August 11, 2015

Tip of the Week

You Can Be Light on Your Feet. (Includes links to videos.)

Coaching and Other Activities

It's been a busy few days. Here's a quick rundown.

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY
I did little coaching these days, and instead spent nearly the entire time glued to my desk. I gave pretty much a grocery list of things I'm working on in my July 23 blog (before I left for my nine-day writing workshop "vacation"), and I basically jumped from one thing to another for two days. I also started work on rewrites of the three stories I had critiqued at the writing workshop. 

SUNDAY
It was a rather long day. It started with several hours of private coaching. We're doing some technical adjustments for one of my students, a rising junior, and so spent a lot of time on that. (Shorter, more forward stroke, and related issues.) Then came a junior class, where we did a lot of fundamental work, and then spent a lot of time on serves. Then came my Sunday night training session, where we had eight adults training together. It's pretty physical - lots of footwork and attacking drills. (But the attacking drills means that the other player is working on his defense and ball control, mostly blocking.) With Raghu Nadmichettu assisting as a practice partner and moving from player to player about every ten minutes, everyone got lots of good practice. We finished with serve practice, where I emphasized the smooth acceleration of the wrist and fine grazing motion, which leads to tremendous spin.

MONDAY
This was Day One of Week Nine of our summer camps. (There will be eleven weeks in all, Mon-Fri all summer through Aug. 28.) After working the previous few days mostly with more advanced players, this was a switch as I spent most of the day working with beginners in the 6-8 age range - plus a memorable four-year-old. (I won't go into that here!) It's a great group, and given their ages, they worked pretty hard - but they played even harder. They had a memorable hide and seek competition during break - MDTTC, at 10,000 square feet and lots of barriers, tables, couches, etc., provides a lot of hiding places. There was also a memorable paper airplane competition during lunch break, which somehow morphed into a "zombies attacking others with paper airplanes" that's not really possible to explain - you had to be there.

I probably emphasize serve practice more than other coaches. This is both 1) I believe serve and receive are the most under-practiced aspects of the game; 2) good serves allow a player to dominate play, develop their shots faster, and so raise their level - which has the double whammy of allowing the player to compete with stronger players, thereby improving their play even more; and 3) if you develop good serves, you understand them, and so learn to return them better. I'm in a constant state of disbelief at the lack of serving skills by many players who train long hours but never reach their potential because of this. 

One player was so shy that he/she completely ignored me and the ball at first, just letting ball after ball go by while refusing to even look up. I did everything I could to get the player's attention, but to no avail. I'd already gone over the basic forehand as a group, and had them all shadow practice. I kept going to the player's side of the table to get the player's attention, but to little avail. After several minutes trying to get any reaction, I gave up, and went to the next player. The player's brother told me the player was super shy and had a short attention span. As the day went on, the shy player got better, but it was a long, gradual struggle. The player did like doing ball pickup, which helped, but was a bit oblivious to those hitting on tables, and I had to keep shooing the player away from players so the player wouldn't get hit by someone's backswing. By the end of the day the player was beginning to lose the shyness, and I have a feeling as the week goes on I'm going to miss the shy version. (Notice how I cleverly/awkwardly kept saying "the player" to hide the player's gender?)

Para Pan Am Games

They are in Toronto, Aug. 7-15, with table tennis from Aug. 8-13. Here are USA results:

China Open

It finished this past weekend in Chengdu, China. Here's the ITTF home page for the event, with results, lots of articles, and a link to videos. Here are a few interesting video highlights and articles:

  • Men's Final: Ma Long vs. Xu Xin (4:40)
  • Women's Final: Ding Ning vs. Zhu Yuling (4:10)
  • Video (6:16) of Chuang Chih-Yuan's upset of Zhang Jike in round of 16
  • Two articles from Tabletennista on Japanese sensation Yuya Oshima, who made the semifinals of Men's Singles with wins over Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Koki Niwa, and Chuang Chih-Yuan before losing 4-3 in the semifinals to Ma Long.
  • Video (32 sec) of spectacular Ma Long – Chen Weixing exhibition point, with Chen lobbing from the side stands, and then they switched side (Ma was up 3-0 and 9-4).
  • Video of incredible rally (19 sec) between Mu Zi (CHN) and Ai Fukuhara (JPN), with Fukuhara up 12-11 match point in the seventh in the round of 16. (Fukuhara would still win, 14-12.)

Using Misdirection

Here's the new coaching article by Han Xiao, with a link to video.

Good, Better, Best!

Here's the new coaching article by Samson Dubina.

Eight-Shot Sequence

Here's video (11 sec) of Samson Dubina in a drill. It's a good illustration of forehand and backhand loops. It's also a great example of this week's Tip of the Week (see link at top) – see how Samson bounces slightly between each shot as preparation for the next move.

11 Questions with Samson Dubina

Here's the USATT interview. (Is today Samson Dubina Day? That's three Samson segments in a row!)

Ask the Coach Show and the Service Rule

Episode #164 (24:50) – Changing the Service Rule.

At 9:05, they talk about my serving rule proposal to solve the problem of hidden serves, but they didn't cover it very well, alas. When initially giving the proposal, they quoted the current rule but forgot to mention the actual proposal, so viewers will be confused. The basic idea is that the ball not only shouldn't be hidden from the receiver, but also should not be hidden from the net and its upward extension. (They seemed unsure if this was covered in the current serving rules – it isn't. They may have been thinking about the rule about the non-serving arm – rule 2.6.5.) I've blogged about this a number of times and have been corresponding with an ITTF official on this who said he would propose it – but told me it'll probably take some time. Here is the actual proposal, with the proposed new wording bolded.

Current Rule:
02.06.04: From the start of service until it is struck, the ball shall be above the level of the playing surface and behind the server's end line, and it shall not be hidden from the receiver by the server or his or her doubles partner or by anything they wear or carry. 

Proposed Rule:
02.06.04: From the start of service until it is struck, the ball shall be above the level of the playing surface and behind the server's end line, and it shall not be hidden from the receiver[, or any part of the net and its upward extension,] by the server or his or her doubles partner or by anything they wear or carry. 

I’ve tested this out at my club along with many others, and it solves the problem. If you try to hide the ball from an opponent in a normal ready position, it’s obvious you are hiding the ball from at least part of the net (which includes the net posts). For example, if a righty serves to a righty, there is almost a 90 degree angle in the line of sight from the ball to the opponent, and the ball to the left net post. When serving to a lefty the angle is still close to 45 degrees unless the lefty goes into an extreme forehand position.

Table Tennis Intelligence

Here's the new article from Jon's Table Tennis Training.

USATT Athletes of the Month – July

Here's the USATT article. They are Yue "Jennifer" Wu, Nikhil Kumar, and the 2015 Pan Am Women's Team (Lily Zhang, Jiaqi Zhang, and Yue "Jennifer" Wu).

USA's Victor Liu Wins Cadet Team Gold

Here's the ITTF article – he teamed with China's Xu Yingbin to win at the Hong Kong Junior and Cadet Open.

Ask a Pro Anything

Here's the video interview (3:09) of reigning World Women's Singles Champion Ding Ning, by Adam Bobrow.

Interview with Zhang Jike

Here's the video (3:32), in Chinese with English subtitles. It starts with Zhang wearing a huge Panda mask!

'Bionic' Maryland Grad Has the Heart of a Competitor

Here's another article on Navin Kumar, "The Bionic Man." (I'm his coach!)

ALS Ping Pong Ball Bucket Challenge?

Here's the article from Table Tennis Nation.

Playing Off a Rebound Board

Here's the video (1:52) – not bad!

Matt Kuchar and Samson Dubina at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational

Here's the article and video (8 sec and 4 sec) of the golf star taking on the table tennis star. Matt's pretty good!

Ping Pot Mat

Here's the picture – "It likes to go between table and hot pot." (Here's the non-Facebook version.)

Humorous Table Tennis Pictures and Video

Here's a French page with lots of humorous table tennis pictures and videos. (I've previously linked to most of them in my blog.)

Ban Junk Rubbers in Table Tennis

Here's the hilarious animated video (3:47)!

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