Talent and Table Tennis

There's a lot of online debate and many books (from The Sports Gene to Bounce) and articles out about talent versus environment. How much are top athletes born and how much is made? There's no question that most of it is made, but is there such a thing as talent? Well, yeah. And remember that this is a blog, not a scientific study, so much of what I'm writing is based mostly on my experiences as a table tennis coach. I've also discussed the topic several times with my uncle, who chaired the neurology department at Johns Hopkins for many years.

Some say there is no such thing as talent, and that's nonsense. No two brains are identical, even at birth. There are many studies that show, for example, that IQ is mostly genetic, and yes, intelligence helps in table tennis. (It's a bit more complicated than that - there are different types of intelligence - but I'm not going to get into that here.) The brain is a complex organ that's evolved many built-in areas of specialization (verbal areas, spatial skills, facial recognition areas, etc.), but just as there are variations in the rest of the body, there are variations in these areas of the brain because of the variations in the DNA. Some of these areas help in sports such as table tennis, meaning some players start out with at least an initial advantage.

MDTTC Camp and The Pongs of Power

There are lots of younger kids at the camp this week, which is Week Nine of our ten weeks of summer camps. It's the youngest group of the summer, maybe ever. We have about 30 kids, with about 20 of them under age 10. I'm in charge of the beginning under 10 crowd. In most past camps I pretty much worked with them on my own, but this time there are just too many - 12 of these under 10's are beginners - so coaches John Hsu and Chen Jie ("James") are helping me with them.

The focus yesterday was on the forehand. There were the usual problems - many want to put their index finger down the middle, don't turn their shoulders, lunge for the ball, try to take the ball too quickly, stand up too straight, and above all, won't close their rackets. (I probably said "Aim lower" five hundred times.) I'm always amazed that until about age 8 or 9, most beginning kids don't really understand that the ball is going to go where their racket is aiming. They understand it when I point it out to them, but it's something that doesn't really occur to many of them on their own.

We ended the day with the ten-cup challenge, where I set up a pyramid of 10 paper cups, and each kid had 10 shots (fed multiball) to see how many they could knock down. Several got 7 or 8, but four missed all 10. They now have something to work for. By the end of the week they'll be the terror of paper cups everywhere.

I called this week's beginning under 10 group "The Pongs of Power." What does that mean? I don't know, and neither did the kids, though they debated it. But it has a ring to it, and would be a great name for a music band.

Tip of the Week

Service Contact Point.

When and Where to Learn to Loop

One of the toughest decisions for a coach is when to start a player on looping. There is the "Chinese" theory, which is that you focus on the fundamentals - forehand and backhand drives - for a long period, while teaching the loop only against backspin. When the drives are well developed, then the player just extends his backswing and changes his contact and the shot becomes a loop, and soon the player is looping everything. Then there is the "European" method, where players often learn to loop almost from the start. This allows even smaller kids to loop the ball as they let the ball drop down to their level and spin it on the table. (Of course they have to first learn to hit the ball, so even here they first learn basic forehand and backhand drives.) I put the two methods in quotes because this isn't an exact thing; some Chinese coaches teach the "European" method, and vice versa.

I generally go with Chinese theory, but teaching the loop a bit sooner than most Chinese coaches. However, some kids seem to take to looping very easily, and for them, we go to looping much sooner. More and more Chinese coaches are also introducing looping earlier. Those who learn looping early tend to have more natural loops. Those who go the "Chinese" method tend to have more powerful loops. However, these are just tendencies.

MDTTC Camp and Training Centers

Yesterday's focus was on the backhand attack, especially the backhand loop. I had 12-year-old Derek Nie demo his backhand loop - if a 4'7" 65 lb kid can do this shot at such a high level, perhaps that'll encourage others that they can too. When I was coming up, players had to ask themselves whether it was worth developing a backhand loop since many believed "one gun is as good as two," i.e. you should focus on the forehand and footwork. So the question used to be "To backhand loop or not to backhand loop?" But the game has changed, and now the question is "To backhand loop and be a top player or not backhand loop and not be a top player?"

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday's focus was forehand looping. It's always my favorite day as this is when players really begin the route to becoming top players. As I explain in my lecture, starting at the intermediate level looping dominates the game, and everyone's game is based either on looping or stopping the other guy's loop.

I had a player who was having trouble positioning his feet when he stepped around his backhand to play his forehand. I showed him how to solve this problem with what I call the "Hop" method of foot positioning. I demonstrated by first showing him how I positioned my feet when playing a forehand crosscourt from the forehand side. He had no trouble doing this on his side. Then, while standing in the forehand ready position on the forehand side, I pointed my non-playing hand crosscourt. (We're both righties.) Then, while holding my body, arms, and legs as rigid as possible, I literally hopped over to the backhand side and rotated my body until my non-playing hand was pointing crosscourt toward his backhand side. This put me in exactly the same positioning for hitting a forehand from the backhand side crosscourt as hitting a forehand from the forehand side crosscourt. But the hopping part looks pretty comical!

Rules Changes I Was Involved In
Yesterday I blogged about rules changes since I started playing in 1976. I also wrote how I was involved or responsible for three, and promised to write about them today. I'll go in reverse order.

1) Paddle Point Rule. Back in 1991 I shared a ride from Maryland to the U.S. Open in Midland, Michigan with Dave Sakai. Along the way we picked up then-USATT president Dan Seemiller in Pittsburgh. During the long drive we discussed the paddle point rule, which a lot of people thought was silly, including all three of us. The rule then was that if an opponent hit the ball off the end but it hit your racket while still in play (i.e. not hitting the floor or something else to end the point), you'd lose the point. The reason for the rule was back in the hardbat era there were many players who blocked so quick off the bounce it was difficult to tell if the ball hit the table first - but in the sponge era, this doesn't happen much.

But many matches were being decided by the paddle point rule, including the Men's Final at a recent Olympic Sports Festival (then a major USATT tournament), where Sean O'Neill was up I believe 20-19 in the fifth match point (games to 21 back then), and smacked a ball off the end for an apparent deuce, but the ball hit Jim Butler's racket, and so Sean won. So right there in the car I got out my steno notebook and wrote a draft of a rule change to rescind the paddle point rule. I gave it to Dan, who gave it to the chair of the Official's Committee (not sure who - Wendell Dillon?), who finalized the language and submitted it to the ITTF, where it was passed.

MDTTC Camps

Another day, another camp. We've been running these five-day camps at MDTTC since 1992. My best estimate is that we've run over 170 of them, and I've been at nearly all of them. That's over 800 days of camp, almost 2.5 years. I've given each of my lectures 170 times, led in stretching (twice a day, except I missed the afternoon session sometimes so I took off 100) about 1500 times, and (I just did some quick calculations) fed about seven million balls in multiball. Yesterday's focus (as it was about 170 previous times on day two) was the backhand. This is in addition to at least 30 other camps (most about five days long) that I'd coached at before we opened MDTTC.

I noticed an interesting dynamic among some of our developing juniors. Compared to other juniors from other programs, I think our juniors tend to have better backhands (especially looping), but less power on the forehand. Our juniors tend to develop more forehand power later in their junior careers. Right now we have several of them who are in slumps as they are trying to loop with more forehand power, which (initially) leads to inconsistency, as well as problems with other aspects of their games. (More focus on the forehand means less focus on other parts of their games, plus if the first loop comes back, they aren't used to the different timing since it often comes back quicker.) The good news is they've chosen good times for this - during the summer, the best time to work on your game since there aren't many tournaments, and they are off school and so can really work on these things. Hopefully by the fall the juniors in question here will have mastered the extra power. (Much of it comes from extra hip rotation.)

Rule Changes

Tip of the Week

Blocking Tips.

Back Stiffness

My back is now so stiff I've been offered money to use it to carve stuff on diamonds. There's a rumor it's made of collapsed matter.

I spent most of July feeding multiball and hitting with beginners, then spent nine days at a writers workshop (mostly sitting down), and then another week at another camp mostly feeding multiball or hitting with beginners. When I finally had several sessions with more advanced players this weekend (John, Kevin, Sameer) I could barely move. At some point in the last month or so the wide forehand has moved another three feet away. The backhand corner is now somewhere way off in the distance to the left. And looping with power is like trying to lasso someone with a hundred-pound dumbbell.

If I weren't so busy with MDTTC camps, private & group coaching, a new tenant just moving into my townhouse (I live on third floor, rent out first two floors), battles with previous tenant (who left without paying rent, cleaning the place, and left numerous damages), plus an incredible amount of time now devoted to my novelist career (my first one's coming out Nov. 15 - see my July 30 blog), this blog and Tip of the Week, a pair of upcoming ITTF coaching seminars, promoting Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers (as I just did!), and a few jillion other things, I'd focus on getting back in shape and back to my normal 2200 level - not easy at age 53.

This morning we start another camp, Week Eight of our ten weeks of camps. We have stronger (i.e. younger) coaches who act as high-level practice partners, so most of my coaching time will likely be giving the usual group lectures, demos, and feeding multiball.

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday's focus was the backhand loop. Most of the players in the camp were ready for this, including two of the five beginners I was mostly working with. The harder part for most was doing a backhand loop against backspin and then and a backhand drive against topspin consecutively, fed multiball style. Inevitably, when they first try this, they'd either shorten the backswing on the backhand loop (and go into net), or swing up on the drive (and go off the end). Some of the more advanced players backhand looped against both backspin and topspin, but being more advanced, they had little trouble making the adjustment.

I gave a private lesson to a player roughly in his late 40s (not sure), where I introduced him to forehand looping. This was where the power of the subconscious became a problem. He quickly developed a pretty good forehand loop technique, except his racket was always too closed. And so when I fed him backspin with multiball, over and over he went into the net. Even when I told him to spin the ball way, way off the end, his subconscious took over as soon as he began his stroke, and the balls kept going into the net. This happens all the time when the loop is first introduced to older players. The key is you have to really, Really, REALLY convince yourself to aim to loop way off the end, so that your subconscious gets the message, and so it aims there - with the result that the ball probably hits the table. After doing that a few times, the subconscious has the feedback to aim better, and then it can loop off the end. Then you tell it to aim for the table, and kazzam, you can aim for the table and the ball hits the table.  

It was a long day at the club. Due to the camp, private coaching, meetings, and other TT issues, I was at the club continuously (except for a lunchtime walk over to 7-11 with a bunch of the kids) from 8:30 AM to 9PM.

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday's focus was on forehand looping. We didn't have most of the beginners do this, though a couple of them badly wanted to and so I taught them the shot. Normally you give players at least a few weeks at least of regular forehand and backhand drives before introducing them to looping. The six-year-old I blogged about yesterday who had a pretty good backhand loop (at least in multiball) had an even better forehand loop! Very smooth and rather consistent. However, he's not ready to do this effectively in a game yet - he still loses head-to-head to other beginners who don't have his techniques, but are a couple years older and are more consistent.

One of the important points that came up several times yesterday is the importance of rotating mostly in a circle when forehand looping. Imagine a rod going through your head; you should rotate around it. The left side (for righties) should pull back and around as much as the right side goes forward. This doesn't mean you never move your head and upper body (i.e. follow through sideways), but that's usually done to create power when rushed, especially when stepping around the backhand corner. By rotating mostly in a circle you stay balanced and immediately ready for the next shot - which is how top players can pull off a series of powerful loops in quick succession, while intermediate players often struggle to do two in a row.

The younger kids in this week's camp absolutely have gone bonkers over Froggy. All they want to do is put it on the table so they can try hitting it while I feed multiball. I'm starting half the sessions by saying various versions of, "If you work hard for the first hour, I'll bring out Froggy and you can take turns hurting the poor amphibian." It's good target practice, as long as they use good form when hitting.