Last-Minute Looping: Learning to Loop

Yesterday I taught an 11-year-old girl to forehand loop. She'd attended ten junior group sessions I'd taught, and this was I think her fourth private session. Her forehand and backhand drives are getting pretty steady, and of course we'll continue to work on them to make them "perfect."  

Sometimes it's good to wait longer to really ingrain the forehand and backhand drives before starting them on looping, but I'm a believer in getting to looping (at least against backspin) as soon as possible. Otherwise, they tend to become pusher/blockers (since they can't attack backspin), their loops aren't as natural (since they ingrain drive strokes early on rather than topspin strokes), and they don't take advantage of a characteristic that gives them the advantage at that age - they are shorter, and so looping is a bit more natural since they can let the ball drop down to their level. Plus, it gives them something to get excited about when they begin doing shots that match what the best players in the club are doing, and that excitement leads to more focus and determination, which leads to faster improvement.

I started her on looping in the last ten minutes of the session, feeding backspin with multiball. At first she had difficulty. Sometimes she wouldn't bring her racket down enough, or she wouldn't sweep up enough and would instead start up, then switch to a more forward-driving stroke. The result was flat strokes with little topspin. The scary part here is that since I'm giving her the same spin over and over, it's pretty easy to drive the ball with light topspin, and to believe that it's a good shot. (And it would have - in the hardbat era.) So I have to explain how a drive against backspin without great topspin isn't that good and will rarely be as consistent or effective in a match situation as looping. She understood, and kept trying.

Keep a Player's Attention and Thinking

Want to bore a six-year-old? Feed him multiball and have him hit forehands for a long time. Want to inspire a six-year-old? Put a giant frog toy on the table and tell him to hit it.

Want to bore a sixty-year-old? Have him do nonstop repetitive drills without explaining anything. Want to inspire a sixty-year-old? Have him to a range of drills that cover what he does (or hopes to do) in an actual match, from repetitive drills to perfect strokes to random drills to mimic game play, and explain the purpose of each drill and technique.

Keeping a player's interest is one of those things coaches have to learn to do. If you just spew out instructions in a bland way and just do repetitive stuff, you'll lose them. You don't treat everyone like a six-year-old or a sixty-year-old, of course - it has to be both age-appropriate and personality-appropriate. Some are more analytical than others, and some just want to hit the ball. Younger players often just want to hit the ball, while older players tend to be more analytical. Yet even younger players have their analytical side, and like to think about certain aspects of the game as long as you don't overdo it. Show them something they want to learn to do, and they'll want to know how it's done.

The more the player thinks, the more interesting it is to him as he learns. Older players often enjoy learning the thinking side as much as the actual playing side - tactics, why specific techniques are better than others, mental training, etc.

Table tennis is a game of contradictions. One of them is that you need to think a lot if you want to improve. At the same time you have to clear your mind when you are in an actual rally and let your trained reactions take over - i.e. don't think.

ITTF Level 3 Coaching Course

Coaching Decisions

Here's a tough decision I've got to make - and it's a good decision to have to make. I have a student, a 7-year-old girl. She has one of those rare combinations of talent, physical ability, and mental focus. She's been playing about two months and already has nice strokes, can even forehand loop backspin with surprising power. (Yes, one month after starting, this 7-year-old was already looping.) Should I go the "normal" route and have her focus on hitting against topspin until she's bigger? Or should I have her loop the forehand against everything right from the start, since she seems to do this naturally? She's too small right now to really be successful trying to loop over and over - her hitting peers would hit her off the table. But imagine where she might be in two years. And since she's picking things up so fast, how soon should I have her spin the backhand as well? (It's tough spinning the backhand until you are taller.) Decisions, decisions . . . but I think she'll almost set the course. If she can loop over and over, then that's what I'll have her do. 

She was using a rather slow blade and sponge, but in our last session she tried out my blade - a fast carbon racket with hyper-tension sponge for looping - and fell in love with it. I was of course skeptical, thinking it was obviously too fast for her, but she was noticeably better with it, could rally faster and more consistently, and loop with great spin. (Yes, great spin at age 7.) After discussing it with her dad, we're likely going to get her the same or similar setup. Many coaches would be against this, and so would I normally, until I saw how well she played with my racket, and especially the way her eyes lit up while doing so.

2013 National Team Trials Host City Bid

Tip of the Week

Care of Equipment.

Disservice to Juniors Everywhere

I'm going to do a disservice to junior players everywhere and point out something I noticed at the MDTTC tournament this past weekend, though it's something I've mentioned before. When playing these fast and furious juniors (i.e. players that can rally faster than you can), your best option is use serve and receive to get the first attack in, usually with a loop. However, over and over I saw players losing to juniors because they kept opening with crosscourt loops, which the juniors would pounce on. These juniors do a lot of crosscourt hitting, and I think if you even snap your fingers they'll reflexively cover the crosscourt angle. The players that gave them trouble were the experienced ones who would attack down the line with their first shot, and then move to cover the wide crosscourt angle if it came back. Usually they did not.

Butterfly MDTTC September Open

Here are the main results for the MDTTC tournament I ran this weekend. Juniors dominated, with at least one in every final except Under 2350. Here's a rundown, with main results below.

Table Tennis Tactics

This past week I've been jumping back and forth from working on the page layouts of "Table Tennis Tactics: A Thinker's Guide" and 246 other things. Here's an excerpt from the book:

Table tennis is a game of utter complexity and utter simplicity. If you get too caught up in the myriad of complex strategies available, you'll be lost in a sea of uncertainty. Think KISS—"Keep It Simple, Stupid." On the other hand, if your thinking is too simple, you aren't maximizing your play.

There's no conflict here. Much of tactics involves simplifying things so the game becomes simple and easy. If you use tactics that force your opponent into predictable returns that feed into your strengths, you've won the tactical battle and made the game simple and easy. In this book we'll cover the tactical and strategic ways of doing this, as well as the tactical frame of mind that makes tactical play come naturally.

Most matches are tactically won on at most two or three tactical things, not the zillions that are possible. It's finding those two or three out of the zillions that's key. (Hey, I may add this to the book! Addendum - just did.) And if you can't think of zillions of tactical things to do, you need to start thinking tactically! To further quote the book:

Tactical thinking is a habit. I know some brilliant people who do not think at the table, and some not-so-brilliant ones who know exactly what they are doing out there. Which do you choose to be? It’s a choice.

Help is on the way! The book should be out by December in time for the USA Nationals, and perhaps sooner. (If I get going on it, it might be ready by November.)

One Day Till the MDTTC September Open!

Preparing for Tournament This Weekend

When I say this, I mean both for my students and for myself.

Students: Yesterday I had one-hour coaching sessions with two junior players who are about to play in their first USATT tournament. (I had a third session with another who might play in our October tournament.) How does one prepare someone for their first tournament? First off, I direct them to this article I wrote a while back, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Your First Table Tennis Tournament … But Didn’t Know Where to Ask!"

But you are probably more interested in how to prepare a player to play well? Here's my article "Ten-Point Plan to Tournament Success." In the case of these two students, we did about 30 minutes of regular drills (footwork, steady stroking drills, multiball), and then went to game-type situations. For example, I'd rally steady into the student's backhand, and he'd pick a shot to either step around and smash, or hit his backhand down the line. As soon as he did one of these it was free play. Then we got to even more game-type drills, such as straight serve and attack (he serves backspin, I push it back, he loops, then free play). We did a lot of pushing and loop against push drills. I also had them do a lot of serve practice, always the most under-practiced aspect of a game, especially just before a tournament.

Serve Practice - It Pays Off!

Last week I played a practice match with a local top player. He had trouble with my side-top forehand pendulum and reverse pendulum serves to his forehand, which kept going slightly long, but he kept looping them off. Near the end he finally adjusted and started looping them in. I had to mostly switch to other serves to win - barely.

So this weekend I practiced serves for 15 minutes. The main adjustment for both versions (pendulum and reverse pendulum) was to focus on contacting the ball a bit more to the side, and making sure contact was very low to the table. Then I played the top player again, and this time I was able to keep them short when I wanted. I varied short and slightly long (i.e. "half-long" or "tweeny" serves where second bounce would be barely off the end), and he never adjusted, and I won again, using these serves right to the end. (I also threw in no-spin and backspin serves, but the side-top serves were the mainstay here.)

Willy Mays and Other Table Tennis Dreams

This was a strange one. I dreamed I was an elderly Willy Mays at the plate in a baseball game. (Not sure why it was Willy Mays - I'm an Orioles fan! See segment at end.) They walked me on four pitches, including a brush-back pitch that I had to dive to avoid. So next time up I brought a ping-pong paddle, and began spraying topspin shots over the infielder's heads for hits! (The ball seemed to be a baseball-sized ping-pong ball.) No idea why they kept pitching to me and why I didn't run to first base; I was having a blast smacking shots just over the infielder's reach, and letting the topspin pull the ball down before outfielders could get to it!

Learn From Others

Something that's always bothered me as weird is that often I'll play someone who absolutely cannot return my serves. If the player is a beginner, they'll often ask how I do the serve and how to return it. But starting at the intermediate and advanced levels, almost nobody asks, even if they struggle with my serve, even if it's someone I coach. This is especially bothersome with up-and-coming juniors, who presumably are striving for a high level. Don't they want to learn?

The same is true of other aspects of the game, but a player can better see what's happening with most other techniques. If they struggle with my short receive, they can see I'm just dropping the ball short. If they can't see the direction of my forehand, they can see that I'm changing directions at the last second by turning my shoulders. But they usually cannot see how, for example, I'm serving topspin when I'm stroking downward with an open racket, hitting the bottom of the ball, and continuing downward. (Short answer - the racket is rotating about an axis centered over the hitting surface, and so the near side of the blade is actually rotating upward at contact, though only for a split second if done properly.) They can't see how it's done, and can't figure out how to read it (since they don't know where the topspin is coming from), and yet they never ask! (Well, rarely.)

Next time you're playing me or someone else and struggling to react to spins that don't look like they should be there, ask how it's done. I'll show you, as will most top players, most of whom you'll find love to talk about their craft. There are multiple ways to create these deceptions (serving is the "trick" part of table tennis), and are much easier to show in person than in an article, even with a photo sequence. Tricky serves are subtle, and subtlety doesn't show up well in photo sequences. 

Tip of the Week

Why Table Tennis Really Is Chess at Light Speed.

Table Tennis Music Video

On Saturday night the Edie Sedgwick music group came to the Maryland Table Tennis Center to do a table tennis music video. The gist of the video is the group shows up at a nightclub to play table tennis, and then, one by one, they get destroyed by a kid. Starring in the video is Derek Nie, 11, the U.S. Open Under 12 Boys' Singles Champion. (Here he is warming up with me at the Open, and here he is in his full green wig and striped sunglasses outfit. And here he is at the Eastern Open last year!)

The band had been planning this video already, but were apparently going to just bring in some kid actor and fake the table tennis scenes. Then they saw Derek in the Washington Post video, and contacted me about hiring him.

The table tennis portion of the taping took four hours, from 7-11PM, though the band members came in around 5PM to start setting up. Also in attendance were Derek's parents and older brother, George (15, a 2050 player), and lots of pizza. In order, here's what happened:

Practice Slower and Better

I have a couple of junior students at the beginning-intermediate level (under 1000) who like to hit everything hard. When they practice with me, they feel they can do it because I'm returning their shots, but they are spraying shots all over the table, and rarely make more than a few shots in a row. I've been on them for a while to slow down, and while this'll get them to slow down for a few shots, they quickly go back to smack it mode.

The only way to get them to slow down I discovered is to challenge them to make a certain number in a row. If I challenge them to make 50 in a row, then they slow down, and they make the 50.

But more important, by slowing down they get far more practice developing a repeating shot that they can do successfully over and Over and OVER again, which is the backbone of success in table tennis. Whenever I get them to hit 50 or 100 in a row, they play well the rest of the session. If I don't get them to slow down, they practice slapping the ball all over the place, and it doesn't help their development much at all. Table tennis is a game of precision, and you can't develop precision unless you practice precision shots over and over. Smacking balls all over the table and off it is a good way to practice smacking balls all over the table and off it.

MDTTC Table Tennis Music Video