Developing Training Centers

The best thing that's happened to table tennis in recent years is the rise of full-time training centers. I predicted this for years, but most thought there simply weren't enough table tennis players to support more than a few of these. In December 2006, when there were no more than eight to ten full-time TT centers in the U.S. (including my club, the Maryland Table Tennis Center), I even gave a presentation to the USATT Board, urging them to get involved by using their resources to recruit and training coaches to set up these full-time centers and junior programs. I wanted them to set a goal of 100 full-time training centers in five years. The response was a room full of eyes staring back at me as if I were crazy, with two board members bluntly telling me that there simply aren't enough players in this country to support more than a few full-time centers. Others nodded in agreement. They also didn't like the idea of setting a specific number as a goal, since they thought they'd be considered failures if they didn't reach the goal. (This last was crazy, as if you have ten centers and make a goal of having 100, and get, say, 80, you are an incredible success, going from ten to 80 - and then you continue to strive for the 100.) I made a similar challenge at the 2009 USATT Strategic Meeting; same result. 

USATT Candidate Statements and Board of Directors

If you are a USATT member over the age of 18, by now you've received the candidate statements and supplementary campaign statements from the two candidates running for the USATT Board, Jim McQueen and Ross Brown. I've read over them, and let's just say I'm dismayed. I blogged about this a few weeks ago after receiving the initial candidate statements, and now we have the supplementary ones. (As I blogged there, I voted for McQueen because I disagree with Brown on most major issues. At the 2009 Strategic Meeting, Ross and I argued about just about everything, and he "won" the day - nothing I pushed for was adopted, while he was on the "winning" side of nearly every decision. I blogged about this several times, such as here, though I didn't mention names. A few of the links in the blog to USATT news items are no longer valid, alas.) I'm not sure why they have these supplementary statements, but they are more of the same. To be clear, what I have to write here is about what they wrote, not about the candidates themselves - but alas, the candidate statements are for many voters all they have to judge them by.

The statements have no vision, no goals, no plans. They are mostly about how well and fairly they'd judge the issues that come before them as board members. It's as if they are running for USATT judge. To me, this may qualify them to be on certain USATT committees, where fairness issues need to be judged. We need to separate "Fairness Issues" from "Progressive Issues. I blogged about this in March.

Physical Therapy

I'm supposed to start physical therapy on my arm at 11:30 this morning. However, it's snowing outside (again), and schools and most businesses closed for the second day in a row. I'm guessing it'll be postponed. Since I'm off for the USA Nationals this Sunday, and then will be coaching at our Christmas Camp, I might not be able to schedule anything else until January. We'll see. Meanwhile, the cortisone shot finally stopped hurting. Can't tell how my arm is without playing, and don't want to risk that. So I'll just keep resting it with the idea that I'll be healthy and ready to go by January. (I also have a dental appointment at 2PM, but I'm guessing that'll be cancelled too.)

Table Tennis Tips

Since I'll be stuck at home most of this week without any coaching (thanks to arm problems), I may start work getting my next table tennis book ready for print, tentatively titled "Table Tennis Tips." It'll be a compilation of all my Tips of the Week that have been going up each week the past three years. Sure, you can read them all online, but this puts them all together in one nice convenient package, organized by subject (strokes, footwork, tactics, sports psychology, etc.). It turns out that when I finish the year, I'll have exactly 150 Tips published since I started in January 2011. There are 148 already online, with two more to go, for Dec. 23 and 30. (No Tip on Dec. 16 while I'm at the Nationals.)

First task is the cover. Tentatively I'll go over all my coaching pictures and pick out something. Then I'll do fancy it up with the title and who knows what else.

Tip of the Week

Learn Tactics by Coaching Others.

Recap of Past Week

It's been a wild week. Let's recap the last five days:

• Wednesday: I reinjured my arm (or at least aggravated previous injury) and had to cancel four hours of coaching that night and the following night.
• Thursday: $458 in car repairs. (Car was vibrating and needed new tires.)
• Friday: Saw doctor, got a cortisone shot, no more playing for rest of month (i.e. no private coaching). Also spent an hour going over videos of Zhang Jike, Ma Long, and Ma Lin and their footwork, and one of our top juniors, and then sent him a selection to view and compare. Later we discussed it, going over what he needs to do to improve.
• Saturday: Ran a group junior session for 90 minutes, but then sent out emails to cancel the rest of my private coaching for the weekend and the rest of the month.
• Sunday: All my group sessions today (3.5 hours) were cancelled due to snow and sleet. So I sat in a lounge chair all day and night reading and watching TV. It was great!!!

Mentality in a Match and in Practice - Revisited

Someone doubted part of my Tip of the Week for Nov. 25 at the MyTabletennis.net forum, writing that he thought that "…the zone was still something people enter on occasion and that Larry was wrong when he said one could practice entering it." I think this is a common way of thinking for those who don't have the experience that top players and coaches have in sports psychology. Here is my response:

Seeing Doctor

I'm one of those people who hates seeing doctors. But alas, my arm not only didn't heal during the week I had off playing at the Teams, it somehow got worse. So I finally made an appointment with an orthopedist/sports medicine doctor, for 1PM today. I'll report on this on Monday. I'm pretty sure I have tendinitis.

I'm also considering possible scenarios if I can't do any serious playing for a while, which mostly affects private coaching. I already do a number of group coaching sessions, but I have a number of private students as well. One scenario is I group them in two-hour segments, and bring in one of our practice partners for the middle hour - the second half of the first one-hour session, the first half hour of the second one-hour session. Then I focus on multiball and serve & receive in my thirty minutes, and just coach (while practice partner does the playing) in the other thirty minutes. In an ideal world, I'd have the practice partner do all the hitting the entire hour, but I'd have to pay him for it. This 50-50 arrangements lowers that cost 50%, and should be workable as I can still feed multiball and do most serve & receive drills as long as we don't play out the point.

Jorg Rosskopf and Me

At the about.com forum, Jim Butler quotes German coach and former star Jorg Rosskopf as saying, "When I play with the German Team I only practice playing the first ball against them.  After this I just let the ball go." This was because he's older and so not as fast as before, and so can't rally as fast as he used to. This is exactly what I sometimes do with the top juniors at my club. I don't play at the level I used to, but my serve and receive is still very strong, and so often I let them practice against just that, and don't continue the rally.

Post Teams Coaching

Now that the North American Teams are over my coaching changes focus. The last few weeks before the Teams I was preparing players for the tournament. Now comes the long period where we focus on developing their games for the longer haul. In particular, I have several players who I'll be working on topspinning their backhands more. I also want to greatly improve serve and receive. And as noted yesterday, we're going to work more on sports psychology. But in general there's going to be a lot more work on fundamentals while setting and aiming to achieve long-term goals.

Arm Problems

HERE WE GO AGAIN!!! But it makes no sense. None. Nada.

I think it was a couple of months ago that I had serious arm problems and had to take two weeks off. I've had minor problems since then, but nothing serious. Then, last week, just before the North American Teams, the arm started hurting again. Part of it might have been the extra coaching hours getting players ready for the Teams. But it wasn't that bad, and I knew I'd be able to take a week off to rest the arm during and just after the Teams. (I coached at the Teams, but except for one session warming up a player for ten minutes didn't play any.) So I rested the arm for exactly one week, from last Wednesday until yesterday.

About five minutes into the session I was grabbing my arm. At first it just seemed tight. Then it began to hurt - badly - especially when I hit backhands. It was the same injury as two months ago, and the same one I'd had as a recurring problem in the 1980s, but not in between. HOW DID MY ARM INJURY GET WORSE WHILE RESTING IT FOR A WEEK???

Sports Psychology and Sport Psychology Books

After watching and coaching at the Teams, I'm upping the sports psychology training. In fact, I just got out to review my copies of "Get Your Game Face On" by Dora Kurimay, "The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey, and "Finding Your Zone" by Michael Lardon. I also discovered that my copy of "Winning Ugly" by Brad Gilbert is missing, and realized I lent it to someone a long time ago and never got it back - so I just ordered a new copy. (A new version came out in May this year anyway.) I also discovered a new book, "Coaches Guide to Sport Psychology" by Rainer Martens which I just ordered. (Dora Kurimay and Michael Lardon are both sports psychologists and top table tennis players. Dora ran a sports psychology session at MDTTC I think in early 2012. "The Inner Game of Tennis" and "Winning Ugly" both use tennis as examples, but the principles apply to all sports, and they are both considered classics that are read by top athletes from every sport.)

Tip of the Week

Use a Wider Stance.

North American Teams

It was a LOOOOONG weekend of playing (for 858 players and 213 teams) and coaching (for me and many others). I’m still recovering!!!

Here are the results. This should take you to the Summary page. You can use the second dropdown menu to see more detailed results of the Preliminaries on Friday and Division play on Saturday and Sunday.

I was primarily coaching Derek Nie, though I also coached seven other players at various times, including Derek’s teammates (Crystal Wang, Chen Jie, and Tony Qu). I can’t really discuss most of the coaching itself since they will likely play these players again. But there’s still a bunch of stuff I can write about. None of it is about the players in Division One (i.e. the Championships Division) since Derek’s team was in Division Two, where the average rating was a little over 2300 or so. I was so busy coaching that I never saw a single Divisions One match.

Derek had a strange tournament. He started out Friday by beating a 2300 player in five games, after being down 0-2. But then he lost five consecutive five-gamers over Fri & Sat, against players ranging from about 2280 to 2490. But on Sunday he was 2-0 in five-gamers against a pair of 2300+ players.

I'm taking the day off, so the blog (and Tip of the Week) will start up again tomorrow. Other than Thanksgiving, I've coached every day for the past two weeks, and I coached seemingly around the clock the last three days at the North American Teams - competition started each day at 9AM and went until well after dinner time all three days. Also, I have to take my car to the shop - for some reason it vibrates when I go at speeds over 65 mph. So I'll see you all tomorrow with lots and lots of stuff since I've been off since Wednesday last week.

But to keep you occupied until then, here's a video (4:58, with time removed between points) of the Swedish Open Final this weekend between China's Fan Zhendong and teammate Yan An. (Before jumping to the end to see who won, what's your prediction? Here's where you can find Swedish Open results, articles, video, and pictures.) 

And here's where you can find results of the North American Teams (set dropdown menu for "2003 JOOLA NA Teams," then go to Summary for general results, Preliminaries for Friday's results, and then you can pick and choose the Sat & Sun results for each division). Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend!

Last Blog Until After the Teams

This will be my last blog until Monday. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, so I’m taking the day off, and Fri-Sun I’ll be coaching at the North American Teams in Washington DC. I’ll have lots to write about when I return! Here’s a picture of the facility as they are about to set up the tables.

Preparing for the Teams

This week I’m preparing players for the Teams. Compared to normal, that means fewer rote drills, and more random drills. I do a lot of multiball training, but the focus now is on random shots and simulating match play.  We’re also doing a lot of game-type drills, such as where the student serves backspin, I push back anywhere, he loops, and we play out the point. I’m also making sure they are ready to do the “little” things, such as pushing, blocking, and serving. And we play more games at the end of each session. There’s also the psychological aspect. I keep reminding the players that they need to go into the tournament with their minds clear and ready to play. I also want to keep the sessions fun – I don’t want the players too stressed out over getting ready for three days of almost non-stop competition. I want to see determination, but not grim determination.

USATT Magazine and Membership Rates