March 24, 2015

Exhaustion, and Playing Those Wide Angles and Middle

I must be getting old. I'm not sure how this happened - I think someone at the club stuck something in my Gatorade one day, and presto! This past month I've coached nearly every single day. I finally got a day off this past Saturday due to a series of fortunate events, but Sunday I was on my feet coaching for over six hours. Yesterday I had 2.5 hours of coaching and could barely move as my muscles were absolutely, completely, totally, wholly, entirely, fully, and utterly dead. (Yeah, I used a Thesaurus.)

I was hitting with 10-year-old Daniel (1639), and I think he aced me with shots to the wide forehand or backhand about every ten seconds. The eye-opener was when I wanted to work on his blocking near the end of the session with him, and literally couldn't forehand loop to his block more than a few shots - normally I'm sort of a machine in a drill, not really powerful but can loop over and Over and OVER. I was even having blocking as my legs just wouldn't step to the ball - and Daniel was somewhat gleeful in looping wide-angled aces, as well as to my middle. (But I liked that he was going for such wide-angle loops - see last Monday's Tip of the Week, To Play the Middle and Wide Corners You Have to Practice to Them.) We ended up doing extra multiball. When we played games at the end, I compensated for my lack of mobility by pulling out my best serves and receives - sorry Daniel.

Today I also have 2.5 hours scheduled, but I've got others substituting so I can stay off my feet - no coaching today. I still have to run out and pick up some kids for our afterschool program, but I'm just dropping them off and then returning home. I'll be back on Wednesday and Thursday, but I'm probably going to take Friday and Saturday off as well. Friday is a Professional Day, and local schools are closed, so no afterschool program, and I think my one student that night is away. Saturday there's a USATT Board meeting in Baltimore (see below), so no coaching that day. (I'm trying to figure out if sitting in a meeting all day is restful or exhausting?) I'll blog about the meeting on Thursday, and again afterwards on Monday.

The Spirit of Pong

I blogged about this fantasy table tennis novella last Wednesday. It's now 21,290 words, about 85 pages in double-spaced 12-point Times Roman. I was about 15 minutes from basically finishing the first draft on Sunday when I had to go coach. I say "basically" because I have three pages of notes of things to go add or fix; once I'm done with that, I'll consider it a first draft. I expect it'll end up around 25,000 words, about 100 pages. I hope to work on it more today and tomorrow, and perhaps finish the first draft. (Alas, I have other projects that keep interfering, such as getting the new French translation of my Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers ready for the French Amazon, and preparing for the USATT Board meeting this Saturday, where I have two presentations.)

I'm dying to tell you about my favorite scene, a life and death match with "The Dragon," an impeccably polite and unassuming Hiroji Satoh, who once again has a new revolutionary racket, plus a few other unexpected quirks. There are also appearances by the "Spirit of What Made Them Champions" of great players at key times, and extended training sequences with the spirits of Ichiro Ogimura and 1959 World Men's Champion Rong Guotuan - and the story gets rather dark in the latter saga.

The Odyssey of Ruchao Alex Chen: A Chinese Star from Sweden in America

Here's the story I wrote for USATT about this great player from the Maryland Table Tennis Center.  

Latin American Championships and Pan Am Qualification

Here's the ITTF page. Team USA (Jim Butler, Kanak Jha, Timothy Wang, and coach Stefan Feth - here's a team selfie!) defeated Peru to qualify for the Pan Ams. Here's an ITTF article featuring undefeated Kanak Jha. And here's the entire video of Team USA's win over Peru (2:28:37).

USATT Hall of Fame Museum at Triangle Table Tennis

Here's the ribbon-cutting picture. "Donna Sakai, President of the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame, cutting the ribbon to mark the opening of the USTTA Hall of Fame museum at Triangle Table Tennis in Morrisville, North Carolina. (l-r) Tim Boggan, member of the museum committee, Ann Campbell, President Triangle Table Tennis, Steve Rao, Morrisville Councilman, Mike Babuin, member of the museum committee, Dean Johnson, Chairman of the museum committee." Here's a Panoramic View of the museum.

Open Ended Drills

Here's the new coaching article by Han Xiao.

Plan A vs Plan B: Learn about making necessary adjustments

Here's the latest coaching article by Samson Dubina.

Don't Plan Rest Days Into Your Training Programme

Here's the new article by Ben Lacombe.

Ask the Coach

Episode #101 (16:50) - Pendulum Serve Grip (and other segments)

Episode #102 (23:15) - Is the rest of the world catching up to China? (and other segments)

Next Stop for Richard McAfee, Dharwad District in State of Karnataka

Here's the ITTF story about USA's globetrotting coach's coach.

XIOM Smash TT Round Robin and Newgy Ohio Open

While everyone was paying attention to the Butterfly Cary Cup in NC and the German Open (both covered in yesterday's blog), there was also the Newgy Ohio Open (here are results, photos, and video), and the XIOM Round Robin in nearby Virginia (here's the write-up & results, and photos). 

Great Point at German Open

Here's the video (8 sec) of this very fast point in the final between Zhang Jike and Ma Long.

Mima Ito of Japan Becomes Youngest Ever ITTF Pro Tour Champion

Here's the video (1:32) as she defeats Petrissa Solja of German in the final on Sunday.

Table Tennis in The Onion

As pointed out by Iskandar Taib in the OOAK Forum, table tennis has been in The Onion at least three times, including just last month:

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