Here Comes the Snow (again)

We've had several snowstorms already this year here in Maryland and much of the east coast. Tonight and tomorrow we're supposed to get another 5-12 inches. Plus it's 18 degrees out, and was 12 when I got up this morning. I stocked up with supplies at the supermarket last night, and have several great books ready, as well as work to do on my upcoming book, "Table Tennis Tips." Bring it on!!!

Quips and Quotes

My favorite quips while playing:

1. "Just because the point is over doesn't mean the point is over." (Said when my student hits a ball off the end, but I play it off the floor and the rally continues.)
2. "Here comes a pop-up. You're going to flub it. Prove me wrong." (Usually said near the end of a multiball session with a beginning student.)
3. "I'm too good to miss that shot." (Said by me roughly whenever I miss a shot.)
4. "I haven't missed that shot since 1987." (Also said by me roughly whenever I miss a shot.)
5. "Ten years ago I would have got that."
6. "There's a probability greater than zero that I won't lose another point this match."
7. "There's something you don't know. I'm really left-handed."
8. "I cannot be defeated."
9. "Time to pull out the unreturnable serves."
10. "Coaches from all over the world come here to study my [whatever shot I happen to be doing]." (I usually say this when blocking forehands, and often tell stories about how the top Chinese coaches journey to American to study my forehand block.)
11. "Balls in boxes!" (Told to students at the end of playing sessions, with balls scattered all over.)
12. "The most powerful loop in the world." (With a Dirty Harry accent).

Inspiring table tennis quotes from:

• Mytabletennis.com (a thread on table tennis quotes)
• TableTennisDaily (another thread on table tennis quotes)

Things I constantly say or harp on with my students:

• Fix your grip. Balance. Wider stance. Relax the shoulders. Free hand. Rotate the shoulders. Topspin (or backspin) the ball. Remember the feel of the good shots, forget the bad ones. Place your shots. Don't think, just do. Step, don't lean. First move has to be the right move. More spin! Vary your serves. 

Three more quotes on playing. (I should have kept a running log of such quotes over the years, in which case I'd have dozens of these.)

• "If you focus on playing well, you probably will; if you focus on winning, you probably won't."
• "If you can't write a book about your own game, then you either don't have a game, or don't know your game."
• "Let go, have fun." (Stolen from Ariel Hsing, who used to write this on her arm before playing.)

Here's a page where I keep my favorite non-TT quotes (including three by me).

Here's an article I sold to Science Fiction Writers of America for their web page, "Fifty Writing Quotes." I came up with all fifty of these in one long feverish night.

Shirley Temple RIP

Shirley Temple Black died Monday. Here are five pictures of the famous child actress playing table tennis.

• Photo1
• Photo2
• Photo3
• Photo4 (with actress Jean Rogers)
• Photo5 (with actress Jean Rogers)

International Table Tennis

Here's where you can get a daily fix of international table tennis.

• Table Tennista
• ITTF.com

22 Great Table Tennis GIFs

Here they are! (A few of the links don't seem to be valid, but most are there.) 

Non-Table Tennis: Redcoats

Yesterday I sold my 70th short story (all science fiction or fantasy), with the sale of "Redcoats" to Abyss & Apex. (The story parodies Christmas in the 1790s, with alien conquerors in red coats coming down the chimney every Christmas to get tribute left out for them, and how a boy defeats the aliens.) It's also my 1498th published or sold article or story - I'll hit 1500 shortly. (Here's a listing of my complete published works.)

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USA Table Tennis Magazine Going All Digital

Well, they've finally done it. USATT has cancelled the print version of its magazine and is going all online with a PDF version. (Correction: I'm told it's actually Flash.) Here's the new Winter 2014 issue (really the Jan/Feb issue), which will also be printed as the last print edition. And here's the home page for USATT Magazine. (Addendum - when you go to the new issue, just below it is a listing for "Related publications." USATT Magazine is the second one listed, sandwiched between two magazines with nude cover pictures. Great.) 

It's good that they now have an online version. But have they really thought through this decision to cancel the print version? It's impossible to tell, since no explanation is given on the USATT web page or the magazine page. If you go to page 8 of the new issue, there's a short explanation from the editor, but it doesn't really give any reasons, just basically tells us it's going all digital without explanation. This is one of the biggest decisions in USATT history, and it's been made without explanation, and without advance notice to the membership so they could give input on the matter. (We are a public organization.)

Presumably they are doing this to save money. They might. But I'm guessing that if they do, they'll save a lot less than they think. They'll save money on printing and postage. But they'll lose money on advertising and membership. (Isn't increasing membership a primary purpose of why USATT needs more revenue? It defeats the purpose when they increase revenue in ways that decrease membership.)

I did discuss this with one insider, and heard some things that I found a bit scary. I'm told they are budgeting advertising to stay the same, which of course won't happen. This reminds me of the group-think that took place a number of years ago when USATT increased the membership fee from $25 to $40 in one year. I was in the room as the 13 board members voted unanimously to do this, and unanimously budgeted membership to stay the same. That was crazy, and I told them so. Membership had just reached 9000, the most ever. I predicted they'd lose 2000 members; I was told by all 13 that I was wrong. One year later they were down to 7200 members. I was in the room one year later, alternating between anger and laughter, as the USATT board had to painstakingly cut about $60,000 from the budget. (It would have been more but with fewer members they saved on printing and postage costs.)

So the question is, do they really believe advertising revenue will stay the same? I was told two of the major advertisers have already committed to paying the same amount this next year. But I spoke with one of the two, and he/she disagreed with that statement.

I was told they are going in the direction of sports like volleyball, which apparently have gone all digital. When that discussion came up, did anyone point out that the demographics are very different? I looked into this once before, and volleyball has a much younger average age than table tennis, with a medium age probably under 20. (I don't have current figures.)  The average and medium age for USATT members is more in the range of 45-50, according to stats from a few years ago, with a lot of much older players, who are more likely to be interested in print issues. We're more like tennis and USTA - which has two monthly print magazines that go to their 700,000 members. (And note that in Europe, the table tennis membership is greater than the tennis membership in nearly every country. USA, where tennis greatly outdoes table tennis, is the exception. We just don't like learning from others.) 

Our current membership is something like 8000-9000, and only about half play tournaments. The only tangible benefit the other half gets is the magazine. Many of them, especially older ones, far prefer the print version; to them, the membership fee is just a subscription fee to the magazine. We're going to lose some of them. How many? I don't know.

So USATT is going to lose advertising and membership revenue. Will this be offset by the savings in printing and mailing? Perhaps. We're a public organization, but no financial figures have been made public on this. The decision was made about a month ago, so there's been plenty of time for a public explanation, giving the reasons and the savings projected. Presumably they had all the facts and projections a month ago when the decision was made, so there's no reason these facts aren't public already. (The alternative was the decision was made, with the facts and projections to rationalize this to be found later. I sure hope not!) So where are these facts and projections?

Did they speak to someone with real journalism experience before making this decision? Or was it made without their input? I don't know, and they aren't saying. Perhaps we'll learn more when the minutes of the meeting go online. Perhaps there is something they're not telling us, but we don't know until they tell us.

I was editor for 12 years in two tenures. When I left we were within $15,000 of "breaking even." I put that in quotes because, since the magazine is a tangible benefit for members, part of the membership fee goes toward the magazine. At $15,000 for an organization of 7500 members, that's a $2 annual fee for six issues, or 33 cents per issue. Think about that - $2 out of your $49 annual adult membership! Even if they are losing $30,000/year, that's only about $4 out of the $49 membership fee. When's the last time you bought six issues of a color glossy magazine for $2 to $4?

If, of course, they are "losing" much more than $15,000/year, then presumably advertising revenue has dropped. If so, then focus on increasing it. It's not just a matter of salesmanship; it's a matter of having a timely magazine with good content so readers will actually read it, and see the ads. I know how this works; in both of my tenures, I increased advertising over 250%. If advertising is down, get feedback from the advertisers on why, and then address the problem. If advertising is substantially down, then something has gone wrong. If it's not, then there's no reason to drop the print version. 

The other rumor I've heard is they are thinking of moving the magazine in-house. I blogged about that on November 26, 2013 (see second segment). Do we really want to go through that nightmare again? But there's a lack of organizational memory in this organization, and we tend to make the same mistakes over and over and over. At least in canceling the print magazine we might be making a new mistake, if that's any consolation. Time will tell.

I have a new book coming out, "Table Tennis Tips." I was planning on running an ad in USATT Magazine for that and my other TT books. But now I'm not so sure. With a print issue, people see the ads. With a PDF version, they are more likely to just page through it, and zoom in only on the articles that directly interest them. They're going to have to greatly reduce the advertising rates before it'll be worth it for me to advertise. 

2014 USA Table Tennis National Team Trials Preview

Here's the video (2:55), with lots of inspirational play!

Backhand Serve

Here's video (3 sec) of a nice backhand serve by Soo Yeun Lee.

Top Ten Shots at the 2014 Europe Cup

Here's the video (4:39).

Timo Boll vs. the Robot!

Here's the home page for the event (to be held on March 11), with a link to the teaser preview (44 sec) showing the two about to play as the robot does a few tricks!

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Tip of the Week

Never Give a Server What He's Looking For.

Developing Good Technique

Table tennis clubs are full of players with poor technique. And there's nothing wrong with this, if the player doesn't care, or at least doesn't put a high priority on it. There are also lots of good players with poor techniques, though few of them get beyond good and become very good. That's subjective, of course; I can name a number of players who have reached 2200 and 2300 levels despite poor technique. The key is they developed a game around that poor technique, and didn't get good because of the bad technique, but in spite of it.

Here's comes the part a lot don't realize, and it's a three-parter.

1) You will not reach your potential unless you develop good technique. This doesn't mean everyone plays with exactly the same technique. There are some techniques where there's clearly a "best" way, and there are others where there are multiple options. Often it depends on the rest of the player's game. Some players have developed such unorthodox games that what is proper technique for others might not be proper technique for them. But that's a rarity. Almost always, to reach your potential, you need to develop good technique.

2) Anyone can develop good technique. I don't care how poor your current technique is, you can fix it, and have good technique. This doesn't mean you'll have great technique - that's almost impossible once you've developed bad habits. But you don't need perfect technique in this sport (except in most cases at the highest levels), and good technique will take you pretty far.

3) It will take lots of time and effort to develop good technique if you currently have bad technique. You'll also lose to a lot of players if you continue to compete while changing your technique. (I usually advise against that.) It takes a lot of saturation training to fix bad technique, and you'll probably need a coach - which usually costs money. But it's a one-time fix, because once it's fixed, it's fixed for a lifetime, as long as you continue to play regularly.

So, do you have bad technique? It's your choice whether to keep it that way, or make it a goal to fix that technique once and for all.

Chinese Team Squad Trials Ranking and Videos

Here's a short article with the final ranking of the Chinese Team Squad (men and women), with links to numerous videos of them in action. 

Zhang Jike on the New Plastic Balls

Here's the article, where he says the speed dropped some. Unfortunately, the article doesn't say which of the new balls they were using. There are at least three ITTF approved plastic balls. Leaving that out sort of makes the article somewhat less useful, and I hesitated in including it here.

USATT Criteria and Procedures for Entering US Athletes in International Competitions

Here's the article from USATT.

NCTTA Newsletter

Here's the Feb. 2014 National Collegiate Table Tennis Newsletter.

Ping Pong Summer

Here's video (2:45) of a preview of the coming-of-age comedy coming this summer, starring Susan Sarandon and a break dancing, rapping and ping-pong playing 13-year-old.

European Cup Highlights

Here's video (6:52, with time between points removed) of Denmark's Michael Maze's (world #28, but formerly #8) win over Germany's Dimitrij Ovtcharov (world #6) in the semifinals of the European Cup this past weekend. (Ovtcharov defeated teammate Timo Boll, world #8, in the semifinals - they were the top two seeds, so presumably one of them was upset in preliminaries?) Here's video of the other semifinals (5:09) where Portugal's Marcos Freitas (world #15) defeats France's Adrien Mattenet (world #52). And here's video of the final (4:54) where Freitas defeats Maze.

Unreal Counterlooping Rally - Ovtcharov vs. Boll

Here's video of the rally (48 sec, includes replays), which took place at the 2014 Europe Cup this past weekend.

Wheelchair Player Cindy Ranii

Here's the article from the San Jose Mercury News, "She may be in a wheelchair, but Cindy Ranii is a ping-pong powerhouse."

Shopping Mall Exhibition

Here's video (40 sec) of an exhibition in a shopping mall, with lots of lobbing and changing of sides during rallies.

Holy TT Racket

Here's the racket I lend out to my opponents. 

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How to Teach a Beginning/Intermediate Class

Starting on Feb. 17, I'm teaching a new Beginning/Intermediate Table Tennis Class at MDTTC. It's designed for adult players from beginners to roughly 1500 in USATT ratings. The class is every Monday for ten weeks, from 6:30-8:00PM. If you are in the Gaithersburg, Maryland area and would like to participate, contact me. We have an even ten already signed up, so I'm hoping for a good-sized group. (There's a whole chapter on teaching classes in my book Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook.)

The purpose of the class is to give players a complete introduction to the sport of table tennis. That means covering every major aspect, including grip and stance, the strokes, footwork, equipment, and tactics. But there's another reason for such a class. When new players come to a club, they often are a bit lost. They don't know the sport and they don't know other members of the club - they have no peers. By having a class, we get all of them together, and they not only learn about the sport, they develop their own peer group. I've taught a few dozen of these classes, dating back to when we started MDTTC in 1992. Some of the classes had over 20 players.

I'll start each class with a demo with an assistant coach, and lecture on the focus for the class. Since it's an adult class (younger players allowed in with permission of the instructor), it'll have a lot more lecturing and demos than in a typical junior class or clinic. Then we'll go out on the tables and practice the new technique, with myself walking around and coaching. If there's an odd number of players, one will hit with the robot, or I'll have my assistant coach hit with someone or do multiball. Usually there's a second topic to be covered in each session, so roughly halfway through we'll come together for a second demo and lecture. Most weeks may start off with players practicing/warming up the basic strokes, especially forehands and backhands, before we get to the demo/lecture stage.   

Here's the planned weekly schedule:

Week 1: Intro to TT; Grip; Stance; Forehand drive
Week 2: Table tennis equipment; Backhand drive
Week 3: Footwork; Beginning serves
Week 4:  Pushing; Advanced serves
Week 5:  FH loop vs. backspin; Blocking
Week 6:  BH attack (looping & hitting vs. backspin)
Week 7:  Smashing; Introduction to USATT, tournaments, and leagues
Week 8:  Return of Serve (and review of serving)
Week 9:  Loop/smash combinations (i.e. loop backspin, smash topspin); Tactics
Week 10:  Smashing lobs; player's choice; 11-point games

Fan Zhendong Learned His Lessons from Zhang Jike

Here's the article from Table Tennista, with links to several videos.

Umpires to 2014 World Championships

There are two ways to make it to the courts at the World Championships: as a player or as an umpire. The ITTF just announced the list of umpires for the 2014 Worlds. The list includes two USA umpires: Stephen Banko and Michael Meier. Congrats to them! (Now, what's the going bribe rate?)

Angles Galore

Here's a video (28 sec) of one of the best rallies I've ever seen - and talk about angles!!! That's Wang Liqin on the far side, Werner Schlager on the near side. I'm guessing this is from the 2003 World Championships, where Schlager upset Wang in the quarterfinals and went on to win Men's Singles. (EDIT - according to comment below, it was from the 2003 World Cup - so I was close!)

"Plastic Ball"

When I read about the new plastic balls that are replacing celluloid ones, I start humming to myself the theme music to the 1989 World Championships, "Magic Ball," except in my head it's now "Plastic Ball." So here's the greatest table tennis music (and music video) ever produced (3:10).

A Little Sit-Down Table Tennis

Here's the picture and German article (which my Chrome browser conveniently translated into English) of Milan Orlowski and Jindrich Pansky on the table.

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Backhand Games and Random Drills

It seems that recently half my students are challenging me in backhand-to-backhand games. These are games where we put boxes on each side of the table to block off the forehand side of the table, and play a strictly backhand-to-backhand game. If a shot doesn't go to the backhand, or if a player hits a forehand, he loses the point. You'd think I'd dominate this type of game since I can hit a million backhands in a row, but not really. The players quickly learn to match my consistency, while throwing speed, quickness, placement, and variation at me. I've struggled to win games (and sometimes lost) to 12-year-olds with ratings about 700 points lower than mine, as well as to adult players.

What does this mean? It means that, when isolated, they are developing very good backhands. They are learning to do all of the things mentioned above - consistency, speed, quickness, placement, and variation. (Yes, even with only half a table you can move the ball around.) There are times where I'm just pounding the ball with my backhand, and can't get through their steadiness. There are other times where I'm just keeping the ball going, and struggling to find ways to win a point since they aren't missing either, and they are pressing me with all of the attributes mentioned here. (As I regularly remind them, if they find they are pressing because I'm not missing, remember it works both ways - keep coming at me with the same consistency, and I'm the one who'll be pressing because they aren't missing.)

As good as this is, it also exposes one of the "secrets" of table tennis: In a real game, you don't know where the ball is going. In a real game, we wouldn't be going backhand-to-backhand. If we're smart players, we'd both be looking for chance to move the ball around, attacking the middle and wide corners. Without the certainty that the ball's coming back to our backhand side the backhand isn't nearly as strong. It's the ability to react to these random balls all over the table that make up much of the difference in rallying skills between 1500 and 2200.

But the foundation is there. Now I'm doing lots of random drills with them (as they know!), and that will soon pay off just as all the stroking work is now paying off. The most basic one is they keep the ball to my backhand while I put the ball randomly to their forehand and backhand. When they are comfortable against that, I up the stakes and put the ball randomly anywhere on the table, including their middle and wide angles. We also do a lot of random multiball drills. (Did I mention that they are also developing terrorizing forehands?)

New Plastic Balls Approved by the ITTF

Here's the ITTF article.

USATT Reports

Here's a listing of USATT Committee reports, with links to each. I just browsed through most of them. Let me know if you find anything interesting.

Piing of Power - Michael Maze

Here's the video (1:35) that features the lefty Danish star. (I'm not sure why there are two i's.) While currently ranked #28 in the world after injuries to his knees in 2010 (losing nearly a year) and then undergoing hip surgery in December 2012, he was as high as #8 in 2010, and made the semifinals of Men's Singles at the World Championships in 2005, and the quarterfinals in 2009. He was the 2009 European Men's Singles Champion, and the 2004 European Top-12 Champion. He has strong serves and a strong forehand, but is mostly known as probably the best lobber in the world. Maze recently had an "amazing" training session with USA's top cadet and junior, Kanak Jha - here's the short article from USATT, and here's the feature article on Maze, his comeback, and his session with Kanak.

Xu Xin Received Advice from Wang Liqin

Here's the article, with links to several videos. Said Wang, "In the Chinese Team, your brilliant moments are not usually in the good times but in the most difficult times. As long as you can rebound from those difficult moments, then is already indicates that your potential is very big."

Ma Long vs. Yan An

Here's a nice match (3:03, with time between points taken out) between these two Chinese stars at the recent Chinese Trials. (Ma Long in the red shirt.) You can learn a lot by watching how they attack from both wings, but even more by watching their receive. Here's where you can find similar videos of many (or all?) of the matches at the Chinese Trials.

Cerebral Palsy Can't Smash Table Tennis Talent

Here's the feature article on Paralympic star Mike Brown.

Congress is Playing Professional Tournament-Level Ping-Pong With This Nation's Future

Here's the article - and if it's from The Onion, you know it's true!

Ping-Pong Masters

Here's a hilarious video (2:26) that features two (or more?) players in an intense table tennis battle! Lots of special effects, including player cloning.

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Today's Blog…

…will be shorter than usual. Because of our after-school program, and because I'm rather busy on weekends, I've worked every day this entire year (other than Jan. 1 and two days when I had the flu). Due to icy conditions, local schools are closed today, so no afterschool program. I normally have three hours of coaching on Wednesday nights, but two are off today, so only one hour today. (Plus a dental appointment at 11AM.) So I'm basically taking the day off, though I'll likely use it to catch up on things, such as working on my upcoming book Table Tennis Tips.

Poly Ball

• My Thoughts on the Poly Ball: They are pretty simple. I haven't really looked into how or why the rule is coming into place - there's a lot of controversy about it. To me it's very simple: do the new balls play like the celluloid ones? The newest one that came out by Xushaofa plays very similar. (I blogged about this on Dec. 26 - see second segment.) According to this article (which I linked to yesterday), the balls are accepted by the Chinese team and endorsed by Ma Long. So I'll accept them as well. Personally, however, I'd rather stick with celluloid, as would many others. For those who would like to fight the change, see next item.
• Petition to Keep Celluloid Balls: Here's an online petition to keep Existing Celluloid Table Tennis Balls.
• ITTF Approved Poly Balls: Yesterday I wrote about the ITTF approving the first plastic ball, the Xushaofa. This morning there are two more up, the DHS 40+ and the Double Fish 40+. Here's the listing.
• Liu Guoliang considers the Poly Ball a "potential hazard."

Serving by Bengtsson

Here's an article on Serving by top coach and 1971 World Champion Stellan Bengtsson. (The article is from 2010, but I don't think I've ever linked to it.)

The iRacket

Here it is! (Why do I have this sudden urge to invade some other country? Think about it until it comes to you.)

Care for a Little Outdoor Table Tennis While it Snows?

Here are some snowy ping-pong table pictures.

Arnold Schwarzenegger Table Tennis Superbowl Ad

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the ad (14:39), where they interview Ian Rappaport, the "unsuspecting" person who had the wild night in the ad. They discuss the table tennis aspect starting at 4:15. "I'm a big ping-pong player," Ian says. (Here's the complete ad (3:44), which ran in several parts. The table tennis starts exactly two minutes in. "Prepare to be crushed in tiny tennis," says the long-haired wigged Arnold.)

Non-Table Tennis - Win a Free Copy of Sorcerers in Space!

Here's the online raffle where you can win a copy of my humorous fantasy novel. Or just buy it here (save a few dollars) or at Amazon. (Available in print or ebook format. Stars a kid who has to put aside is table tennis ambitions to save the world!)

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Not Going Against or With the Spin

When counterlooping, you'll notice how top players tend to counterloop with lots of sidespin. They rarely counterloop with straight topspin. To do so would mean contacting the ball directly on top of the ball, and going directly against the incoming topspin. The ball would then jump off the paddle, and it would be tricky keeping it on the table. Instead, they mostly contact the ball on the far side, which avoids taking on the incoming topspin directly while putting a sidespin that curves to the left (for a righty). Some do the opposite, and contact the ball on the near side, and the ball curves to the right, again avoiding taking on the incoming topspin directly. (This is a bit more difficult.)

Of course once they are into a counterlooping duel, the incoming counterloop usually has sidespin, and if you counterloop it back with sidespin (assuming both are contacting the ball on the far side), you are taking on the incoming sidespin directly. But that's not much of a problem because by doing so it becomes trickier controlling the sideways movement of the ball, just as taking on the topspin directly makes controlling the up-down movement of the ball more difficult. But you have a much wider margin for error with sideways movement; few players miss because they go too wide, while many miss by going off the end.

You actually get a bit more topspin when going directly against the incoming topspin, where the ball rebounds back with topspin, if you can control it. The same is true against an incoming loop with sidespin and topspin - if you go directly against the incoming spin and loop back with your own sidespin and topspin, you get a bit more spin overall. (And that is one reason why in counterlooping rallies both players continue to sidespin loop.) However, the difference here is minimal as players are often throwing themselves into each shot, thereby getting tremendous spins regardless of the incoming spin.

When the backhand banana flip, you face the opposite. (Side note - I call it a backhand banana flip for clarity, even though there is no corresponding forehand banana flip.) Against a heavy backspin ball, it's difficult to lift the ball with heavy topspin and keep it on the table. The table is in the way, and so you can't really backswing down as you would when doing a normal loop against a deeper backspin. The banana flip solves this problem by having the player spin the ball with both sidespin and topspin. Contact is more sideways, which makes lifting much easier as you are no longer going directly against the backspin. Intuitively this doesn't seem to make sense to a lot of people until they try it out, and discover how much easier it is to flip the ball, often with good pace as well as good spin (both topspin and sidespin).

Some players face the same thing when looping against deeper backspins - they have trouble lifting the ball. This is mostly a technique problem. However, some top players do sidespin loop against heavy backspin, which makes it easier to lift. Jan-Ove Waldner was notorious for this, often sidespin looping over and over against choppers until they gave him one to loop kill. But the difference here is that you have room to backswing, and so you can actually use the backspin to create your own topspin.

Sometimes you want to go against the spin. For example, when pushing it's easier to load up the backspin against an incoming heavy backspin as you can use that backspin to catapult the reverse spin back, giving you an extra heavy backspin. You get a lot more backspin when pushing against incoming backspin than you do against an incoming no-spin ball. And with a banana flip, against a topspin serve it's easy to go against the spin by contacting the ball nearly on top, using the incoming topspin to rebound off your racket to give you an extra heavy topspin.

Teaching How to Tell Time

Yesterday I made the mistake of teaching a 7-year-old how to tell time. He was used to digital, and had no idea what the various hands on the clock meant. So I taught him. He not only was fascinated by this, but the rest of the session he became a clock-watcher. He didn't completely get the idea, and kept running over to the clock and trying to figure out the time (usually getting it wrong). I tried to convince him that time slows down if you keep watching the clock, but to no avail. This was the second time I've made this mistake - I taught another kid the same age how to tell time sometime last year, with the same result. Never again!!!

New Coaching Articles by Samson Dubina

There are a number of new coaching articles up on the news section of his web page.

Juicing for Athletes

Here's a video (5:28) about table tennis coach and cyclist Brian Pace's new book, Juicing for Athletes.

ITTF Monthly Pongcast - January 2014

Here's the video (12:33).

ITTF Approves First Poly Ball

They also now mark all approved balls as either celluloid or plastic. Here's the listing: see item #49 (you'll have to go to page 2). The approved Xushaofa ball is the same one I tested and blogged about on Dec. 26. (See second segment.)

Ma Long Endorses New Plastic Ball

Here's the article.

Prince Plays Table Tennis on New Girl

Here's the video (45 sec) of Prince on the TV show New Girl, which includes a segment where he plays table tennis.

Sony Commercial

Here's an ad (32 sec) for Sony TV that features Justin Timberlake (on right) and Peyton Manning playing table tennis.

A (Ping-Pong) Table for Two?

Here's the cartoon!

Non-Table Tennis: My Thoughts and Ranking of the Academy Award Nominated Movies

I've now seen all nine movies nominated for Best Picture for the Academy Awards. Here's my personal ranking and short analysis of each. Note that all nine were good, so finishing last here merely makes the picture one of the best of the year. I'm pretty sure my #1 will win best picture.

1. 12 Years a Slave: Will and should win Best Picture. Brought something new to the screen: slavery as seen by someone who, like us, learns about it as he experiences it. Pretty brutal movie.
2. Gravity: Also brought something new to the screen: the experience of being in space. One of the few movies you really should see in 3-D. It reminded me of Jurassic Park. Both are examples of "special effects movies" that also have good stories and good acting. Along with "American Hustle," has a chance to challenge "12 Years a Slave" for best picture.
3. Captain Phillips: Great performance by Tom Hanks, great drama. Rather than demonize the bad guys, shows it from their point of view as well so you see why they did what they did.
4. Philomena: Surprisingly good. I went in thinking this would be a somewhat boring movie, but it got better and better as it went along. When I see old pictures of people I almost immediately wonder what happened to them, and so this movie was almost an extension of that as the main character tries to find out what happened to her long-lost son. It got even more interesting when we find out what happened to him, and she tries to learn more about him.
5. Nebraska: Interesting movie, but pretty grim, despite the intermittent humor. I kept hoping I don't end up like that when I'm old. I kept wondering how in heck could they end this movie effectively, and they found a way. (Though I found it a bit convenient that the bullying character just happened to walk out of the bar at just the right time.)
6. The Wolf of Wall Street: Fun movie. We all know about the extravagances of Wall Street, so it didn't really add to that. A little long for the story.
7. Dallas Buyers Club: This was a tough one to rank. Ultimately it came out toward the bottom because I could never like the main character. He started out as a ridiculous redneck character because he was surrounded by ridiculous redneck characters. Then he changes because he's now around new types of people, and begins to take on their traits. So he's basically just becoming whoever is around him. Not much of a thinker.
8. Her: A bit long and slow at times. Nice concept.
9. American Hustle: Entertaining, but didn't have the substance of some of the others. Surprisingly, this is the main challenger to "12 Years a Slave" for best picture, and it has a chance. 

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Tip of the Week

Winning with Ball Control.

Topspinny Backhands: When to Learn?

Yesterday was a pivotal moment in one young player's table tennis career. One of the tougher decisions for some coaches is when to have their up-and-coming junior players begin to topspin more on the backhand in rallies. At the start, you teach basic backhand drives. But at the higher levels, most players these days topspin the ball, basically a backhand loop with a shorter swing, often right off the bounce. It's not easy to learn to do this in a rally, where it's tricky enough playing a regular backhand, but to topspin the ball off the bounce, practically a backhand loop, against an often fast incoming ball?

Some coaches advocate teaching this starting at around the 1800 level; others do so much earlier. But everyone's different. If a player seems to have a knack for it, and is training regularly, then perhaps he can start earlier. The problem is that in a fast rally, you have little time to topspin the ball, and players who try to do so before they're ready will make lots of mistakes.

I've got several students who are reaching the stage where they're ready to really topspin on the backhand in faster rallies. Yesterday's breakthrough was for Sameer, 12, rated 1378 after the Teams in November. He's developed a pretty nasty backhand drive, especially in drills, though he sometimes still has trouble getting the drilling backhand into games. Sameer already has a pretty decent backhand loop against backspin, but was he ready to do this over and over in rallies?

We tried it out yesterday, and he surprised me on how quickly he picked it up. We did it first in multiball, and then live, and in both cases he seemed comfortable doing so. He's also ready for the rigors of reality - that he'll probably have some bad losses over the next few months as he incorporates this into his game, especially against players who rush him on the backhand. (If you are an opponent of his, please use go ahead and rush him on the backhand - it gives him the practice he needs!) But we have a longer-term goal - the U.S. Open in July. He's going to focus on just training until then, with the plan to show up with a devastating backhand topspin, as well as (hopefully) a few other devastating shots. Maybe he'll be a true basher by then. (See Tip of the Week article above.)

Banana Flip

This video (3:22) may be the best tutorial I've seen on the backhand banana flip. Lots of slow motion and clear explanations.

Pushing

Here are two videos from PingSkills on the Backhand Push (3:14) and the Forehand Push (3:19).

Table Tennis Strategy Page

Here's a new page, Table Tennis Strategy. It includes pages on Strategy, Fun Facts, Jokes, and others.

Superbowl Ad with Arnold Schwarzenegger

Here's the complete ad (3:44), which ran in several parts. The table tennis starts exactly two minutes in. "Prepare to be crushed in tiny tennis," says the long-haired wigged Arnold.

CNN Features Table Tennis

Here's the video (1:57), which ran on Friday, and is on the growing trend to play table tennis. Features Arnold Schwarzenegger, Susan Sarandon, and Soo Yeon Lee, and with clips of Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Biba Featured

Here's a feature article on Biba Golic in Women's Fitness Magazine.

Bounce Back Shots

Here's a video (57 sec) that compares a desperation backspin shot by Ding Ning that unreturnably bounces back over the net to win the point to a similar shot by Roger Federer in tennis.

Table Tennis on a Boat

Here's video (12 sec) of two men playing table tennis on a boat that's not much bigger than a canoe.

Hit the Card Trick Shot

Here's video (24 sec) of a trick shot where the player smacks a card out from under a ball without knocking the ball off.

When Table Tennis Gets Angry!

Here's the video (1:41) of some very angry players.

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TT Arena

Here's a new page that's devoted to connecting coaches, players, and clubs. For example, here's a club in the U.S. looking for a coach. (The club appears to be in Coffeyville, Kansas, from the accompanying map.)

A number of years ago when I was a USATT webmaster, I tried something similar, creating a USATT page devoted to connecting coaches and clubs, with two main pages: Clubs Looking for Coaches, and Coaches Looking for Clubs. Alas, it didn't take off - there just weren't enough full-time clubs at the time, less than ten in the U.S., while there are now about 70 and more popping up seemingly every week. So now might be the perfect time, as more and more full-time clubs open up, each needing minimally 3-4 full-time professional coaches. Plus, the availability of coaches would encourage more entrepreneurs to open up such clubs.

Along with leagues, I've long held that setting up table tennis centers with junior programs is the key to developing table tennis in the U.S. and any country. I even wrote Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook for that reason. (Believe me, I didn't write it for the money! I'm practically selling it for cost.)

One of my long-term plans is to develop a program to solicit and train professional coaches. But that's on the backburner along with dozens of other major projects on my long-term todo list.

Side note - above I mentioned that each of these full-time centers would need minimally 3-4 full-time coaches. Yes, that's minimal. The key to all the successful centers opening up around the country are the professional coaches that bring in players. The basic recipe is simple, as pioneered by my club, Maryland Table Tennis Center, which opened in 1992. You bring in a number of full-time coaches, with the basic deal being they help solicit and bring in students, and work long hours, and in return they keep most of the money they earn - i.e. they work hard, but they get wealthy. The coaches bring in lots of students who in turn pay for memberships, clinics, leagues, tournaments, equipment, refreshments, etc. The result is an active and financially healthy full-time club.

13th ITTF Sports Science Congress

It was held in Paris last year during the World Championships. A total of 37 table tennis related papers were presented. They are all online in the International Journal of Table Tennis Sciences, Volume 8. (It's mistakenly listed at the top as Volume 7, the previous volume. You can find links to past volumes here.)  Included in the papers are two by U.S. writers/coaches:

• Effects of digital images on table tennis players and coaches based on the thoughts of McLuhan and the PATT system, by Donn Olsen and Kyongsook Kim
• The mental image in high level table tennis, by Michael J. Scott and Michael J. Scott III

Wang Liqin's Backswing

Yesterday I blogged about how most top players, especially the Chinese, brought their arms in during their backswing on the forehand, which allows a quicker backswing, and then extended their arms on the forward swing, which increases the power. Someone posted the following video of Wang Liqin (3-time World Men's Singles Champion) at the mytabletennis.com forum, which illustrates this very well. Here's the video; go 42 seconds in, and see Wang as he loops over and over.

The Athlete Kitchen

Table tennis player and coach Brian Pace has a web page, The Athlete Kitchen, devoted to athletes eating, including a number of eBooks such as Juicing for Athletes and related topics. Brian's not only a former 2600 player and professional coach, he's also a championships cyclist. Brian, who's quite the entrepreneur, also creates table tennis instructional videos at Dynamic Table Tennis.

Princeton Freshman Ariel Hsing

Here's an article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly that features Ariel Hsing.

Interview with World Sandpaper Champion Maxim Shmyrev

Here's the interview.

Amazing Maze on a Robot

Here's video (25 sec) of Michael Maze training with a robot at the Werner Schlager Academy.

World Ping-Pong Federation

Here's the cartoon!

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Yesterday's Coaching Events

Had a lot of interesting things happen yesterday - here's a rundown!

• For the second time, those months when I was about twelve where I learned how to pick locks paid off, making me a hero. On Tuesday night someone accidentally closed the bathroom door while it was locked. We have two bathrooms at MDTTC, but this was the one where we stored paper towels and toilet paper - and the other bathroom was running low. When I came in Wednesday afternoon they hadn't been able to open it, and were about to call a locksmith. So I grabbed a credit card and a paper clip, and picked the lock. I was a hero!!! For future cases, I taught Coach Jack how to pick that particular lock. The previous time my lock-picking made me a hero was about 15 years ago at a U.S. Open or Nationals, where nobody came to unlock the playing hall at 8AM, and about 100 of us were stuck outside, with events to start at 9AM. I picked the lock, to thunderous applause.
• During a practice session a student mentioned that some of my blocks against his loop came out flatter than others. There's a simple reason for that - when the ball lands at normal depth or deep, a player blocks normally. But when the ball lands shorter and you have to reach forward, there is sometimes a tendency to block flatter. This is also why players who block right off the bounce tend to block flatter. 
• One student tended to block from about five feet off the table. So we spent some time working on blocking within an arm's length. There are generally two types of blockers: those who take it right off the bounce (and go for quickness, consistency, angles, and change-of-pace - penholders with conventional backhands are notorious for this) and those who take it a bit later, but still on the rise, and focus on blocking more aggressively.
• I did drills with one player where he had to loop to my middle. This is easier when backhand looping then with forehand looping. Why? For the simple reason that when backhand looping the opponent is in front of you, clearly in sight, while for forehand looping you are looking to the side, and so can't see the opponent. I know several top players who are great at finding my middle with their backhands, but aren't so good at doing this with their forehands.
• One of the sessions was a lot of fun. Why? The student had had recent problems against players who lobbed and fished. And so I spent a good 20 minutes lobbing and fishing to him! This happens to be a strength of mine, and so we had some vicious rallies. I can lob down pretty much anyone under 1800 level, and (at my peak, when I was faster) most 2000 players.
• Had one of the most interesting conversations ever while driving kids to the club - see next segment!

Blue Whales at the MDTTC

Recently we've started an afterschool program where I pick up some of our students from their schools and take them to the club. Yesterday I picked up a 7-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. What follows is a rough synopsis of the conversation, mostly with the 7-year-old. Be forewarned - it gets silly, and if you're not in a silly mood, skip ahead or it'll ruin your non-silliness by making you laugh. (And there's plenty of other table tennis stuff afterwards.)

Me: "I'm going to drive the car up the Washington Monument, which is 555 feet tall, and drive off the top."
7-year-old: "No, don't do it! We'll all die! And the police will arrest you!"
Me: "I'll drive off the top so fast we'll land in the Atlantic Ocean and get swallowed by a blue whale."
7-year-old: "You won't make it to the Washington Monument because the police will stop you with their bazookas!"
Me: "They'd arrest me for driving off the top of the Washington Monument?"
7-year-old: "Yes!"
Me: "But then they'd have to wait until I'd actually driven off the Washington Monument before they could arrest me for driving off the Washington Monument. Then they'd only have three seconds to do so. Besides, the hungry blue whale will stop them from arresting us."
7-year-old: "Blue whales don't eat people, they eat plankton!"
Me: "Ah, I see you know your whales. But this is a special man-eating whale that's realized that in one bite, it can save hours of scouring the ocean for plankton."
7-year-old: "The police will kill the blue whale with their bazookas!"
Me: "No way. In a fight between a 100-foot blue whale weighing 200 tons, and a few puny humans with bazookas, the blue whale would win."
7-year-old: "Not if I bring in the army!"
Me: "If you bring in the army, I'll bring in a gang of octopuses with machine guns. And I think the plural of octopus is octopi."
7-year-old: "Then I'll bring in all the rest of the animals in the world!"
Me: "Then I'll bring in blood-sucking vampire cheetahs, since you missed them since they are dead."
7-year-old: "I'll bring in tanks!"
Me: "I'll bring in super-plankton, this little plankton that's been lifting weights and beating up blue whales everywhere! He's small but deadly."
7-year-old: "I'll eat your plankton!"
Me: "I'll bring in the planet Mars, and smash your policemen, armies, animals, and tanks."
7-year-old: "I'll smash your Mars with Jupiter!"
10-year-old, joining in for first time: "I'll smash Mars and Jupiter with my Jupiter-sized fists, which are made of rock."
Me: "Okay, now I'm scared."
[We arrive at club.]
Me: "But this raises the age-old question: How many blue whales could we fit in the Maryland Table Tennis Center?"
7-year-old: "None, they're too big."
Me: "I think we could fit four across the floor, and stack four more on top, so we could fit eight of them."
7-year-old: "How are you going to get them into the club? You can't carry eight blue whales!"
Me: "I'll toss them over my shoulder, one by one, of course."
10-year-old: "I'll smash your blue whales with my giant fists."
7-year-old: "But blue whales won't fit in the club!"
Me: "Let's find out." 

And so I paced off the club, and got its dimensions: 77' wide and 126' long. By measuring the size of the panels on one wall that went up to the ceiling, I calculated the height at 18 feet. (Technically, we have two bathrooms sticking out of one wall, which reduce the volume, but we also have a back room of about the same size.)

Now according to my Internet research, an adult blue whale is roughly 100 feet long, and (when lying out of water on dry land) about 10 feet tall and 25 feet wide at its widest. The 10 feet tall thing is problematic since that would make it difficult to stack them since the ceilings are 18 feet high, but I'm going to assume we can squeeze them down a bit more and stack them two high - but this would make them wider, perhaps 30 feet wide. Since the club is 77 feet wide, we would be able to fit two side by side, and two on top of that. Then we'd have 17 feet left on the side. We should be able to squeeze one more in there. But the club is 126 feet long, so we have an area 26 feet by 77 feet left over. Taking into account that the whales don't take up as much space with their flukes, and being careful to load them into the club fluke first, we should be able to jam in one more blue whale, left to right, if we fold its flukes back over. So that makes us a six blue whale club.

Here's another way of looking at this. A blue whale's density is pretty close to water. A blue whale can weigh up to 200 tons, let's assume we have a very large one at 200 tons. Now if MDTTC's dimensions are 77x126x18, then it has a volume of 174,636 square feet. A square foot of water weighs about 62.4 pounds. So MDTTC could hold up to 10,897,286 pounds of water, or about 5448 tons, which equates to 27.24 blue whales at 200 tons each. Suddenly I'm realizing that my blue whale packaging above wasn't very efficient. So now we're a 27 blue whale club, assuming we can fold and perhaps cut up the whales to make them fit. The key question - will they pay membership?

Balancing Training of Strengths and Weaknesses

Here's the article from Table Tennis Master.

The Laughmaster of Ping-Pong - Adam Bobrow

Here's an article on this entertaining player, "The Laughmaster Of Ping-Pong, Adam Bobrow Combines Comedy And Table Tennis And Tours The World In Leopard Print," which includes a link to a video (4:08) that compiles some of his adventures.

Liu Shiwen Criticized by Liu Guoliang

Here's the article, which includes a link to a video (18:06).

Top Ten Table Tennis Points of 2013

Here's the video (3:37).

Top Ten Shots of the ITTF World Tour Grand Finals

Here's the video (4:24) from the ITTF.

Eager Thief Tries to Gift Wrap Table Tennis Table

Here's the article! (Alas, it links to a video that is no longer available, which I saw last night, with video footage of the hapless criminal actually trying to wrap the table.)

Cat Smacking in Forehands

Here's the latest cat-playing-table-tennis video (27 sec) starring an acrobatic cat with a world-class forehand, I mean forepaw.

Will Ferrell Playing Table Tennis

Here's the picture, where he demonstrates his unique penhold grip - while wearing white with a white ball, the cheater.

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