June 23, 2016
It's Fun Hitting with the (Future) Stars!
Yesterday in our MDTTC camp I got to work with someone who I'm guessing you'll be hearing about in a few years – but for now, I'll just call him "Smash," since that's what he likes to do, and I started calling him that during the session. As he will carefully explain, he's not five years old, he's five and a half. He was in my multiball group for three hours, so I worked with him a lot. (I'd worked with him a few times before.) He's got nice strokes, can do footwork drills at a pretty fast pace without missing much, and is already starting to loop. How did he learn all this so young? Well, it helps living near a club like MDTTC. It also helps that his older brother is another fast up-and-coming junior (who you'll be hearing about even sooner), who, as Smash explained, has been teaching him to smash. He has good form, great focus, is very physical, and with an older brother to practice with, the sky's the ceiling.
Or perhaps I've just been hit in the head with a ping-pong ball one too many times. Or perhaps to me it's happened to two too (giggle) many times – yes, that's how many times I was smacked REALLY HARD in the head yesterday. It's part of the profession, but I probably get hit like this perhaps once a month. I got smacked twice in the forehead about five minutes apart by two very hard-hitting kids in multiball, and it left me with a headache.
But then ping-pong is a dangerous sport. One girl yesterday cut her finger trying to pry a broken ping-pong ball into two equal halves, and needed a band aid. The day before one ran into another during a two-player multiball footwork drill, and a player went left when he was supposed to go right, and they collided. And of course we spend a lot of time killing.
History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 18
We're DONE – almost. All 26 chapters and the covers are complete; I've even done the advertising flyer for him. However, he has lots and Lots and LOTS of corrections, and tomorrow is correction day. We started on them this afternoon and got through 94 pages worth. We should finish today, and then he'll go home Friday morning – allowing me to focus on resting up for running the Maryland State Championships this weekend.
The final totals: 444 pages and 1548 graphics, and that's just for the years 1990-91. The last volume was an even 450 pages and 1500 graphics. (It was 1499 before I added one just to get to 1500.) Now here's an exercise: imagine taking a picture into Photoshop, and spending some time cleaning it up with various filters, adjusting the contrast and brightness, cropping, and then pulling it into the final document and placing it. Now do that 1548 times. Check back with me when you're done. That's what I've been doing for 15 days.
I did get to read some interesting stuff along the way, and there's a lot of stuff I wrote that's in this volume – probably 20 different articles. I posted one yesterday, "The Ping-Pong Apartments," and may post others later on, if they are pertinent. Most are coaching articles, player profiles, or player analysis. I had a series of articles back then where I'd analyze two top players (international or USA), going over their strengths and weaknesses, and about what each wanted to do tactically against each other.
Ask the Coach Show
Episode #262 (19:05) - Developing Unique Serves
Have You Practiced Your Serves Today?
Just do it!!!
USATT Insider
Here's the new issue that came out yesterday.
Battle for Olympic Seedings at the 2016 Korea Open
Here's the ITTF press release about the battle in Korea for higher seeding at the upcoming Olympics.
Interview with Robert Eriksson
Here's the video (4:12) by Samson Dubina of the Swedish player, who's been playing in the European Super Leagues for the past twelve years.
Datto Ping
Here's the video (70 sec) from Table Tennis England of Datto Ping's launch, showing the benefits of table tennis.
Table Tennis Strangulation
Something MUST be done about the recent surge of deaths by ping-pong net strangulation.
***
Send us your own coaching news!
