August 5, 2015

Tip of the Week

Get to the Root of the Problem. (Adapted from Monday, July 20 blog.)

Sometimes Small Things Are Big Things

I was coaching a player a couple days ago who tended to start his forehand loop drive with his upper body. This is a common problem, and leads to players "muscling" the ball, i.e. straining to create power with just their upper body. Large players often get away with this, as they can create sufficient power this way, but it means straining, which means they lose control as well as having only good power instead of great power. It also invariably leads to injuries.

But telling a player who strokes with just his upper body to use his lower body (legs, hips, waist) doesn't usually work. It's a big change, and incorporating all those lower body movements into a nice, smooth stroke throws the timing off, leading to all sorts of problems. What to do?

They key is to start small. Just have the player use a little lower body to get the upper body started. Once this is done, it all starts to fall into place – as it did here. After a few minutes the player was smoothly ripping shot after shot as I fed him multiball.

Non-Table Tennis: What I Did on My Vacation

(Skip ahead of this for lots of table tennis links below.)
I was in Manchester, NH, July 24 – Aug. 1, for the "The Never-Ending Odyssey" (TNEO), an eight-day writing workshop for graduates of the six-week Odyssey Science Fiction & Fantasy Writing Workshop. I went to Odyssey in 2006, and have been to TNEO now six times. Here's a group picture of the participants this year (23, with one missing). Our fearless leader, who has run Odyssey for 20 years, is Jeanne Cavelos, who is in front, fourth from the right. (Here's my science fiction & fantasy page. That's what I do when I'm not doing TT!)

What do we do there? It's an incredibly busy schedule, including:

  • Group Critiquing. We do three hours of this each morning, where we go around the circle, critiquing stories or novel chapters. I was in the short story group (9 or 10 people each day), and had three stories critiqued:
    • "Galahad Returns," a humorous fantasy where Sir Galahad, who has been given super powers from "The Finger of God," returns from 1500 years searching the galaxy for the Holy Grail and ends up jousting with fighter jets and getting mixed up in presidential politics as he learns that honesty is not always the best policy.
    • "Old Tuna," a humorous science fiction story about an alien invasion – from the point of view of a house cat.
    • "Tooth Apocalypse," a straight science fiction/fantasy story (it's borderline both) about alien poachers who hunt and kill humans to near extinction for their teeth to sell on the galactic black market, since many aliens believe they have magical properties. It's a metaphorical take on rhino horn and elephant tusk poaching.
  • Master Class on "The Key ingredients of Plot." Each TNEO has a different Master class, which the students themselves teach. They involve about 2.5 hours each afternoon.
  • Brain-Storming, Plot Breakout, and Problem-Solving Session. For these we got together in smaller groups (3-5) and basically brainstormed about specific story problems.  
  • Readings. There were two informal readings where we take turns reading our stories (and getting feedback), plus the annual "Smash Reading" at the local Barnes & Noble, where we each did readings roughly five minutes long. Here's a picture of me reading my story, "Happily and Righteously," a parody about paranoia. (Here's the non-Facebook version.) The story is in my science fiction & fantasy anthology, "Pings and Pongs," which contains 30 of my best sold stories. (I've sold 71, and will soon have a new anthology out with 30 more stories, "More Pings and Pongs.")
  • Salons. These were at night, where we got together and discussed and did various writing activities.
  • Walking. The dorms were ten minutes from the meeting area, and involved a gentle incline. Let's just say writers are not as fit as table tennis players, and the distinction really came out during these walks!

Chen Bowen: Mr. Athlete

Here's the feature article I wrote for USATT on one of MDTTC's premier player/coach/practice partners.

Other Blogs and News Items

While I was away (since July 24), there were a lot of blog and news items that went up. Here are some links.

New Coaching Articles from Han Xiao

McAfee's Mechanics: Improving Your Anticipation Skills

Here's the new coaching article.

Timing is Everything

Here's the coaching article from Jon Gustavson of Jon's Table Tennis Training in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Always Expect Your Serve to Be Returned

Here's the new coaching article by UK Coach Tom Lodziak.

ITTF's Spins 'n' Skills

Here's the ITTF instructional video preview (54 sec), with short segments on the forehand and backhand.

Ask the Coach Show

They did three more episodes while I was gone:

Four-Year-Old Table Tennis Coach

Here's video (22 sec) of four-year-old Shia teaching his cousin Charles how to hit forehands and backhands. He's after my job!!!

ITTF Monthly Pongcast – July 2015

Here's the video (11:45).

New Podcasts from Expert Table Tennis

Outrageous Backhand Flip by Xu Xin

Here's the video (15 sec, including slo-mo replay). Note that the sidespin is the opposite of what you get on a regular "banana" backhand flip. When done this way it's sometimes called a "strawberry" flip. I've written about it before, such as on Dec. 27, 2011 and on Sept. 18, 2014.

MDTTC August Newsletter

Here it is. (Disclosure: I'm the editor.)

Navin Kumar in the News (Again!)

Here's more media coverage of Navin, who has a partially mechanical heart and Parkinson's. (Disclosure: he's a student of mine.)

Star Studded Field Set to Compete at ITTF World Tour China Open

Here's the ITTF press release.

Samsonov vs. Ma Long and the Asia vs. Europe Challenge

Here's the video (8:51) as Samsonov battles the world champion in the Asia vs. Europe Challenge, with links to other videos. Europe "upset" Asia, but was helped by the apparent rule of only one player per country, so Ma Long was the only Chinese player. Team Asia was Ma Long (CHN), Jun Mizutani (JPN), Tang Peng (HKG), Chuang Chih-Yuan (TPE), and Alamiyan Noshad (Iran). Team Europe was Vladimir Samsonov (BLR), Marcos Freitas (POR), Robert Gardos (AUT), Bastian Steger (GER), and Andrej Gacina (CRO). Here's an article and complete results, and here's an article from Tabletennista.

Behind-the-Back Running Backhand Kill

Here's the video (15 sec). Technically, he hit that with the forehand side of his racket!

Chop Lob and Behind-the-Back Counter-Smash

Here's the video (16 sec) of Adam Bobrow demonstrating the basics.

Table Tennis and More

Here's the music video (71 sec) from the Phoenix, Arizona club.

Ma Long vs. Ding Ning Bounce Challenge

Here's the video (49 sec).

More Mike Mezyan Pictures

NOTE - If you are unable to see these pictures, all you have to do is join the Table Tennis Group - it's easy! Here are all the past, present, and (soon) future pictures he's collected. (I pick out his best ones for here - he has more.)

Obama vs. Ali Kamenei (Iran Leader)

Here's the table tennis cartoon. (Here's the non-Facebook version.) Whoever did the cartoon got it right – Obama is using a proper forehand pendulum serve grip, and Kamenei has a proper shakehands grip. I'm impressed!

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