January 17, 2012

One-year Anniversary

Yes, it was on January 17, 2011 that I did my first blog entry here. That's was mostly an intro to the site, with a few coaching news items. The January 18, 2011 entry was where things began to take off! ("The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Table Tennis Players," "The Backhand No-Spin Serve From the Forehand Court" (see the context), and a couple of other news items.) And then on January 19, 2011 we covered "Closing Out a Match" and "The Carrot and Celery Diet" - yes, that's when I started on my diet, going from 196 lbs to 174, which is my current weight.

And here we are, 248 blog postings later!

Drive-Smash Day

Yesterday was "Drive-Smash Day" during my coaching, with three sessions with three semi-beginning junior players. This is a drill where the player hits a regular drive, and then smashes, and then another drive, then a smash, and so on, alternating. The drive gets the rally back under control and helps the player work on his stroke, and then he gets to practice smashing. It also helps develop timing as they play at different speeds. It's done both forehand to forehand and backhand to backhand, and either crosscourt or down the line. (One variation I just thought of I haven't done is they drive down the line, then smash crosscourt, or perhaps the reverse. Have to try that one.) 

A variation for more advanced players is to do this looping - something I plan to introduce to some students next week, both with regular drills and multiball. In this case the player does a regular loop, and then loops one very hard, and continues alternating.

A key for this drill is not to press too hard on the forehand smash or hard loop - let the naturally body rotation provide the power. Many players try to muscle the ball, and end up with a sort of jerky or spastic shot as they try to power the ball mostly with the arm. One thing I like to demonstrate is that you should be able to smash or loop at near full power while carrying on a conversation. (I say "near" full power because you shouldn't think of using "full" power as that leads to trying to muscle the ball. You actually get full power by letting the body swing naturally into the ball on the forehand, but it may seem like less than full power.)

Another article on Vitali Klitschko

Yesterday we linked to an article on world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko and his table tennis. Here's another one, this time with a picture!

World-class table tennis in slo-mo

Here's a video of world-class play in slow motion (1:49).

Austin Preiss training in China

Here's a video of Austin Preiss training in China (2:34) at age 7 in 2002, ten years ago. He was only rated about 1100 at the time. He'd spent much of the next decade touring with his father, Scott, who does exhibition shows full-time for a living (see pingponglive.com).

Judah Friedlander

Here are five things you didn't know about him - see #3! I've coached him on and off over the years when he's been in Maryland, usually on holidays - he's actually from Maryland, though he lives in NYC where he stars in the TV comedy 30 Rock and does standup comedy. He has a USATT rating of 1515. Part of his standup routine is that he's the "World Champion" at everything, including table tennis. Here are some pictures of him playing table tennis: photo1 photo2 photo3 (with Spider-man) photo4 (Anna Kournikova on right) photo5 (L-R: Table Tennis Superstar Mikael Appelgren, Friedlander, Actress Susan Sarandon, Table Tennis Superstar Jan-Ove Waldner).

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