang's $1600 for His School Club

They are up to $1180 raised, so it's $420 to go. Donate now, or you will regret it the rest of your life as you face the wrath of Allen (who will beat you), his little sister Amy (who will humiliate you), and me (who will put you on the list of all the people in the world who didn't contribute). You are running out of time!!!

26 Seconds of Samsonov and Ovtcharov

Here's the video (much of it slow motion) as the two stars counterloop in preparation for the World Championships.

Masters China 2015

Here are two recent matches:

Table Tennis Legend Crushing Competition at 78

Here's the story of John Shultz from Bay News 9.

Table Tennis in Metlife Stadium

Yesterday I linked to the video (41 sec) of Michael Landers and Mieczyslaw Suchy playing table tennis at Metlife Stadium. (Because of the sunglasses I didn't even recognize Landers!) Here are pictures.

Hardcore Mode in Real Life - NoobtownMonkeys

Here's the video (4:25) of this epic table tennis match. I previously linked to a shorter, 69-sec version.

TT Birthday Cake

Here's Hanna Ricci's 16th birthday cake!

The Lighter Side of Table Tennis

Here's the new video (5:37) from International Table Tennis Thailand.

Floating Ball Archer

Here's an archer who apparently shoots a floating ping-pong ball out of the air. (The archer in question is actually rather controversial. He has longer videos out showing him doing all sorts of apparently spectacular shots, but most from the archery community seem to believe he's mostly a fraud. Or so I've read. I think the shots are real, but how many tries did it take to get the shot?)

Mike Mezyan Humorous Pictures

Once again he has searched the Internet high and low, bringing you the greatest shots ever seen, soon to be a new wing at the Louvre. (Several people have said they cannot see the Facebook pictures - apparently you need an account - so I've put an "alternate version" for each that takes you directly to a version of the picture but without the Facebook comments - which sometimes are half the fun!)
=>ADDENDUM: Mike wrote me saying, "Just To Clarify Perhaps Some Can't See The Photos Because the Need To Be Member Of The Group? Anyone Can Easily Just Send us A Request To Join and We Will Gladly Accept!" So why not join the Table Tennis Group?

Non-Table Tennis - Story in Space and Time Magazine

Here's the cover of the upcoming issue of Space and Time Magazine, one of the nicer science fiction & fantasy magazines. I'm one of the cover stories! (They typically have about 15 stories and articles in each issue.) My story is "Leashing the Muse," my third sale to them. The story is about the conflict between an English professor with a supercomputer and high standards, and an ancient Greek Muse who has even higher standards. (Here's my science fiction & fantasy page. I've sold 71 short stories, and have a humorous fantasy novel "Sorcerers in Space," and an anthology of my best stories, "Pings and Pongs.")

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