December 12, 2014
USATT Election
USATT members, don't forget to vote!!! Here's my USATT Election Page. (You have to be at least 18 years old to vote.)
SPUR USATT Growth and Filling Up a Club
How do you SPUR growth in USATT? This has always been one of my favorite acronyms. SPUR, or more properly S.P.U.R. stands for:
- Show the sport
- Play: get them to play
- USATT: get them to join
- Rejoin: get them to rejoin
If you do three of these things, you generally won't succeed. (This is for USATT growth; you can replace the USATT part with something else if that's what you are trying to grow.) It's like a chain missing a link. I try to incorporate all four in programs I propose to USATT, or have programs that, working together, do all four.
Many don't understand the concept that to grow the sport, you don't just look for places where there are already players and then set up a club or league. (Though you do want to continue to grow those areas until table tennis is outrageously popular there.) You set up clubs and leagues and other activities to create a player base. That's how the sport grows.
And yet I'm always hearing the following:
- "There aren't enough players for a league."
- "There aren't enough players for a club."
- "There aren't enough players for a training center."
- "There aren't enough players for a full-time coach."
- "There aren't enough players for the sport to be big in this country."
All I can say when I hear this is Jeeeeez!!! These are the people who are living in the status quo mediocrity that's been accepted for so many years in our sport, at least in the U.S. You grow the player base, and that's how you get enough players for the first four items above, and this all leads to the final item.
To grow the sport does mean finding solutions to problems, such as how do you get players into a club? (That's #2 in SPUR.) There's a great quote about this type of thing:
"Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining."
-Teddy Roosevelt
So what is the solution to filling up a club? The two best ways are leagues and coaches. If your club has a singles league for all levels, then you can fit new players into it right from the start, and they become regulars. If you don't have such a league, and instead have the common "call winners" club concept, then new players call winners, get killed by regulars, and you never see them again. So you need a league if you want to keep these new players and turn them into regulars.
The other way is with coaches bringing in players. A key to all this is understanding the purpose of a table tennis coach in an area where there aren't many players. You don't want a coach who just sits around waiting for students - how does that help the club increase the number of players? You want coaches who are out there bringing in new players as students - and thereby filling up the club. It is this implicit deal between clubs and coaches that has led to the success of many - the coaches bring in the players (who pay for memberships, tournaments, leagues, group sessions, equipment, refreshments, etc., and thereby finance the club) while the club lets the coaches keep most of their money in return for them bringing in players.
It isn't always like this - once a club is successful (i.e. full of players), or if they have a major sponsor (rare), then they no longer need their coaches to be out there scrambling for students. (The best clubs with the strongest players have elite coaches who aren't scrambling for students, but are instead working with the best players and developing them.) But coaches looking for students, and thereby filling the club, is what's needed at the start. They need to be out there doing exhibitions at schools (including Asian schools on weekends), talking to the press, and going to rec centers and churches. They need to have flyers or business cards to give out everywhere, always trying to turn potential players into regular players at the club.
So let me re-iterate: A primary purpose of a coach for a new full-time club is to bring in players.
Backhand Footwork
I've been having my students do a lot of backhand footwork training recently. This is one of those things that a lot of coaches have their students do enough of. I think I've figured out why.
The most basic backhand footwork is no different than forehand footwork - you put the ball side to side, and the student moves side to side and hits backhands. (There's also in-and-out footwork.) This is exactly what a player has to do in a game when covering the backhand side with the backhand, so why don't more coaches do this? Most often when students do backhand footwork drills it's incorporated into a drill where they are also doing forehand footwork, such as side-to-side footwork, where they alternate forehands and backhands, or other variations that mostly have the player move from the forehand side to the backhand side to hit a backhand. But players also have to move around on the backhand side to hit backhands, and need drills to cover. In fact, it was backhand footwork training that Eric Owens attributes as the primary reason he upset Cheng Yinghua in winning Men's Singles at the 2001 USA Nationals.
What happens with many coaches is this. At the beginning stages, players focus on just the strokes, and so don't do footwork. When they can do footwork, they might do some backhand footwork. But soon the forehand becomes the dominant shot, and so the players focus on moving around and attacking with the forehand. Often the backhand isn't as developed, and so the coach doesn't want to push the player into doing too much movement while doing backhands as they think it might hurt the stroke. This is especially true of intermediate players making the transition from standard backhands to topspinning the backhand - and so the backhand is often in a perennial situation of being behind the forehand in development. And so the coach focuses on forehand footwork while focusing only on technique on the backhand side as the backhand develops into a topspin attacking shot.
By the time the player does have a solid topspin backhand, both the coach and the player aren't in the habit of doing backhand footwork drills in their sessions, and so they just don't do them. And this can lead to a weakness in the player's game as they don't move around as well as they could in covering the backhand side. This is a problem as the backhand by its very nature is a more cramped shot, with the body in the way, and so being able to move about and attack with the backhand is key.
A version of this will likely be the Tip of the Week on Monday - sorry in advance for any redundancies!
Back Injury
On Wednesday I wrenched my back pretty badly. I didn't realize at the time how bad it was, but on Thursday morning when I got up I could barely move. Even feeding multiball is like having a knife in my back. So I've had to cancel all my coaching through Sunday. (I leave for the U.S. Nationals on Monday morning.) It seems like I always get injured just before the Open or Nationals. It's like clockwork. Alas, pain killers never seem to work on me.
So if you see me at the Nationals and I'm sort of hunched up, or walking funny, or noticeably even stiffer than usual, now you know why. Thank god for wheeled playing bags! I am entered in two hardbat events, but I don't play until Wednesday, so we'll see if I'm at all recovered by then.
USA Nationals
They are next week, Dec. 16-20, in Las Vegas, Nevada. I leave for them Monday morning. (I should still get one last blog and a Tip of the Week in on Monday before leaving.) Here's the home page for the event. Here's an alphabetical listing of all 761 players, and here's a listing by event. (Make sure to set dropdown menu to "2014 US Nationals.")
I checked with USATT, and the playing hall will be open for practice on Monday from 3-8PM. I arrive at 3:45 local time, and will likely be at the playing hall soon after.
It's going to be a busy trip for me, probably made worse by the back injury I wrote about above. I'm mostly there to coach (that'll take up most of my time), but I'm also in two hardbat events (we'll see about that) and a lot of meetings. Official meetings I hope to attend include:
- Board meeting, Tue 9AM-6PM, Wed 9AM-noon, room N251
- USATT Assembly, Tue, 7-9PM, room N245-247
- Officials & Rules Committee: Wed 7PM room N247
- Hall of Fame Banquet: Thur 6:30PM
I've also got meetings for the Table Tennis Professionals of America; to demonstrate Createspace (for would-be table tennis authors); and with someone who's apparently writing a training center manual. Plus I finally get to meet that disembodied voice better known as the new USATT CEO Gordon Kaye!
Here's an assignment for all players going to the Nationals (and really for all readers): Read the rules. It always astonishes me how many players have never done so. If you do it just one time, you'll have a better idea of just what's in there - and some of it might surprise you! Here are the ITTF Rules.
$1,000,000 ITTF World Tour Finals
The event continues today, Dec. 11-14 in Bangkok, Thailand, with Men's and Women's Singles and Doubles. Here's the ITTF home page for the event where you can get results, articles, pictures, and video. USA's own Adam Bobrow is, as usual, doing the TV commentary. Here are player bios.
PingPod #42 - Change the Service Rule
Here's the new episode (8:28). (Here's a text version.) At 3:09 (and in the text version) they refer to my serving proposal, but leave out a key part. My proposal isn't that both umpires must be able to see the ball, but the following:
"Throughout the serve, the ball must be visible to both umpires, or where the umpires would sit if there were umpires."
The second part is key, since most matches do not have umpires. And just as the purpose of the 6-inch toss wasn't to make players toss the ball six inches but to make sure they weren't serving out of their hand, the purpose here isn't to make players serve so the ball is visible to both umpires (or where they would sit) but so that the ball is clearly visible to the opponent - which is the result of this rule. (I didn't originate this idea, but I'm hoping to push it through.)
Ask the Coach
Episode 47 (20:01) - Pick the World Tour Grand Final Winners
- Yesterdays #PQOTD - 1:04: Do you remember your first tournament?
- #PQOTD - 4:18: Write down the Mens & Womens Singles World Tour Grand Final Winners as a comment on the Blog to this show and win a free 1 Month Premium membership. First to name both winners on the PingSkills blog wins. You are only allowed one guess.
- Question 1 - 6:27: I heard the term "dummy loop" on some table tennis blog that I can't quite recall. It had a vague definition and I couldn't quite grasp the concept. What is it? Sawyer Meverden
- Question 2 - 10:00: I see a few players serving with a "pick axe” motion a shakehand version of Wang Hao's service. I don't understand why a professional is serving this way, because there seems to be hardly any wrist action. I must admit that they are hard to read. Dieter
- Question 3 - 13:28: I have been unable to return balls which dribble over the net. Often they are hit hard and I am expecting them to come fast and far back. Is it possible to increase reaction speed to the point that you could lunge forward and return it? Adam
- Question 4 - 15:40: Some friends of mine said that my game is very predictable, like hitting the ball back right at where it come from, and some other stuff. I often lose because of this. I'm a looper, and how to fix this? Erriza
International Table Tennis
Here's my periodic note that you can great international coverage at TableTennista (which especially covers the elite players well) and at the ITTF home page (which does great regional coverage).
Topspin Charity
Here's a photo gallery from USATT of the event held this past weekend at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. Top players included Sean O'Neill, Lily Yip, Ariel Hsing, Erica Wu, Wally Green, Kaz Yakoyama, and a host of celebrities - go through the pictures to find out who! And here are three pictures of Joel Roodyn on his way to winning the tournament they held (presumably the "celebrities" event).
Inclusion Table Tennis
Table Tennis on Reuters
Here's the article, Table Tennis: the Addictive Spin. "Table tennis bounces as effortlessly as its little white balls through all sorts of venues, from church basements to the Olympic Games to urban social clubs for the ultra cool."
Dangerous Beauty
Here's the latest table tennis artwork by Mike Mezyan - but how do we teach footwork to this fiery pong player?
Xu Xin Under-the-Leg Shot
Here's the video (18 sec), and check out the sidespin!
Don't Forget the Ball
Here's the table tennis cartoon!
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