April 30, 2012

Tip of the Week

Chalk Up Wins with Chop Blocks.

Coaching breakthroughs

A number of my students had "minor" breakthroughs this weekend, especially some of the younger kids, and it all added up to a rather successful weekend of coaching. (Twelve hours total.) I titled this "coaching breakthroughs," but perhaps that should be "playing breakthroughs"? After all, it's the players who are having breakthroughs!

  • One six-year-old who literally couldn't put the ball on the table last week - he had this nasty habit of opening his paddle at the last second and smacking the ball up - mostly fixed that problem, and was able to hit about 20 in a row. In a game at the end of the session he knocked down nearly an entire pyramid of paper cups with one shot, something he hadn't come close to doing before.
  • Another solved her problem on the backhand and hit 65 in a row. She's the type that never seems to smile while playing - but she was all grins after that.
  • One kid learned to loop for the first time. Another discovered the joys of counterlooping, and we counterlooped for half an hour. (More! More! More!).
  • One kid finally mastered "Doing the Journey." He's now hard at work on doing the "Return Serve," where you serve high with backspin so the ball bounces directly back over the net. (And his regular serves are getting spinny as well!)
  • Among older students, one really began to master spin serves - and after the session, we spent ten minutes doing the 50-foot serve, where we serve from 50 feet to the side of the table and try to curve the ball so it lands on the table with a legal serve. (It's fun and good practice in creating spin.)
  • Another advanced player continued his backhand development, and is beginning to win matches because of it. (Many players have good backhand drives but weak backhand loops; he has a good backhand loop but his backhand counter-hitting for his 1900 level was weak and is the primary thing holding him back from 2000 and beyond.)
  • And another experimented with various grips due to a hand injury - but he'll get over that. (Actually, it only affected his forehand loop, so he got lots of backhand practice.

USATT Coaching Newsletter

The new USATT Coaching Newsletter is out! It's mostly about new ITTF coaching seminars. I'm planning to run one around late August or September, but haven't scheduled it yet.

Ping Pong Fever

The book Ping Pong Fever: The Madness that Swept 1902 America is featured in the new issue of The Table Tennis Collector. (I just read most of the book and went over the huge number of pictures, and plan to write a review soon.)

MDTTC May Open

If you are in the area (or want to do some traveling!) come join us for the $2600 MDTTC May Open at the Maryland Table Tennis Center this weekend, May 5-6. The prize money has more than doubled from past tournaments. Here's the new prize money and events:

Open:   1st $1000 2nd $400 3-4: $200
U2300: 1st $200 2nd $100
U2150: 1st $150 2nd $75
U2000: 1st $100 2nd $50
U1850: 1st $80 2nd $40
U1600: 1st Trophy 2nd Trophy
U1350: 1st Trophy 2nd Trophy
U1100: 1st Trophy 2nd Trophy

High-tech ping-pong table

The surface and net of this computerized ping-pong table is a touch screen, and the computer can display the exact position where the ball bounced. It displays the score and statistics. Soon it'll probably play the game for us as well!

Amazing Table Tennis

Here's a video of the most amazing table tennis shots of 2011 (8:49). (I don't think I linked to this before, but if I did, it's worth watching again.)

Pearls Before Swine

They did a table tennis cartoon on Saturday, April 28.

Crazy Japanese table tennis

Here's 9:41 of crazy Japanese table tennis as they aim at targets (including human faces behind a glass window), play on improvised tables, with rackets with big holes in them, and other weird stuff. (Thanks Julian Waters for sending this one to me. Now I'm going to have nightmares.)

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