May 18, 2016

Backspin Serves for Kids, and Making the Ball Return Into or Over the Net
Had an interesting session yesterday with two kids, ages 7 and 9. You'd think kids that age are balls of energy, wanting to smack the ball over and over. But when they get interested in something, that becomes their whole focus – and that's what happened yesterday.

I'd been teaching them backspin serves recently. It was new to the 7-year-old, while the 9-year-old was a bit more advanced. It started with the 7-year-old rushing out to the table five minutes early, and with a bucket of balls, trying to serve backspin so the ball would bounce backward. I'd demonstrated this to him a few days before, and he badly wanted to do it. He was able to serve so the ball would sometimes come to a stop, or even sometimes bounce backwards, though usually with the ball never reaching the net. He wanted to serve so it would go to the other side and bounce back into the net, as I'd shown him. And so began our hour-long Odyssey. (Here's the serve in question, though they aren't doing it with a high toss.) 

Seeing the other trying to do it, the 9-year-old joined in as both tried to make the ball bounce back into the net. I showed them how to do it, guiding them through the motion. And lo and behold, suddenly the 7-year-old did it! Excited, he continued to do it. Then the 9-year-old did it. I'd thought this would be a good thing to practice at the start of the session, and we'd go to regular practice afterwards. But they didn't want to stop! And so they continued – only now they had an even bigger goal – make the ball bounce back over the net, to their side, as I'd also demonstrated. Now that's a trick serve not normally done in tournaments – advanced players see it coming and smack it, and most players can reach them anyway. (Though not kids.) And so the Odyssey continued as they tried to both make the ball bounce backward and bounce back over the net. (I couldn't find a video of this, but the idea is you serve a bit high so the ball hits just short of the net, goes over the net, and then bounces backwards over the net again, returning to your side.) 

They didn't want to stop, and so we ended up doing almost the entire hour on this. In the end, both were able to make it bounce backwards most of the time, and each managed to make it bounce back to their side five times each. (A tie!) It was great practice – they now have very good racket acceleration and grazing contact on their serves, and they can control it – you can't do these serves if you can't control where the bounces are.

The last five or so minutes we did an alternate variation where I put a cup on the table on the far side, along the right sideline, halfway between the net and the end-line, and demonstrated "Making the Tour." I served forehand pendulum sidespin from my forehand side (on right) so the ball bounced first on the backhand side on my side of the table, then on the far left side on the other side, and then spun back to the right side, curving until it hit and knocked the cup off the table. They were determined to do this – and after a few minutes, both managed to knock it off.

And so ended a great session – without one rallying shot. Except the session didn't end there – the 7-year-old didn't want to stop, and continued practicing his backspin serve for another 30 minutes, until I had to kick him off the table since I could start a coaching session! (Then he borrowed my smart phone and spent the next hour calling up pictures of his other huge interest –jets and planes.)

Hitting Cups with Serves
Here's the video (14 sec). And here's a challenge: you should be able to hit each cup let's say 2/3 of the time. Then you should be able to hit all three consecutively (2/3)^3=~30%. If you really want to be a champion, then you should hit each cup 9/10 of the time, or all three 73% of the time. Go to it!  

How to Learn From a Defender
Here's the new coaching article from Carl Danner.

Advice About Trying Table Tennis Rubber with Pips
Here's the article.

Backhand Banana Flip
Here's a nice video (1:49) where it's demonstrated for both shakehand and reverse penhold. It's by an Asian coach, probably Chinese and speaking Chinese, but you can learn from the video itself. (Can someone identify the language? Update - Doug Harley tells me it's regular Mandarin Chinese.)

Ma Long Forehand Loop
Here's the video (48 sec). I might have linked to this once before, but it's a good one to study – especially the slow motion part.

Supermicro Named Title Sponsor of 2016 USATT National Championships
Here's the USATT news item.

2016 USA Table Tennis National Championship “Shout Out”!
Here's the new USATT feature – have a special message printed in the USA Nationals Program Book!

China's Squad for Rio Olympics 2016 Announced
Here's the listing and discussion.

Sport for All with Equal Dignity
Here's the article by Massimo Costantini.

Alabama Closed
Here's the article, results, and pictures.

Zi Rui Zhao Wins the Newgy Ohio Open
Here's the article and picture.

Pittsburgh Steel City Open
Here's the article and pictures.

Pongstarz and Cornilleau Partner with the Lausd Move It Challenge at Dodger Stadium
Here's the article.

Swedish Table Tennis Association Celebrates 90 Years
Here's the article.

Trainerbot Will Push Your Ping-Pong Skills to the Limit
Here's the article. Of course, much of this follows for any good table tennis robot.

Liu Shiwen, Queen of Amazing rallies!
Here's the video (2:08) – first rally shown is incredible.

Romain Lorentz Big Defense
Here's the video (39 sec) of some great lobbing and fishing!

Andrew Luck Wants to Buy Robot to Play Ping Pong With
Here's the article. "The Indianapolis Colts quarterback was asked during an appearance on 'The Ringer NFL Show' with Kevin Clark what the nerdiest thing he would buy with the money from his next contract. 'That's a good question,' Luck said. 'Maybe, like, a robot ping-pong thing that can hit balls back at you. My buddy has one and he swears by it.'"

Full-Speed Animated Three-Headed Robotic Pong
Here's the repeating gif image! You don't need coffee in the morning after seeing this.

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