January 31, 2012

Different strokes for different folks

It's interesting to watch the natural tendencies of players come out in their play. Yesterday I coached three kids, all beginning-intermediate players.

The first one, age ten, literally takes every ball off the bounce. It is easier for an elephant to fit through the eye of a needle than to get him to hit the ball at the top of the bounce. In a previous era not dominated by looping he'd be a hitter/blocker. These days? I'm not so sure. Right now he hits everything off the bounce; later on, perhaps he'll loop everything off the bounce. He plays at home with a table that has about four feet going back, so that says something about how and why he's developing this way.

Another kid, also about ten, doesn't seem to get the concept of a flat hit, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in this topspin-dominated age. His version of a forehand-to-forehand warm-up is no different than when he loops, and he doesn't seem to realize this - he uses the same looping stroke for drives and loops, and seems to think he's doing something different, though I haven't found a difference yet. So we've abandoned any pretense of hitting and he just loops everything. Not bad considering he's played about two months.

A third kid, age seven, has the weird habit of hitting until the ball is high. Then he'll wait for it to drop, and loop it! He has loop written all over him, and will probably be looping everything soon. The interesting thing here is that at age seven, he already knows all the best players in the world, and likes to mimic them. Yesterday he was showing off his "Ma Lin backhands," mimicking both Ma's conventional and reverse penhold backhands, though he's a shakehander. He also tried to mimic Timo Boll's loop - needs work.

What are your natural tendencies, and how have you incorporated them into a winning table tennis style?

Busy day

Yesterday was one of the busiest days I've had in a while. I was on the go non-stop the entire time. A quick rundown, in rough order from my todo list - and don't even try to calculate how I fit all this into the roughly sixteen hours I was up.

  • Wrote the Tip of the Week, on "Quick and Variable Blocks," and put online at TableTennisCoaching.com and PaddlePalace.com.
  • Wrote my daily blog.
  • Put new sponge on my forehand.
  • Paid all my bills for the month of January and worked out my finances for the month, including my monthly coaching payment to MDTTC. (I pay them $10/hour for court time.)
  • Updated four web pages.
  • Worked out hotel arrangements for MDTTC camps and tournaments.
  • Watched and took notes for on three matches for upcoming U.S. Olympic Trials
  • Went to bank.
  • Took car to repair shop for various problems, costing about $400.
  • While waiting three hours for car repairs, went to Jerry's Pizza and read and did short critiques on 39 short stories (all under 750 words long, about 27,000 words or 140 pages total) as part of a SF contest. Consumed two small pepperoni pizzas.
  • Coached three hours.
  • Did 40 minute weight training and stretching routine.
  • Did an hour's work on the final rewrite of "Table Tennis Tactics: A Thinker's Guide."
  • Made popcorn and watched The Daily Show and Colbert Report.

Han Xiao hoping to grab a U.S. place at the ping-pong table

Here's an article in the Washington Times this morning on Han Xiao. I'm quoted in the story. The other player with the really good backhand? Fan Yiyong. I'll be coaching Han and John Hsu at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Cary, NC.

United States National Table Tennis League

Here's an article on the new USNTTL! Attila Malek (full-time coach at Power Pong Table Tennis Club in Huntington Beach, CA, and 1979 U.S. Men's Singles Champion) is the prime mover of this league, though there's apparently a group putting it together and financing it.

Royal Navy Table Tennis Book

Here's the Royal Navy Table Tennis Book!

Tribute to Chinese Dominance

Here's a video that pays tribute to China and their dominance of table tennis (5:24).

Bruce Lee Table Tennis Commercial

You've probably seen this video before - but now it's part of a Japanese Nokia camera commercial. There's no hint that it's a commercial until the last ten seconds of this 73-second video. And for our naïve viewers - it's not real. They just took footage of Bruce Lee (or is that an actor portraying him?) and used real table tennis players and computer animation to make it look like he's playing with nunchucks. Or am I the naïve one?

***

Send us your own coaching news!