Our (okay, My) Long National Nightmare is Over

I jumped the gun yesterday in trying to coach all day at the MDTTC camp. When I went in I was still tired, and my voice still slightly hoarse. When I came out I was tired ^100^th power, and my voice was back to a croaking whisper. Note to self: After spending four days lying in bed feverishly sick, it's not good to go straight to six hours of coaching. (As noted previously, I had a suspiciously simple-sounding sinus infection, but that came off as bad or worse than the flu.) 

I've been on the following medications. They are:

• Antibiotics: Amoxicillan and Clavulanate Potassium Tablets
• Guaifenesin AC Syrup (for cough)
• Eye drops: Gentamicin Opth Solution
• NightQuil. I was taking DayQuil as well but the doctor said it wouldn't really help, but thought the NightQuil would.
• Lots and lots of liquids, on doctor's orders.

Today I'm only doing the afternoon session, 3-6PM. This works out well as it gave me plenty of time to do the blog and other things. (Next on list of things I've put off that need to get done: MDTTC July Newsletter. Also a few zillion unread emails.) Overall, the kids in my group are more advanced than normal – all of them are able to play points, and so we were able to play a lot of Brazilian Teams yesterday. (Many kids simply aren't ready for that, and so we do more target practice games.) Only one is actually new; I've worked with the rest before.

I think the kids were happy to see me back. Actually, I think poor Coach Jeffrey was even happier to see me back, since he'd been the one assigned to take my place with the younger kids. Working with a pack of kids might be fulfilling, but mentally it's a million times harder than working with a 2500 player. Here's a comparison.

Working with a 2500 player:

Blog Returns Tomorrow, and Ding Dong, the Bacteria is Dead!

I'm back!!! Well, sort of. I was pretty sick for four days, but I'm perhaps 90% over it. I'm going to the MDTTC camp to coach this morning - hopefully my energy will be back. I spent yesterday in bed (which is where I've pretty much lived since Friday), and didn't want to get up early this morning, so no blog today. Blog will return to normal tomorrow morning. Alas, I leave for the U.S. Open this Sunday, and I won't be blogging while there, so that means only two blogs until after the Open. 

As hinted at by the head bacterium in yesterday's "blog," I had a serious infection of the sinuses behind and below the eyes. Gunk was pouring out of the corners of my eyes - yeah, sounds disgusting, so guess how much more disgusting if it's coming out of your eyes? There are still big, black bags under my eyes; I really do look like Frankenstein. Hopefully I won't scare any kids this morning. The side effects of the infection were similar to a very bad cold - fever, chills, constant coughing (and coughing up an incredible amount of disgusting green stuff); aching teeth; aching muscles; headaches; laryngitis and a very sore throat; and complete exhaustion, as if I'd been hit by a tsunami. 

Dear Human Readers,

We are the bacteria infecting Larry Hodges’ body. Last Thursday we invaded, using “Pong Blitzkrieg,” where we destroy all enemy forces before us with our tiny paddles and balls. By Friday we had taken over much of his body. He was beaten – fever, chills, coughing up incredible amounts of green stuff (that’s our glorious dead), runny nose (more of our dead), aching muscles and teeth, sore throat, and laryngitis. In fact, there were so many of us that we overran our positions and began to overflow out his eyes – what he called “gunk” was just more of our dead. (Admittedly, a lot of us get killed taking over a body, with all those marauding white blood cells with their super spinny Tenergy sponges that overpowers our hardbats, but we reproduce faster than we get killed and overwhelm the sponge enemy by sheer numbers.)

Our glorious campaign was going so well. And then Larry saw a doctor Monday morning. A DOCTOR!!! How do these quacks look themselves in the mirror, knowing the misery and death they spread among our kind? This mass killer quickly saw that our stronghold was in the sinuses behind and below Larry’s eyes, which we had been trying to keep secret. He gave Larry antibiotics!!! Using these illegal weapons of mass destruction is a crime against bacteriamanity. We appealed to United Bacteria, the worldwide governing body for bacteria, but they wouldn’t intervene – we all know those vermin are secretly funded by Doctors Without Borders and their ilk. The doctor also gave Larry eyedrops, so terror now reigns from the skies on our helpless minions. He also prescribed some other mysterious medication, a secret weapon that attacks the forces holding and torturing Larry’s throat.

No Blog This Morning

I’m pretty sick right now. Not sure if it’s flu, cold, or something else. I’m seeing a doctor this morning. I put my symptoms into an online medical diagnosis page, and according to that here are the top ten most likely diagnoses: Influenza, Tularemia, Sinusitis, Common Cold, Swine Flu, Infectious mononucleosis, Bird Flu, Lemierre's Syndrome, Sars/Coronaviruses, and Babesiosis. Meanwhile, since I did it already, here’s the Tip of the Week.

Tip of the Week

The Feel of a Shot and a Checklist.

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Send us your own coaching news!

MDTTC Camp, Sick & Exhausted, and Media

One of the side effects of coaching kids is you are exposed to every germ known to mankind. Yep, I’ve come down sick. It’s probably just a cold – 100 degree temperature, extremely sore throat, aching teeth, the general sick feeling (every muscle feels like it was hit by a tsunami), and complete exhaustion. The problem is I was exhausted before I came down sick, from coaching every day for over two weeks, including coaching all day (and sometimes night) in our camps Mon-Fri, even longer hours on Sundays, and about two hours on my “rest” day, Saturday. So right now my exhaustion level on the Richter scale is 11.0, enough to win a game while destroying half the planet.

Even after 24 years of coaching at MDTTC I’m never really sure where to draw the line at when I should just stay home, for myself but even more so I don’t get anyone else in the camp sick. But I’m sort of needed – without me the sun might fall out of the sky, right?

Meanwhile, we did a lot of smashing yesterday. I was surprised at how fast some of the new players picked it up. One seven-year-old registered his first backspin serve that came back into the net; he was quite excited. Here’s the serve demonstrated by Ma Lin (1:18) on an apparently hot day.

I was interviewed by a reporter from the University of Maryland Alumni Association for their newsletter, which is doing a feature on fellow alumni Navin Kumar. Also had an email exchange with one of the sports reporters at the Baltimore Sun, who is both going to put the results of the Capital Area League in the paper (see below) and do a special on Han Xiao. Strangely, we’re more local to the Washington Post, but they’ve always been more difficult to get into, except for KidsPost, which has twice featured us.

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday was a rather peaceful day – no nosebleeds, no meltdowns, nothing more dramatic than a few untied shoelaces. We did a lot of work on pushing and other fundamentals; nine of us went to 7-11 after lunch; and at the end of the day, many paper cups were stacked and smacked to death by excited kids. One thing did stand out today – during all three breaks (morning break, lunch break, and afternoon break), several kids stayed late each time to work on things. At one point during lunch break I was secretly glancing at my watch wondering if I would ever get to eat lunch as several kids wanted me to work on their serves, and so all of me (other than my grumbling stomach) happily went along.

Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers

Here’s the review of my book by Samson Dubina. I like the first line! You can buy it at Amazon, in print or kindle.

Ping Pong for Quitters

Some of you might have read the book “Ping Pong for Fighters” by Tahl Leibovitz. Tahl recently got the bronze in singles and gold in teams at the Spanish Paralympic Table Tennis Championships. In honor of that, my next book will be “Ping Pong for Quitters,” unless of course I’m kidding. Here are ten major points about ideas that will be featured.

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday was the Day of the Nosebleed. When you run a camp with kids, you'll get them occasionally. How about two in five minutes, and both from my group? First a five-year-old (the youngest in the camp) walked right into someone's forehand backswing, and got smacked in the nose. It bled pretty badly. Five minutes later a seven-year-old kid was shadow-stroking his forehand, as I'd directed him to do, and somehow he managed to smack himself in the nose - and the blood came pouring out. (What type of forehand stroke am I teaching these kids?!!!) We went through a lot of paper towels before all the bleeding stopped. A couple hours later the seven-year-old was running about picking up balls and the nose started bleeding again, even worse than before. (Yes, we did a thorough clean-up each time.) Table tennis is a violent sport....

We spent a lot of time working on spin serves. Two kids who had never put spin on their serves on their lives were able to put enough backspin on the ball so the balls came to a stop on the table. (Here's my article How to Create a Truly Heavy Backspin Serves.) We also did a lot of King of the Table and Brazilian Teams, and many paper cups were killed.

The seven-year-old with the two nosebleeds has a nice backhand, but tends to jerk his forehand, and stops the stroke almost as he hits the ball. Maybe one kid in a hundred that age can spend an entire day focused almost entirely on fixing the problem, not to mention taking it seriously, but that's what he did. By the end of the day his stroke was looking much better. We're both determined for him to have a "perfect" forehand. He's almost too serious about wanting to get better!!!  

MDTTC Camp

Yesterday was Day One of Week Two of our Eleven Weeks of Camps at MDTTC. (That’s enough capitalization for the week.) With one “minor” exception (can’t go into that since the person involved is a kid who likely won’t be back), it’s a great group this week, especially the ones in my group. We did a lot of work on fundamentals – forehand, backhand, footwork, and serve.

I think right now we have the most talented and promising group of kids in the roughly 7-8 age range than we’ve ever had at MDTTC in our 24 years – lots of depth. Check back with us in a few years – they’re getting scary. We had a 7-year-old today who was smacking bottles off the table like they were the broad side of a barn, and he’s not even in the top five at MDTTC for that age group. Of course, it’s more than just apparent talent – this is a very serious group of kids who already seem to have the mental dedication to the sport that’s usually lacking until much older. Plus they can loop anything!

Every camp there’s something different. This week it seems as if all the newer players have good backhands but need work on the forehand – way too many wristy forehand swats. Also, a number of them have good fast & deep serves, but few can really spin their serves – which will be a focus today. Out come the soccer- colored balls! (So they can see if they are spinning the ball or not.)

One little problem – after standing up all day nearly every day for a million years (subjectively), my legs are exhausted. In fact, as I write this I’m balancing two things – too tired to do anything, but too tired to get up from my computer. The latter overpowered the first, so I’m at my computer, and so I might as well write stuff.

Tip of the Week

Conquer the One-Winged Blues by Developing Your Weaker Side.

USATT Club Development Handbook

The new USATT Club Development Handbook by Yang Yu (Head Coach and Business Director of the Austin TTC) and Roderick Medina (League Director and Board Member of ATTC) is out! (Here’s the direct link to the PDF file.) This is a great new manual for those hoping to start a new club. (Disclaimer: I edited and critiqued an early version of this.)

I’m especially interested in how it can be used to assist those hoping to start up full-time table tennis centers. Assisting in the growth of such centers is something I promised when I ran for the Board as a key part of growing USA Table Tennis – both the organization and the number of serious players in this country. I believe that using it in conjunction with the USATT Club Handbook (which I haven’t reviewed in a while – will do so sometime) and my own Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook will give us the textbooks for running seminars on the how to create such full-time centers. While all nine steps in this new manual are important, I think steps 3-6 are particularly key for this.

The manual is made up of nine steps - if any of these may be useful to you, download the (free) manual!

Racket Tip When Blocking

On Tuesday I linked to Racket Position, a 54-second video from Samson Dubina. It brought back a memory of my own during my peak years in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the video, Samson explains why it’s an advantage to keep the racket tip down in the same way for all shots (i.e. an extension of the arm), so you can do different shots from the same starting position.

Unfortunately, when I started out in 1976 I learned instead to raise my racket tip on my blocks, to about 45 degrees on the backhand, and a bit more on the forehand. This led to problems later on, as I’d have to have the racket tip up on some shots, down on others, and I’d often get caught the wrong way. Once I started blocking I tended to continue blocking rather change the racket tip up position. And so at my peak, I went on a roughly two-year mission where I tried to fix this, and forced myself to block on both sides with the racket tip more down. This allowed me to wait until the last second on each shot before deciding whether to block, counter, smash, or loop, and perhaps also kept the opponent in the dark.

However, at that point my blocking with the tip more up was pretty much ingrained, and I was never able to block consistently or effectively with the tip down. After losing numerous matches during those two years because of this I went back to my old way, and to this day I generally raise my racket tip when blocking. It’s especially noticeable on my forehand. On the backhand, I now block both ways, which probably isn’t good. In drills, I’ll often lower the tip on the backhand as that’s how I drilled for those two years, and it became pretty consistent that way – but only in drills. In games, I almost always raise the tip.