Tip of the Week
Distance from Table When Looping a Push.

My Weekend
This was one of the busiest four days I've ever gone through, Fri-Mon. Here's a rundown.

• The usual private and group coaching – but a little less than usual as one student was away at a tournament, another was sick, and another had to cut a lesson short because of shoulder problems, so only about seven hours total.

  One interesting note – it seems a number of players I'm coaching are working on backhand serves, so I'm coaching that a lot. My backhand serve was my #1 serve for a short time in the late 1970s, but I had some arm problems that made that difficult and pretty much stopped using it. Now I'm using it a lot – in demonstrations! In fact, I've been coaching it so much that on Sunday I spent ten minutes practicing the serve to get it back to where it was way back when. The big breakthrough was I finally can do a backspin serve that comes back into the net – more of an exhibition trick serve than a player should use in a match (where it's better to drive the serve out so the second bounce is at or near the end-line), but it's good practice, and shows students just how much backspin one can put on the ball. (I can do this easily with my forehand serve.)

Local schools are closed today for a "professional day" for teachers. As is my standard practice, when the kids are out of school, I'm off too! So no blog today, and the Tip of the Week will go up tomorrow. (I'll get a lot of work done.) But I'll leave you with this short, six-second repeating gif image of a player catching the ball on his racket, carrying it over, and smashing it. Legal??? Time to go practice this new shot!!!

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A Short History of Modern Receive
If someone were to write a History of Receive, I think there would be four major breakthroughs in modern professional table tennis.

• 1960s: Looping (Europeans and Japanese, especially Hasegawa). Before this time top players mostly attacked a long serve with a regular drive (or they'd chop it), without much topspin. But as the loop was developed during the '60s, long serves became vulnerable to a loop. And so most top players were forced to switch to serving short most often, which are often not as tricky and doesn't have as much break. There were players who used loop-like shots before this, but until the '60s looping wasn't done at a particularly high level. Nobuhiko Hasegawa in 1967 was the first world champion with a modern loop. He also was the first of the great lobbers, plus had a big backhand.

  Here's vintage video (8:57) of the 1971 World Men's Team Final, Japan vs. China (China wins 5-2), with Hasegawa against chopper/looper Liang Geliang in the first match. At 5:10 Hasegawa goes up against Li Jinghuang, a lefty penhold attacker. (China wins 5-2.) Others shown include Zhuang Zedong, Shigeo Itoh, and Mitsuro Kohno. (I couldn't find any video from 1967, when Hasegawa won the Worlds.) Here's 14 sec in 1974 of Hasegawa against Li Zhenshi, who now coaches in California, with Hasegawa looping a number of times against Li's blocks and hits.

State Championships and Why Table Tennis Leaders Often Don't Try New Things
The project is moving along pretty well – see the USATT news item from last Friday (also my blog for that day). As of that time we had 14 state championships in 2015 (plus 15 state games). Since Friday we've had volunteers stepping forward for another eight state championships in 2016. (I'm hesitant to name the states until they have gone through the sanctioning process.)

When you run a local tournament, you may get publicity. But think about it – what do you think will bring in more exposure, another MDTTC Open (or some other tournament), or the Maryland State Championships? Some monthly or even 4-star event in California or New York, or the California or New York State Championships? State championships are a must. I've always known this, but didn't really prioritize it until our new CEO, Gordon Kaye, convinced me that now was the time to focus on setting these up, and asked if I'd take charge.

Now here's the thing that many don't understand. The GOAL is state championship in all 50 states in 2016 (plus DC – which someone just volunteered to run, so cross that off the list). Ignoring state games, which usually aren't quite the same thing, we've gone from 14 to 22 state championships. Let's suppose, just suppose, we end up with 40 in 2016, and that we turn many of these into media events, bringing attention to our sport. Would this be a success? Of course!

Coaching Tennis Players at Table Tennis
This keeps coming up. (I played tennis on the side for many years.) I'm coaching a ten-year-old who plays tennis and insists on using an almost tennis-style backhand. Whenever I get a new player who's played a lot of tennis, five things happen – one good, one sort of good, one bad, two very good.

Toby Kutler: Flat to Spinny Backhand
Yesterday I had an interesting discussion with Toby Kutler, a 24-year-old local who's recently made the jump to 2300+. I've known and played him since he started playing at age 12, including coaching him at camps and a few times in tournaments. He's been training very hard the last year or so, after having hip injuries that sidelined him for over two years, 2012-2014. From 2008-2011 he was roughly a 2000 player. (He wasn't training as hard most of that time as he does now.) In 2011 I trained with him regularly, and during that time he jumped to about 2150 before the injury problems. (Here's a 13-sec video of him in 2014 where he's doing forehands footwork. Here's an article on him training in China in 2011.)

Even then I always saw the major flaw in his game – his backhand. He had a very strong forehand loop, but on the backhand he simply did everything pretty well – he could block and hit well, and could backhand loop, but there was no serious threat there. I discussed it with him a few times. Backhand looping is pretty much a must at the high levels these days, but it just wasn't a big part of his game at that time.

He began playing seriously again in 2014, including training for a time at the Werner Schlager Academy in Austria, where he was told, "The days of the flat hit are over." He also trained in California with Stefan Feth, who also convinced him to spin the backhand, and worked with him on it. And so he decided to make the switch from a mostly flat backhand to a topspinning one, i.e. backhand looping.

Tip of the Week
Develop a Practice Partner.

Nationals – I'm Top Seed in All Four Events!
Yes, it's true. Okay, so far only 192 have entered, but that's roughly 1/4 of the expected 800 players. This year, besides coaching, attending meetings, and selling my books, I'm entered in four events – Hardbat Singles, Over 40 Hardbat Singles, Hardbat Doubles (with Ty Hoff), and the FASTT Sandpaper Singles. Here's the list of entries by player and by event (set dropdown menu to "2015 USA Nationals") – and as you can see, I'm top seed in all four!!!

Although I'm normally a sponge player, and that makes up the vast majority of my coaching, I've also been a hardbat player at the Open and Nationals for many years. (I've won Hardbat Singles twice, Over 40 Hardbat four times, Hardbat Doubles 13 times – nine with Ty Hoff, four with Steve Berger – and Over 50 Hardbat Doubles twice – once each with Jay Turberville and Jeff Johnson). But age has slowed me down, making it difficult to play my mostly all-out forehand attacking game. (I mostly chop on the backhand, where I'm pretty good, but not good enough to chop down the top hardbatters, especially with the fast racket I use to enhance my attacking.)

I'm retired from tournament sponge play, and I've retired from tournament hardbat play at least two or three times in disgust at my play. But this year might be different. I decided to try to win a few of these events one more time. And so I've done two things.

First, I've been dieting for about three weeks, and have gone from 196 lbs to 185. I plan to continue right down to perhaps 175, and then go to a weight maintenance diet. Here's the Larry diet, ©2015. (I also have a daily vitamin pill.)

State Championships

(This also just went up as a USATT news item.)

Dear Table Tennis Leaders,

USA Table Tennis is making it a goal to have State Championships in all 50 states – and we'd like to do it in 2016. We want to turn these events into major events for both the players and the media. Here is a listing of all fifty states and which ones have a 2015 State Championships (including those with a State Games).

For most players, the State Championships should be one of the most important events of the year. Many can compete to become a State Champion, whether it be in men's or women's singles, a senior event, a junior event, hardbat or sandpaper, a rating event, or doubles. It gives them something to train and look forward to. It's also the time when players from all over the state get together for table tennis and fun, usually ending with everyone going out for dinner together.

We'd like to celebrate these champions by commemorating them on a USATT State Champions Page as well as on the USATT News page. We'd also like to have an annual Parade of Champions at the U.S. Nationals, where, between matches during the showcase events, we invite all the attending state champions to take a march around the playing arena as the crowd cheers.

We'd like to turn these State Championships into major events in the local media. To do this, the tournament director or publicity director would simply Google the local TV, radio, and newspaper listings to get contact emails. Then, the week before the tournament, send them press releases inviting them to cover the tournament. Afterwards send them a follow-up press release that they can use.

The More Two Players Drill Together the Better They Drill Together

One of the keys to improving is getting a good practice partner. Usually these are two players who are roughly the same level. But it's more important that they both want to improve, are willing to work together, and are regular to train on a regular basis. The more they train together the more used to each other they get, and the better each plays in these drills. This leads to both players' levels escalating up – an upward spiral to excellence! (Here's my article on How to Play and Practice with Weaker Players.)

I want to emphasize how amazingly better you play when you drill with someone regularly – you get used to their shots, and your own shots become more and more natural and consistent, as well as more powerful. Some might think this is artificial, since you are playing against the same player and shots, which isn't what happens in tournaments or leagues. But the key is how much this type of drilling develops your foundation.

Players still need to play others with different styles, especially matches – that's imperative - but drilling with a good partner develops the foundation that's so important to develop your game.

Once you find someone to train with regularly, take turns with the drills. But remember that in any drill, both players are doing the drill. If one player is doing a footwork drill to the other's block, then the other is doing a blocking drill. Players not only need to learn to move and attack, but also to control an opponent's shots.

Don't forget to get a box of balls and do some multiball training! (Here's my article on Multiball Training.) Multiball training makes up about 1/3 of the training of world-class players. (A version of today's blog might end up as a Tip of the Week.)

Leagues, Leagues, Leagues!

If I hear or read that word one more time I believe I will hurl myself off a ping-pong table. Okay, the 2.5-foot fall probably won't hurt me and I'll just brush myself and go back to work, but it seems leagues (ugh!) is all I see or do that last few days – except when I'm coaching or blogging. (And here I'm blogging about it!!!) (Oh, and there's that pesky time I'm spending working with my new publisher on my upcoming SF novel – which has a lot of table tennis – and I'm writing a new SF short story, but I won't talk about that on this table tennis blog . . . much. Today is also Back to the Future Day, but believe it or not, my intensive online search found exactly zero table tennis pictures involving that movie or actors Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.)

I took yesterday morning off from blogging so I could work on the prototype USATT Regional Team League (that word again!). The goal is to create something that can spread to other regions, as I blogged about here. I kept running into roadblocks as the leagues (ugh!) in LA, NY, and the Capital Area are run a bit differently. I ended up deleting most of what I did. I got so tired of working on it that I finally called an early halt to it and worked on something else, and then went off to coach.

And then, last night, while mulling over it at about midnight after going to bed I had a spurt of inspiration and energy. I leaped out of bed, ran to my computer, and worked until 3AM – and it's (mostly) DONE! Well, except for the roughly dozen more bullet point items that need to be incorporated that I thought of afterwards.