March 29, 2016

Tip of the Week
Stroke Technique vs. Consistency, Serve, and Receive.

USATT Training Camp
USATT will be running a two-week "Super Camp" for USA team members immediately after the July 4-9 USA Nationals. With July 10 a travel date, the camp will run July 11-24. The location will be finalized soon, probably this next week. (We already have at least one very good option.) Organizing it is the new USATT High Performance Director Cory Eider, with assistance from Sean O'Neill, Han Xiao, and myself. I'm the volunteer, unpaid camp manager and one of the coaches. Sean and Han will also be there one week each as coaches. Other coaches will be named later, including a head coach for each week. (On a side note, I got the okay from Cory to go public with all this. I don't want to upstage USATT on their camp, but he wanted everything to be transparent and said to go ahead and blog about it.)

We had a 2.5 hour Google hangout meeting yesterday (Cory, Sean, Han, and myself, from 3-5:30PM), where we discussed and planned the camp. A big emphasis is going to be physical training. As I blogged last Wednesday (see item #3 of the items where I discuss my thoughts on the HPD position), we have to focus on the weaknesses of USA players, and we were all in agreement that physical training was a top priority. That and receive seem to be the biggest weakness relative to our overseas competitors.

Invited to the camp will be the members of the U.S. National Men's, Women's, Junior, Cadet, Mini-Cadet, and Hopes Teams. Others will likely be invited as well. If you are a top, Top, TOP player or coach, or have a top, Top, TOP-class venue, then perhaps you should contact Cory.

As I've blogged before, right now we have the strongest group of players at the cadet and younger age level than at any time in history, and it's not even close. This is the first group since the hardbat era with the real potential to take the world by storm, ending our 60-year-nap. Our last major title at the World Table Tennis Championships was the 1956 World Mixed Doubles title – Erwin Klein and Leah Neuberger. We should bring in Tybie Sommer to give the USA team a pep talk – she's the USA's 1948 World Mixed Doubles Champion (then known as Thelma Thall) with Dick Miles, and is alive and well in Scottsdale, AZ. USA's heyday was 1937, when we swept Men's and Women's Teams, Women's Singles, and Men's Doubles. We were competitive at the highest levels into the 1950s . . . and never since.

As an incentive to the players to work hard in the camp, especially during physical training, here's a challenge from this former high school miler and marathon runner (40 years ago). In any long distance running, anyone on the Men's, Women's, Junior, or Cadet Teams who finishes behind me has to run extra. If anyone on the Mini-Cadets or Hopes Teams finishes ahead of me, I have to run extra. So train hard so you can shame me or avoid getting shamed yourself!

I'll have to miss the last three days of the camp. Here's my extremely complicated July schedule:

  • July 3-10: USA Nationals in Las Vegas
  • July 10-22: USA Training Camp in [TBD]
  • July 22-30: Manchester, NH, for my annual writing workshop vacation
  • July 30-Aug. 3: Houston, TX, coaching at 4-star Team Competition (July 30-31) and Junior Olympics (Aug. 1-3).

Podcast with Jan-Ove Waldner
Here it is (40:29). From TableTennisDaily. He's arguably the greatest player of all time. Topics covered:

  • 02:30 Naturally gifted? 
  • 04:30 Why Jan started playing.
  • 06:40 How Jan gets feeling for the ball.
  • 08:10 How much practice Jan did when he was younger.
  • 11:24 How to get good at reading the game.
  • 14:19 More on the importance of matches in the practice hall.
  • 15:46 Was Jan really as calm as he looked when playing big matches?
  • 19:00 The Waldner Service.
  • 27:35 Ball issues.
  • 29:00 Changing from 38 to 40mm ball.
  • 30:40 Prize money.
  • 34:30 ITTF.
  • 35:43 Ma Long.
  • 37:03 Chinese Hurricane rubber.

College Table Tennis Championships
Here is the home page, results and video for the event, held this past weekend in Round Rock, TX.

Qatar Open
Here's the ITTF home page for the event held this past weekend, with results, articles, pictures, video, etc.

Developing a Basic Tactical Plan for Competitions
Here's the new coaching article by Francisco Mendez, 9-time Mexican Men's Singles Champion.

The Best Physical Training Exercises for Developing Table Tennis Footwork
Here's the new coaching article (with links to video) from MH Table Tennis.

Ask the Coach Show
Episode #248 (30:20) - Dealing with Backspin (and other segments)

Indore Host for First Ever Level Three Course Stage in India
Here's the ITTF article on the latest coaching course ran by USA's Richard McAfee.

The Table Tennis Buddy System
Here's the new article from Coach Jon.

Playing Ping Pong is Exercise for Life
Here's the article.

Make New York State Consider Drunk Driving a Violent Crime
This is only tangentially table tennis, but here's the petition from USA Paralympic star Tahl Leibovitz.

RIP Garry Shandling
Why is this in a table tennis blog? Because Garry did one of the best table tennis spoofs ever. In a December, 1988 episode of "It's Garry Shandling's Show," he did a table tennis episode titled The Natural, which spoofed the great Robert Redford baseball movie The Natural. "Garry attempts to make a comeback at ping pong in spite of an incident that put an end to his ping pong days 18 years ago." Unfortunately, I can't find any of the episode online.

ITTF-European Olympic Qualification Tournament Moved to Halmstad, Sweden
Here's the ITTF press release. "Due to the present circumstances in Turkey, the European Table Tennis Union (ETTU) has come to a conclusion to reschedule the ITTF-European Olympic Qualification Tournament that that was originally scheduled to be held in Istanbul, Turkey."

Tapper Becomes First Australian Paralympian to Qualify for the Olympic Games
Here's the ITTF press release.

Competitive Table Tennis Finds a Home in Northern Virginia
Here's the article from the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

San Ramon, Calif., Tween Excelling in Table Tennis, Named to U.S. Team
Here's the article on 11-year-old Mudit Mahajan.

Quentin Robinot - No Look Shot
Here's the video (23 sec, including slow motion replay) of the French play, #107 in the world.

12 Table Tennis Balls in One Hand
Here's the video (1:30).

New Roger Federer Table Tennis Commercial
Here's the video (30 sec). Here's the other one (46 sec) from last November.

Everybody Wants Some – Trailer
Here's the trailer (2:30) for the upcoming movie "Everybody Wants Some" – with four seconds of table tennis, starting 40 sec in. (Link should take you there.)

NEW Rotisserie-Style Chicken at SUBWAY
Here's the video (30 sec), which strangely starts out (first four seconds) with someone playing table tennis using a tablet as table tennis racket. Like the movie trailer in segment above, it too ends with a player throwing his "racket."

Table Tennis (or Spoon Pong?) on King of Queens
Here's the video (1:50)!

Crazy Table Tennis Spin Serve!
Here's the video (15 sec)!

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