Push Aggressively
Recently I've been harping on pushing with students. Most players push just to keep the ball in play, which is fine if you have no ambitions to be a much better player. Instead, learn to push aggressively. This can be done in a number of ways: faster, quicker off the bounce, deeper, heavier, lower, shorter, wider, with spin variation, spinless, with sidespin – all of these can turn a "keep it in play" shot into a weapon that either forces mistakes or sets up your more powerful shots. Whatever you do, don't settle for just keeping the ball in play.

Some would say that they mostly push to return serves, and that they need to play safe there so as not to make a mistake. That itself is a mistake. If you only push serves back passively, then you'll never learn to push them aggressively – which leads to players pushing passively because they haven't learned to push aggressively. Get out of that passive cycle and find ways to push effectively, both in returning serves and at other times.

Here are a few articles on pushing:

• Pushing: Five out of Six Doesn't Cut It
• Push with Purpose and Placement
• Pushing Change of Direction
• Pushing Short
• Backhand Sidespin Push

History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 17, Day 8
Yesterday we finished chapters 18-20 of the 27 planned. Chapter 18 was a monster chapter, with 29 pages and over 100 graphics, and took over three hours to finish. The only things that keeps me going are Mountain Dew, popcorn, and Tim's Taser.

Long Hours for One More Week
Ever have one of those weeks where you work 18 hours/day, spend an hour on meals and other activities, and blink each night and suddenly it's morning and you have to do it again? Well, that's what it's like for me right now, while I work with Tim Boggan on his History of U.S. Table Tennis, Vol. 17 (!). My days are divided into three parts. While we generally start around 7AM, the last two mornings we've started at 6AM. We go until 2:30 PM each day. Then I'm off to the TT club to coach, afterschool program, some tutoring, etc. And then I get home, usually around 8PM or so, and my real day is just beginning as the cascades of USATT, MDTTC, SF, and other stuff keeps coming in. I haven't been to bed before 1AM this past week, usually working past 2AM, and I haven't slept past 6AM, and I've been up by 5AM several times. I'm guessing this isn't healthy, but something keeps my brain from comprehending the problem, whatever it is. (Note – last night I finally went to bed and got up at a "reasonable" time – 12:30AM and 6:30AM. Now I feel as refreshed as waking up the night after playing three days at the Teams…)

Meanwhile, I was so tired while teaching a junior class on Sunday that I kept forgetting names of players who have been in the class for some time. I've always been weak on remembering names, but jeez, it took half the session to remember who some of the kids were. (On the other hand, I could still give detailed info on their games, techniques, and what they needed to work on. Just don't ask me their names when I haven't slept since Satoh won the Worlds.)

Tip of the Week
What Is a Good Serve? 

If I Won the Lottery
People are sometimes surprised that I occasionally buy lottery tickets. I know the odds, and they know I know the odds, and I'm a little embarrassed because they know I know they know I know the odds, and so why do I do such a silly thing?

It's all for the good of table tennis.

First, let me be up front that I don't believe in supernatural beings, so the odds of my winning the jackpot are mathematically something like a really, Really, REALLY big number to one. (To be exact, 292,201,338 to 1.) In fact, the odds are so small that I have a better chance of winning if I'm wrong, and that there are supernatural beings out there, such as some benign God who loves table tennis, and he or she decides to award me the winning lottery ticket because, well, I'll be good and use some of the $900 million ($558 million cash value, about $2.58 after taxes) to develop table tennis.

But let's be real. I don't buy lottery tickets (occasionally) because I objectively think I have a good chance of winning. I buy them for the excitement knowing there's a chance I might, and so I can dream. You know, like everyone else who buys one?

You have to remember that I'm not only a table tennis coach & writer (and 246 other table tennis things), but a science fiction & fantasy writer, which means I have a vivid imagination – which means I can imagine a LOT of things to do with that $558 million or so. Training centers!!! Professional Leagues!!! TT on TV!!! And of course, highly-paid umpires who enforce the hidden serve rule!!!

Three Biggest Problems in USA Table Tennis
While there are many problems in our sport, I believe the following are the three biggest ones currently faced by USA Table Tennis.

• Grow the Sport. USATT membership is in the 9000 range, just as we were in the 1990s, though I hear we may be approaching 10,000 or so. Alas, at the various "Strategic Development" meetings we've had over the years we've had a good name for our membership totals: they are a "round-off error" for what membership should be in a country this size, which should be in the hundreds of thousands. (How can all those little countries in Europe have memberships that dwarf ours??? Let's not even talk about Asia.) I believe when membership grows, many of our other problems will be resolved, such as money problems (from membership fees), turning the U.S. Open and/or Nationals into premier events (more players and money available), and so on.

  How do we fix this? It comes down to having a product that the masses will join in. In Europe, that means lots and lots of regional team leagues. In the U.S., it'll likely be the same, whether it's team or singles leagues. USATT's historic focus on tournaments simply hasn't worked, and neither has the culture at the club level of "winner stay on." When the focus is on leagues – as it is in nearly every successful sport all over the U.S. and the world – membership will begin a long and steady increase. But it's going to be a long and slow process creating such an infrastructure. Here are the plans for regional team leagues; already there has been interest in a number of new regions, as I've blogged about previously.

How to Wake Up a Student
I had a one-hour session yesterday with a kid who was half asleep. So what does one do when a student (or yourself) is half asleep, and you need to wake him up? I have my own proven method, which I use both on students and on myself – such as every morning when I have to get up early to work with Tim Boggan on his new volume. (See next segment.) So what is my secret?

You splash water on your face. Really, it works! I do it every morning when I first get up, and sometimes in the afternoon if I'm feeling sleepy. When I have students who are sleepy – and kids are always either sleepy or hyperactive, there is no in between – I have them do so as well. It really works! (Usually. Oh, and splashing water on face to wake up ©2016 by Larry Hodges. If you do it, you owe me $1.)

There are other tricks you can do as well to wake yourself up. One simple way is to simply do a little shadow-stroking. Another is to bounce up and down or from one leg to the other before going out to play or between points – it really wakes the body up.

History of U.S. Table Tennis, Volume 17, Day Two
Tim Boggan continues to hold me captive in my office, forcing me to fix up photos and layout pages for his new volume. He's a merciless slave driver who keeps me in chains and smacks me with electrified ping-pong balls if I slow down. If anyone gets this note, please contact Donald Trump so he can tweet bad things about Tim, and Tim will feel remorse and go away.

Remember how I wrote we'd be working from 7AM-2:30PM? Hah! For unknown reasons, I dragged myself out of bed yesterday at 5AM (or did Tim drag me out kicking and screaming?), and we started at 5:30AM, and went to 2:30PM, when I left to coach. He allowed me a thirty-second lunch break of moldy bread and water that smelled like old ping-pong shoes.

A Blast from the Past
Yesterday while I was coaching, an elderly man was practicing on an adjacent table on the robot. He had some questions for me, and it soon became an interesting discussion, mostly taking place while the two kids I was doing multiball with were picking up balls. He was obviously once an experienced player, with decent technique and could hit regular forehands and backhands.

The man looked perhaps 65, and was Asian, but spoke perfect, unaccented English – he likely grew up in the U.S. He said that this was the first time he'd played in 40 years, and that he'd last played in 1976. This was ironic, since I started playing in 1976, and so was now in my 40th year of playing!

The first thing he'd noticed when he came in was that everyone had black and red surfaces on their racket, which surprised him. Back when he played, everyone had the same color on both sides. I explained the two-color rule of 1983, and about how in the years just prior to that the game was dominated by players with combination rackets who flipped and used deception to force misses and easy pop-ups. He found this interesting, yet difficult to understand. He wondered why players didn't just read the spin from the ball.

He also said that the ball seemed a bit big, and asked if these were standard sizes. (I think he said he had an old 38mm ball at home.) I explained how the ball had gone from 38mm to 40mm in the early 2000s, and explained why, which led to a discussion of modern surfaces. He was clearly surprised at the number and bounciness of modern surfaces such as Tenergy. He also wondered if the bigger ball would spin as well.

Tim Boggan Arrives
Yes, it's that time of year again – USATT Historian Tim will be knocking on my door at precisely 9:30AM (after driving 4-5 hours down from New York to Maryland), and then we start work on Volume 17 (!) of his History of U.S. Table Tennis. More specifically, I begin my work, as Tim's already done most of his – the writing and planning. Mal Anderson has also done his part – he's the primary photographer, and has scanned probably 1000 photos for the volume, and sent them to me in a CD I received this morning.

Who are Tim and Mal, you ask? They are both members of the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame (as am I), so we're practically a history of the game, the three of us. (But I'm only 55! They are about 25-30 years older than me.) You can read about all of us in our profiles there.

My job over the next two weeks, as I've done with the previous volumes (usually once per year), is to fix up the photos (many of which are vintage ones or in bad shape – lots of work in Photoshop), and then lay out the pages (text and photos). Tim comes in with notes on where each photo goes, and he's pretty particular about it – he'll be spending the next two weeks looking over my shoulder and saying various versions, of, "No, you fool, the photo goes there!"

Tip of the Week
Backhand Serve Deception with the Elbow.

Luck or Skill?
I saw this video recently (16 sec, including slo-mo replay) and was struck what a perfect example of skill that looks like luck. Now when I say "skill," I don't mean natural talent; I mean learned skill. The player on the near side has an easy put-away, and creams the ball – but the opponent makes a seemingly "lucky" block return. He doesn't just block back a winner; he practically counter-smashes, and makes it look effortless and easy. So . . . was he just lucky?

No, it was almost all skill from years of training. Look at the body position of the player on the near side as he sets up to smash - he's set up to go crosscourt, and the opponent reflexively sees this. The near-side player could change directions at the last second, but doesn't, and so he's predictable. It would have been an easy winner to the wide forehand or middle. Of course with a shot like that, the near-side player was likely taking the long diagonal for safety as he didn't expect the opponent to react so quickly.

Happy New Year!
Tomorrow is New Year's Day – and I'm spending the day in bed reading. Happy New Year, and see you next Monday!

2016 USATT Resolutions

Coaching Matches is Trickier Now
Coaching matches used to be easier. In most matches in the "old days" (twenty years ago?) there'd be a style conflict since the odds of two players with the same style playing was rather low. I mean, what were the odds of two players playing with the same style, such as, say, both being two-winged loopers? Sure, it happened sometimes, but there were a lot more common styles back in those days – hitters, counter-hitters, blockers, choppers, various types of pips-out, conventional penholders, Seemiller grip, and all sorts of forehand/backhand combinations.

All of these styles still exist, but it's a matter of degree – they used to be common. Now the matches I coach are mostly up-and-coming players who train regularly under top coaches, and so there are very few "old-fashioned" styles among them – they are nearly all two-winged loopers these days. The few that don't play that way are still usually inverted players who loop both sides, just not all the time.

With style conflicts, there are obvious tactics. There was the thrill of the clash of styles, such as when a looper met a hitter, or a one-winged forehand looper met a blocker. The tactics were more straightforward.

These days, since the large majority of the matches I coach are between standard two-winged loopers, coaching is a bit subtler. Both players tend to play the same, with the same serves, same surfaces, same strokes, and often the same strengths and weaknesses, with subtle differences in degree.

There's still diversity, but nothing like before. In the past it was like throwing a lion, a wolf, a bear, a giant anaconda, a crocodile, a rhinoceros, a shark, and a black widow spider into the quarterfinals, and they'd battle it out. Now it's more or less eight lions, all running around looping everything. The game is more athletic, but it's also more uniform.