Eleven Questions with Larry Hodges

Here's the USATT interview with me yesterday. Not a policy interview, but hopefully some interesting stuff. I had a lot of fun with it, but hopefully some of it is informative as well.

Upcoming Events and Back Problems

Tomorrow we have another 3-5 inches of snow scheduled to come in - yeah, these days we schedule these things. (So it's likely school and all coaching will be cancelled tomorrow.) There's also a USATT teleconference at 8PM where we appoint committee chairs. I have to go over dozens of applications. Alas, not a single worthy bribe. And then on Saturday there's a Super League Organizing Committee Meeting at 7PM. ESPN and USA Today just did interviews with Crystal Wang at our club, so those are coming out soon, plus the Washington Post is doing a feature soon on Crystal and Derek Nie, so more on those when they come out.

Mixed in with these, of course, is the usual private and group coaching, and several writing projects. I've also got the MDTTC March Newsletter to finalize. I normally send it out at the start of each month, but we decided to wait until after the USA Team Trials this weekend so I can put info from there in it, and send it out probably next Monday. Plus I have a dentist appointment today at noon, and see my tax accountant next Tuesday. Yeah, things are busy here.

The Sayings of Bruce Lee

I read over these quotes from Bruce Lee and was amazed at how many of them apply to table tennis. I picked out the 30 most pertinent to our sport, in no particular order. I guess you can say that Bruce Lee is ghost-writing my blog this morning. Which are your favorites?

Tip of the Week

When Should You Go For a Winner?

Rest in Peace Leonard Nimoy

Famed actor Leonard Nimoy (best known as "Mr. Spock" from Star Trek) died on Friday, which happened to be my 55^th birthday. He was 83. Mr. Spock, the logical Vulcan, was one of my heroes growing up, and that it happened on my birthday was especially memorable, in a bad way. I have several connections with Nimoy.

• My mom told me that when I was about two years old (circa 1962), when Nimoy was already a well-known actor but before his role as Mr. Spock, we were at a bank in the Los Angeles area, and Nimoy was in line. She said I began running and crawling between people's legs, and that I crawled between Nimoy's legs.
• I met Walter Koenig ("Chekov") at a science fiction convention.
• I attended a writers' workshop with Ann Crispin, a famed Star Trek novelist.
• This page has four pictures from Star Trek (you may have to page down a bit) where the characters are playing table tennis. (Alas, no pictures of Nimoy/Spock playing, as this is from Star Trek Voyager, not The Original Series.)
• Here's the home page for the Vulcan Red Tooth Table Tennis Club. Alas, it's named after the God of Fire from Roman mythology, not Mr. Spock's race.
• Finally, when I'm under pressure in a table tennis match, I sometimes ask myself, "What would Spock do?" It's a great way to get yourself to look at things analytically and without emotion.

Weekend Weather Worries

Beginning Junior Class

I teach two beginning junior classes, one on Thursday 6-7PM, and the other on Sundays 4:30-6:00 PM. And so should your club!!! Yesterday's session had 16 players ranging in age from 7 to 12. Assisting me were the Triple J's - Coaches Jeffrey, John, and Josh. Here's the info page.

We started with ball bouncing. This is especially important for beginning juniors as it helps them develop the hand-eye coordination needed, as well as helping them get used to the proper grip. First they bounced on the forehand side (calling out every tenth in a row they make), then on the backhand, and then alternating. For the very, very brave (but mostly older ones) I challenged them to alternate between forehand and off the edge of their racket! Many can do a couple of these. While they did this, I worked with two new players who were there for the first time, showing them the proper grip and stance.

Then we did some forehand and backhand shadow practicing as a group. By this time everyone was there, so I then did a roll call.

Then we went into four groups, one with each coach. It worked out nicely, with four players with each coach. I took the two new players and two others, and used the robot area. We started with one player with me, one on the robot, and two picking up balls. The second half I worked with two at a time (one at each corner), with one on the robot and one picking up balls.

Yesterday's focus was the backhand, so we spent much time on that. However, since we had two new players and the two others in my group had had only one session, we started with the forehand. After one circuit on that, then we went to the backhand.

Most Interesting Rules

Here are some of the more interesting rules in table tennis.

Willie and the Coat, and Other Competitions

Yesterday I lost a competition. Willie, an eight-year-old, has this habit of wearing his coat while he plays. We usually convince him to take it off. Yesterday, while coaching him and another in a one-hour multiball session from 4-5PM, I secretly (and jokingly) told others I had one goal this session: to get Willie to take the coat off by 4:30PM without my having to tell him to do so. And so I worked him to death with lots and lots of side-to-side footwork drills, with constant mentions of how tiring this must be, how sweaty it was, and how hot it was. But he never took the coat off. At 4:30, I gave up and told Willie what I'd been doing, which he thought was pretty funny. I'm guessing he's still wearing that coat. Did I mention he also tends to lose his shoes while playing?

I have other little "competitions" with students. With Daniel, a 1639 rated ten-year-old with a supernatural ability to get nets and edges, we often count how many we get. (He kills me, and believe me, he'll beat you at this. It's uncanny, and he does this with Tenergy on both sides - usually it's players with deader rubbers like long pips or hardbat that get all the nets.) When I coach on the back table, where there's a wall closer behind me than on the bigger courts in the front, when a student misses I often continue the rally by hitting the ball backwards so it goes off the wall and back onto the table, reminding students that "Just because the point is over doesn't mean the point is over." (Or I just return it from off the floor.)

Why Players Are Getting Better at Younger Ages

Yesterday I blogged about and linked to videos of 11-year-old Tomokazu Harimoto, the new Japanese sensation. And on February 13 I blogged about how much stronger the current USA cadets and juniors are than their predecessors. As noted there and in previous blogs, a primary reason for this (especially in the U.S.) is the rise of full-time training centers, where more and more kids are training full-time. This, of course, leads to more and better junior players (and ultimately better players).

But there's another reason why in recent years we're getting more and more prodigies, where kids compete on an almost even level with much bigger and older players. As I've blogged before, modern tensor-type sponges make looping much easier, practically shooting the ball out, where before players had to put far more energy into a shot to get the same result. So looping becomes both easier and more powerful than before - all the player has to do is supply good technique and timing, and the sponge does the rest, kicking the ball out with speed and spin that wouldn't be possible otherwise. In previous generations (in particularly in the '80s and '90s) this was mostly made up at the intermediate and higher levels by speed glues. But little kids rarely speed-glued back then - if they did, they'd have gotten strange looks. Instead, kids used slower rackets and sponges, and had to supply their own power. Guess what? A little kid can't supply the power needed to compete with bigger and older players, not unless he's using a tensor-type sponge or speed gluing.

Tip of the Week

Shadow Practice When You Miss.

Forehand Topspin Against Backspin, and Proper Forehand Technique

Here's the new video (3:36) from PingSkills. You should study it to learn to loop against backspin. However, it's also a chance for many of you to fix up your forehands in general by fixing your contact point. While this video features looping against backspin, many of the principles apply to all forehands.

Note in the video how he basically rotates his body around an imaginary vertical rod going through the top of his head, and how he contacts the ball almost directly to the side of this? Most players violate one of these principles, either moving the body forward too much as they do the shot, or (even more common) contacting the ball too far in front.

There are times when you should move the body forward on a shot, such as against an easy high ball or when you are rushed in stepping around the backhand corner, but normally you should go more in a circle. This both gives you great centripetal force as you rotate around, but also leaves you in position for the next shot, balanced and ready, which is how top players can play power shots over and over in quick succession.

But as noted above, the more common problem is that players tend to contact the ball too far in front. This either keeps them from rotating backwards fully (and so losing power), or forces them to reach for the ball (thereby dissipating power and putting you off balance).

Also note how the legs (and especially the knees) are used to rotate into the shot. The legs aren't just for standing; they are the primary start to every shot, and give you the pivot into your shots. (An expanded version of this will likely become a Tip of the Week.)

Ping Pong for Fighters

Ping Pong for Fighters by Tahl Leibovitz, a Paralympics gold medalist, is a relatively short read, which is both good and bad, i.e. reading it isn't a huge commitment, so don't expect War and Peace; it's a two-hour read, full of golden nuggets. It's available in paperback ($13.45, 152 pages) or Kindle ($9.95).

I've known Tahl since he was about 13 years old, when he was part of the New York Junior Team that competed with a Maryland Team in a ten-on-ten match. He was always a battler, but back then he didn't look special, other than a knack for pulling off spectacular shots. Well, he can still pull off spectacular shots, but as he relates in the book, he's learned patience and tactics, and knows how to use these shots - how to fight with what he's got. On the back cover I wrote, "Tahl Leibovitz has forever been overcoming the odds as he fought his way to the top, so it's only fitting that he wrote Ping Pong for Fighters - and if readers have even a fraction of his fight, they too can reach the top."

The book starts off with a foreword by Stellan Bengtsson and an introduction by Tahl. And then we get into the real text, divided into four parts: The Fight Against the Environment; the Fight Against the Opponent; the Fight Against the Ball; and the Fight Against Ourselves. Yes, this is truly a fighting book!

• The Fight Against the Environment

Early on there's a quote from Samuel Jackson in the movie "The Negotiator": "You are not in control," where he explains the importance of knowing which factors are in our control and which are not, and that we should not worry about the ones we don't control.

Ping-Ping Diplomacy by Nicholas Griffin - Review

This book should be of great interest to table tennis buffs, history buffs, and Chinese buffs - lots of great stuff! It's subtitled "Ivor Montagu and the Astonishing Story Behind the Game That Changed the World." It's 275 pages, plus another 61 pages - so 336 total - of various end notes, acknowledgements, index, etc. It has 51 chapters, divided into four parts. There's also a very nice photo section in the middle.

Part 1 is titled "The West." Here we learn about Ivor Montagu, the founder of the ITTF, the person most responsible for table tennis becoming an international sport due to his tireless efforts - when he wasn't spying for the Soviets. Yep, our sport was pretty much founded by a communist spy! But we learn how he was instrumental in helping spread the sport to China as well as a little bit of Soviet history, where we even meet Trotsky.