September 21, 2011

Receive

The last couple of blogs I've had a lot on serving. Now let's talk about receive. Below are links to ten articles I've written on receive. Receive is the hardest part of the game to learn, and the most under-practiced. When players drill, they work on their strokes, their footwork, and they even practice serves. But how often do they systematically practice receive? To do so, you need to find practice partners who is willing to let you practice against their serves, and many players are protective of this - they don't want to give potential rivals a chance to get used to their serves. Sometimes the best way to practice serves is to find a stronger player (one who doesn't consider you a potential threat) and ask to practice against their serves. Or hire them as a coach. As to the receiving itself, enjoy browsing or reading the below. Any questions? C'mon, I love questions!!!

• Reading Service Spin
• How To Return Different Serves
• When Receiving, Emphasize Placement & Consistency
• Returning Short Serves
• Looping Spin Serves
• Stopping the Third-Ball Loop Versus Push Attack
• Never Give a Server What He's Looking For
• What To Do With Problem Serves
• Why You MUST Attack the Deep Serve
• What is the goal of the receiver?

Getting back to my old level

Now that my back problems are over, I'm toying with how serious I should take my own playing. If I want to get back to my old level, I'm going to have to:

• Do lots of stretching or I will get injured. There's no "if" here.
• Lift weights to regain full muscle strength.
• Practice a lot.
• Play lots of tournaments to become tournament tough again.
• Give up most other activities. :)

*Sigh*. It seems like a lot of time and work. There's a reason most coaches stop competing. (And the huge majority of my match play these days is as a practice partner for local juniors.) Maybe I'll just continue to focus on coaching, and let others do the above. (Like I've been doing for years.) On the other hand, I can rely on 35 years of playing experience to win matches. There's some pride to winning a match when the opponent has you completely outgunned, and they come off the table wondering, "How the heck did I lose that?"

Counterlooping

Coach Tao Li teaches the forehand counterloop (8:35). If you like this, here are seven coaching videos by Coach Tao

• How to play long pips (10:38)
• How to return short no-spin serves (13:41)
• How to loop a dead ball (4:56)
• How to improve reaction time (3:51)
• Hitting your second topspin (3:21)
• How to control your counter-attacks (5:06)
• Forehand counterloop (8:35)

Joo Se-Hyuk

Here's a profile of South Korea's Joo Se-Hyuk, the best chopper in the world (really a chopper/looper, since he's often all-out looping on the forehand), and a men's singles finalist at the 2003 Worlds.

National Physical Disabled Table Tennis Association

Straight from Nepal!

USATT logo

Do you prefer new, the old, or the older one? 

New USATT logo	Old USATT logo	Older USATT logo

Exciting but catty table tennis action

Can the catchy new USATT logo (see above) be the catalyst for catapulting our catatonically-growing sport to catching on with new categories of fans as we no longer cater to the catastrophically few who currently play our catlike sport? Or am I just being catty? See what these fans and players think.

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