April 27, 2015

Tip of the Week

Your Ready Position - Think Basketball.

Adult Beginning/Intermediate Class

With Raghu Nadmichettu and Josh Tran out of town at the Westchester Open, Coach Jeffrey Zeng Xun assisted this time. We focused on three things this session, which ran 6:30-8:00PM on Sunday.

First up was the forehand loop against block. We demonstrated and I explained, and then they went out to the tables to try it. I had them do it for 7.5 minutes each, twice each. The hardest parts for most adults learning to loop is to use the whole body rather than mostly arm. There's also a tendency to try to stroke it too quickly instead of a smooth, accelerating swing.

Next we did serve and attack. But before we got to that I knew the players would need to get their regular shots back. After all that looping - the first time ever against block for many of them - they'd likely lift their regular forehands and go off the end. So I had them do two minutes of forehand to forehand, as well as two minutes of backhand to backhand and backhand to backhand pushing. Then we began the drill. The server served backspin, the receiver pushed to a pre-arranged spot, the server looped to the receiver's backhand, and then they played out the point.

Finally, for the last 20 minutes, I brought out a bunch of different rackets for "show and tell," and went over the various characteristics. I had two different types of hardbat rackets, a sandpaper racket, longs pips with sponge and without sponge, pips out on a shakehands and penhold blade, antispin, plus tensored inverted.

Other Miscellaneous Stuff

  • Capital Area Super League. The league committee met Friday night at Smash TT from 9PM to Midnight. (That's Michael Levene, Stefano Ratti, John Olsen, and me.) Topics included budget, changing name (taking the "Super" off, since it makes it look like the league is only for elite players), less travel and more "home" matches, plans for the big Finals, and plans for next season. It took me 55 minutes to get there, but because of road construction, almost 2.5 hours to get home - I got back around 2:30 AM. (Had one funny exchange. I mentioned the "The point of the league" in reference to this shot by Derek Nie, an around-the-net backhand loop receive. But John thought I was talking about the point of the league as in why we did it, and for a few seconds we had a rather confusing discussion.)
  • Arm. It's a lot better now. Tonight I'll be doing my first private coaching in two weeks. I tested it out yesterday, especially while demonstrating the forehand loop in the class to Jeffrey's never-missing block. However, it's not completely healed - it's still sore, so I have to go easy on attacking too much. I'm doing exercises with it each day to build it up.
  • Washington Post. They came in on Friday to do a story on Crystal Wang and Derek Nie. It should come out on May 19. I'll post a link here.

Ask the Coach

World Championships

They started yesterday (Sunday), with opening ceremonies on Saturday, and are from April 26 - May 3 in Suzhou, China. Here are some links.

U.S. Open

Here's the new FAQ page. And here's the U.S. Open page itself. It takes place July 6-11 in Las Vegas. Enter now!!!

Jan-Ove Waldner Interview - He Does Not Like the Plastic Ball

Here's the interview (5:08, in English). Some quotes: "Too many changes, not good for the sport," and "Plastic ball not good." He also thinks Ma Long might win the Worlds. (Side note - there's been a debate for years on whether Waldner is the greatest player of all time. It's mostly between him and a few Chinese players. But I think we have one consensus - Pretty much everyone agrees that either Waldner is the greatest of all time, or is arguably the greatest of all time.)

Butterfly Science: All about Tenergy

Here's the new video (10:11) that explains the science behind the sponge. (Disclaimer: I'm sponsored by Butterfly.)

The Journey through Chinese Table Tennis

Ma Long and Zhang Jike Serve

Here's the video (10:11). It's in Chinese, but you can learn by watching. They both serve and play out the points, with a Chinese coach apparently giving commentary.

26 Seconds of Extremely Fast Multiball by Li Xiaoxia

Here's the video.

37 Seconds of Incredibly Fast Table Tennis

Here's the video!

Ma Long vs. Xu Xin

Here's the video (3:57) - lots of great points, and a little Jaws music as well!

Incredible Around-the-Net Backhand

Here's the video (29 sec, including slo-mo replay).

NCTTC Bracket Challenge

Here's the article - and congrats to the winners!

Liu Guoliang vs. Bill Gates

Here's the video (64 sec) as the Chinese Men's Coach and former superstar player takes on the world's richest man!

Operator Please - Just a Song about Ping Pong

Here's the video (2:18).

Roller Pong

Here's the picture!

More Mike Mezyan Pictures

NOTE - If you are unable to see these pictures, all you have to do is join the Table Tennis Group - it's easy! Here are all the past, present, and (soon) future pictures he's collected. (I pick out his best ones for here - he has more.)

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