July 1, 2016

Last Blog until Tuesday, July 12
I'm actually going out of town for a month, July 3 – Aug 3. I don't plan to blog during most of this time – even I need vacations! – but I do plan to blog from July 11 to July 22, during the USATT Super Camp. Here's my upcoming schedule:

  • July 3-9: USA Nationals in Las Vegas;
  • July 10-22: coaching at the  USATT Supercamp at the Lily Yip TTC in New Jersey;
  • July 22-30: at the TNEO Science Fiction Writing Workshop in Manchester, NH;
  • July 31-Aug. 3: coaching at the Junior Olympics in Houston.

I won't actually be gone continuously for a month. I'm flying to Las Vegas on Sunday, returning the following Sunday morning (on a Saturday night red-eye flight, landing 7AM at BWI Airport), then I quickly finalize packing, and drive to New Jersey for the Supercamp. Then I drive from there to New Hampshire for the writing workshop. Then I drive all the way back to Maryland on June 30, and fly out to Houston on July 31, flying back late on Aug. 3. (Or perhaps staying the night, and returning Aug. 4.)

Preparing for the Nationals and USATT Supercamp
As a coach, I don't train much as a player. But I'll be playing in three events next week at the USA Nationals, though as usual playing has to take second priority over coaching – but I still want to win all my events do well. I'm in three events: Over 50 Men's Doubles with Ty Hoff; Hardbat Doubles with Ty Hoff; and Over 40 Hardbat Singles.

At last year's Nationals Ty and I played the top seeds, Li Yu Xiang and Chu Bin Hai, in the quarterfinals – and were at 8-all in the fifth before losing. (Ty and I also lost in the quarterfinals of Men's Doubles at the USA Nationals in 1989 to Jim and Scott Butler – 21-18 in the third – and the Butlers went on to win it.) This year Li & Chu are top seeded again, while Ty and I are seeded third, meaning we won't have to face them until at least the semifinals – but bring 'em on! So, how am I preparing for these big doubles matches?

I spent half an hour yesterday practicing my doubles serves (from right-hand court, of course) – mostly forehand pendulum serves, regular (sidespin left) and reverse (sidespin right). Because I've been teaching these serves to students a lot recently, a strange thing seems to be happening – I seem to have more control over them then before, at least since I stopped practicing them regularly many years ago. This is especially true of my reverse pendulum serve, which I expect to mix in with my regular ones. I've got lots of variations ready for both – backspin, side-backspin, sidespin, side-topspin, and no-spin. As an added bonus to this serve practice, several of the kids in the camp saw me practicing my serves, and next thing I know, a pack of them joined me, all practicing their serves. One kept asking me how to do them, and so I finished the session working with him on his serve. (This was during break!)

In Hardbat Singles and Doubles I'll likely use the same serves – I plan to practice my hardbat serves tomorrow, along with perhaps some more inverted serving. The main difference in my hardbat singles serves is that I mix in far more deep serves – I like to mix in short serves to the middle and long ones to the wide backhand, always following them, if humanly possible, with a forehand. I've won Hardbat Doubles 13 times, nine times with Ty. I've won Over 40 Hardbat four times. I've also won Hardbat Singles twice, but am not playing that this year. (These are for both the USA Nationals and the U.S. Open.)

To prepare for coaching at the Nationals I've been spying on the players I'll be coaching. At the Nationals during our first warm-up session I'll have them throw all their serves at me so I have a good feel for what serves they can do and how they come out. (Of course, I'm pretty familiar with their serves already, but more is better.) I'll mostly be coaching Adrian at the Nationals, but when he and I aren't playing, I'll likely coach other MDTTC players.

To prepare for the USATT Supercamp – where 25 of the top USA juniors will be training in New Jersey, July 10-24 – I spent some time working on my speed multiball. Our top juniors do most of their training now with our top 2550 Chinese practice partner/coaches, and so I mostly feed multiball to players under 2000. So I have to make sure my multiball is ready for the 2500 crowd. The main difference is I almost always bounce the ball on my side when feeding multiball, which is standard when feeding backspin and for most topspin drills. But when going full-speed, it's better to feed the ball directly into the paddle, and I've gotten rusty at that. So a few people at the club saw a strange sight this afternoon during break – me feeding multiball to the table tennis robot's net. I still feel a bit slow at it, so I might have to work at it some more. (I have to leave the camp two days early to go to my writing workshop. Normal people vacation at the beach, camping, Disneyworld, etc.; I go to science fiction writing workshops.)

But it's not just multiball I need to prepare for the camp – I'm also going to be chopping practice partner for the players. Though I'm normally an attacker, I chop at about a 2150 level – almost as good as my normal game – and so tomorrow I plan to get some extra chopping practice in so I'm ready. I have my own chopping blade, a Butterfly Joo Saehyuk blade with Tackiness Chop II 1.9mm black on the forehand, Feint Long II 1.3mm red on the backhand. (I actually had Tenergy 05 2.1 on the forehand so I could both chop and attack, but switched to Tackiness Chop II for the camp so I can chop better.) I normally use a Butterfly Timo Boll ALC blade with Tenergy 05 2.1 black on forehand, Tenergy 25 2.1 red on forehand.

It's going to be a busy time, but compared to the past month, this next month will be a breeze. Those reading this blog regularly know of all the tribulations this past month as I struggled to put together History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 18 (!) with Tim Boggan (the proof copy was just ordered for Tim) while trying to do all my other work. Last night, besides doing most of this blog, I also put together the MDTTC Newsletter and about twenty other things as I try to get ahead on as much as possible before leaving for a month.

Dan Seemiller's Autobiography
Here's the promotional flyer for this, coming Aug. 31 – you don't want to miss it! (I'm working with him on the editing, page layouts, photos, and print on demand publishing. Plus I'll likely be the first outside Dan's club to get to read it!!!)

13 Stages: Develop a systematic approach to learning a new skill
Here's the coaching article from Samson Dubina.

The Serve
Here's the coaching article by Aiman Fazeer Yap.

Interview with Alan Cooke: England’s Performance Coach
Here's the podcast (43:44) from Expert Table Tennis. In this episode you’ll learn:

  • Alan’s review of the World Team Championships [1:30]
  • An update on Rio 2016 for Team GB [3:00]
  • How Paul, Liam, and Sam prepared for Kuala Lumpur [5:00]
  • The current plans for Rio 2016 [10:00]
  • How and why to use periodization in your table tennis training [11:45]
  • How to use goal setting for your tournaments [14:15]
  • How to stay focused during a tournament [16:30]
  • Alan’s coaching style and philosophy [19:00]
  • What Alan says to the players in the corner [22:30]
  • The correct mindset when facing “unbeatable players” [25:30]
  • How to debrief, reflect, and learn after a tournament [27:30]
  • Using video analysis to learn about yourself and others [31:30]
  • What the plan is for Team GB after Rio [33:00]
  • What separates top 50 players from top 20 players in the world [35:15]
  • The future for English table tennis [38:00]

Ask the Coach Show

DHS ITTF Top 10 at the 2016 Korea Open
Here's the video (6:02).

USATT Insider
Here's the new issue that came out on Wednesday.

U.S. Table Tennis Player Will Be the Youngest in Olympic History
Here's the article from USA Today featuring Kanak Jha.

An Introduction to Coach Pieke Franssen (Part One)
Here's the article.

USA and International Table Tennis
Here's my periodic note (usually every Friday) that you can great international coverage at the ITTF home page (which does great regional coverage). Butterfly also has a great news page. (Tabletennista, which used to do great international coverage, apparently closed down after May 31.) For USA coverage, see the USA Table Tennis News Page.

Best Animated Table Tennis Videos
Here's a selection of some of the best animated table tennis I know of – enjoy! (I've linked to all of them in the past.) Sorry, no anime – there's just too much of that to go through. I'm sure I'm missing some good ones that I just don't recall at the moment – feel free to add links to others below.

Trump Umpiring Table Tennis
Here's the new video (4:24)! (From Larry Bavly.)

Non-Table Tennis – Penguins of Noah's Ark
My new humorous story Penguins of Noah's Ark just went up at Galaxy's Edge! It answers the age-old question of just how two penguins in the Antarctic managed to make their way to the Middle East in time for Noah's Ark. It also answers a lot of questions about dinosaurs, burning bushes, and the Garden of Eden. Galaxy's Edge is one of the top "Pro" markets – I'm sharing the table of contents with George R.R. Martin, Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick, Nancy Kress, and Gregory Benford, all huge names in SF.

***
Send us your own coaching news!