MDTTC Camp, Sick & Exhausted, and Media

One of the side effects of coaching kids is you are exposed to every germ known to mankind. Yep, I’ve come down sick. It’s probably just a cold – 100 degree temperature, extremely sore throat, aching teeth, the general sick feeling (every muscle feels like it was hit by a tsunami), and complete exhaustion. The problem is I was exhausted before I came down sick, from coaching every day for over two weeks, including coaching all day (and sometimes night) in our camps Mon-Fri, even longer hours on Sundays, and about two hours on my “rest” day, Saturday. So right now my exhaustion level on the Richter scale is 11.0, enough to win a game while destroying half the planet.

Even after 24 years of coaching at MDTTC I’m never really sure where to draw the line at when I should just stay home, for myself but even more so I don’t get anyone else in the camp sick. But I’m sort of needed – without me the sun might fall out of the sky, right?

Meanwhile, we did a lot of smashing yesterday. I was surprised at how fast some of the new players picked it up. One seven-year-old registered his first backspin serve that came back into the net; he was quite excited. Here’s the serve demonstrated by Ma Lin (1:18) on an apparently hot day.

I was interviewed by a reporter from the University of Maryland Alumni Association for their newsletter, which is doing a feature on fellow alumni Navin Kumar. Also had an email exchange with one of the sports reporters at the Baltimore Sun, who is both going to put the results of the Capital Area League in the paper (see below) and do a special on Han Xiao. Strangely, we’re more local to the Washington Post, but they’ve always been more difficult to get into, except for KidsPost, which has twice featured us.

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday was a rather peaceful day – no nosebleeds, no meltdowns, nothing more dramatic than a few untied shoelaces. We did a lot of work on pushing and other fundamentals; nine of us went to 7-11 after lunch; and at the end of the day, many paper cups were stacked and smacked to death by excited kids. One thing did stand out today – during all three breaks (morning break, lunch break, and afternoon break), several kids stayed late each time to work on things. At one point during lunch break I was secretly glancing at my watch wondering if I would ever get to eat lunch as several kids wanted me to work on their serves, and so all of me (other than my grumbling stomach) happily went along.

Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers

Here’s the review of my book by Samson Dubina. I like the first line! You can buy it at Amazon, in print or kindle.

Ping Pong for Quitters

Some of you might have read the book “Ping Pong for Fighters” by Tahl Leibovitz. Tahl recently got the bronze in singles and gold in teams at the Spanish Paralympic Table Tennis Championships. In honor of that, my next book will be “Ping Pong for Quitters,” unless of course I’m kidding. Here are ten major points about ideas that will be featured.

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday was the Day of the Nosebleed. When you run a camp with kids, you'll get them occasionally. How about two in five minutes, and both from my group? First a five-year-old (the youngest in the camp) walked right into someone's forehand backswing, and got smacked in the nose. It bled pretty badly. Five minutes later a seven-year-old kid was shadow-stroking his forehand, as I'd directed him to do, and somehow he managed to smack himself in the nose - and the blood came pouring out. (What type of forehand stroke am I teaching these kids?!!!) We went through a lot of paper towels before all the bleeding stopped. A couple hours later the seven-year-old was running about picking up balls and the nose started bleeding again, even worse than before. (Yes, we did a thorough clean-up each time.) Table tennis is a violent sport....

We spent a lot of time working on spin serves. Two kids who had never put spin on their serves on their lives were able to put enough backspin on the ball so the balls came to a stop on the table. (Here's my article How to Create a Truly Heavy Backspin Serves.) We also did a lot of King of the Table and Brazilian Teams, and many paper cups were killed.

The seven-year-old with the two nosebleeds has a nice backhand, but tends to jerk his forehand, and stops the stroke almost as he hits the ball. Maybe one kid in a hundred that age can spend an entire day focused almost entirely on fixing the problem, not to mention taking it seriously, but that's what he did. By the end of the day his stroke was looking much better. We're both determined for him to have a "perfect" forehand. He's almost too serious about wanting to get better!!!  

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday was Day One of Week Two of our Eleven Weeks of Camps at MDTTC. (That’s enough capitalization for the week.) With one “minor” exception (can’t go into that since the person involved is a kid who likely won’t be back), it’s a great group this week, especially the ones in my group. We did a lot of work on fundamentals – forehand, backhand, footwork, and serve.

I think right now we have the most talented and promising group of kids in the roughly 7-8 age range than we’ve ever had at MDTTC in our 24 years – lots of depth. Check back with us in a few years – they’re getting scary. We had a 7-year-old today who was smacking bottles off the table like they were the broad side of a barn, and he’s not even in the top five at MDTTC for that age group. Of course, it’s more than just apparent talent – this is a very serious group of kids who already seem to have the mental dedication to the sport that’s usually lacking until much older. Plus they can loop anything!

Every camp there’s something different. This week it seems as if all the newer players have good backhands but need work on the forehand – way too many wristy forehand swats. Also, a number of them have good fast & deep serves, but few can really spin their serves – which will be a focus today. Out come the soccer- colored balls! (So they can see if they are spinning the ball or not.)

One little problem – after standing up all day nearly every day for a million years (subjectively), my legs are exhausted. In fact, as I write this I’m balancing two things – too tired to do anything, but too tired to get up from my computer. The latter overpowered the first, so I’m at my computer, and so I might as well write stuff.

Tip of the Week

Conquer the One-Winged Blues by Developing Your Weaker Side.

USATT Club Development Handbook

The new USATT Club Development Handbook by Yang Yu (Head Coach and Business Director of the Austin TTC) and Roderick Medina (League Director and Board Member of ATTC) is out! (Here’s the direct link to the PDF file.) This is a great new manual for those hoping to start a new club. (Disclaimer: I edited and critiqued an early version of this.)

I’m especially interested in how it can be used to assist those hoping to start up full-time table tennis centers. Assisting in the growth of such centers is something I promised when I ran for the Board as a key part of growing USA Table Tennis – both the organization and the number of serious players in this country. I believe that using it in conjunction with the USATT Club Handbook (which I haven’t reviewed in a while – will do so sometime) and my own Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook will give us the textbooks for running seminars on the how to create such full-time centers. While all nine steps in this new manual are important, I think steps 3-6 are particularly key for this.

The manual is made up of nine steps - if any of these may be useful to you, download the (free) manual!

Racket Tip When Blocking

On Tuesday I linked to Racket Position, a 54-second video from Samson Dubina. It brought back a memory of my own during my peak years in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the video, Samson explains why it’s an advantage to keep the racket tip down in the same way for all shots (i.e. an extension of the arm), so you can do different shots from the same starting position.

Unfortunately, when I started out in 1976 I learned instead to raise my racket tip on my blocks, to about 45 degrees on the backhand, and a bit more on the forehand. This led to problems later on, as I’d have to have the racket tip up on some shots, down on others, and I’d often get caught the wrong way. Once I started blocking I tended to continue blocking rather change the racket tip up position. And so at my peak, I went on a roughly two-year mission where I tried to fix this, and forced myself to block on both sides with the racket tip more down. This allowed me to wait until the last second on each shot before deciding whether to block, counter, smash, or loop, and perhaps also kept the opponent in the dark.

However, at that point my blocking with the tip more up was pretty much ingrained, and I was never able to block consistently or effectively with the tip down. After losing numerous matches during those two years because of this I went back to my old way, and to this day I generally raise my racket tip when blocking. It’s especially noticeable on my forehand. On the backhand, I now block both ways, which probably isn’t good. In drills, I’ll often lower the tip on the backhand as that’s how I drilled for those two years, and it became pretty consistent that way – but only in drills. In games, I almost always raise the tip.

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday was another long day at camp, including an extra hour of private coaching. Strangely, most of the kids seem more energetic than ever. (But not all!) We spent a lot of time working on serves, as well as a lot of fundamentals.

A lot of other interesting stuff probably happened, but perhaps I don’t remember it. I was feeding multiball to a righty ten-year-old, and I gave him a pop-up to his wide forehand. He smacked it down the line at a zillion mph, smack into the middle of my forehead. I think I saw stars for a few seconds, and I had a slight headache for the next couple of hours. (It’s times like this I’m glad I wear glasses when I play table tennis – I wouldn’t want a ball like that in the eye.)

Backspin Return Over Net Serve

Here’s a video (30 sec) of a Japanese player doing this serve. It’s actually not that difficult a serve for an advanced player, though it takes practice to do it consistently. I did 14 in a row last week in a demonstration for a class, which tied my previous best. (Missed #15 both times. All 14 were “clean,” bouncing back over the net on one bounce and not touching the net in either direction.) I did this serve once in a tournament at something like 20-12 match point against U.S. Under 10 Champion Sunny Li (who I trained with regularly) back when he was about 1900 but too short to reach it, but that’s the only time I’ve done it in a serious competition.

MDTTC Camp and Coaching

Yesterday felt like one of the most exhausting days ever, probably because it was. Imagine coaching a group of 6-to-10-year olds for three hours, eating lunch, frantically reading a must-read document for an hour, then coaching the kids again another three hours, then doing 90 minutes of private coaching, then doing this blog (so I wouldn’t have to get up extra early this morning to do it). All in a day’s work for many full-time coaches, but it left me exhausted, as it has the many times I’ve had to do this before in our camps. But I’m getting older, and it’s not so easy anymore! (There are about 40 players in the camp.)

Several of the kids in my group were near-beginners, so we did a lot of work on fundamentals. Quite honestly, a few seemed pretty untalented at the beginning but surprised me with their progress as the day progressed. At the end, nearly all of them were able to hit the bottle of “squeezed worm juice,” and I was forced to drink quite a bit. Yuck!!! (As far as some of the kids know – and some sort of believe me – I’m spending the night at the hospital getting my stomach pumped.)

It has to be said – I’ve never seen a group who could lose paddles so quickly. I think we spent half the camp searching for lost rackets. I might have to tie them to their wrists.

One of the kids in my group, about eight, who has been in several of our past camps, wrote a note and handed it to me. It read, “Dear Larry, Larry is varey (sic) nice. By [name withheld].”

After a sufficient amount of pleading and negotiating, I finally gave in and treated them all to Slurpees at 7-11 after lunch. There goes my income…

Tomorrow we’re going to spend quite a bit of time on serves. I always look forward to the jaw-dropping, bug-eyed looks of shock when I demonstrate backspin serves that bounce back into the net. I really should video that part.

MDTTC Camps

MDTTC’s annual eleven weeks of summer camps started yesterday. Originally local schools were supposed to finish last week, but because of snow days they pushed over and so yesterday (Monday) was the final school day. Because of that, we had a lower first-day turnout, and so I was able to mostly stay home and do various USATT and MDTTC paperwork. (We still managed to get over 20 players for the afternoon session.) I went in for a 5-6:30PM coaching session with Daniel, and then rushed home for the USATT teleconference at 7PM (see below).

Most likely I’ll be coaching much of the rest of the summer from 10AM-6PM, with a lunch break. I’ll likely have some coaching sometimes during the lunch break, as well as after 6PM, so things are about get busy. Add in the blog, tip of the week, MDTTC stuff (group sessions, private coaching, newsletter, and other marketing things), USATT stuff (don’t get me started…), and few minor details like sleeping and eating, and I’m about to will the earth rotation to slow down so I have a few more hours in the day.

On top of that, my arm was bothering me a bit after coaching nearly all day on Sunday. I’m going easy on it – today, after the camp is done, I’ve got a 90-minute session with two of our juniors, and I’m bringing in Raghu so that I do the multiball and blocking drills, he does looping and free play drills, and we switch halfway through. (Alas, he gets the fun stuff.)

USATT Board Teleconference

We had a teleconference last night, rough from 7-8:30 PM. Main topics included:

Tip of the Week

Good Receive is What Works.

Equipment Edventures
(Did I just coin a new word, or simply force a word to start with “E”?)

Three of my students had equipment adventures this weekend, all involving Tenergy, which they all use on both sides. All are in the 1550-1700 range.

Sameer, 13, has been having trouble against slightly high balls, especially when I go back and fish. Over and over in practice games or drills if I step off the table and just get the ball back, he’d start missing. Part of this is the trajectory as when a player backs up to return with topspin, the ball will bounce out more, and so the attacker also has to take perhaps a half step back or he’ll get jammed. But Sameer was complaining that his sponge was old and that was the problem. He was right that the Tenergy was old as he hadn’t switched in a long time. So he finally bought new Tenergy this weekend. We had a session on Saturday before the change, and he was still struggling against my fishing. After changing, we had a session on Sunday and suddenly he was ripping them. So yes, Virginia, there is such thing as sponge that’s too old.

Daniel, 10, also was having trouble as he too hadn’t changed sponge in way too long. I’d told him he needed new sponge, but he put it off until Friday – with a tournament at MDTTC on Saturday. (See link to results below.) After months of using old sponge, the switch to new sponge cost him control, and he wasn’t able to make the adjustment immediately – and so had a bad loss in his first match at the tournament. But then he adjusted, had a pair of nice wins, and made it to the semifinals of Under 1700. (Much of adjusting to newer sponge is mental, as you not only have to adjust to the sponge, but you have to have confidence you have adjusted or you’ll miss your shots.)