I'm Off to See the Surgeon - in Song
I see him at 11AM this morning. (I blogged about this yesterday - it's just a consultation about whether I should get shoulder surgery.) Then I buy advance tickets for The Avengers: Infinity War tickets (via Moviepass, which requires I go in person) for the 8:30PM showing at Germantown. Then I spend the day doing the MDTTC Newsletter and a bunch of other TT stuff. Then I teach a junior class from 6:30-7:30PM. Then I see The Avengers! And now, in honor of my upcoming visit to the surgeon, I give you . . .

I'M OFF TO SEE THE SURGEON
By Larry Hodges
(Sung to the tune of We're Off to See the Wizard, with Apologies to Harold Arlen, the munchkins, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion.)
I'm off to see the Surgeon
The wonderful Surgeon of Oz
I hear he is a jock of a doc
If ever a doc there was
If ever, oh ever a doc there was
The Surgeon of Oz is one because
Because, because, because, because, because
Because of the great operations he does
I'm off to see the Surgeon
The wonderful Surgeon of Oz!

Then I got to thinking - what about players who come to see me, a table tennis teacher?

I'M OFF TO SEE THE TEACHER
By Larry Hodges
We're off to see the Teacher
The wonderful Teacher of Pong
He's beyond reproach as a coach
If ever a coach there was
If ever, oh ever a coach there was
The Teacher of Pong is one because
Because, because, because, because, because
Because of the wonderful coaching he does
We're off to see the Teacher
The wonderful Teacher of Pong!

Two Upcoming ITTF Level 1 Coaching Courses in the U.S.

Frozen Shoulder Syndrome
I've been seeing a physical therapist three times/week, 90 minutes/visit, for two months, where I go through rigorous massage and shoulder stretching routines. I also do a 20-minute stretching routine twice a day.

Yesterday I saw the doctor again for an update. He put me through a number of tests. The good news was that my shoulder flexibility has gone from 50% normal to 70%. The bad news is that the shoulder hurts just as much as before - no improvement there. I can play with the pain - it's not that bad - but I'd just be injuring the shoulder further.

I'd already been diagnosed with a frayed rotator cuff, tendonitis, and bursitis in the shoulder, and with an extreme lack of shoulder flexibility due to muscle stiffness. Yesterday the doctor gave me a final diagnosis - Frozen Shoulder Syndrome. If I were to quit table tennis completely and only do normal things with the shoulder, it would gradually go away in 1-3 years - but that's not really an option, is it? So here are my real options.

OPTION ONE: I continue the stretching routines, and the shoulder will most likely return to near normal - but it would take many months, and could take a year, and it may never get well enough to play serious table tennis again.

OPTION TWO: Surgery. Tomorrow morning I'm meeting with a shoulder surgeon to go over this option. But the doctor told me that if I go this route, the shoulder most likely will be back to normal about two months after the surgery. Based on what I know right now (but before meeting with the surgeon), this sounds like the best option. But I am a bit surprised at the two-month recovery period from surgery to serious table tennis. He may have meant two months to "normal" activities. Table tennis isn't normal.

Coaching Is Like Awkwardly Programming a Computer
How is this true? When coaching, you are trying to change the habits of the student's subconscious, which is what controls his conditioned shots. The student's conscious mind might be a partner in doing this, but it is the subconscious that is really the student.

If the student really was a computer, you'd just program him properly. Is he hitting forehands without rotating his body? Just go into his forehand programming, click the "rotate body" button, and you're done. But in real coaching there's no "rotate body" button, so you have to do it more awkwardly. Here's what really happens.  

STEP ONE: Tell student's conscious mind he needs to rotate his body on forehands.

STEP TWO: Student consciously rotates his body while hitting forehands.

STEP THREE: Student's subconscious mind notes that body is rotating while hitting forehands, and protests, since this isn't "normal," and so gives student feeling of awkwardness, which the student attributes to not being used to rotating his body while hitting forehands.

STEP FOUR: Student's subconscious gradually stops protesting as it gets used to this weird and newfangled idea of rotating the body while hitting forehands, and stops protesting as much. Student starts to feel more natural with the shot.

STEP FIVE: Student now rotates body somewhat naturally on forehands since this is now the "norm" for his subconscious. All is well.

STEP SIX: Student takes a week off from playing. Subconscious starts to yearn for those days of playing table tennis, causing subconscious to want to go back to playing as well.

STEP SEVEN: Student returns to playing. But subconscious remembers those good ol' days of not rotating while hitting forehands, and goes back to that.

STEP EIGHT: Go back to Step One.

Tip of the Week
Are You a 10-8 or an 8-10 Player?

Happenings

Forehand Blocking
Here's the last point of the match (18 sec) where 14-year-old Japanese whiz Harimoto Tomokazu (world #13) recently upset world #1 Fan Zhendong at the ITTF-Asian Cup. The camera angle shows just how fast these players play. But to me the key thing here is what Tomokazu does at the start of the rally when Fan loops to his forehand - he blocks. Yes, at the highest levels of our sport, where nearly everyone tries to counterloops everything on the forehand (and often on the backhand) - he forehand blocks. And this is a well-placed block. He has an angle into the forehand, so Fan has to be ready to cover that - and so when Tomokazu instead blocks down the line, he forces Fan to play his backhand, followed by an awkward, out-of-position forehand, which sets Tomokazu up to win the point. (Fan would have tried to counterloop.)

One of the most under-used shots in table tennis (at all levels) is the down-the-line forehand block - most players automatically go crosscourt, both because of the angle (which forces the opponent out of position) and because it's easier. And that's probably the best shot at least half the time. But with the opponent reflexively moving to cover that angle, he's almost always vulnerable to a down-the-line block to his backhand. It was one of my bread-and-butter shots when I competed regularly. When I play practice games with students it drives them crazy, not just because it catches them off guard, but because they claim few of their other opponents block forehands down the line. And because players tend to copy other players, few of them have developed this shot. Jeez, talk about a simple way to improve!

Tip of the Week
If You Miss a Practice Session, You Will Know. (This normally goes up on Mondays, but I was away on Mon and Tue, and had so much on Wednesday that I decided to postpone it one more day.)

USA Nationals
It's that time of year again - time to enter the USA Nationals! You can enter online or with a paper entry form. They are in Las Vegas, July 2-7.

There are 91 events this year. They include:

• Men's and Women's Singles, Doubles, and Mixed Doubles.
• 18 junior events, ranging from Under 10 to 21 and Under, for boys and girls, with singles and doubles, plus Junior Teams for Boys' and Girls'.
• 34 senior events, ranging from Over 30 to Over 80, with both singles and doubles, for men and women.
• 17 rating events, from Unrated and Under 1000, to Under 2400, including the ever-popular Under 2200 tiered Super Round Robin (lots and lots of matches!). Most of them are divided into Adult and Junior rating events, so adults can avoid those way-underrated kids, and kids get to play other kids.
• Under 4200 and Under 3200 Doubles, plus the new Adult ABCD Doubles with four divisions and lots of play!
• Ten hardbat and two sandpaper events.
• Two Paralympic events for Classes 1-5 and 6-10.

But the Nationals is much more than just playing and competing. You also get to mingle with your friends and peers from around the country, as well as perhaps a contingent from your club - a built-in cheering section when you play. (But make sure to cheer for them when they play as well!)

USATT Hall of Fame Inductions and Lifetime Achievement Award
They have been announced, and so today is sort of a "WOW!" day. Why?

I'm this year's recipient of the USATT Lifetime Achievement Award! (The official title is "Mark Matthews Lifetime Achievement Award," named after 1931 and 1932 U.S. Open Men's Champion, then called Marcus Schussheim.)

This year they are inducting five new members to the USATT Hall of Fame - most years it's two or three, but this year we're inducting a basketball team!!!  This year's inductees are Li Ai, Dhiren Narotam, Norm Bass, Henan Li Ai, and Doru Gheorghe. The induction ceremony for all six of us will take place at the USA Nationals in Las Vegas, on Thursday night, July 5.

This could also be called the "Resident Training Program" (RTP) induction ceremony, as four of the honorees were from that program at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, circa 1985-1992. I was part of it from 1985-1990, at varying times the manager, director, and (mostly at the end) one of the coaches, and as chair of the RTP Committee. Li Ai and Dhiren Narotam were players there. Henan Li Ai was the head coach for about five years.

Why?

1. Because I'm totally exhausted from running the 3-star Butterfly MDTTC April Open this weekend, plus teaching a class Sunday night.
2. Because Tuesday the power will be out from 7AM to 5PM for electrical repairs. (They were supposed to do this a few weeks ago but it got postponed at the last minute.)
3. Because I have to put together the write-up, formatted results, and photos for the tournament.
4. Because I have to do catch up on some writing projects.
5. Just because!

But to tide you over until Wednesday, here's Ukulele Pong (14 sec), with Mary Lieu!

Summer Table Tennis Training Camps
Summer is coming, and it's time to plan for your summer training needs!!! Email me if you'd like me to add you to the listing below - I will likely link back to it numerous times. (With apologies to those missed - I put out a note last week asking for those running camps to contact me, plus I listed the ones I already knew about. I visited many of the major full-time clubs to find info on their camps, and listed those I could find.)

Why would you go to a table tennis camp? The simple answer is . . . to get better. But many would say, "I can train at my home club, why go to a camp?" At a camp, besides getting expert coaching, you get intensive training typically for five days, which is enough time to dramatically improve your game. This type of saturation training will lead to far more improvement than just practicing on and off for longer periods of time. Plus, it's a memorable event - you love table tennis, and this is a table tennis vacation! Some of my best table tennis memories are from the late 1970s when I was a regular at the Seemiller Camps. (I've emailed to see whether Dan is running camps this summer.) But I do suggest researching the camps and finding the perfect one for you. Some are primarily for kids; others are for all ages. 

Alameda TTC (Alameda, CA) has 8 weeks of camps with a kids-only and kids/adult program: http://alamedattc.org/2018SummerCamps.htm

Michael Maze Short Push
Denmark star Michael Maze retired in 2016 after a series of injuries, but recently has been training for a comeback at age 36. He's a former top ten player, who won the bronze medal in Men's Doubles at the 2004 Olympics, made the semifinals of Men's Singles at the 2005 Worlds, won the Europeans Men's Singles Championships in 2009, and made the quarterfinals of Men's Singles at the 2012 Olympics. At the 2005 Worlds he beat two Chinese players, Wang Hao (Men's Singles Silver Medalist at the 2004 Olympics and world #1 or #2 at the time) and Hao Shuai, often lobbing them down. Against Hao in the quarterfinals he was down 0-3 and saved three match points before winning in one of the great comebacks in history. He's a lefty looper, and probably the best lobber in the world. But he's also known for his soft touch, such as in receive. 

Here's a video (1:35, some of it in slow motion) of him practicing his short push against a side-backspin serve. Most players, when pushing, whether short or long, just aim in the opposite direction of the sidespin to compensate. But at the advanced levels they do more than that. Notice how he not only angles his paddle sideways to offset the incoming sidespin, but sidespin-grazes the ball back, meeting the sidespin straight on and putting his own sidespin on the ball? (Watch how the ball curves away after he hits it.)

By finely grazing the ball, most of his energy goes into spin, and so there's little forward energy, making it easy for him to push short. That's probably the most common reason players do not push short well - they try to just tap the ball back softly rather than graze it back.