Table Tennis Birthday Parties

One of the things we do at Maryland Table Tennis Centers is table tennis birthday parties. I've run dozens of them over the years. We had one this past Sunday for Ryan Lee, one of our up-and-coming players - he just turned eight, and is already racing around looping like a maniac. Here's a picture from the party, and here's another. There were just over 20 kids this time, all about Ryan's age. Past ones have ranged from this age group up to teenagers.

The typical party starts out with a demo, which usually includes an exhibition. Then we give a short clinic on the basic forehand, backhand, and serve, usually taking the players up two at a time for about five shots each. Then we go to games. The most popular is the cup game, where I ask if the kids like to build things; they say yes. I ask if they like to destroy things; I get an emphatic yes. So explain how there's nothing better than where you get to build and destroy! Then I have them build pyramids, walls, or forts on the table with paper cups, and then they line up as I feed multiball and they knock them down. Here's a picture of this from a previous party. (We start with a lot more cups than this, but at this point they've knocked most of them off.)

We often finish with the bottle game, where if they hit a bottle I put on the table that's full of squeezed worm juice, I have to drink it. For the younger kids, who rarely can hit the bottle, I'll put two or even three bottles together on the table to give them a bigger target.

Tip of the Week

Technical Problems Often Come in Pairs.

Saturday - USA Table Tennis Board Meeting

The USATT Board met from 9AM to 4PM at the Hilton Inn at BWI Airport near Baltimore. I blogged about this on Thursday, including the agenda. Attending the meeting in person were board chair Peter Scudner, Anne Cribbs, Ed Hogshead, Kagin Lee, Han Xiao, and myself. Mike Babuin and Jim Kahler also phoned in for certain issues. Also attending was CEO Gordon Kaye, High Performance Chair Carl Danner, USATT Legal Counsel Dennis Tayler, and Assistant Secretary Lee Kondo. Most of us met for dinner on Friday night.

Much of what went on I'll go over when the motions and/or minutes go online. Here's the gist of some of the more interesting items.

We started with breakfast (served in the meeting room at 8:15AM), then call to order and introductory remarks from Peter. Then came the roll call and conflict of interest statements. We went over the minutes of the January and March meetings, and they were approved with a few minor adjustments. Dennis Taylor gave us a legal update on several confidential issues. (This was also the Executive Session that was scheduled later in the agenda.)

No Blog on Friday

Because…

1. Schools are closed for a "Teacher Professional Day," and if they get the day off, so do I.
2. I can use another day off to rest. I took a day off on Tuesday, and it really paid off during yesterday's coaching, where I felt energized for the first time in a while.
3. To give me time to prepare for the USATT Board Meeting on Saturday, where I have two presentations.
4. So I can spend the day finalizing the first draft of "The Spirit of Pong," which I blogged about March 16. (I finished the first draft yesterday, but have two pages of notes of things to add or change.)
5. So I can take my car to the shop for a check-up and minor repairs.
6. We have a one-day training camp at MDTTC, but I might not be needed since we have eight full-time coaches - but I might be called in.

USATT Board Meeting

This Saturday there's a USATT Board meeting in Baltimore from 9AM to 4PM. Board members and some staff and/or committee chairs will be coming in for the meeting. As a board member since January, this'll be my first in-person meeting, though I've been on two teleconferences. (Over the years I've attended about 60 board meetings, including the last one in December at the Nationals.) Below is the agenda. I've got two presentations, both scheduled for 30 minutes.

The first (at 11:30 AM) is my Regional Associations Proposal, which plans to set up regional and state associations, with a three-pronged goal: setting regional team leagues; coaching programs; and state championships. A huge portion of my time over the next few years is going to be devoted to this. I'll blog a lot more about this later.

Shakehands Grip Variations and Changes

Recently I've had a lot of questions about whether it's okay to use variations of the shakehands grip, or to change grips during a rally. (Of course a large part of this is I'm teaching a new ten-week Adult Beginning/Intermediate Class.) The answer is . . . it depends.

Before I go further, here are three articles I've written on the subject:

• Grip and Stance
• Should You Use a Neutral Grip?
• Feet and Grip

But since these articles are all from 2012 and 2013, they've been forgotten - so now's a good time to blog about it! At least it'll get you thinking about it. Plus I'll add a few new things.

First, a quick definition. A neutral grip is where the thinnest part of the wrist should line up with the paddle. If, while in a backhand position, you rotate the top of the racket away from you, then you have a backhand grip. If you rotate the top of the racket toward you, it's a forehand grip. Here's an article with pictures showing extreme forehand and backhand grips - you can also have a forehand or backhand grip that isn't as extreme as in these pictures.

For beginners, I strongly urge you to use a neutral grip until your strokes are well developed. Those who start out with backhand or forehand grips usually ended up with stroke problems. The problem with a non-neutral grip is you are forced to make adjustments for the fact that your arm is aiming one way, your racket another. This will mess your stroke development up.

Exhaustion, and Playing Those Wide Angles and Middle

I must be getting old. I'm not sure how this happened - I think someone at the club stuck something in my Gatorade one day, and presto! This past month I've coached nearly every single day. I finally got a day off this past Saturday due to a series of fortunate events, but Sunday I was on my feet coaching for over six hours. Yesterday I had 2.5 hours of coaching and could barely move as my muscles were absolutely, completely, totally, wholly, entirely, fully, and utterly dead. (Yeah, I used a Thesaurus.)

I was hitting with 10-year-old Daniel (1639), and I think he aced me with shots to the wide forehand or backhand about every ten seconds. The eye-opener was when I wanted to work on his blocking near the end of the session with him, and literally couldn't forehand loop to his block more than a few shots - normally I'm sort of a machine in a drill, not really powerful but can loop over and Over and OVER. I was even having blocking as my legs just wouldn't step to the ball - and Daniel was somewhat gleeful in looping wide-angled aces, as well as to my middle. (But I liked that he was going for such wide-angle loops - see last Monday's Tip of the Week, To Play the Middle and Wide Corners You Have to Practice to Them.) We ended up doing extra multiball. When we played games at the end, I compensated for my lack of mobility by pulling out my best serves and receives - sorry Daniel.

Tip of the Week

Macho or Tricky?

Adult Beginning/Intermediate Class

Yesterday, from 6:30-8:00PM, I taught Week Four of the ten-week class. There are 19 in the class, with Raghu Nadmichettu and Josh Tran normally assisting. (Yesterday John Hsu subbed for Josh, who was at Cary Cup.) Here's the group picture I linked to last week.

Yesterday we started right where we'd finished last week, with pushing, with the emphasis now on the forehand push. I explained that you have to learn to do regular forehand pushes, but as players advanced, they mostly only do forehand pushes against short balls, since it's better to loop any deep backspin ball to the forehand. (This is also somewhat true on the backhand side, but not quite as much since you are more likely to get jammed on the backhand side, and because you have an angle into a righty opponent's backhand with your backhand push.)

I harped on the idea that you have to step to the ball, both side to side and in and out, not just reach. I showed how beginners should learn to take the ball on the drop, letting the ball fall on their racket, but as they advanced, they should learn to take the ball quicker, right off the bounce. I went over the six main things you want to do with a push, and explained why it's better to be pretty good at all six than great at most but weak on one or two Here's my Tip of the Week, Pushing: Five out of Six Doesn't Cut It.

Historic First Match of the Capital Area Super League

It took place last night at the Maryland Table Tennis Center, between the MDTTC Smokeoutz (Khaleel Asgarali, Toby Kutler, Ryan Dabbs, Amy Lu, with Chen Bowen and Reza Ghiasi sitting out), and the MDTTC Lions (Stefano Ratti, Raghu Nadmichettu, Heather Wang, and Ernie Byles). Normally it's supposed to be three on three, but due to a misunderstanding and a last-minute negotiation, they played four on each side this one time. The Smokeoutz won 5-4, with a severely under-rated 11-year-old Ryan Dabbs (rated 2018, #5 in U.S. in Under 12 boys) pulling out a ninth match upset win over Ernie Byles.

Here's the write-up by Stefano Ratti, along with results and pictures. (Click on the pictures for larger version.) And yes, that's a lion smoking a cigar and dreaming about table tennis.

New Table Tennis Terms and Why This Blog is Short

Below are some new table tennis terms that we've invented at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. Yes, we are constantly innovating!

Today's blog is a little short as I was up late working last night and so got started on this late, and I have to leave shortly for a rare morning coaching session. I'm sort of jumping back and forth between 1) preparing the French translation of Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers for publication; 2) writing the fantasy table tennis novella "The Spirit of Pong"; 3) writing a feature but temporarily top-secret table tennis article; 4) responding to approximately 314,159 emails; and 5) various USATT activities, mostly regarding regional associations and leagues. And then I've got five hours of coaching plus driving around to pick up players in our afterschool program, so it's going to be a bit busy.

• "Daniel" - a net or edge. (Note - Daniel is a 10-year-old student of mine who gets an unreal number of nets and edges. He uses inverted on both sides.)
• "Double Daniel" - a net-edge.
• "1% Daniel" - a ball that barely nicks the edge.
• "You have no chance" - You can do this.
• "Dang" - what an older player (or at least me) says when he misses a shot or can't get to a ball that he could get to when he was younger.
• "Cup Killers" - anyone with a deadly accurate forehand, as it allows them to knock cups off a table in multiball.
• "Worm juice" - any liquid in a bottle that the coach has to drink if they hit the bottle while he's feeding multiball.
• "Nuclear bomb" - any ping-pong ball under a cup that players have to knock off the table to defuse.
• "Larry" - the claim that the shot you just did was the greatest shot of all time, or the greatest shot of its type.

NCTTA Three-Player Rule and Petition

Can You Have Too Much Confidence?

Here's an interesting article by Ben Lacombe of Expert Table Tennis, though this article is from his non-table tennis blog. The article is about confidence and how it affects success, and features Kanye West as an example. Now I'm no music expert and am not an expert on West, but from what little I do know from various news articles, I have to agree with President Obama about him. However, he is right in some of the things he says about attaining success, as the article explains. The article finishes with the following four ways people think about success:

Adult Beginning/Intermediate Class

On Sunday from 6:30-8:30PM we had the third session of the class at MDTTC. The class technically ends at 8PM, but I've pretty much made it official policy to stay until 8:30PM, where we work on serve and serve return. There are 19 people in the class, ranging from near beginner up to about 1500. Strangely, there are no women - usually we have a few. One woman actually did sign up, but she was the only one to drop out before we started. Also, all 19 players are right-handed. There is one penholder, the rest are conventional shakehanders. One likes to chop occasionally.

Here's a group picture from Sunday, with one player missing. That's me on the far right in the black shirt. Kneeling in front on the right in the black hat is assistant coach Raghu Nadmichettu; in blue with his hand on his chin is assistant coach Josh Tran. I have to be very careful of everything I say in the class; that's USATT counsel Dennis Taylor in the back, slightly right of center in the red shirt. (He has a 1478 rating, and has been as high as 1619.)  

On Sunday we started with forehand and backhand practice. Then we went over hitting down the line, and practiced that. Then we did some more crosscourt hitting. Since many players are relatively new, I thought we needed a lot of forehand and backhand practice. Then we went over backhand pushing. I did the demo with Raghu, and used the soccer-colored balls so they could better see the backspin. There were a lot of questions, and so the lecture/demo went on longer than expected - but that's a good thing. Then we went to the tables and practiced.