February 8, 2012 | TableTennisCoaching.com

NO BLOG ON THURSDAY & FRIDAY

I'm off this morning to coach at the U.S. Olympic Trials (Cary, NC, Feb. 9-12), so no blog entries the next two days. See you all again on Monday - hopefully with lots of news from the Trials!

U.S. Olympic Trials Live Streaming and Schedule

Yes, you can watch the U.S. Olympic Trials live! They are care of NBC Universal Sports Live Feeds. (Trials are Feb. 9-12, Thur-Sun, in Cary, NC.)

Here is the basic format of the Trials. For both men and women, the top ten seeded players are seeded to the Top Twelve. The rest play a qualifier on Thursday, Feb. 9, for the final two spots. On the men's side, 32 players (13 of them rated over 2400, led by Jeff Huang and Dan Seemiller at 2504 and 2494) will play single elimination to the final two, who will advance to the Top Twelve. On the women's side, there are only three in the qualifier, so they will play a rather short round robin to see which two advance to the Top Twelve. (See player listing below to see who the players are in the Qualifiers.)

The players in the Top Twelve then play a complete round robin, eleven matches each, four on Friday, four on Saturday, and three on Sunday. All matches are best 4 out of 7.

Schedule

Note that the tentative playing times are listed in the Prospectus above.

Thursday, February 9, Qualifying Tournament, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Friday, February 10, Final Round Robins, 10 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Saturday, February 11, 10 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Sunday, February 12, 10 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.

Live Streaming

The non-playing arm

While coaching yesterday I found myself having trouble moving to my left to block against a student's loop. Something felt wrong. I grabbed my towel, and stalled while trying to figure it out. Then it hit me - I'd been coaching for three hours, and I'd gotten lazy with my left (non-playing) arm. Instead of holding it out for balance, it was hanging loosely by my side. Without it to counterbalance my playing arm, and to actually initiate rotations to the left by pulling, my movements were sluggish. I raised the arm, and the problem was gone. I felt like greased lightning again. (Okay, tired greased lightning.)

The irony is that I'm always harping on my students to use their non-playing arm for balance. Many players, especially beginners, simply do not use it, letting it hang down like a limp rag. You not only need it for balance, but in any rotation to the left (moving to play a backhand, any forehand stroke) you should pull with that side.

Special note to coaches: It's very easy for a coach to get lazy or tired from hours of coaching, and to let the non-playing arm hang loosely. Most coaches are strong enough players that it won't greatly affect their play. However, this puts great pressure on your upper back to rotate the upper body without any help from the non-playing arm, which should be both balancing as well as initiating many movements. If you do this, you'll probably end up with back problems. I know now that this is one of the reasons I had so many back problems last year.

Why red and black?

For those not historically-endowed, the two-color rule was passed in 1983 so that players could tell which side an opponent with two surfaces used to hit the ball. Originally the rule was that the surface colors must be "clearly different." Players and manufacturers immediately began the search for "clearly different" colors that look the same in action - and they found it in black and maroon. When examined, they are clearly different, but when the racket is moving and ten or so feet away, they are hard to tell apart. Confusion reigned.

So the ITTF ruled that the two surfaces must be black and cherry red. The latter was later changed to bright red.

An interesting side issue is that for many years the die used for the black side dye slowed the surface down. Because of this, most players put black on their backhands, red on the forehands. (There was a study on this once, and found that 70% of tournament players had red on the forehand. I was one of the rebels - I've had black on my forehand since 1983! I like a springy backhand.) This isn't a problem anymore, but perhaps because players tend to copy other players, I think players still tend to have the red on the forehand. At the U.S. Olympic Trials (I leave for them tomorrow) I'll try to remember to do a count among the players on this.

U.S. Champ Timothy Wang hopes to bring table tennis out of the basement

Here's an interview with Timothy Wang . . . in Sports Illustrated! See, we've made it out of the basement.

USATT Videos Archive

Here's USATT's video archive, with 60 videos, including most of the major matches from the 2011 USA Nationals.

Pongcast TV Episode 9

Here's Pongcast TV Episode 9 (25:37), which covers the 2012 Slovenian Open.

Jan-Ove Waldner vs. Ma Long?

I think Waldner wins this one on a landslide. Ma Long's a great player, but to become an all-time great, you have to actually win the big events. Give him time, and perhaps we'll have this discussion in five years.

Baby doing multiball is Internet hit

On Feb. 3, I blogged about and linked to the video of Jamie Myska-Buddell, 18 months old, doing multiball training. The video is now an Internet sensation, attracting over 800,000 hits. Here's the article.

Highlights Video

Here's another highlights video (6:44). I sometimes think there's a sweatshop somewhere in China or Africa that churns these things out.

One-year-old "Joy Se Hyuk" demonstrates her long-pips chopping skills

Someday she will beat you (1:51).

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