Tip of the Week

Smooth Acceleration + Grazing Contact = Great Spin.

(This is an updated and expanded version of what was originally a blog entry from a while back.)

Hodge Podge

It was another busy weekend, with lots of stuff to report - hence the heading.

I had an interesting learning experience with one seven-year-old I coach. He's one of the more advanced ones, one you'll likely be hearing about in a few years. He can loop from both wings, and is learning to be more and more consistent, and already has great power. There are a few problems with his technique which I'm working on - too long a backswing, and a tendency to let his free arm hang loose and so not always using the left side of his body. He's tried my racket out, and loves it, and is always trying to borrow it. At first I thought it was too fast for him - a Timo Boll ALC with Tenergy on both sides (05 and 25). But when he borrowed it in drills, his shots got better and better! His father noticed this as well. We discussed it, and finally decided he's ready. So he's borrowing my backup blade (the same racket and sponge), and will soon get a new one. (He currently uses a Timo Boll All-round, with Roundell sponge.)

The old paradigm of starting with slow equipment is still true, but when a kid is training regularly with a coach and has the fundamentals mostly down, the tendency more and more these days is to move him to more advanced equipment sooner than before. This allows him to more easily do advanced shots, and so advance faster than if he were inhibited by equipment that made these shots more difficult to do.

USATT Election

Today's the final deadline for candidates to apply to get on the ballot. (Here's the USATT Election Notice and Process.)  I sent in the signed forms, the signatures (38 to be safe), and the one-page statement. (I'll put the statement online later on, whether I'm on the ballot or not.) So now all I can do is wait. The final ballot will be announced by next Friday (Nov. 21), with the election from Nov. 27-Dec. 27, and the winners announced Jan. 6.

As noted in my October 23 blog, I'm running on five main issues. If I'm on the ballot, I'll put together a "USATT Election" tab here, and put more information there on these and other issues. I'll devote one blog to each of these five issues for five consecutive days, plus a sixth day to go over a number of other issues. (On the seventh day I'll rest?) As I've noted, I'd like to focus on progressive issues that develop our sport. (I blogged about this on March 19, 2013 - Fairness versus Progressive Issues.)

Here are twelve other items I'd like to get done, in no particular order.

***NOTE - Due to technical problems all the formatting is getting lost in my blog, and the normal formatting tools in it don't work. This also means I can't up links right now. I had lots of segments ready for today, but I can't put them up without the links. So I'll only put up the regular blog entry. Hopefully this problem will be fixed quickly - I have someone working on it.

BACKHAND SATURATION TRAINING
I'm coaching a kid with a big forehand but a relatively weak backhand. He's also in the transition stage where he's learning to really topspin the backhand, i.e. loop it in rallies - but it's simply not as strong as his forehand. He's also pretty forehand oriented, and so he's often forcing forehand shots rather than take easier backhand ones - and since he's overplaying the forehand, that side keeps getting better while the backhand side doesn't.

Since he's aware of the problem - we've discussed it quite a bit - we've changed the focus of his training sessions. Overwhelmingly players start sessions by going forehand to forehand. We now start our sessions with backhand to backhand. He goes almost straight to looping the backhand; why re-enforce a flatter backhand when he's trying to learn to topspin it? We spend perhaps the first ten minutes going just backhand to backhand, where he loops and I block. This saturation training is dramatically improving his backhand. Not only is the backhand loop getting better, but it's getting him in the habit of actually using it in games rather than switching over to his normal forehand-oriented game.

I've also told him he should try winning some matches by focusing on backhand attacking, and not playing forehands except against balls going to his forehand and on obvious weak shots to his backhand. Eventually, when his backhand is strong, he may go back to playing more forehand - but for now, I want to turn his backhand into a weapon.

Tournaments and Omnipong

I've run over 120 USATT tournaments, ranging from monthly tournaments at MDTTC all through the 1990s to the 1998 Eastern Open which received 411 entries, still the record for a four-star tournament. (Richard Lee was tournament president for that one, his first big tournament, and he's been running them all over the country ever since with North American Table Tennis.) Running a large one is a massive undertaking, and even the smaller ones take far more time and work than most realize.

I sometimes think all tournament players should be required to run a USATT tournament just one time, to see what really goes on. Observant players have a good idea of what tournament directors do during a tournament; really observant ones who think it through have a good idea of all the work that went on before the tournament. Before the tournament, directors (sometimes working with a referee) receive the entries, enter them onto the computer (unless, heaven forbid in this day and age, they are running it by hand, on paper!), check all the memberships, create draws (including checking for geographical separation and other complexities), finalize the scheduling, and print everything out so it's ready. They get all the tables, nets, and barriers in place, put up the table numbers, and make sure everything is clean. And then there are those thousand small details that, if I listed them all, it'd take up about a year's worth of blogs.

There's also the more advance work - scheduling the tournaments, creating the entry forms, circulating them, publicizing the tournament, and so on. I change my mind; even running a small one is a massive undertaking!!! There's a reason why "tournament" is just an anagram for "one tantrum."

Rules Changes and One Last Change

I am tired of rule changes. The game as it is played now is substantially different than the game when I started out. Some of the rules changes were good, such as the two-color rule, the six-inch toss rule, and the idea of making hidden serves illegal. Others were more ambiguous for me - the larger ball, games to 11, and various rules restricting long pips. Some I'm not happy with, in particular the switch to non-celluloid balls, though that's mostly because they jumped the gun and made the switch before the balls were standardized or training balls were available. (I blogged about this on October 21 - see second segment.)

At this point it would take a rather strong argument for me to agree with any more changes. However, there is one last rule change I'd like to see before declaring our sport "perfect" - and that is fixing the hidden serve rule.

I've blogged numerous times about the problems with the hidden serve rule, where umpires rarely call them and so many top players (and juniors) use them to win titles, while those who play fair learn that cheating often pays off in our sport. The problem is that umpires sitting off to the side cannot tell for certain whether a serve is hidden from the opponent, and for some reason I've never fully understood, do not understand the meaning of these two rules:

Rule 2.06.06: It is the responsibility of the player to serve so that the umpire or the assistant umpire can be satisfied that he or she complies with the requirements of the Laws, and either may decide that a service is incorrect. 

Tip of the Week

Keep the Ball Deep.

Shorter Blog Today

At 11:15 AM I learned that local schools are letting out early today, at noon, and that I'm supposed to pick kids up at that time rather than the usual 3PM time. So I have to rush off now to pick them up and do about 90 minutes of coaching and tutoring. So no main blog today - just the Tip of the Week and the segments below. Back tomorrow!

Reverse Pendulum Backspin Serve - Like a Boss!

Here's the new video (5:37) where the serve is taught. The coach (Brett Clarke from TTEdge) has a very animated and unique approach to teaching the serve! I may have to dig out my old Frisbee from my closet….

Returning the Reverse Pendulum Serve

Here's the new video (12:28) from Coach Brian Pace.

Ask the Coach

Here's episode #22.

USA Table Tennis Hall of Fame

Sorry, no blog this morning - I have a last-minute opportunity to participate in a writer's workshop, and I'm rushing off for that. I promise to feel suitably guilty about this all morning as I improve my writing skills. Meanwhile, here's a new video (3:50) of a kid doing all sorts of ping-pong tricks. 

Ready Stance

What is a proper ready stance? Any decent coach could go over this in great detail. I've written about it before, such as in Grip and Stance and Use a Wider Stance. But there's a simpler way. (This might be expanded later into a Tip of the Week.)

Next time you are trying to show someone the proper ready stance in table tennis (or trying to work out your own), imagine playing basketball. Pretend to dribble a ball, and tell the person to cover you. Invariably he'll go into a perfect crouch that allows him to move quickly side to side - he'll widen his stance, with his feet aimed slightly outward, knees slightly bent, and bend slightly forward at the waist. (You can also tell someone to imagine being a shortstop in baseball or a goalie in soccer - same thing.) Other than not holding the arms up (as one does when covering in basketball), the player is now in a proper table tennis stance, and you didn't have to go into all the specifics.

Have the player do some side-to-side movements, and he'll quickly realize the benefits of playing in such a stance.

Table Tennis Authors Unite!

I've self-published my last few table tennis books on Createspace.com, a subsidiary of Amazon.com. Along the way I've become something of an expert on it. I've been advising a few other writers on it, and at the upcoming USA Nationals I'm doing an informal demo for three prospective table tennis authors who are writing table tennis books. If you also are interested in this (i.e. are writing a book on table tennis - or perhaps some other topic - that you'd like to self-publish), email me and I'll see if we can find a time at the Nationals where we can all get together.

Coaching Seven-Year-Olds

Yesterday I coached two seven-year-olds, feeding them multiball for half an hour as they took turns practicing and doing ball pickup. Coaching seven-year-olds is like trying to catch smoke in your hands. If you haven't tried coaching this age group, then you have no idea what it's like. I've worked regularly with these two, who aren't exactly beginners. Both will likely become very good players. I should be taking videos of them now to blackmail them to show them someday.  

I teach a class of beginning kids twice a week. Our last one on Sunday had 15 kids, including one 6-year-old, three 7-year-olds, and four 8-year-olds. So I'm quite experienced at threatening to throttle them if they don't pay attention teaching them the finer points of the game. It's always a matter of finding the balance between strictness (i.e. getting them to learn by actually practicing) and fun. 

At this age they have an attention span of about three seconds. Okay, they can focus longer than that, but it's not easy for them. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a 7-year-old to play serious for more than 30 seconds. Pretty much anything brings on a gigglefest. And yet you have to find a way to get them to do things properly, and to practice it, or as you explain to them they'll grow up flipping burgers at McDonalds they won't reach their potential as table tennis players.