Serving Mania
Serving Mania has struck MDTTC! At least with my students. I blogged about this on Wednesday, about two kids who spent an entire one-hour session doing almost nothing but backspin serves (trying to make the ball come back into the net or bounce back over the net). It happened again on Thursday, where two kids (including the 7-year-old I blogged about on Wednesday) spent 40 minutes doing it again. There's getting better and better at it, and get pretty excited when they make the ball jump backwards and over the net.

We have a scoring system: one point if you get the ball to bounce back and hit the net; three points if it bounces back over the net cleanly after one bounce; two points if it bounces back over the net, but nicks the net in either direction, or takes more than once bounce on the far side to come back over the net. Here's a video (78 sec) of Ma Lin demonstrating the "ghost serve, where the backspin pulls the ball back into the net. But the ultimate backspin trick is making it bounce back over the net!

When I do the Trick Shots demo at the MDTTC Open House on May 29 I'm going to demo and teach these "Come Back" serves. It's a fun trick shot, though more advanced players see it coming and either reach forward or go to the side of the table, and smack it in. (I'll also demo and teach the 50-foot serve; blowing the ball so it balances in the air – sideways!; rallying by blowing the ball over the net; speed bouncing on the table; and playing alone with two paddles.

Chop Blocks
I have a student who cries "Foul!" whenever I do a chop-block. He insists no one else does them, and often will catch the ball when I do them. Before we go further, what is a chop block? Here's my article, Chalk Up Wins with Chop Blocks, and here's the video, Ma Long Chop Block (5:17).

Yesterday, in a session with Matt, I threw a chop block at him, and he wanted to try it. Now I wouldn't normally devote half a session to chop-blocks, but on the other hand I'm an adherent to Saturation Training, which means if you are going to make a change in your game or add something new, you really focus on it for a time until you get it right, rather than just work at it now and then. So we did just that – spent half the session on it. For most of this I stood a few feet back and fed him loops, multiball style, as he chop-blocked and sidespin-chop blocked.

This is a shot that most people have trouble with at first, and then it comes together suddenly, once you get that "smothering" feel of contact. And once you do, it creates havoc for opponents. I think it's even more effective these days for a simple reason – it's one of those shots that has died out in popularity (except for long pips blockers, who do it naturally), and so few players are used to it. There's a reason why world #1 Ma Long likes to use it.

Backspin Serves for Kids, and Making the Ball Return Into or Over the Net
Had an interesting session yesterday with two kids, ages 7 and 9. You'd think kids that age are balls of energy, wanting to smack the ball over and over. But when they get interested in something, that becomes their whole focus – and that's what happened yesterday.

I'd been teaching them backspin serves recently. It was new to the 7-year-old, while the 9-year-old was a bit more advanced. It started with the 7-year-old rushing out to the table five minutes early, and with a bucket of balls, trying to serve backspin so the ball would bounce backward. I'd demonstrated this to him a few days before, and he badly wanted to do it. He was able to serve so the ball would sometimes come to a stop, or even sometimes bounce backwards, though usually with the ball never reaching the net. He wanted to serve so it would go to the other side and bounce back into the net, as I'd shown him. And so began our hour-long Odyssey. (Here's the serve in question, though they aren't doing it with a high toss.) 

Adjusting to Different Balls in the Yucky Insane Plastic Era (YIPE!)
One of the realities of the YIPE era (yes, that's what I'm calling it!), where we use plastic balls instead of celluloid (which is actually a type of plastic, but we won't get into that), is that the balls vary widely, far more than before. It used to be that everyone knew that Butterfly balls were slightly softer and lighter than Nittakus, and you'd warm up with the appropriate tournament ball and you'd be ready. But now they vary dramatically. Playing with the various 40+ Nittaku, DHS, Butterfly, JOOLA, and the seamless Xu Shao Fa is like trying to play basketball where one moment you're dribbling a basketball, then suddenly (in no particular order) it's a bowling ball, then a baseball, then a golf ball, etc.

One of my students, Daniel (who I've blogged about before) played in the Capital Area League this past Saturday. He tends to play too passive, and so we've spent a lot of time working on using his serve to set up his attack. Alas, we weren't using a Nittaku Premium 40+, and so when he used that in the league, he said it felt really heavy, and he had no confidence in his attack. Result? He went back to pushing.

The moral here, and for others, is that you need to work out in advance what events you'll be playing in, find out what balls they will be using, get a supply of each type, and make sure to practice with that ball before each event.

Tip of the Week
Depth Control on Serves with CBS.

Bottle Drill and Quotes
Here is a useful drills I used this weekend. Sameer (14, 1826) has reached the point where he's pretty consistent with his first and second loops (both forehand and backhand), but needs more focus on placement. He told me that in his league matches, he's making nearly 100% of his backhand loops off push, but they keep coming back – but that was because he's opening primarily to the middle backhand, where the opponent is ready and waiting. (And most players block better on the backhand.) Since your first attack should most often be to the opponent's middle (something top players routinely do, but beginners and intermediates often don't quite get – here's my Tip on Attacking the Middle), with follow-up attacks at the corners (since the attack to the middle draws them out of position), we did the following multiball drill.

I put a bottle just a bit to the left of the middle line on my side of the table, about a foot in, where the middle (playing elbow) of a typical right-hander would be. (This does vary based on the player, situation, and handedness.) I put another bottle on the right side of my side (my wide forehand), about 18 inches outside the corner, a couple inches from the sideline. First I fed just backspin to his backhand so he could practice hitting the bottle with his backhand loop. Then I fed just topspin to his wide forehand so he could practice hitting the bottle with a hooking forehand loop (so the ball curved to his left, my wide forehand). He reached the point where he was able to hit the bottles about 1/3 of the time.

Footwork Drills by Stefan Feth, and Attacking the Middle
Here's the new video (1:23) from Butterfly. Note how, for this drill, Stefan stresses that the he's putting the ball to his partner's middle. Far too often players just drill to the corners, and then wonder why they have trouble attacking an opponent's elbow, usually the weakest point – if you don't practice it, you won't do it very well. I've often faced this as a coach – I'll tell a player to attack the opponent's middle, and he'll get this pained look as he knows he's not comfortable doing so since he's so used to attacking the corners. And then he'll go out there and continue to go to the corners, since that's what his muscle memory wants to do.

Think about it. Any coach or top player will tell you that your attacks should go to three spots – wide forehand, wide backhand, and the opponent's middle (roughly his playing elbow). Most will agree that attacking the middle is usually the best spot for the first attack – here's my article, Attacking the Middle. Here's an excerpt:

Why is the middle so weak when attacked? There are five (yes, five!) primary reasons.

How to Avoid Hurting the USA National Team, and Some Training Stuff
While in a session with Daniel (age 11, about 1650, but should be more like 1750), he hit a ball that broke cleanly into two hemispheres. I pointed out that somewhere out there were two poor mice, huddling in the cold, and that we should donate the two hemispheres as hats to help these two mice keep warm. But then I realized that the hats would cover their ears, and so they wouldn't hear approaching cats, and so they'd get eaten, and it would be my fault. This is when Daniel took over, pointing out that this would lead to fat cats, which would get eaten by dogs, leading to fat dogs, which would be sold in China, where (in some places) they eat dogs. This would spur the Chinese economy, thereby giving them more money to fund the Chinese National Team, making it less likely the USA National Team would beat them. So . . .  sorry mice, you'll just have to stay cold. (Now you know what really goes on in my coaching sessions.) 

Okay, we actually did lots of training in the 90-minute session - Daniel was on top of his game, and should play some tournaments soon. Our main focus right now is improving his forehand looping (which has improved dramatically), and following up his serve by looping (forehand or backhand) - he tends to play to the extremes, either too passive or too aggressive with wild swats. I'm 90% certain he's the best under 12 lobber in the country, but he's learned to hold back on that in serious matches. If he can remember to take his time when he serves (rather than grab the ball and serve like the ball's a hot potato), he'll make a jump soon. There's also one serve I want him to really work on - sorry, can't tell potential rivals about that one!

USATT Announces Roster of National Coaches
Here's the announcement. They include Lily Yip, Barney Reed, Teodor "Doru" Gheorghe, Massimo Costantini, Stefan Feth, Wang Qing Liang ("Leon"), Zhou Xin, Han Xiao, Sean O'Neill, Maggie Tian, and Samson Dubina. (Han Xiao and Wang Qing Liang are both from my club, MDTTC.)

Most (or all?) of these coaches will be at the upcoming USATT Training Camp to be held at the Lily Yip TTC in New Jersey, July 10-24, right after the USA Nationals. The camp is primarily for members of the USA Junior, Cadet, and Mini-Cadet Team Members, with a number of others also invited. USATT's High Performance Director, Cory Eider, will be directing it. I'm the (unpaid volunteer) manager for the camp and one of the coaches, though I'll primarily be an assistant coach, helping out where needed – probably feeding multiball, acting as a practice partner for some of the mini-cadet players, or walking around looking important. (I'm no longer fast enough to train with the cadets and juniors, alas.) I'll be there the first 12 days, but have to leave two days early to go to my annual "vacation" – a writing workshop in Manchester, NH, July 22-30. 

Drills When the Kids are In Charge
I let two kids choose their last multiball drill during a session yesterday. Here's what they chose.

The first, age 9, alternated hitting backhands from the forehand side of the table, and forehands from the adjacent table. So I had to feed every other ball to the adjacent table to my left! He ran back and forth like a giggling maniac. 

The second one, age 7, chose the following four-shot sequence: Forehand from forehand corner; forehand from middle; backhand from middle; and then I was supposed to give him a backspin serve to his wide backhand for him to push; and then repeat. I have no idea why he wanted this, but he was very insistent on that backspin serve as part of the multiball drill. He also has his own name for backspin - he calls it "stopspin," since he's seen my backspin serves stop and go back into the net. This kid has a history of begging for weird drills - usually intricate combinations that often have him doing backhands from the forehand side, me suddenly serving in mid-drill, or (one time), I fed multiball with a cardboard box instead of a racket. 

In my group sessions, especially toward the end, I sometimes do give players either a pair of options for their next drill, let them choose the drill, or ask them what they want to work on and then design a drill around it. For example, I may give them the choice of doing forehand-forehand footwork, or forehand-backhand footwork. Or serve and forehand attack, serve and backhand attack, or serve and attack from both wings. 

Training Blog at MH Table Tennis
Matt Hetherington is now blogging about his daily training at MH Table Tennis, with links to video. So far he's blogged about days 1-4.

Tip of the Week
Move In to Cut Off the Angles with Quick Blocks.

Balance and Recovery
During coaching sessions yesterday I spent some time harping on balance. Way too often, when moving to the wide corners, players go off balance, either because they are reaching instead of stepping, or because they step, but not far enough. And so they hit the next shot off-balance, leading to a weak and erratic shot. Perhaps even worse is it leaves them unable to return quickly to ready position, so they aren't ready for the next shot.

What seems to happen to many players is they learn to make these slightly off-balance shots somewhat consistently, and so it becomes a habit. The problem, besides the loss of power, is that because they are off balance from that shot, it takes time to recover the balance to move back into position – and so they are late on the next shot. And then they scream, "I'm so slow!!!" It's not a slowness problem; it's a technique problem, caused by faulty feedback. Instead of realizing they are missing the next shot because of a balance problem that leads to slow recovery, they think it's natural slowness, and don't fix the problem.

Often staying balanced while moving to the wide corners is a simple matter of taking a longer step so as to keep your center of gravity between your legs. By doing so, you stay balanced, and can recover almost immediately for the next shot. And then, as if by magic, you'll think you've suddenly gotten faster! (An expanded version of this will probably become a future Tip of the Week.)