May 18, 2015 | TableTennisCoaching.com

Tip of the Week

Number of Hours and Hits in a Lifetime

Let’s do the calculation for myself.

I’ve started playing table tennis in 1976 when I was 16. From 1976-1985, nine years, I probably averaged at least three hours/day practice. So that’s 21 hours/week for nine years, or 9828 hours. (I played some recreationally before that, but those hours are inconsequential.)

From 1986-1989 (four years, actually starting at the end of 1985 and continuing to the end of 1989) I was a manager/director/coach for table tennis at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. I was often used as a practice partner during the three-hour sessions, plus did other sessions in camps and local clubs. I’m guessing that I averaged two hours/day, so about 14 hours/week, or 2912 hours.

From 1990-1991 (two years) I played at local clubs while going to graduate school. I probably continued to average two hours/day, so again 14 hours/week, or 1456 hours.

From 1992-1997 and 1999-present (23 years) I’ve mostly coached at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. During those years I’ve probably averaged at least 20 hours/week. Many of those hours are in group sessions, where my time is split between “walking around coaching” (and so not hitting) and feeding multiball (where I’m hitting more balls per minute than in regular play). I’m going to assume these two balance out to about the normal amount of hits per minute of regular play. And so I’ve got 21 years where I’m averaging 20 hours/week. Except – I’ve had periodic injuries that have taken me out of commission a few times. They probably bring the average down one hour/week, so we’ll bring that down to 19/hours week for these 21 years, or 20,748 hours.

From 1997-98 I didn’t play a lot. During those two years I mostly worked as a computer programmer and as an editor, and probably averaged only a few hours per week – perhaps four hours/week those two years, or 416 hours.

So where does this leave me? 9828 + 2912 + 1456 + 20,748 + 416 = 35360 hours. We’ll round that off and estimate I’ve played table tennis 35,000 hours.

But now the question is how many shots per hour am I actually doing? In a typical rally I might be doing two shots per second. But most of the time is spent between points. Let’s assume (and I could be well off on this as I haven’t done any testing) that only 20% of the time is actually hitting. In a game, it’s probably less; in a drilling or coaching session, it’s probably higher. (Feel free to chime in with your own estimates.) So let’s go with 20%. At two shots per second that’s 7200/hour; 20% of that is 1440/hour. And 35,000 x 1440 = 50,400,000.

I’ve played table tennis about 35,000 hours and hit the ball about 50 million times. Wow. How about you?

Busy Monday

It’s another busy day. This morning I’m running a clinic from 10AM-1PM for disabled veterans. At 2:30 PM I have an appointment with an orthopedist sports medicine doctor to look at my arm. At 7PM there’s a USATT Board Teleconference. Somewhere in between all this I need to finish the editing on Samson Dubina’s coaching book, “100 Days of Table Tennis.” Due to the arm problems, I’ve canceled all my private coaching this week, so that frees up some time. But the sheer number of other issues that come up are endless.

North American Cup

It finished yesterday. Here’s the ITTF page with complete results and articles. Here’s the USATT site which has lots of video and links to the results. Here’s the final ITTF article on the champions. Congrats to champions Jim Butler and Zhang Mo! (They also had the North American Hopes Trials; here are the boys’ results and girl’s results.)

Ask the Coach with PingSkills

Episode #125 (32:44) – Improving Retrieving.

Ask the Coach with Richard Prause – Part 9: Short Pimples

Here’s the video (79 sec).

Motor Learning: Block vs. Random Practice

Here’s the video (15:55). “Motor learning is the study of how people acquire skill through practice. Decades of research show that there are more effective ways to design our practices...”

How to Train with a Table Tennis Robot

Here’s the new coaching article by Samson Dubina.

ICoachTableTennis.com

Here’s the relatively new coaching site, which I believe started in March.

Jan-Ove Waldner: I Hope This Was Not the End

Here’s the article.

Zhang Jike Multiball Training at Worlds

Here’s the video (3:42).

Suzhour Worlds 2015 (Men’s Singles Part 2)

Here’s the video (6 min). Here’s Part 1 (5:23), which I posted last week.

What It Means to Fight in Para Table Tennis

Here’s the video (20 sec).