How to practice the loop against backspin

Unless you have a chopper or a coach feeding multiball handy, it's not easy getting practice looping against backspin. You could use a robot, but then you aren't reading the spin off a paddle. You could just do it in games or drills, but then you only get one loop, and then the rally is into topspin.

A good way to practice looping against backspin over and over is to do the loop-chop drill. It's simple: You serve backspin; your partner pushes it back; you loop (forehand or backhand); your partner blocks (not too hard); you chop it back; your partner pushes it back; and you loop, and the cycle repeats. It's best to do it all crosscourt or all down-the line. I demonstrated this drill this morning at our Spring Break Camp (using the backhand loop and backhand chop), and several were trying it out later.

USATT Coaching, Club, and Editorial Committees

It's official! I've been on the USATT Editorial Board for a while; now I'm back on the USATT Coaching and Club Committees. I actually chaired both back in the 1990s. Coaching Chair Richard McAfee and Club Chair Attila Malek recently asked me if I'd joined their committees, and it's been approved by the USATT Board. I'm now listed on these committees in the USATT Committee listing.

On the coaching committee, I'd like to see more recruiting and training of full-time coaches and coaches who want to set up and run junior programs. On the club committee, I'd like to see more coaches and leagues. This is a very short version of what I'd like to see. My focus will be on increasing USATT junior and adult membership through these programs. However, since I'm not chairing either committee, I'm going to first work with the actual chairs and see what direction they want the committees to move in.

Why forehands are better than backhands

A nine-year-old student of mine named Sam said one of the funniest - and most profound? - things I've heard in a while. He's only had a few lessons, and is just starting to really hit forehands. But he has trouble with the backhand. After hitting forehands, I said let's do backhands, and he looked a bit glum. I asked why. He said, "Forehands are like an adventure. Backhands are like I'm at home watching TV."

Receive practice

I was watching one of our top cadet players practice with one of our top coaches. Near the end of the session the coach began giving his best serves, challenging the cadet to return them effectively, with the coach looking to follow up each serve with an attack. The coach mostly dominated for the simple fact that the cadet rarely got to face such serves and follow-ups. I went out on the court and suggested they do this from now on for at least half their sessions, and the coach agreed. This cadet is going to be very good! Serve & receive are the most under-practiced aspects of the game.

Robots catching and juggling ping-pong balls

As the headline said, here are robots catching and juggling ping-pong balls.

Tip of the Week problem

You may have noticed that there was no Tip of the Week on Monday, that the last two Tips of the Week (April 4 & 11) have disappeared, and that the March 28 Tip appears twice. Yes, I'm having a software problem. I have someone working on it.

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Counterlooping

This afternoon during our Spring Break Camp here at MDTTC, I spent some time counterlooping with Nathan Hsu, one of our top cadet players. (Age 14, rated 2239.) During the ITTF Coaching seminar I taught this past weekend I talked about counterlooping, and yesterday I wrote about how my counterlooping had improved as a result. But at age 51, I'm still much slower and stiffer than I used to be, and I was a bit reticent about wasting Nathan's time counterlooping, since it's a strength of his, and I wasn't sure if I could keep up. Lo and behold, I was able to stay with him - barely! But I also realized everything had to be just right for me to do so. As we started, I had to really focus on my hand and racket position, start my stroke earlier than I normally would, take a slightly longer swing than normal, and take the ball at just the right spot (just after top of bounce so the ball couldn't jump away from me). Once the counterloops starting hitting, I basically blanked my mind out and just let the shots happen. Mentally, I was just an observer. When I tried to intervene and get involved, I'd miss; when I sat back and mentally ate popcorn and just watched, I counterlooped better than I had in years. Afterwards, Nathan commented he'd never seen me counterloop with so much power. (Okay, Mr. Lupulesku, I'm ready for you now!)

Jungle Pong and Gnip-Gnop

Yesterday I wrote about some games we do in our training camps. During break, about 15 of the kids were playing "Jungle Pong." Basically the rules are you have to let the ball come off the table, and make your return after the ball has hit the floor. You can hit the ball to either side of the table - so the opponent has to be ready to change sides quickly. Since the ball has to bounce off the table and hit the floor, players have time to run it down. It's a rather strange game, but a lot of fun.

Knocking off cups and other table tennis games

We're about to start day two of our five-day Spring Break Camp at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. Guess what's one of the most popular games at our training camps? Knocking off cups. We do this with the younger kids near the end of a session. I put ten plastic cups on the table like bowling pins. I feed ten balls to each kid (multi-ball style), and see how many they can knock off. Then we get creative with the placement of the cups. An alternate version is the kids line up and each gets two shots and then rotate, and we see how long it takes for them, as a team, to knock off all the cups. We also do this with my bottled drink - whenever someone hits the bottle, I have to take a sip. (I do my best to convince them it's squeezed worm juice.)

We also play Brazilian Teams. We put them into teams of 3-5. One player from each team goes to the table and plays a point. The winner stays, while the loser goes to the end of the line for his team, and the next player goes to the table. The new player always serves. Games are usually to 41. If there are players who are much stronger than the others, we handicap them, usually by requiring them to end the point with one shot when serving (serve and end the point), and two shots when the other player is serving (receive and end the point). If a player is a complete beginner and can't really compete, we handicap it by letting them score if they can make two or three consecutive shots (so opponent has to end the ball quickly).

At the end of many sessions we play 11-point games, where the winner moves up a table, the loser moves down, with the goal to reach the first table. We do this with both singles and doubles.

Xu Xin's footwork

Now here's some fast footwork and looping! That's China's Xu Xin, world #6.

ITTF Coaching Seminar - Part 1

This weekend was the first half of the ITTF Coaching Seminar I'm running at Maryland Table Tennis Center, Sat & Sun from 9-4. (Part 2 is next weekend, same times.) It's been great fun so far - easier, in fact, than a regular table tennis camp where I would spend half my time feeding multiball. Here all I had to do was spend half the time talking, and the other half walking around and coaching the coaches in the current activity. When you've spent 35 years playing a sport, have coached it for 30 years, and have run 120+ five-day training camps and countless other group and private sessions, it's not hard to know what to say - the hard part is deciding what not to say.

I've learned a lot as well just from thinking about and preparing for the seminar. In practice matches tonight afterwards, I remembered my lecture on counterlooping with sidespin by hooking the ball rather than taking on the incoming topspin directly - and realized I'd been doing that too often. Bingo, my counterloop came alive when needed. Even my forehand flip has gotten better just from thinking about and demonstrating it. I've also learned some interesting stuff from comments from the coaches, a very insightful group.

The funnest part is imitating common mistakes and challenging the coaches to figure out the problem. Pretty much all of them can see the "obvious" problem, but usually that's a symptom of the problem, not the root cause. The challenge is to figure out what is actually causing the problem, which often is something seemingly unrelated, such as the foot positioning or grip. (These latter two are often the root cause of most technique problems.) Also key is not to just memorize how to fix every problem, but to get in the habit of analyzing a technique problem and figuring out what is going wrong.

Preparations for ITTF Coaching Seminar

I've been run ragged this past week preparing for the ITTF Coaching Seminar I'm running the next two weekends. I won't bore you with the details.

As I'm going over the various techniques we'll be going over its bringing back memories of all sorts of coaching examples I've experienced over the past 35 years. I was thinking of creating a list of them to use in the seminar, but decided it's not necessary; they will pop into my head as we get to each item. For example, I know that when we talk about a coach analyzing a player's needs or the forehand follow-through, I'll remember the 5'2" coach trying to get a 6'10" player to follow through with a "salute" stroke, with the racket going to the forehead. It was both hilarious and sad. (I later worked with the 6'10" player, where I "allowed" him to have a more normal follow through to his chest, and in about a year he went from 1300 to 1800.) I know that when we go over common problems for any technique, dozens of examples will pop jump into my memory banks. I probably ruined my own technique for the next ten years by "practicing" some of these bad habits so I can challenge the coaches to figure out what the problem is. (Hint - many will see and try to fix the symptoms of the problem rather than the root cause of the problem.)

Twas the Night Before the Table Tennis Coaching Seminar

'Twas the night before the seminar, and all through the center,
Not a coach was yet stirring, but soon they would enter,
The tables were lined up on the courts with great care,
In hopes that great coaching would soon take place there.

What are your goals?

Some people want to be champions, whether it be basement, school, club, state, country, or world champion. Others want to be the best they can be. Others have a specific level in mind, such as a certain rating. Others want to play the sport properly. Others just want to play for fun. How about you? It's hard to reach a goal without having a goal.

I've had numerous goals. Early on it was to reach a 1500 rating, later 1800, 2000, then 2100, then 2200, etc. I wanted to be the best at my club - took about three years to do that. I wanted to be the best in my state, and I eventually was state champion (at different times) in three states. I wanted to be national champion, and though I didn't do it in Men's Singles with sponge, I was National Collegiate Doubles and Team Champion, and U.S. National and U.S. Open Hardbat Champion! (Also 4-time Over 40 Hardbat and 10-time Hardbat Doubles Champion.)

As the years went by, just playing the sport properly became more of a goal. Early on my best shot was my forehand smash, but I wanted to be a looper with a big forehand loop, like most of the best players in the world, so I learned to be a looper. Even now I'm working on my backhand loop because of the increased importance of the backhand loop in the modern game. (Not to mention the difficulties in covering most of the table with the forehand at age 51.)

But at this point, as a player, guess what's most important? It's a tie between having fun, and just playing well. And there's a rather strong correlation between the two.

Sidney Harman - ping-pong whiz?

Fast or Slow Blade?

Someone posted that his coach recommends the use of slower blades, that he says, "a fast blade is like a drug because you can hit great shots with it and when struck correctly they also feel wonderful but the speed of a fast blade hurts your all around game (you just don't notice it because you are high on the power shots it makes happen)."

I understand why your coach recommends slower blades, and partially agree with him. However, a slower blade makes a player stroke the ball more to get the same speed as a faster blade, and so you have to do more work in the same amount of time as a player with a faster blade. And so the player with the faster blade will generally be able to rally at a faster pace with more consistency. The advantage of a slower blade is that because it makes you stroke the ball more, beginning/intermediate players develop their strokes a bit more. But beyond that, you generally need a faster blade. HOWEVER - I agree with your coach that many or most players use too fast a blade. If the blade's too fast, you can't control it, and you have less spin. So you need a balance. My recommendation? Stay away from the really fast blades unless you are contending for the national team (i.e. 2500+ level); otherwise, whatever feels right is usually best.

Ping-Pong Diplomacy

Chinese vs. European Forehand Loop

David Bernstein emailed me the following question: "In your TTC blog a little while back you mentioned in passing that a Chinese forehand loop is more like a modified drive or smash while a European (or anywhere else) loop is something very different. Could you possibly expound on that a little more in another blog entry?  I want to link to it from my blog (where I'm experimenting with a Chinese style forehand)."

In some ways this might be the biggest difference in Chinese versus European coaching, especially for coaches from the 1990s and before. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but in general, here is how they teach it differently. (And I'm going to use the words "tend" and "in general" a lot here.)

Chinese coaches tend to spend a lot of time with beginning juniors stressing the forehand drive and smash. Many of their juniors start out as hitters because of this. However, when they are advanced enough, they teach the loop, with the idea that it is just an extension of the regular forehand. Against backspin, you just extend the arm down and drop the racket, and hit the ball with an upward grazing motion. (You don't really have to change the racket angle, which stays about perpendicular to the ground.) Against topspin, you just extend the arm more backward, with the racket tip more backward, close the racket more, and contact more on top of the ball. They sink the ball into the sponge, sort of midway between a spinny loop (where you graze the ball) and a regular drive (where the ball sinks more into the sponge, often to the wood), catapulting the ball out with speed and topspin. 

Control the receive

I was watching some beginning/intermediate players in a tournament yesterday and noticed a huge number of points decided by the receive. Either the receiver was way too aggressive (and so made mistake after mistake) or was way too passive (and kept pushing topspin and sidespin serves off the end or side). While it's usually best to learn to play aggressive, receive is all about control, about consistently taking the initiative away from the server. If you can force a neutral rally on the opponent's serve and win half the points, you should win the match when you serve.

How do you control the serve? At the beginning/intermediate level you should focus on one thing only: is the serve backspin or not backspin? If the serve has backspin (including sidespin backspin), then you mostly push it back, though you can also loop it. If it's not backspin (i.e. sidespin or topspin serves), then you use your regular topspin shots, i.e. backhand and forehand drives (or perhaps loops, if you can do that). No-spin serves you can handle either way.

At higher levels you might want to do more with the receive, but ultimately it's all about control, whether you are quick-pushing to an angle, dropping it short, flipping, or looping.

Baltimore Orioles and Ping-Pong

The secret to the Orioles hot start this season? Obviously it's ping-pong!

"Mr. Control Freak Manager [Buck Showalter] allowed a ping-pong table to be placed near one end. The players engage in spirited competitions before games. The coaches dress in their own locker room. Jones says that Showalter rarely is seen."