Tip of the Week

Do You Have the Blocking Reachies?

My Weekend

Here's a short rundown of my weekend, Fri-Tue morning.

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I'm not Jewish, but the local schools celebrate it and are closed today. If the kids I coach get the day off, so do I! So no blog today, and the Tip of the Week will go up tomorrow, as I sleep late. But not too late – I've got a long todo list today involving various USATT, MDTTC, and CATTL issues, plus some private coaching tonight. (You may notice I'm putting this up at about 4:15 AM Monday morning. Guess what I've been doing all night?) But to tide you over, here's an…

...Incredible Doubles Rally at the Belgium Open

Here's the video (38 sec) between the Koreans and Hungarians in the semifinals at the Belgium Open held last weekend. Hungary won the match! (They'd lose the final. See Men's Doubles results.) 

Some Ping-Pong Reading?

Why not spend some of your weekend (or next weekend) reading some table tennis books? Or are you one of the 28% who haven't read a book in the last year? No, table tennis players are too smart, and of course are voracious readers. Here's my table tennis book collection – currently at 234 books and 13 feet of shelf space. You could, of course, just read my books - here they are. (Here's my Amazon page.) Or you could browse these, mostly from the last ten years.

Table Tennis Instructional Books

Fixing the Grip

Here's an interesting coaching story. I've been coaching one junior for about three years. Over the last year he's grown about six inches and his hands grew even more –at age 14, they're as big as mine. During his first three years his biggest technical problem was a tendency to stand up too straight, which affected his strokes. In particular, it led to a tendency to stroke too much upward. Often his strokes would start forward and then go upwards as he contacted the ball, which is the natural tendency of players who stand up too straight.

Over the past year, as he's grown, he's run into another problem - he began to forehand loop with mostly his upper body, with less and less legs and hip rotation. I kept harping on this, but he had difficulty doing so. At the same time, he seemed to overcome his problem with standing up too straight, adopting a very wide stance that kept him relatively low. So we'd sort of swapped one problem for another. 

And then, a few weeks ago, he sort of "confessed" something to me - that he'd been changing his grips much more than I'd thought. Yes, grips.  

I'd known that, like Waldner and many others, he had what I thought was a minor grip change from forehand to backhand, where he'd put pressure with the thumb on backhands, which rotated the racket slightly into the backhand position. However, over the last year - probably because his hands were getting bigger - he'd begun using more and more extreme grip changes, to the point where he was now using a relatively extreme backhand grip for backhands, and a relatively extreme forehand grip for forehands. And he was running into all sorts of problems in rallies as he tried (often unsuccessfully) to switch back and forth. The subject had actually come up about six months ago, but at that time it was only a minor forehand and minor backhand grip, and he wasn't having quite as much trouble switching yet.

Table Tennis Bucket List

A long time ago, when Pterodactyls ruled the skies, Jimmy Carter was president, and I had just graduated high school (1978), I put together a bucket list - things I wanted to someday do. Some of it was table tennis; some was writing; some was other things, like traveling to historical sites. At the time I was rated around 1800. (I didn't start until I was 16.)

Since you are a table tennis person (why else would you be reading this?), why not create your own table tennis bucket list? Here are some suggestions.

1. Achieve a certain rating.
2. Win a state or national title.
3. Play table tennis in a certain number states.
4. Play table tennis in a certain number of clubs. 
5. Play at a U.S. Open or Nationals.
6. Become proficient at multiple styles.
7. Master a certain stroke you've never been able to do well.
8. Start and/or run a club/tournament/league/training program.
9. Become a USATT or ITTF certified coach.
10. Become a USATT certified umpire.

Here is the bucket list I made. I've managed to do 14 of the 20, but still have a few to go.  (This was not the original order, which was scrawled in somewhat random order on a lined paper in very bad handwriting.)

Tip of the Week

Never Look for a Winner.

North American Championships

They were held this past weekend (Sat-Mon) in Toronto. Here's the ITTF page for the event, which has results, articles, pictures, quotes, and video. Here's the ITTF Press Release.

The big news is that USA swept everything over Canada, all eight events – Men's and Women's Singles and Teams, Cadet Boys' and Girls' Singles, and Junior Boys' and Girls' Teams. Historically, there have been many USA-Canada battles for many decades, and it's usually been competitive. But the strength and depth of USA Cadets is just too strong for Canada. As I've blogged a number of times, USA is stronger at the cadet level than it has ever been in history, and it's not even close. (Cadets is under 15, but due to dates used, some players are eligible after turning 15.)

But USA had to make two near miraculous comebacks to get the 8-0 sweep. In the Women's Singles Final, Lily Zhang (USA) was down 0-3 to Mo Zhang (CAN) before coming back to win 4-3. In the Men's Team Final, USA (Jim Butler, Timothy Wang, Kanak Jha) was down 0-2 before coming back to win 3-2. (Here's the match sheet.)

But USA overall dominance was rather obvious. In Women's Singles, seven of the eight quarterfinalists were USA, with Mo Zhang the only Canadian. In Men's Singles three of the four semifinalists were USA, including cadets Kanak Jha and Jack Wang. In Cadet Boys, all four semifinalists and seven of the eight quarterfinalists were USA. In Cadet Girls, all four semifinalists were USA.

Let's Revisit the "91-Shot Lobbing Point"

I posted the video a few days ago, and it's all over the Internet. Sure, it's spectacular, the lobbing point of the century. But there's one obvious thing most are missing – why Adrien Mattenet was lobbing in the first place. The video is 2:27 long, and you can watch it over and over, but we're only going to concern ourselves with the first two seconds.

Par Gerell, the lefty on the far side, is serving. He tosses the ball up and slightly sideways and backwards. The rule is the ball must be tossed "near vertical," which isn't well defined. By tossing the ball somewhat high, Gerell can throw the ball a little sideways and backwards while keeping the serve "near vertical."

At first the ball is easily visible, and Gerell actually moves his head backwards, away from the ball. But watch how the ball moves sideways, and Gerell moves his head forward, thrusting it in front of the ball just before contact! Yep, an illegal hidden serve. And that's how Gerell got the easy ball to loop kill that forced Mattenet to lob in the first place.

Here's a five photo sequence showing this. (The white "G" logo on the floor conveniently shows the relative positions of the ball and Gerell's head throughout the serve.)

Smart Phones and Smart Coaching

Well, I've finally done it. I've bought a smart phone. I've fought the temptation and peer pressure long enough, knowing that once I got one, there'd be no going back. I'm now entering the 24-hour online world, where coaches can check email while students are chasing after balls and perhaps watch a Disney movie on their phone while feeding multiball. 

I'm used to the idea of checking email when I get home from coaching; now I'll be able to do so at any time. I'm not sure this is a good thing. But there's no going back. I've fallen to the dark side - they have cookies. 

I've used smart phones in my coaching. Just a few days ago I had one of my students use his cell phone to video his forehand loop so he could see how he wasn't rotating his hips into the shot. I'll likely be doing this more often. I plan to get a tripod to make this easier. Isn't there an app for coaches to make it easier to video students? (Who'll be the first to find me that link? Email me!) 

Are We Done Yet?/Can We Practice More?

It's always interesting to see the different attitudes. Recently I had a session with two younger kids, who took turns, one doing multiball, the other ball pickup. One didn't try very hard except in spurts, kept asking what time it was, kept close track of how much longer he had to practice, and tried to bargain to leave early. The other was silent throughout all this, practicing pretty hard. But when the session ended and the first kid raced away happily, the second one asked, "Can we practice more?" Since I didn't have another session for 30 minutes, we did an extra 20 minutes (no charge). He got some good stroking and smashing practice. (We did it live, not multiball.)

You can always tell which ones will get good. Sure, there's talent (let's not start that argument for now!), but the ones who are determined to get good have this disturbing tendency to get good, while those who want to get out of practice or don't try have this weird tendency to not get good. I don't understand it!!!

On a related topic, long-time and older players often find themselves hitting the wall in their attempts to improve, even when they try hard. Often they start to give up, as even though they practice more (like the second kid above), they don't improve as much as they'd like. For those, I suggest taking a look at what they are practicing. I've seen players lose match after match because they couldn't block, and afterwards spent all their time practicing their attack. Or players who lose over and over because they couldn't return serves, and afterwards spent all their time practicing their attack. Or players who lose over and over because their serves are weak, and afterwards they spent all their time practicing their attack. (See a pattern?)

Backhand Serves From the Middle and Forehand Side

Over the last few days I've watched several players practice backhand serves. They worked really hard at it, and yet they were missing something. All four players only did the serve from the backhand corner. (They were all righties.) That's okay, but it's lacking. Germany's Dimitrij Ovtcharov might have the most effective backhand serve among top players, and he usually serves it from the middle and even the forehand side. Here's a video of him doing the serve, in slow motion. (The video is 3:12 long and shows all his serves, but the link should take you to his backhand serves, which start at 1:22 and go to the end.)

By serving from the middle or forehand side of the table (and we're again assuming righties – lefties adjust), you get the following: