November 19, 2015

Periodic Physical Checklist
Okay, here's mine! (Confession – I was up half the night on something, and woke up with a headache. This inspired me to write about health stuff. It's also why today's blog is a bit shorter than usual. Back to more serious table tennis tomorrow!) I have very tight muscles, and because of that I tend to get too many injuries, alas. Part of it is my insistence of playing a physical game rather than just be steady and block. If this is boring to you, skip to the other stuff below!

  • Weight. I started dieting early in October. In about six weeks I've gone from 196 to 181, mostly by practically living on a wide variety of soups and snacking on granny smith apples and carrots. The only problem is I've been stuck at 181 for a week – I'm not sure why as I haven't changed my diet. I plan to get to 175, or maybe 170. (I'm 5'10" for perspective.)
  • Back problems. I've had minor one recently. Some may remember that twice I've had to take weeks off because of these back problems. The solution turned out to be simple – the muscles on the right side of my upper back were so much stronger than the ones on the left side (due to table tennis) that they were pulling the spine out of alignment. Solution? A simple stretching exercise where I stretch those upper right back muscles.
  • Arm problems. I still wear an arm brace as I can still feel soreness in my arm. I'm mostly being protective as wearing it really protects the arm problem from getting worse, and it's rather important to me since I coach professionally. I blogged about the solution to this problem on May 21 (second item) – hard to believe that six months later I'm still wearing the brace, but it does the job. I'm debating whether to wear it at the Nationals, but I probably should or I'll likely re-injure it with all the hitting I'll be doing in the hardbat and sandpaper events. (That's what I do when I'm not coaching or attending meetings! But I normally play sponge.)
  • Shoulder problems. I've had periodic shoulder problems in three specific spots in my shoulder, and I can still feel soreness in the three spots. But I haven't had any shoulder problems in a while.
  • Weight training. I started doing this 2-3 times a week in early October. I took last week off at the writing workshop, but am back at it again. I've lightened the routine, focusing on leg, stomach, and lower back exercises, plus chest press.
  • Eyes. I had an eye checkup yesterday. It seems my right eye has gotten a bit worse for distances, but not enough yet to need new glasses. I only wear glasses for sports (including table tennis), movies, TV, and when driving. I can read pretty comfortably without glasses, but for extensive reading I use reading glasses, mostly for the right eye. If I hold a book about two feet away, I can see fine with either eye, but even there the right eye is slightly blurry. About a month ago I accidentally rolled over on my reading glasses, bending them badly, and the left lens fell out. But since my left eye is almost just right for reading, I don't need it, and so I now only have one lens in the glasses.
  • Teeth. I see a dentist every six months, and after a number of problems all through the 1990s, I've been fine since.

How to Play Table Tennis
Here are two new coaching videos from the ITTF. Both feature Michael Maze.

Ask the Coach Show
Episode #188 (24:50) - Koki Niwa's Service Return

USATT Insider
Here's the new one that came out yesterday.

Champions League 2015/2016 - Dimitrij Ovtcharov vs Jens Lundqvist
Here's the video (6:06, with time between points removed). German star Ovtcharov is world #4, the top non-Chinese player in the world (and one spot ahead of Zhang Jike). Swedish star Lundqvist is currently only #98, but at the Swedish Open this past weekend he upset Zhang Jike, and he was ranked as high as #19 in the world back in 2003.

Liu Shiwen, Queen of Amazing Rallies!
Here's the video (2:07).

Samsonov Playing with Sandpaper
Here's the video (1:45).

How You Transport a Ping-Pong Ball
Here's the picture – it takes hundreds of trips to bring in all the balls needed for a tournament! (I think Paul Bunyan is playing King Kong.)

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