Good Tactics Lead to Confidence

Thank about the last time you played a match and got nervous. Now ask yourself this: What were your tactics in that match? If you are like the overwhelming majority of players I've worked with over the years in that situation, you probably didn't have a strong game plan - you were probably just winging it. And so, unsure of what you were doing, you were (drum roll please) . . . unsure of what you were doing. And it is that lack of surety that often leads to nervousness.

So next time you are nervous, ask yourself what your game plan is, and come up with a coherent one. Not only will this give your mind something to think about other than your upcoming doom loss, but it will give yourself the confidence that you know what you are doing. You still have to execute the shots, but it's a lot easier to be confident when you know what you are doing than when you don't. Plus, this confidence allows you to think a bit more clearly and so play even better tactics. In other words:

Good Tactics => Confidence => Good Tactics => Even More Confidence

When I talk to players after losses, often they'll blame their loss on nervousness. It's only when I question them that the truth comes out! (An expanded version of this will likely become a Tip of the Week!)

World Championships

They are from April 26 - May 3 in Suzhou, China. Here are some links. USA is now out of everything, but we did decently in Men's Doubles, where Timothy Wang and Kanak Jha made the final 32. USA isn't that strong now, but think of where we might be in 4-6 years, when our current powerhouse group of cadets are reaching their peaks!!!

Top 20 Chuck Norris Table Tennis Facts

I thought I'd have a little fun this morning. Let's see if you can come up with your own Chuck Norris table tennis facts! Comment below - if there are a lot of good ones, I'll refer to them in tomorrow's blog. I saw a thread like this in the OOAK table tennis forum, but they were doing non-table tennis Chuck Norris sayings. (There's actually a Chuck Norris Facts page - I contributed about 50 of them.)

Man in the Table Tennis Arena

Historically most table tennis leaders have judged themselves not on how much they accomplished, but on how few mistakes they made. They'd go through an entire forgettable career patting themselves on the back for not making mistakes, all the while avoiding doing anything that might risk putting a stain on this great record that few will remember. This is a recipe for what I call "stagnation with a forced smile." We get it a lot.

While getting things right ranks high for me as well, I tend to judge a person's record more on what they actually accomplish. The two are not mutually exclusive; the key is not letting one affect the other, i.e. avoid trying new and possibly risky things so as to avoid mistakes. I'm pretty forgiving of those who make mistakes while trying new things in our sport. This doesn't mean recklessly doing things; part of trying something new is thinking it through and avoiding doing stupid stuff. Otherwise you aren't really trying something new so much as just being reckless. The best way to avoid doing stupid stuff while trying something new? Talk to those who have been working successfully in our sport for years and get their advice on pitfalls to avoid. What may be new to you may not be completely new to them.

To accomplish a lot means trying new things a lot, and that means more mistakes than those poor souls who are afraid of trying anything new with any risk. But without people trying to accomplish things, and sometimes taking risks, nothing gets accomplished. You can't develop a new program without risk, because anything new is a risk. It doesn't mean jumping in at full thrust; remember the saying that "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Plan out the journey as best you can, but take that step. If it turns out the step is in the wrong direction you can always change later. Those who never take the step never make the journey.

Tip of the Week

Your Ready Position - Think Basketball.

Adult Beginning/Intermediate Class

With Raghu Nadmichettu and Josh Tran out of town at the Westchester Open, Coach Jeffrey Zeng Xun assisted this time. We focused on three things this session, which ran 6:30-8:00PM on Sunday.

First up was the forehand loop against block. We demonstrated and I explained, and then they went out to the tables to try it. I had them do it for 7.5 minutes each, twice each. The hardest parts for most adults learning to loop is to use the whole body rather than mostly arm. There's also a tendency to try to stroke it too quickly instead of a smooth, accelerating swing.

Next we did serve and attack. But before we got to that I knew the players would need to get their regular shots back. After all that looping - the first time ever against block for many of them - they'd likely lift their regular forehands and go off the end. So I had them do two minutes of forehand to forehand, as well as two minutes of backhand to backhand and backhand to backhand pushing. Then we began the drill. The server served backspin, the receiver pushed to a pre-arranged spot, the server looped to the receiver's backhand, and then they played out the point.

Finally, for the last 20 minutes, I brought out a bunch of different rackets for "show and tell," and went over the various characteristics. I had two different types of hardbat rackets, a sandpaper racket, longs pips with sponge and without sponge, pips out on a shakehands and penhold blade, antispin, plus tensored inverted.

Other Miscellaneous Stuff

The Coaching Zone: The USATT Coaching Page

You're practicing to reach another level, a level not of rating but of improvement. A journey to advanced performance whose boundaries are how hard you train and how good your coaching. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the USATT Coaching Page!

Have you visited it recently? Here's a quick rundown, from the top:

State Championships

Here's my vision: 50 state championships in 2016 . . . a USATT page devoted to listing and glorifying these champions . . . a "Parade of Champions" a the USA Nationals where these champions march through the arena . . . regional media coverage all over the U.S. of these tournaments . . . Let's make it happen!

I've had numerous discussions with USATT CEO Gordon Kaye on these State Championships, which he's been pushing for since he was hired. He asked me to take charge of it. I plan to have sample entry forms, proto-type web pages, ready-to-use software, etc. More on this late as things develop. It's all part of the three-pronged approach to developing regional and state associations, with the other two prongs (which I'll focus on later) being training centers & coaching programs, and team leagues. (I'm working on these issues as the volunteer USATT Regional Associations Coordinator.) Here's the current listing of State Championships.  If your state doesn't have one and you are interested in running one, email me.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Five Really Bad Coaches

Here are five examples of very bad coaches. They shall all be nameless - but none of them are currently coaching table tennis in the U.S. (Alas, the tennis coach is still active.)

1) I'm going to start not with a table tennis coach (as the next four are), but a tennis coach. For many years tennis was my side sport, reaching a 4.0 level, which is pretty good. I'd often schedule my table tennis coaching so I could stop by the local tennis center for 90-minute group sessions, often 2-3 times a week. During those years I worked with many coaches, and all agreed I had the most lopsided game they'd ever seen - a very strong forehand (100% due to my table tennis, as were my other strengths), quick feet, very nice lob and very good drop shot. But the rest of my game was rather weak - weak serve (especially second serve), weak backhand (I mostly sliced), weak backhand volley, barely adequate overhead. But I loved to race around smacking in forehands, and was especially good at hitting winners off second serves, which made up for players attacking my own weak second serve.

I always told coaches I had two rules - "Larry's Rules" (tennis version):

Rule One: Don't worry about my forehand, coach me on everything else. My forehand was so much better than the rest of my game it was pointless focusing on that. Because I hit it with a hybrid stroke between table tennis and tennis, I lost some power, but made up for it by taking the ball very early, often on the rise, with precise accuracy and placement, and by throwing my whole body into each shot.

Ogimura Book - Some Tidbits

I'm nearly done reading "Ogi: The Life of Ichiro Ogimura." It's currently only available in Japanese; I had to have someone send me the English version, which is only available in England. Stellan Bengtsson first alerted me to the English version, which I hope to make available in the U.S. later on. (Don't know who Ichiro Ogimura is? Probably the most influential player in table tennis history!!!)

I'm taking a lot of notes about Ogimura, and plan to incorporate much of it into my fantasy table tennis novella, "The Spirit of Pong." (I blogged about this on March 16 and several times since.) Here are some interesting tidbits I've learned.

Tip of the Week

Visualize Serves for Feedback.

Sunday Classes and Continuing Arm Problems

Due to my arm problems I had to cancel or get substitutes for all of my private coaching over the weekend. On Sunday I had two classes, a junior class from 4:30-6:00 PM and an adult beginning/intermediate class from 6:30-8:00PM.

In the junior class we had a couple of new players, so I spent a lot of time working with them to get them started. One of them (age 9) seemed a nervous wreck at the start, but by the end of the session he was hitting pretty good forehands and was smiling - and his mom immediately signed him up for the next ten weeks. Working with juniors can take a lot of energy because you have to constantly supervise them or you'll find them changing their grips and strokes, but if you set the right atmosphere and policies, things usually go pretty well. The standard in this class is we train hard for an hour, and then we do 30 minutes of games.

For games we did two things this session. First, we pulled out Froggy, and divided the players into two groups. They took turns, two shots each, trying to hit the poor amphibian as I fed multiball. The two teams were fair, and split the two games played to ten hits. Then we brought out the paper cups, and they build huge structures (this time creating a wall around Froggy, which I called the "Pretty Good Wall of China), and then took turns knocking them down.

USA State Championships and Other Listings

As the USATT Regional Associations Coordinator, I'm preparing to start working with members around the country to set up regional and state associations. However, as I've blogged before, creating these associations is NOT the goal - they are a MEANS to a goal, which is a huge increase in table tennis activity and USATT membership. I'm using a three-pronged approach toward this. I've blogged repeatedly about two of these - creating training centers and coaching programs, and regional team leagues. The third prong is state championships.

The goal is 50 state championships in 2016. (DC as well!) For you non-Americans, there are 50 states, so yeah, we want one in every state.

Of course, the word "goal" isn't the right one either, since once again it is not really the goal, but another means to the goal of huge table tennis activity and USATT membership. But you need sub-goals to reach final goals, so we'll call 50 state championships a goal.

Once we have regional and state associations, they will be responsible for organizing their own state championships. (Since regional associations and state associations don't always coincide, there'll be some negotiating between associations to make sure each state gets a championship.) I will work with them to make sure each association has contact info for all the major media in their region - newspapers, TV, and radio. And so before and after each state championship there should be a flood of press releases, leading to lots of press coverage.

I envision every year at the USA Nationals in December a "Parade of Champions," held between major matches in the arena, where every state champion present marches by, with each one identified by the announcer by name, title, and state.