Between Games Personalities

I've been coaching for over three decades, and have coached many hundreds of players between games. It's always interesting to see the different way players act at this time. Here's a rundown of how 16 different players (half adults, half juniors, mostly top players) were like between games when I coached them. (I'm mixing in both current players and players from farther back, so don't assume these are current players. I'm using past tense for all, including current players.) I'd rather not give out their names, not even via private email, especially for the ones who were not particularly good between games.

Adult A: Very enthusiastic and determined. He always had something important to ask between games, such as whether I thought he should use this serve more, or this receive, or this type of placement. He liked to focus on finding ways to lock down the opponent by taking away his strengths with serve & receive.

Adult B: A very quiet player, he'd listen carefully to whatever I said, and then expand on it with a few brief points. If he thought there was something important I hadn't mentioned, he'd bring it up. He was very good at adjusting to changing circumstances. I probably talked more in depth tactically with this player than any others, as he was able to remember everything I said. With him, I'd often suggest several things on serve, receive, and rallying tactics, and he had no trouble absorbing it all. I coached him as a junior as well, and he was the same then. 

Adult C: This player listened to every word I said, often with eyes wide like every word was a revelation. He then went out to the table and always did exactly what I said. If circumstances changed, he'd continue to do it. He was "great" at following instructions, but tended to take them literally and wasn't able to think for himself at the table.

Table Tennis Tactics: A Thinker's Guide (and other books)

Here's an update. The text is done, and I'm currently doing the page layouts. The final version will be about 240 pages, with around 70 photos or graphics. It's about 97,000 words, over twice as many words as in my "Table Tennis: Steps to Success" book, but with fewer graphics.  It'll be published both as POD (Print On Demand) and as an ebook, and sold online at amazon.com and other locations. Other than the cover, I expect to have it done within days. (I'm playing around with covers, and have three possible ones. Soon I'll decide on the basic idea, and then I'll likely hire a designer to fancify it.)

I'm about to go bigtime into selling my books online. I just bought the domain www.LarryHodgesBooks.com. Within months I hope to be selling the following as both POD and ebooks:

Tactics Case Study

I recently had an interesting practice match with a top player. I'm not going to name the player, so I'll call him "Bob" (not his real name). Bob has a very good backhand, both looping against backspin and hitting against once in the rally. He also has a rather quick off-the-bounce forehand loop, so it can be dangerous going there. His serves are mostly short backspin or no-spin, with deep, spinny serves thrown in as a variation. When he flips short balls with his forehand, they almost always go crosscourt - a weakness I was about to ram an entire match through. He was playing well, and had just defeated two very strong players, while I was not playing very well. But tactics, not playing level, decided this match. Here's what happened.

Early on I could tell when his serve was going long, but I wasn't sure why - there was something different about the way he set up. So whenever he served long, I was ready to loop. (Near the end of the second game I realized it was because he set up for his long serve with his racket farther back and more closed. I pointed this out to him after the match.) Because I was looping his deep serves so well, he had to serve short over and over. This allowed me to drop them almost all short, often faking to the backhand and then dropping it short to his forehand. He mostly pushed these or predictably flipped them crosscourt to my forehand. In both cases, I took the attack. So throughout the match I was the aggressor on his serve.

Backhand Breakthrough

Yesterday a kid I was coaching had a major breakthrough. His forehand has been coming along really well, but his backhand . . . well . . . the stroke was awkward, the contact more like a jab then a stroke, often coming out dead or even with backspin. We've spent the last few weeks focusing on this. Usually it takes him about five minutes of hitting before he can start hitting it decently at even a slow pace, quite a contrast with his nice forehand, which he impatiently steps around to smash every chance since he too was getting sick of his problematic backhand.

And then, yesterday, we hit backhand to backhand, and lo and behold, it all come together. The stroke was textbook, the contact just right. We went backhand to backhand longer than usual as I wanted to really ingrain this. He'd been thinking about backhands a lot, and the visualizing seems to have worked. Let's just way I was pleasantly surprised. So was he.

He had additional incentive. I'd promised he could start working on backhand looping only after I declared his backhand "solid," and yesterday I did just that. I cautioned him that I wanted him to still focus on ingraining the regular backhand before we spend too much time on backhand loop, but next session he's going to finally get to backhand loop against backspin (multiball).

Adventures with Print on Demand and Ebooks, and No More Volunteering

Tip of the Week

Dealing with Cheaters and Poor Sportsmanship.

Bad coaches

Since this week's Tip of the Week is on Cheaters and Poor Sportsmanship, let's continue the trend and look at the dark side of coaching. There are lots of great coaches out there. And I've often blogged about good coaching habits. However, let's talk about the other side of the coin: bad coaches. Here is a list of seven types of bad coaches. (I'm sure I missed some.) There is a lot of overlap between these categories, and the differences between some of them are subtle. There are probably bad coaches who combine the worst of multiple categories!

Too tight when you play?

I'm one of the roughly way-too-many-to-count players who often struggle to get loose before playing, whether in matches or practice. But I have found a solution that works most of the time, and works for many players I coach.

When you start a session (practice or matches), have fun at the start. Let yourself go. If it's practice, start out with something you do really well (preferably something physical, like looping or smashing), and have fun doing it. If it's a match, take it lightly and have fun. The goal in both cases is to relax and loosen up. Once you feel loose - and this shouldn't take too long - then take deep breath, clear your mind, and focus.

When I say focus, this doesn't mean to get super-serious. You can have a clear mind and still smile on the inside. The best players may often look impassive on the outside, but on the inside they are having the time of their life. So lighten up at the start of your sessions, loosen up, then focus, and you may surprise yourself by how well you play.

At the Easterns last weekend, the kid I was coaching, Derek Nie, started the tournament off very nervous, and played horribly in his first match. Afterwards I took him to a back table where we did some counterlooping for a while, joked about, and then played challenge matches where we trash talked. ("I cannot be beaten!" I'd say whenever I win a point," which of course just spurred him on.) In his matches shortly afterwards, he played the best of his life. (See next item.)

Eastern Open Recap

ITTF Coaching Seminars

Here's a note about upcoming ITTF Coaching Seminars that was sent to all USATT Certified Coaches from the USATT Coaching Committee. (I'm a member.) If you are interested, see the info page. I'm running my second one at the Maryland Table Tennis Center on Aug 11-12, 18-19 (with possible Paralympic session on Aug. 25), so I hope to see you there! Here's the flyer for the one I'm running. 

Special Notice to All USATT Members, USATT Coaches, and USATT Clubs
From: Richard McAfee, Chairman, USATT National Coaching Advisory Committee

In the upcoming summer months, USATT Coaching is offering 5 regional ITTF-PPT Level 1 Coaching Courses.  USATT Coaching would like to urge anyone who is actively involved or has thought about becoming involved in coaching table tennis to plan to attend one of these courses.

Coaches completing all the course requirements of the ITTF-PPT Level 1 Course will become ITTF Certified and listed on the ITTF Coaches Registry.  In addition, coaches becoming ITTF Level 1 who are not currently USATT Certified (or certified at a “club” level) are eligible to become USATT “State” Level Coaches.  For current USATT Coaches, your ITTF Certification will be added to your name on the USATT Coaching Data-base.

Course Content:

Why coaches teach nearly everyone almost the same style

If you watch the top players, and especially up-and-coming juniors, you probably noticed something: they all seem to play pretty much the same. There are, of course, differences, often subtle, but in generally they mostly serve forehand pendulum serves (regular and reverse), they pretty much loop everything on the forehand (unless it's an easy smash, though some loop those as well), and they all loop on the backhand (though some will also hit). In generally, nearly every top player and top junior these days is a looper of some type. If you watch closely, you'll realize that many elite juniors aren't really hitting their backhand much anymore; they are looping them off the bounce. You'll even notice emerging trends, such as how they all seem to receive short balls whenever possible now with their backhands, using the newly popular "banana flip," which is basically an over-the-table backhand loop, often with sidespin. Why are they all playing so much alike?

Except at the highest levels, there are many styles that are successful. In fact, one of the strangest things about table tennis is that just about any style can succeed below the national level, say up to 2200-2400 level or so. There really aren't any disadvantages below that level for choppers, blockers, hitters, pips-out penholders, Seemiller grip players, long pips blockers, or just about any other semi-regular style. Given the chance, in fact, many players with these styles probably could nearly reach the top, even becoming, say, the best in the U.S. or top 100 in the world.

So why do so few coaches teach other styles?

Think of it from the point of view of the coach. He has a new player. Let's suppose that one style is slightly better than another at the higher levels. Why would the coach choose that particular player to develop a style he knows is slightly less successful than others?

Bad Sportsmanship and Cheaters

Yesterday I blogged about the Eastern Open, including the extremely bad sportsmanship of one player. Here are some examples of really bad sportsmanship or cheating I've experienced in the past.

Tip of the Week

Serving Short with Spin.

Eastern Open

I was at the Eastern Open this past weekend, coaching 11-year-old Derek Nie. Derek made the final of 11 and Under at the last USA Nationals, and came in with a rating of 2127. (He's very small for his age, only about 60 pounds, and is almost for certain the best player in the U.S., pound for pound.) He played very well this tournament. But he also had a very bad experience with an opponent who was the ultimate in bad sportsmanship. Balancing that was a revelation Derek had about the mental game. Here's a synopsis.

On Saturday morning he started off at 9AM in Under 2500 against Wesley Fan, rated 2163. He didn't play well this match, and Wesley played much better than his rating, and won three straight easily. (Wesley would go on to win both Under 2250 and Under 2375.) Afterwards I took Derek aside and we practiced for an hour, the last half playing practice games. Since I know what "buttons" to push when I play him, I won all five games, but they were closer and closer toward the end. The first three we had a little fun, which helped him relax, then I told him to focus the last two games, and though I won, that's when he started playing well. I could see it, and couldn't wait for his next match. We finished the session with him practicing his serves for ten minutes.