October 26, 2015
Tip of the Week
Develop a Practice Partner.
Nationals – I'm Top Seed in All Four Events!
Yes, it's true. Okay, so far only 192 have entered, but that's roughly 1/4 of the expected 800 players. This year, besides coaching, attending meetings, and selling my books, I'm entered in four events – Hardbat Singles, Over 40 Hardbat Singles, Hardbat Doubles (with Ty Hoff), and the FASTT Sandpaper Singles. Here's the list of entries by player and by event (set dropdown menu to "2015 USA Nationals") – and as you can see, I'm top seed in all four!!!
Although I'm normally a sponge player, and that makes up the vast majority of my coaching, I've also been a hardbat player at the Open and Nationals for many years. (I've won Hardbat Singles twice, Over 40 Hardbat four times, Hardbat Doubles 13 times – nine with Ty Hoff, four with Steve Berger – and Over 50 Hardbat Doubles twice – once each with Jay Turberville and Jeff Johnson). But age has slowed me down, making it difficult to play my mostly all-out forehand attacking game. (I mostly chop on the backhand, where I'm pretty good, but not good enough to chop down the top hardbatters, especially with the fast racket I use to enhance my attacking.)
I'm retired from tournament sponge play, and I've retired from tournament hardbat play at least two or three times in disgust at my play. But this year might be different. I decided to try to win a few of these events one more time. And so I've done two things.
First, I've been dieting for about three weeks, and have gone from 196 lbs to 185. I plan to continue right down to perhaps 175, and then go to a weight maintenance diet. Here's the Larry diet, ©2015. (I also have a daily vitamin pill.)
- Breakfast: 4 oz Banana nut muffin and half a glass of Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice
Calories: 450- Mid-morning snack: Granny Smith Apple (sometimes varied with a pear, grapefruit, or handful of carrots)
Calories: 80- Lunch: Various soups from Campbell's Chunky and Progresso brands. I stocked up with several each of over ten types.
Calories: 200-300- Dinner: More soup! (But I vary it sometimes with salads.)
Calories: 200-300- Splurge #1: I allow myself one 7.5 oz can of Mountain Dew per day. (Actually, I've skipped this 2-3 times a week, and often only drink half of it. But I also ate a handful of peanuts the other day, so we'll leave this at the full caloric value.)
Calories: 110- Splurge #2: I allow myself a bag of popcorn every other day
Calories: 300, so about 150/day- Total daily calories: ~1300/day
According to the Calorie Counter (where I put in my height of 5'10", starting weight of 196, age 55, and put myself down as "active" (I do coach a lot of hours plus I'm weight training – see below), to maintain my starting weight I need about 3100 calories/day. Since 3100-1300=1800, and a pound of fat is 3600 calories, I should be losing a pound every two days. And guess what? I've dieted about three weeks – call it 22 days – and that means losing about 11 pounds, exactly what I've lost!!!
Second, I started weight training three weeks ago, three times a week. My routine takes about 30 minutes. I blogged about this on Oct. 7.
This will be a good test of whether getting in better shape will affect my play at the Nationals. We'll see! (But I already do feel more energized than before.)
State Championships
I blogged about this initiative on Friday, and it's a USATT news item. The goal is to have state championships in all 50 states in 2016. Since Friday we've had volunteers to run state championships from five new states! I'll blog more about this later. If you are interested in running a state championship, and there isn't one already in your state, contact me.
Polish Open
Here's the ITTF home page for the event, which finished yesterday, with results, articles, pictures, and video. The event was held in Warsaw, POL, Oct. 21-25. Here are some links:
- Men's Singles Main Draw
- Women's Singles Main Draw. Women's side just isn't interesting to me much these days – it's repetitively all Chinese, with an occasional Japanese or other Asian player in there, though rarely winning. The #1 non-Asian woman in the world is Elizabeth Samara of Romania, world #16, which tells us that something is wrong with the training of women outside Asian countries. (Han Yang of Germany is #8 in the world, but she's a former Chinese star.) On the men's side, it's also mostly Chinese, but there are several non-Chinese players who do regularly challenge the Chinese stars, and it is those conflict which are most interesting – such as what happened here, at the Polish Open Men's Semifinal and Final, as well as the Men's Doubles Final, where a pair from Sweden defeated a pair from Poland.
- Women's Final: Liu Shiwen (CHN) d. Ding Ning (CHN) (5:05, with Ding retiring because of injury after two games).
- Men's Final: Fan Zhendong (CHN) d. Stefan Fegerl (AUT) (14:05): 1,-9,-9,3,7,-8,7
- Men's Semifinal: Stefan Fegerl upsets Zhang Jike (14:47), 15,-6,-8,8,3,13. Here's a highlights point (36 sec)!
- Insane Athleticism by Xu Xin (24 sec)
- ITTF Polish Open videos. Here's the ITTF videos page, where you can find videos from all ITTF events.
- Highlights video (5:22) of Ma Long vs. 12-year-old Harimoto Tomokazu of Japan in round of 64. On Friday I linked to the ITTF article on him being youngest ever to reach the main draw in an ITTF Tour event, and video of his upset of world #72 Tan Ruiwu (world #72) from Croatia. Here's an article from Tabletennista on him – his idol? Fan Zhendong.
Playing Less Predictably
Here's the new coaching article from Han Xiao, which features and analyzes the recent World Men's Cup Final between Ma Long and Fan Zhendong (including a link to the video).
Ask the Coach Show
Episode #179 (23:20) – Drills Before a Tournament (and other segments)
Table Tennis School – Doubles Training
Here's the video (17:07).
Olympic Coach Magazine
The new issue of Olympic Coach Magazine (Fall, 2015) just came out.
2015 World Cup Highlights with Jimmy Butler
Here's the video (3:44).
World's Best Cadets Prepare for 2015 World Cadet Challenge
Here's the highlights music video (46 sec).
Bouncing Ball on Racket Handles
On Friday I linked to this challenge made to top players – here's the video (3:18), with Xu Win setting the record with 55 in a row. At the end of the video players were challenged to try to top these players. And here are two responses!
95-year-old from England Still Perfecting Her Game
Here's the article on Rita Tanner.
Around-the-Net Rolling Loop
Here's the video (15 sec, including slow-motion replay).
Great Scoop off Floor, Ball Rolls on Table
Here's the video (11:33, with the point in question starting 38 seconds in – link should take you directly there). The match itself is a great counterlooping duel as Mihai Bobocica (world #89, #1 from Italy) defeats Kirill Gerrassimenko (a young player from Kazakhstan) in seven games.
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.)
- Breakfast Anyone?
- Puppy Pong? (Is this the cutest ping-pong picture ever?)
Ping-Pong Ball vs. Ping-Pong Ball
Here's video (10 sec) of Kevin Korb pounding a ball off his shoe . . . sort of. "When your office is a ping pong club, you find creative ways to fit #trickshots into the daily routine."
Table Tennis Trick Shots
Here's the video (32 sec) of all sorts of crazy trick shots.
Ma Long and Chen Weixing Go Around the Table
Here's the video (32 sec) as the two clown around.
A Cartwheeling Killer Smash to the Gut!
Here's the sad, sad video (37 sec, including slow motion as the mortally wounded Shmyrev falls to the ground) as Agent 0011 – Rushton, Andrew Rushton – takes down Russian agent Maxim Shmyrev with a killer shot in this sandpaper rally.
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