Five Really Bad Coaches

Here are five examples of very bad coaches. They shall all be nameless - but none of them are currently coaching table tennis in the U.S. (Alas, the tennis coach is still active.)

1) I'm going to start not with a table tennis coach (as the next four are), but a tennis coach. For many years tennis was my side sport, reaching a 4.0 level, which is pretty good. I'd often schedule my table tennis coaching so I could stop by the local tennis center for 90-minute group sessions, often 2-3 times a week. During those years I worked with many coaches, and all agreed I had the most lopsided game they'd ever seen - a very strong forehand (100% due to my table tennis, as were my other strengths), quick feet, very nice lob and very good drop shot. But the rest of my game was rather weak - weak serve (especially second serve), weak backhand (I mostly sliced), weak backhand volley, barely adequate overhead. But I loved to race around smacking in forehands, and was especially good at hitting winners off second serves, which made up for players attacking my own weak second serve.

I always told coaches I had two rules - "Larry's Rules" (tennis version):

Rule One: Don't worry about my forehand, coach me on everything else. My forehand was so much better than the rest of my game it was pointless focusing on that. Because I hit it with a hybrid stroke between table tennis and tennis, I lost some power, but made up for it by taking the ball very early, often on the rise, with precise accuracy and placement, and by throwing my whole body into each shot.

Ogimura Book - Some Tidbits

I'm nearly done reading "Ogi: The Life of Ichiro Ogimura." It's currently only available in Japanese; I had to have someone send me the English version, which is only available in England. Stellan Bengtsson first alerted me to the English version, which I hope to make available in the U.S. later on. (Don't know who Ichiro Ogimura is? Probably the most influential player in table tennis history!!!)

I'm taking a lot of notes about Ogimura, and plan to incorporate much of it into my fantasy table tennis novella, "The Spirit of Pong." (I blogged about this on March 16 and several times since.) Here are some interesting tidbits I've learned.

Tip of the Week

Visualize Serves for Feedback.

Sunday Classes and Continuing Arm Problems

Due to my arm problems I had to cancel or get substitutes for all of my private coaching over the weekend. On Sunday I had two classes, a junior class from 4:30-6:00 PM and an adult beginning/intermediate class from 6:30-8:00PM.

In the junior class we had a couple of new players, so I spent a lot of time working with them to get them started. One of them (age 9) seemed a nervous wreck at the start, but by the end of the session he was hitting pretty good forehands and was smiling - and his mom immediately signed him up for the next ten weeks. Working with juniors can take a lot of energy because you have to constantly supervise them or you'll find them changing their grips and strokes, but if you set the right atmosphere and policies, things usually go pretty well. The standard in this class is we train hard for an hour, and then we do 30 minutes of games.

For games we did two things this session. First, we pulled out Froggy, and divided the players into two groups. They took turns, two shots each, trying to hit the poor amphibian as I fed multiball. The two teams were fair, and split the two games played to ten hits. Then we brought out the paper cups, and they build huge structures (this time creating a wall around Froggy, which I called the "Pretty Good Wall of China), and then took turns knocking them down.

USA State Championships and Other Listings

As the USATT Regional Associations Coordinator, I'm preparing to start working with members around the country to set up regional and state associations. However, as I've blogged before, creating these associations is NOT the goal - they are a MEANS to a goal, which is a huge increase in table tennis activity and USATT membership. I'm using a three-pronged approach toward this. I've blogged repeatedly about two of these - creating training centers and coaching programs, and regional team leagues. The third prong is state championships.

The goal is 50 state championships in 2016. (DC as well!) For you non-Americans, there are 50 states, so yeah, we want one in every state.

Of course, the word "goal" isn't the right one either, since once again it is not really the goal, but another means to the goal of huge table tennis activity and USATT membership. But you need sub-goals to reach final goals, so we'll call 50 state championships a goal.

Once we have regional and state associations, they will be responsible for organizing their own state championships. (Since regional associations and state associations don't always coincide, there'll be some negotiating between associations to make sure each state gets a championship.) I will work with them to make sure each association has contact info for all the major media in their region - newspapers, TV, and radio. And so before and after each state championship there should be a flood of press releases, leading to lots of press coverage.

I envision every year at the USA Nationals in December a "Parade of Champions," held between major matches in the arena, where every state champion present marches by, with each one identified by the announcer by name, title, and state.

U.S. Training Center Economy

At the recent USATT Board meeting I was asked by Carl Danner, chair of the USATT High Performance Committee, if I'd ever considered just how large the table tennis training center economy is in the U.S. It's a good question.

We're talking about full-time training centers. As recently as 2006 there were only 8-10 in the whole country. Now there are almost 80. A full-time club is very different from a typical club, especially in terms of budget. Your average part-time club gets most of its revenue from membership and perhaps a few tournaments. These numbers are probably dwarfed by the revenue (and expenses) of a full-time club.

I started the Maryland Table Tennis Center (along with Cheng Yinghua and Jack Huang) in 1992. For the first ten years or so I knew everything about the budget. In fact, for most of those years I was the sole owner. But for the last dozen or more years I've stayed out of the finances, and really haven't seen a budget. (I only coach, including a number of group sessions, and do the newsletter, promotional work, and other miscellaneous stuff.) But anyone who observes the activities can make an estimate of the budget of MDTTC or any other training center. So let's do that, and see just how big the table tennis training center economy is in the U.S. I'm only going to look at revenue here and not worry about expenses.

Hodgepodge of Miscellaneous Things

Table Tennis and Schools

I was browsing table tennis forums late last night and found a statement where someone wrote, "I find it funny that some people like Larry Hodges think it's not important to get table tennis in schools in the U.S." (He then went on to briefly argue why we need to get into the schools without explaining how, but I won't get into that here.)

This is NOT what I've argued. I actually blogged about this on January 8, 2013. However, this seems a good topic to blog about again, and timely as well since I'm actually working to develop the sport to the point where we can get into schools.

I'll start by simply reposting my response in the forum to the above statement:

This is NOT what I argue. What I've argued is that schools aren't the first step. The first step is to popularize the sport on our own by developing regional leagues and junior programs (like other sports do and how they do it for table tennis overseas) rather than hoping schools in the U.S. will suddenly get interested in a small sport like us out of the blue. They are only interested in us if we send volunteers for free, and we have no way of doing that except in a few isolated cases. When we grow the sport, that's when the people who run schools will notice us and be interested, and that's when we take that step and spread through schools. I'm not going to get into a debate here [on this forum] about how to popularize the sport U.S. other than to say it's been done all over the world and in other sports in the U.S., and we're not magically different here in the U.S.; we just haven't been going about it the right way. I've blogged about this many times. This might even be a blog topic for tomorrow (or rather, this morning). 

Tip of the Week

How Many Serving Motions Should You Have?

Weekend's Coaching and Arm & Cramp Problems

Well, I did it again - I hurt my arm. I think I did too much looping during a coaching session on Friday so a student could work on blocking. Then on Saturday I did a lot of multiball, and feeding backspin put some strain on the arm. At the end of the session I served to a student for about ten minutes straight, and that's what finally killed the arm. (Advanced serves can put a lot of strain on the arm!) I thought I'd be okay the next day, but on Sunday I quickly discovered it wasn't. I had 3.5 hours of private coaching and 3.0 hours of group sessions scheduled. The group sessions were no problem, but I finally had to hire Derek Nie to do some of my hitting in one session. Even blocking was a problem as it put a strain on the arm reaching for shots. I ended up teaching a lot of serves, pushing, lobbing, and lots of multiball - mostly topspin since feeding backspin hurt the arm.

Since I was on my feet coaching almost continuously all day Sunday, I paid the price - at about midnight, a few minutes after I put aside the book I was reading to go to bed ("Ogi: The Life of Ichiro Ogimura"), my right leg cramped up. It got so bad I had to get up and walk around for ten minutes until it stopped.  

Meanwhile, between cries of pain, I did some coaching over the weekend.

Regional and State Associations, and Team Leagues - Current Status in the U.S.?

Before I get into this, the first thing to remember is that Regional/State Associations and Team Leagues are NOT the goal. They are a MEANS to a goal. The goal is huge numbers of players. By working regionally (as is done in other successful sports in the U.S. and table tennis overseas) and using the team concept (as is done in other successful sports in the U.S. and table tennis overseas - yes, I'm repeating myself on purpose), as well as on developing clubs, training centers, and coaching programs, we hope to achieve this goal. This is not something that'll happen overnight; it's a long process of growing the sport, but if start now and keep at it, imagine where we might be ten years from now?

In other words, we're looking for results. Any process or structure that doesn't lead to results, i.e. the goal of a huge number of players, is a process or structure that isn't working. And of course the processes and structure of USATT since it began in 1933 hasn't led to huge number of players, and so they need to be changed. We need Regional/State Associations to work locally to develop regional team leagues that can grow (like overseas and in other sports), coaching programs and training centers that bring in large number of junior players and others who wish to train, and feature state championships that become huge regional events. 

But before we can do anything, we need to know where we stand. And so my first task as USATT Regional Associations Coordinator and chair of the USATT League Committee is to find the current status of State/Regional associations, and of Team Leagues. (They go together.) It's surprisingly difficult finding info. I plan on doing an article for USATT Insider soon asking members for info they have on these topics. Then I'll likely post the same question on the various table tennis forums.

How the Orioles Help Me Get Work Done

Other than table tennis, I don't really follow too many sports. Locals at MDTTC took great glee recently in quizzing me about the college basketball finals, or whatever that thing that went on recently, and laughing at my utter ignorance of who the "Final Four" were, or that it was even going on. I claim similar ignorance of NBA, NFL, NHL, and most other sports. (When quizzed, I was only able to name three current NBA players, though with time I guarantee you I could have come up with two or three more . . . at most.) I do follow tennis a bit. (I'm a former member of the U.S. Tennis Association, and went to group training sessions twice a week for years as my "side" sport.) But I do have one sport I follow, and that's Baltimore Orioles baseball. I've been a fan since I was a kid.

As readers might know, I've coached three of them at MDTTC - Darren O'Day, JJ Hardy, and Brady Anderson - and visited their clubhouse in 2013 with our top juniors to take on their players for three hours. (Here's my blog about it, and here's a group picture. It was surreal discussing topics like talent and training with Chris Davis and others, hitting with many of the players, and meeting them all.) I also write humorous articles about the Orioles, with 27 articles published in Orioles Hangout.

Normally I do my blog in the morning, but I run into problems doing that during our training camps, which take place all summer as well as in our spring break camp (going on right now). I'd have to get up extremely early to get the blog done before leaving to coach at these camps. So what's my solution?