Weekend Coaching

I had a long weekend of coaching. Here's a rundown.

FRIDAY: I had "only" three students that day. First up was Orioles pitcher Darren O'Day. I've blogged about coaching him; normally he comes in on Wednesday afternoons, but he asked for an extra session and came in on Friday afternoon as well. One irritating thing: In the 21 years since we opened the Maryland Table Tennis Center I'd only been late for a session twice. Yes, you read that right; I always come in early to make sure I'm not late. Well, on Friday I had my times with Darren mixed up and so ended up coming in 15 minutes late, making it the third time I've been late in those 21 years, or once every seven years. (I'm sort of like a cicada.) The other two I was late for were both in the last three years - I wasn't late for a single session the first 18 years! (The other two - once with a joint session with John Olsen & Kevin Walton when I also had my times mixed up, and once with Sameer when there was an accident that kept me in traffic for an hour for the ten-minute drive to the club. Coincidentally I coached all three of the people or pairs that I had been late for this weekend.)

After Darren came Tim (30 min, a new student) and Sameer (90 min). With Tim we're working hard on the foundation of his game, especially on the forehand side. With Sameer we're mostly getting him ready for the North American Teams in ten days. (Key factor - he's still adjusting to a lower, wider stance, and often forgets that and stands up too straight.)

Then I spent some time watching Nathan Hsu and Derek Nie practice and play points as prep to coaching them at the Nationals. (I'm also coaching Derek at the Teams.)

Tip of the Week

Three Reasons Players Miss Against Deep Sidespin and Topspin Serves.

Seamless Plastic Ball

I recently ordered three of the new Palio seamless plastic poly balls that the ITTF has ordained shall replace celluloid balls in July of 2014. I ordered them from Eacheng.net, and they came in on Friday. I brought them to the club and about ten different players tried them out, mostly top players.

The consensus was pretty much the same as others have said. Hopefully the ITTF will work to fix these problems, even if it means delaying the change. Here's what we found out.

What to Focus on in Training

At the MyTableTennis.net forum someone asked about how one should practice if they have limited time. Below is an expanded version of my answer.

Every case is different, but the short, simple answer I usually give is this: Practice everything you might do in a game, but focus on your strengths and weaknesses. Make the strengths overpowering and get rid of the weaknesses.
 
If you have limited time, then focus intensely on one aspect until it's greatly improved (Saturation Training), then focus on the other until it is greatly improved. You'll improve faster this way then if you do just a little of each in limited time. If you practice everything for just a few minutes each, you'll keep those shots tuned up, but won't really improve them very much. Instead, spend lots of time on something until you can do it in your sleep, and then you can focus on something else.

You should probably start by improving the weakness if you only have time for one. But with limited time, it's going to be a long process. Once the weakness is up to par, focus on making the strengths overpowering. You can't dominate if you don't have something to dominate with.

Darren O'Day and Other Coaching

Yesterday I had my second coaching session (90 min) with Orioles pitcher Darren O'Day. He's really picking things up fast! As noted in my Nov. 4 blog on coaching him, he tends to hold his racket tip up on strokes, which he copied from Orioles shortstop JJ Hardy, the best Orioles player. However, in today's session, we really straightened that out, and he had great fun as we went forehand to forehand pretty fast. (The two keys there were dropping the racket tip, and thinking of yourself as just a spectator so the subconscious can take control on the strokes.) We also worked on his backhand, pushing, serves, and footwork. But I also introduced him to looping against backspin via multiball. He had sort of a soft roll he used against backspin. It wasn't bad as he was at least spinning the ball, but there was little power - it was just a roll. We worked on this for a while, but he tended to stay too close to the ball (and a few other problems), and so swung mostly with his arm. I finally began feeding the ball farther away, forcing him to stretch out more - and lo and behold, suddenly he was looping with great power, both spin and speed! We did this for a while, and he can't wait to start using this in games - though I warned him it'll take some practice to incorporate into match situations consistently. He's taking another session this Friday afternoon, and then we'll settle into weekly sessions on Wednesday afternoons.

Potomac Open Serves

There were a number of serving "incidents" at the Potomac Open this past weekend. Here's a summary.

In one match a player accused another of hiding his serve. He called for an umpire. The problem was the umpire didn't feel there was enough room between the tables for him to sit without getting in the way of the players on the adjacent table. So he suggested they move to another open table that was on the side of a row of tables, where he could sit without getting in anyone's way. The player who was accused of hiding his serve didn't like that, saying that the lighting for that table wasn't as good. The umpire and two players argued for a time. They were playing on table #2; the players on table #1 interjected and said why not switch tables with us, so the umpire could sit on the far side away from table #2 and so not interfere with anyone. So they switched tables, and all was well. (Ironically, the server accused of hiding his serve was faulted, not for hiding the serve, but for dropping his hand below the table when he served. The other player was also warned for some serving infraction.)

Another player, rated about 1950, had developed a short, high backspin serve that bounced back into the net, sometimes back over the net. A lot of top players fool around with serves like that, but they don't really work against top players, who can reach over the table for the ball, and often smack a winner off it since the serve is high. But this player had two matches where he used the serve effectively over and over. The first was against Charlene Liu, the U.S. Over 50 Women's Champion, rated about 2000 but not much more than five feet tall. She couldn't reach many of the serves, and they had a long battle. Charlene finally pulled the match out, mostly because she was able to barely reach some of the serves.

Tip of the Week

Pushing Short.

Potomac Open

Here are the basic Potomac Open results, held here in Maryland this past weekend. Winning the tournament (for the third straight time) was chopper/looper Wang Qing Liang, rated 2545 (but who spent most of last year over 2600), over Chen Bowen, rated 2509. Chen had upset Wang the last two times they had played, and looked to win for the third straight time here - he led 8-2 in the seventh! Then something happened. Chen had a match point at 10-9, but to no avail as Wang came back with a 10-2 run to win 12-10 in the seventh.

In the semifinals Wang defeated another local player/coach, Steve Dong, under-rated at 2370. Dong won the first two games, but then Wang's forehand caught fire and he played about half chopping, half ripping everything (seemingly never missing) the rest of the way in winning the next four.

Local player/coach Zhang Jake (only one letter away from the World Champion!) also made the semifinals of the Open (losing in seven games to Chen Bowen). He's about 2450, maybe 2500. But he also won Under 2300, and was in the final of Under 2150. (He's listed as second in Under 2150, but I'm guessing he defaulted or split the final - too tired from all his other matches.) What was his rating coming into the tournament? 2088!!!

How did this happen? He'd played in the recent JOOLA Virginia Open, his first tournament, and went 7-0. Here are his results at the tournament. Though he did lose an 11-9 game to a 1947 player (after winning the first two games), there simply isn't enough info in these results to give an accurate rating, hence the 2088 rating, which was about 400 points off.

Veteran's Day

It's Veteran's Day, and like many of you I'm taking the day off. Sort of. Actually, I'm coaching this morning for two hours, 10AM-Noon, and then one of my students, John Olsen, is coming in to install a new computer I'm buying from him (in return for coaching/multiball sessions). Meanwhile, in honor of Veteran's Day, here's a picture captioned, "A soldier blew a table tennis ball over glasses of water as he participated in a game at a police station in Zhejiang province." It's a Chinese soldier, but this is a table tennis blog, and guess who dominates in table tennis? (The Tip of the Week will also go up tomorrow.)

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Playing at a Club with Great Conditions

One of the problems with playing at a very nice club with very nice conditions is you get used to it. So when you go to tournaments, where the conditions often aren't so nice, you have problems. For example, at my club we have this nice rubberized red flooring, which is great for moving on, as well as having enough give so that it doesn't hurt your legs from the constant movement. But many of us will be playing at the Teams in three weeks, where we'll spend three days playing on somewhat slippery and unforgiving concrete. How do we prepare?

Recently I've been doing "shoe checks." I've been checking the bottoms of everyone's playing shoes to make sure they are in good condition. On our red floors you can wear your shoes down and it doesn't affect the grip on the floor. But on concrete floors (and most wood floors) the floor is more slippery, and you need grippy shoes. So I've been urging those with worn-out shoes to get new ones. Otherwise they'll be sliding all over the place at the Teams.

There are other ways of adapting. You've probably seen players on slippery floors step on a damp cloth between points to increase traction. There are also non-stick sprays you can put on your shoes - in table tennis, I think only Butterfly sells these. (I just ordered a bottle to try out, though I'm not playing in the Teams, just coaching.)

Of course, if you are not from my club, I urge you to show up with nicely worn-out shoes. I mean, c'mon, don't you want shoes you are used to? You'll have three days to learn how to slide into position.

Health Checklist, Sheeba and Me

Today I can say we're both a mess. Here's our checklist.

ME: I just came down with a cold (again!!!), though it's a minor one. (I'm living on Nyquil.) Both of my knees are bothering me, so I'm wearing knee braces when I play. And remember how I hurt my arm a month ago and had to take a week off? Yesterday it was hurting again whenever I played backhands with students. I iced it last night, and today I'm going to have to go easy on it. My weight, which regularly fluctuates between 180 and 190, is at the high end right now, so I'm going to have to diet. However, to any students reading this: I'm ready to take you on!!!

SHEEBA (my dog, who's 3/4 corgi, 1/4 some sort of hound): She'll be 16 in February, which is about 76 in human years. I've had her since she was four, when I got her at the local dog shelter. She has arthritis in her back legs, and so has great difficulty walking up and especially down stairs, and no longer can go for walks. She's completely deaf - I can clap my hands together right behind her head as loudly as I can and she won't even react. She's also nearly blind, and regularly walks into doors and walls. She normally weighs around 23 pounds, but she's been losing weight rapidly this year, and is down to about 17 - she just won't eat much anymore. Here she is a few years ago.

Do Something Different

These days it seems like everyone's trying to be like everyone else. That's a pretty successful way of getting good, if you copy the top players. But many are missing the benefits of doing something different. Give your opponent a different look, at least on some shots, and guess what? He might begin to struggle. This doesn't mean changing your whole game to some unorthodox mess; it means developing certain "pet shots" that are different than the norm. They give you more variation on certain shots than if you only have "orthodox" shots. Some, of course, naturally do something different, by having a non-inverted surface, a different grip (Seemiller grip, or even penhold grip for some), an unorthodox stroke (not usually good unless it's just as a variation), or even something as simple as being left-handed. But for most players, you'll want to do something "different" while sticking to your normal righty shakehands inverted on both sides game. And there are lots of ways. Below are ten examples - and I do all of these on occasion, though less now than when I was an active tournament player and honed these variations by actually using them regularly. Pick out one or two, and give them a try! (An expanded version of this might become a Tip of the Week.)