November 7, 2017

Weekend Coaching and Coaching Correspondence
I was going to write about my weekend coaching yesterday, but then that thing about USA bidding for the Worlds came up, and, well, it was a tough call - what's more interesting, the World Championships or reading about Larry's coaching sessions? Of course you want to hear more about my coaching sessions, but I decided to save the best for later and write about the World’s first. 

As usual, I had three group sessions on Sunday. (I run two of them, help with the other.) In the Beginning Junior Class, Week 8, we introduced them to looping. Not world-class looping, not yet, but just easy spinning of a backspin ball on the forehand side. (We'll do backhand next Sunday.) About half the class was ready for this, while for others (mostly younger ones) we did more work on forehand, backhand, pushing, and footwork. We had 17 in the class, with four coaches.

In the Talent Junior Program, I fed a lot of multiball, much of it backspin so they too could work on looping, but now it was much more advanced players. I also spent time working with some of them on pushing. Two of the youngest were quite proud when they pushed 66 times in a row! (But I reminded them that at the 1936 Worlds, in the first point of their match two players pushed for two hours 18 minutes.) We had I think 24 in the class, with eight coaches and several practice partners/multiball feeders.

In the Adult Training Session, for the more advanced players we did the usual stroking and footwork drills, then some random drills, and finally serve and attack. For two who were more beginners, we did almost all stroking drills, including pushing. For the last 15 minutes I fed multiball to them so they could work on looping. (I did a lot of that on Sunday.) 

I did a lot of private coaching on Saturday, but I won't go into all of those. We had a junior group session, where we played some doubles, so I got to coach that. I also took a lot of notes on some of the players for future reference. 

The really good news? I gave out most of my Halloween candy in the junior sessions. I still have one bag of chocolates – Snickers, Twix, and M&Ms (plain and peanut). During one session I put the candy on the table and the kids had to knock it off to get it. They knocked off a few, and I gave them two pieces each afterwards.

I spent a lot of time the last two days on coaching correspondence. Some of it was coaching committee related (I chair the USATT coaching committee, and there are a bunch of things going on), but a lot were general queries on wide-ranging topics. They ranged from what a coach should say between games when he doesn't know what to say, questions on the backhand loop and two others on serving, one on games beginning juniors can play, on whether players should be allowed to split prize money in tournament finals, and others. 

International Pro Bundesliga Table Tennis Match
Here’s the promotional video (33 sec) of this upcoming match, to take place at 1PM at the JOOLA North American Teams in Washington DC on Nov. 24. Here’s the press release, which I linked to last week.

How the New ITTF World Ranking Works
Here’s the video (1:43).

Seamaster German Open
Here’s the home page for the event. It begins today in Magdeburg, GER, Nov. 7-12.

More from EmRatThich

How to Read Service Spin
Here’s the video (7:43) by Tom Lodziak.

Successful Athlete vs. Unsuccessful Athlete
Here’s the chart. (Here’s the non-Facebook version.)

Training With Dimitrij Ovtcharov and Timo Boll at the 2017 World Cup
Here’s the video (22:22).

Skeleton Attack T-Shirt
Here’s the Kickstarter page for this new shirt design from Steve Worthington, including a link to video (1:25). He needs $200 in pledges; he’s already up to $80. Pretty nice design!

Crazy Hand Swap Rally
Here’s the video (31 sec), which is a nice rally to start with, ending with the great hand switch shot by Jay Hagberg.

Ping Pong Zombie Trick by G Sparks
Here’s the video (21 sec). How do you do this trick? Here’s the how to video (3:19).

The First to 21 Points Gets Into the Country
Here’s the cartoon! (Did Mexico pay for the net? Though the cartoon is actually listed as “UK border, so perhaps they’ll try to make the Irish pay?)

***
Send us your own coaching news!