Help! I’m Being Held Prisoner!!!

For the past nine days I’ve been held prisoner in my house by the 84-year-old man pictured here, a ruthless slave-driver and sadist. Each day he holds a racket to my head in a threatening manner and forces me to sit at my desk from 5AM to 2:30PM, coercing me into changing historical photos and designing the pages for some 1988-89 historical book that’s mostly a constant repetition of the words Boggan, Seemiller, Butler, O’Neill, Onifade, Teekaveeraki, Gee, and Bhushan. It must be some kind of code; I have no idea what these words mean. He assures me we’ll finish this weekend, but I don’t trust him.

At 2:30, he takes custody of my computer, with links to all my accounts, and threatens to use his extensive computer knowledge to delete all my books at Amazon. And then I am forced to go to a local table tennis club and play ping-pong with the cohorts of this man, hour after hour, day after day, with no respite. They keep calling me “coach,” but I think that’s code for “You are our prisoner and will do as you are told.”

Strangely, many of his henchman appear to be children, many of them Chinese, and they are all armed with ping-pong paddles. They seem to know how to use them; I am very afraid. I believe that they became this person’s partner in crime when he visited China back in 1971 – he is so arrogant that he even wrote about his experiences there, in a book and in Time Magazine, practically daring the U.S. State Department to come after him – but after meeting him, they too are afraid of him

Top Ten Craziest Shots I’ve Ever Done

Some of the kids I coach were talking about the craziest shots they’ve ever done. So I’ve compiled my Top Ten list. How about you?

Tip of the Week

Fast No-Spin Serve to the Elbow. (Having trouble learning to do this serve? If you see me at a tournament or club, I’ll demonstrate.)

Balancing the Three Big Interests in a Big Event

With the US Open coming up, once again the triangulation needed between the three big interests is important. Who are the three big interests?

"Ping Pong’s First Fantasy Novel a Smashing Read!"

Here’s the review from MH Table Tennis. Disclosure: It’s my novel!!! (And that’s why it goes first in my blog.) There’s also a 5-star review at Amazon:

“A fascinating story of an American wanting to be the best in the world of table tennis, going to China for some magical and intriguing training sessions, and how he eventually achieved his hard-earned success. The best part is in the journey of it - vivid, colorful descriptions of the matches, processes, psyches, and sometimes point-by-point analysis. This was a real page-turner, and was one of the best binges I've been on.”

As noted in my blog yesterday, there have also been news items at the below:

• ITTF News Item
• Butterfly News Item
• USATT Insider
• Something in Chinese. This was translated for me by someone who wished to remain anonymous:

Foreigner publishes new ping pong-themed book The Spirit of Pong, with way-cool cover.

The Spirit of Pong

The Spirit of Pong is getting a lot of publicity!

• ITTF News Item
• Butterfly News Item
• USATT Insider
• Something in Chinese (Google translate garbles it pretty badly. Can anyone give me a rundown?)

Meanwhile, 10-year-old Daniel Sofer, a student of mine (who I wrote about yesterday), read it cover to cover on Tuesday night . . . and found three typos. AAAAAHHHHH!!!!! (Fortunately, it’s in print on demand and kindle formats, so I can upload a new version and have it up within a day.)

What to Do When You’re Too Tired to Play

I coached a 13-year-old student yesterday who had been up late the previous few nights due to vacation and last-minute work on a school project. He was almost too tired to play and had what he described as a headache that kept coming and going. My solution? Sometimes the simplest ones are best. I sent him to the sink in the bathroom to splash his face with water. (I’ve used this coaching “technique” for many years, with great results.) It basically solved the problem, and he ended up having a great session, with the focus on basic forehand and backhand looping – and we had a nice counterlooping segment. We stayed late and worked on his serves, especially his reverse pendulum serve, which he’s now getting the knack of.

History of U.S. Table Tennis

Forehand and Backhand Loops Falling into Place

I had a great 90-minute session yesterday with one of our top 10-year-olds, Daniel, who’s rated 1639. (They said it was okay to blog about it.) In practice, he alternates between pretty good and then extremely awkward forehand looping, the latter because he either rushes or hangs back and plays lackadaisical. His contact point for his forehand loop, whether against backspin or topspin, is often all over the place, and so he can’t really time it, and it throws the rest of his body off as well. (His backhand loop right now is probably better than his forehand loop.)

I told him at the start of the session we were going to do a lot of shadow practice during the session, where we’d do the stroke and imagine the contact point. We’d done this once before and it worked well, but he’d fallen back into old habits. I explained the importance of stroking and contacting the ball roughly the same way each time, and we went through the stroke slowly to re-enforce the proper technique and contact point.

And guess what? Suddenly Daniel was looping over and over really well against my block, every ball with good speed and spin. We did this for a while, and then some footwork drills, but I kept each drill short as I didn’t want him to tire physically or mentally and fall back into bad habits. Then we did a bunch of multiball, and after a shaky start where I had to keep reminding him to use his legs more against backspin, he forehand looped really well. We did the same for his backhand loop, which also was strong. Then we did random backspin, where he had to loop forehands or backhands, and he did very well again. I decided to skip the shadow practice.

Three Items From Yesterday’s Blog You Might Have Missed

• Tip of the Week: Performance vs. Results.  
• The Spirit of Pong: Here’s the ITTF news item on my fantasy table tennis novel!
• Ice Pong: Here’s the video (1:54) as two players go at it while skating around to music!

Memorial Day Table Tennis

• General Patton and Table Tennis
• Soldiers Playing Table Tennis
• Penhold soldier
• Soldiers in Iraq Play Table Tennis
• Played in the USA Ornament

Tim Boggan’s History of US Table Tennis, Vol. 16 . . . and Some Coaching

No Blog Today – Memorial Day

While you get the day off, I’m hard at work with Tim Boggan putting together Vol. 16 of his History of U.S. Table Tennis. (Plus three hours of private coaching.) We hope to finish by Friday, June 5. I do the page layouts and lots of photo work. Meanwhile, here are a few things to tide you over until tomorrow.

Tip of the Week

Performance vs. Results.

The Spirit of Pong

Here’s the ITTF news item on my new fantasy table tennis novel! Why oh why haven’t you bought one yet??? (Print and Kindle versions.)

Ice Pong

Here’s the video (1:54) as two players genuinely go at it while skating around to music!!!

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Top Ten Reasons to Attend the 2015 US Open

If you aren’t one of the 471 players entered so far in the US Open (Las Vegas, July 6-11), or a parent or coach attending, then consider this a warning. If you don’t go to this years’ US Open, you are going to miss it!!! Just what are you going to miss? (Deadline is Sunday, May 31, with entries accepted until Sunday, June 7, with a $75 late fee.)  So here are the Top Ten Reasons to Enter the US Open.

5:17AM

That’s what time it is as I write this. (I posted it at 5:22AM; it normally goes up between 9AM and 10AM.) No, I didn’t get up early; I’ve been up all night working on various projects. I’m going to go ahead and post this shortly before going to bed. So what have I been working on tonight?

• Samson Dubina’s new coaching book. Get ready to mark your calendars: it’s coming soon!
• This blog, a little shorter than usual as I’m a bit too tired to have deep thoughts right now.
• Regional Table Tennis Association Sample Bylaws. But I won’t be going public with much of my work on regional associations and related issues until this fall. (I’ll be pretty busy all summer due to our summer camps, which start in a few weeks.)
• US Open plans. Are you going? C’mon, you have to!!!
• Top secret discussions regarding the serving rule, which could lead to a better service rule where players don’t hide their serves, leading to peace on earth, the destruction of ISIS, and banana splits for all. I’d explain more but it’s TOP SECRET!!! Shhh.

Arm Problems Non-Problems

Yesterday I did my first private coaching in ten days, due to the arm problems. I blogged yesterday about the new arm brace; it's working great. I was able to do an entire hour without any serious problems. I still can't smash lobs at full power or backhand smash, and I have to go a bit easy on my loops and serves, but overall, it's a miracle. The arm is still injured, and yet I can coach with the arm brace protecting it from further injury. I wonder how many others are out there with arm problems that would be basically fixed by these braces?