Michael Maze Short Push
Denmark star Michael Maze retired in 2016 after a series of injuries, but recently has been training for a comeback at age 36. He's a former top ten player, who won the bronze medal in Men's Doubles at the 2004 Olympics, made the semifinals of Men's Singles at the 2005 Worlds, won the Europeans Men's Singles Championships in 2009, and made the quarterfinals of Men's Singles at the 2012 Olympics. At the 2005 Worlds he beat two Chinese players, Wang Hao (Men's Singles Silver Medalist at the 2004 Olympics and world #1 or #2 at the time) and Hao Shuai, often lobbing them down. Against Hao in the quarterfinals he was down 0-3 and saved three match points before winning in one of the great comebacks in history. He's a lefty looper, and probably the best lobber in the world. But he's also known for his soft touch, such as in receive. 

Here's a video (1:35, some of it in slow motion) of him practicing his short push against a side-backspin serve. Most players, when pushing, whether short or long, just aim in the opposite direction of the sidespin to compensate. But at the advanced levels they do more than that. Notice how he not only angles his paddle sideways to offset the incoming sidespin, but sidespin-grazes the ball back, meeting the sidespin straight on and putting his own sidespin on the ball? (Watch how the ball curves away after he hits it.)

By finely grazing the ball, most of his energy goes into spin, and so there's little forward energy, making it easy for him to push short. That's probably the most common reason players do not push short well - they try to just tap the ball back softly rather than graze it back.

Table Tennis Happenings

Off This Morning
I have to take this morning off from blogging. I'd like to say it's for some big table tennis reason, but actually it's because I'm in a pair of upcoming writing workshops, and have to read and do extensive critiques on seven science fiction & fantasy short stories. Don't worry, I'll be back to table tennis tomorrow! (Actually, I also have to do player evaluations for about ten junior players from our Talent program, so as soon as I finish the SF critiques I switch back to TT.) I plan to spend the day working at the eatery at Lake Forest Mall, so if you are local, stop by and say hello. (But I really, Really, REALLY need to get this work done, so no more than a few minutes and then I have to get back to work.) But to entertain you this morning, here's Plate Bouncing Pong (31 sec)!

Tip of the Week
How to Return Nets and Edges.

Susan Backed Pingpong Parlor Coming to D.C. - SPiN Washington!
Here's the article. I think it's great we'll have one nearby! They really are a different type of club, going for the upper-scale recreational player, with more of a party atmosphere. I've been to the SPiN NY club twice, and had fun playing there. They now have (or will soon) clubs in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Philadelphia, Seattle, Austin, and now DC. Here is their main web page. Here's their About Us page, which explains their interesting history. (Addendum added Monday afternoon: As I drove to my shoulder therapy session after lunch they were talking about the new table tennis club on the radio! It was on WTOP - 103.5FM.)

Their location is right in the middle of DC, which according to Google Directions is just over 30 miles driving distance south of my club, MDTTC. So there's no serious conflict between the clubs - and as I've blogged before, having multiple full-time clubs in one region, but not too close, actually helps all of them as each club brings in new players who might also join or attend tournaments and leagues at the other clubs. While MDTTC focuses on serious training, SPiN has great food - here's the rather extensive NY menu. They have pizza!!! They also serve alcoholic beverages. MDTTC has water and gatorade.

What It Takes to Be Great - and How to Beat the Chinese
Here's a nice video showing what it takes to be a top player: Coming-of-Age of the Ping Pong Kiddo (12:15). It features a kid in China - one of many thousands - who is striving to be the best, and what type of training this means. (Thanks to John Olsen who sent the link to me.)

This is the type of training that goes on all over the world, often out of sight of even local players, who often don't realize how many hours these kids with their coaches are training. I see it on a daily basis at my club, Maryland Table Tennis Center, and it's happening all over the U.S. in training centers, and all over the world. But the sport is more "serious" in China, and so there are far more kids training full time, and making it their top priority, then anywhere else in the world. Even the best U.S. players have to focus more on school (or at most, equally so), and so it's hard to compete against a system where table tennis is the central focus, with numbers far larger than anywhere else. But it can be done! (See below where the Japanese 14-year-old whiz kid, Tomokazu Harimoto, just beat the world #1, China's Fan Zhendong. But Japan might have the second most kids training in the world after China.)

Here's an example of how players are often developed in China. Cheng Yinghua, one of the head MDTTC coaches, from age 5 to 12 trained eight hours a day at table tennis (also training in badminton before that was dropped), with only one hour of school. After that, starting at age 12, he was full-time table tennis, no more school. He became one of the best players in the world, and was on the Chinese National Team from 1977-1987.

Lefty Multiball?
As noted in my blog yesterday (second segment), I'm having major shoulder problems. They have been ongoing since October, but became dramatically worse in December at the U.S. Open when I went for a big forehand and tore (or technically "frayed") my rotator cuff. That, along with shoulder tendonitis, bursitis, and extremely tight muscles, mean I won't be doing any private coaching for a while, as explained in the blog.

It also means I can't feed backspin repetitively. When I did this on Saturday, my arm literally went into rebellion, with every part of the shoulder screaming out in terror, "Stop It You Fool!" I stopped a little short of 90 minutes into a two-hour multiball session with a very inflamed shoulder, and it's been hurting ever since. I can feed regular topspin no problem, but when I open the racket for backspin, the arm twists about slightly, and this puts a strain on the shoulder. I experimented all sorts of ways, trying to find a way of doing this without hurting the shoulder, but couldn't find one. (It also puts a strain on the shoulder if I repetitively do my favored forehand pendulum serve, though I've found a way to adjust so it isn't as bad, but the serve isn't quite as good. Tomahawk serve is fine. Backhand serves are out of the question.)

Head Chinese Coach??? April Fools!
Yesterday's blog was, of course, an April Fools' joke, something I do every year on April 1. This year it fell on a Sunday, and I was off on Monday, so it came out two days late - but note that I dated the blog April 1, even though it came out on April 3! Also note that I said I'd been hired as the Head Chinese Coach on Sunday, which was April 1. And most important, read the first letter of each line (which I've now bolded), which reads out (twice), "April Fool April Fool"! It should also have been suspicious that each line had a hard break ("manual line break") instead of flowing like all the other articles - otherwise I couldn't force the starting letters. (Plus do you really think I'm going to kick Ma Long and Fan Zhendong off the Chinese team if they don't learn English? Or that China would hire an American coach due to his table tennis books?) But some emailed me believing it was true.)  Here are my annual April Fools' blogs since 2011. And now to start planning next year's! (I did "Ping-Pong for Quitters" twice - once "announcing" it as my next book, then "announcing" its completion.)

Tip of the Week
Arrange Practice Partners in Advance.

I'm hired as the Head Chinese Coach!!!
An incredible announcement: I've been hired as the Head Table Tennis Coach for China!!!
Probably because of the recent very poor performance of Chinese players, the Chinese TTA
reached out and hired me on Sunday. Liu Guoliang was replaced as head coach last year, and
it hasn't gone well for China since. But that is going to change - I'm already in contact with
Liu to get his advice on bringing Chinese table tennis back to the top. I'll be working with
famous players: Ma Long, Fan Zhendong, Zhang Jike, Xu Xin, Lin Gaoyuan, Fang Bo, and
others on the men's side, and stars Chen Meng, Zhu Yuling, Chen Xingtong, and Liu Shiwen
on the women's side. I am going to work these players to death! I have a few weeks before I
leave, but seriously, this is a dream come true. Beijing, here I come!

NOTE - no blog on Monday - power will be out from 7AM-5PM for electrical repairs, plus local schools are closed for Easter holiday, and so I'm off too. 

Upcoming USATT Stuff
As usual, there's all sorts of time-consuming USATT stuff going on behind the scenes. I get a double-whammy because I'm both on the USATT Board of Directors and chair the USATT Coaching Committee, both unpaid volunteer positions. (I'm probably going to have to drop one of them next year - just too much.) A lot of it is email correspondence. Fortunately, I'm a writer, so emailing is a strength. But then you add all the local volunteers stuff (such as the monthly MDTTC newsletter I'll be working on today), and then add in all the actual paid stuff, and I'm pretty busy. 

MDTTC Spring Break Camp: Day Three
Yesterday I had six players in my group for most of the session, so I decided to put them in three groups of two. Two of them would practice on a table by on their own. Two would be on the robot, taking 15 shots each, sometimes with a target on the table to aim for. And two would be with me, with one on ball pickup. It worked pretty well. I did some changes in the pairings after each cycle so they'd get different players to hit with when they were on their own.

Much of the session was stroking and footwork drills. But for one cycle I hit with each player live (rather than multiball), and so each got to do some steady forehand-to-forehand and backhand-to-backhand, and some did live footwork drills. (This was the morning session, which emphasizes multiball. In the afternoon session it's almost all live play.)

We also had a serving session, where I worked with the various levels, from one who is still struggling to serve on the table, to several who were well into learning spin serves. One was hard at work the whole session on his tomahawk serve, and he can now do sidespin, backspin, or side-backspin.