August 6, 2015

Top Ten Things if Donald Trump Were Running USATT…

A little fun with Photoshop this morning!

  1. He'll make USA players competitive with the Chinese. "I will build a great training center — and nobody builds training centers better than me, believe me —and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great training center, and I will make China pay for that training center. Mark my words."
  2. All USATT members would receive a free "Make USATT Great Again" red baseball cap, a Trump hairpiece, and a copy of Trump's luxurious new book, "Table Tennis Tactics for Bombastic Egotistical Blowhards." (Hey, wait a minute!)
  3. As a championship player, he'd personally teach our players how to defeat the Chinese, explaining, "When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let's say, China in a ping-pong match? They kill us. I beat China all the time. All the time."
  4. The rules would have to be changed so that 1) orange balls cannot be used as they would be lost in the background of Trump's hair; 2) hair cannot be used to hide contact when serving; and 3) shots made by contacting the ball with hair shall be illegal.
  5. He'd make China send us their best players to train USA players, explaining, "When China sends its players, they're not sending the best. They're sending people that have lots of technical problems and they're bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing bad technique. They’re bringing bad training habits. They’re weak players. ... And some, I assume, are good players."
  6. He'd donate money to all segments of table tennis – top players, officials, clubs, leagues, hardbat & sandpaper - and remind us every few minutes that "I'm very wealthy."
  7. USA players would no longer be allowed to use topspin. "The concept of topspin was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. players non-competitive."
  8. The US Open, USA Nationals, North American Teams, USA Team Trials, and all other USATT sanctioned tournaments would be played in the penthouse at Trump Tower.
  9. USATT would keep its name, but it would now stand for, "USA Trump Trump."
  10. I'll be packing my bags. Since I wrote the above, and I'm on the USATT Board of Directors, the first thing Trump would say to me when we he takes over is, "You're fired."

Expert Table Tennis

Their home page features four of Ben Larcombe's most popular articles:

Ask the Coach Show

Episode #162 (26:25) – Zig Zag Serves (and other segments).

How Does Your Cerebellum Counteract "Paralysis by Analysis"?

Here's the article from Psychology Today. (One of the things I stress regularly, and in my Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers book, is that most tactics must become subconscious.)

How to Serve like Koki Niwa

Here's the video (12:38). It's in Japanese, Chinese, or Korean, with subtitles in one of these languages (can anyone identify the languages?), but you can learn by watching.

Jimmy Butler and Lily Zhang on the NBC Today Show

Here's the video (7:36, with table tennis starting from 4:57 to 6:21). The broadcast also features golf, track and field, Paralympic wheelchair racing, and (after the table tennis segment) weight lifting. Here are five pictures from Jimmy's Facebook page. Here's USATT coverage.

World Team Championships Gets Smaller

Here's the article from Tabletennista, about the ITTF putting limits on the number of teams allowed. "From more than 200 teams (110 for men and 95 for women) in 2014, it will now become 96 teams for each of the men and women division." So while it won't affect women's teams much (at least right now), it'll mean cutting 14 teams on the men's side. (This is unlikely to affect Team USA.) Personally, I think they should go back to the old format, where they had the Worlds every two years, with singles, doubles, and team events. Now they alternate, one year with singles and doubles, the next with teams. This might be fine for the very best teams, but for the years when they run just singles and doubles, for most countries it means spending a lot of money to send a bunch of players who'll be out of everything after just a few matches. ​

Disabled Players Have Paralympic Hopes

Here's the article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Footwork Training in the Ocean

Here's the video (14 sec) of Eliza Samara (world #17, from Romania) in training! Presumably that's the Atlantic Ocean.

Chinese Table Tennis Exercise Music Video

Here's the video (7:23) of a huge number of juniors in China, all in matching yellow & black uniforms, shadow practice in unison to music.

Clayton Kershaw's Ping Pong Charity Events

Here's the article from Table Tennis Nation.

Great Point

Here's the video (57 sec, including slo mo replay).

Giant Ping-Pong Robot

Here's the article and videos from Table Tennis Nation.

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.)

Ping-Pong Ball Breakfast

Here's the video. Go to 1:11, and see the ping-pong segment as we get . . . poached pong?

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Send us your own coaching news!

Larry, the video in Chinese Table Tennis Exercise Music Video is not an original but a copy. The original is by E.L.I.T.E. Table Tennis Club and can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/EliteTableTennisClub/videos/966749933344224/?fref=nf

The moves make much more sense with the original music as well.

Regards.