June 22, 2015

Tip of the Week

Conquer the One-Winged Blues by Developing Your Weaker Side.

USATT Club Development Handbook

The new USATT Club Development Handbook by Yang Yu (Head Coach and Business Director of the Austin TTC) and Roderick Medina (League Director and Board Member of ATTC) is out! (Here’s the direct link to the PDF file.) This is a great new manual for those hoping to start a new club. (Disclaimer: I edited and critiqued an early version of this.)

I’m especially interested in how it can be used to assist those hoping to start up full-time table tennis centers. Assisting in the growth of such centers is something I promised when I ran for the Board as a key part of growing USA Table Tennis – both the organization and the number of serious players in this country. I believe that using it in conjunction with the USATT Club Handbook (which I haven’t reviewed in a while – will do so sometime) and my own Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook will give us the textbooks for running seminars on the how to create such full-time centers. While all nine steps in this new manual are important, I think steps 3-6 are particularly key for this.

The manual is made up of nine steps - if any of these may be useful to you, download the (free) manual!

  1. Are You Ready to Start a Club?
  2. Mission Statement and Business Entity
  3. Facility and Equipment
  4. Income Sources (tournaments, walk-in play, membership, training programs, equipment sales, private events, donations, food & drink sales, sponsorship)
  5. Business Model (mixed operation model, training center model)
  6. Marketing Your Club (with 13 methods listed)
  7. USATT Club Affiliation and Recognition Program
  8. Club Management
  9. Outline the Financial Budget

MDTTC Camps

Another Mon-Fri camp starts today – Week Two of our Eleven Weeks of Summer Camps. Who knows, today may be the day I start the journey of the next Ma Long. Or mess one up.

The Childhood of Table Tennis Masters

Here’s a great new music video (5:55) of kids playing table tennis. About two minutes in it starts showing top stars playing as children.

Ball Placement Tips

Here’s the new coaching article by Han Xiao.

How to Play a Forehand Loop

Here’s the new coaching article (with link to video) from Expert Table Tennis.

Forehand Push – Finger Positioning

Here’s the new coaching video (32 sec) from Samson Dubina.

Spanish Paralympic Open Results

My student, Navin Kumar, played in this. Here are Team Results. (Not sure where I can find singles and doubles results. Navin won a match in his group, and should have a world ranking from that.) I expect there’ll be a USATT news item on this soon, which I’ll link to here.

European Games

Here’s the ITTF page for the event, with results, articles, and pictures. There are lots of videos from the tournament at TTLondon2012 and at Youtube.

  • Men’s Singles Final, Dimitrij Ovtcharov (GER, world #6) vs. Vladimir Samsonov (BLR, world #9)
  • Women’s Singles Final, Jie Li (NED, world #21) vs. Jiao Li (NED, world #35)
    • Entire match (47:41)
    • Highlights (will post if/when it goes up)

MDTTC June Open

Here’s the article (with results and pictures) at Butterflyonline.com.

LYTTC After-School Training Program

Here’s the video (5:08).

Dimitrij Ovtcharov & Li Jiao Win Golden Ticket to 2016 Olympics

Here’s the ITTF press release on their getting automatic passes by winning European Games.

Fan Zhendong Practices Smashing/Looping Lobs

Here’s the video (61 sec).

Jim Butler vs. Chance Friend

Here’s a great point (48 sec) between these two at the Texas Wesleyan June Open, with an intro by a pair of Finnish girls.

One of the Best Points Ever with Waldner

Here’s the video (33 sec), against Georg Böhm of Germany. (Yep, no “e” in his first name.)

Trickshot Challenges from PingSkills to the Ping Pong Sisters and Back

Here’s the video (57 sec).

Hungry? Try a Ping Pong Kimi’s Roll!

Here’s the menu.  (If you can’t read the Facebook image, try this.) It appears to have crab, avocado, and shrimp in it, three things I do not eat, so I’ll pass.

Happy Table Tennis Father's Day (one day late)!

Here's a nice image - father and son on a stamp playing TT.

***
Send us your own coaching news!