Tip of the Week
Attacking the Middle with the Forehand and Backhand.

Basics, Basics, Basics!!!
It seems like half my students were on vacation recently, and so they all seem out of practice. So what are we focusing on? Yes, BASICS!!! This doesn’t mean just forehand to forehand or other simple drills like that. But it means a lot of basic stroking and footwork drills. One of the things about taking time off is that when players come back, they often fall back into old habits we had spent so much time fixing. So I’m being very careful to watch for that.

For example, I have one student who used to habitually lift his elbow when he hit forehands, thereby closing the racket during the forward swing, leading to erratic shots. He kicked the habit, or so we thought – but he was right back to it in our last session. But we quickly fixed it, and did a lot of forehand drills to make sure.

Another student felt like he’d completely lost the feel of his forehand loop – nothing seemed right. We spent quite a bit of time in our session on it before it began to click. This was a case of his feeling tentative, and so he kept falling back, and so the ball was falling front of him, throwing off his stroke and timing. This led to erratic contacts, and so even when he did it “right,” he was erratic. I had him focus on positioning and contact, and soon all was well. He’s also seemingly forgotten how to smash lobs, so we focused on that, and the importance of doing a systematic one (bring racket back), two (raise the racket) and three (drive into the ball with legs, throwing upper body into the shot).

Another had had a slightly longer “break” – he had stopped playing for 40 years (!), and recently started up again. He used to have a forehand pendulum serve, but had forgotten how to do it. So we’re working on that, and it’s beginning to come back.

Progressive Coaching
A few days ago a student complained that while she could rally in drills, in games she not only missed, but tended to hit the ball right at the opponent, as if it were a drill. She wanted to know how she could fix this. So I put her through the following progression of drills, in this specific order. The key was to first build up accuracy from both the forehand and backhand sides, then do so off random balls, while always attacking the three spots you should always go after in a match – wide forehand, wide backhand, and middle (the elbow, the mid-point between the forehand and backhand). (This will likely be expanded into a Tip of the Week.)

Coaching a Junior Class for the First Time
At the MyTableTennis forum someone asked about teaching a junior class for the first time, and how to get them serious about the sport. Below is my response. The last paragraph might be the most important. But note the sale on the Handbook in the first paragraph! I’m willing to supply them at cost to large groups or to USATT events.

I have ten pages on this in my Professional Table Tennis Coaches Handbook, which comes in print ($5.99) and Kindle (currently on sale at 99 cents). I've run the beginning junior classes at MDTTC for decades. 

I generally go with a 2-1 ration - 2/3 practice, 1/3 games. (More like 50-50 for kids 8 and under.) For new players, you'll be doing a lot of multiball. At the high school level, they should have the coordination to hit among themselves after some multiball practice. 

For games, have them play king of the table, up-down tables, or Brazilian Teams. However, it's also good to have a large supply of paper cups and a bottle of Gatorade. Kids like to build large pyramids and walls out of the cups, and then they line up, taking turns knocking them down while you feed multiball. (Perhaps three shots each, though only one on first round.) Or you put the Gatorade bottle on the table and feed multiball, and they line up, taking turns trying to hit it, two shots per turn - and if they hit it, you have to drink it. But since these are high school kids, you'll want to focus more on the real games mentioned above. But let them try different games and see which they like. 

Why Waldner Doesn’t Have to Move
Here’s the meme that’s making the rounds on Facebook. (Here’s the non-Facebook version.) “I am standing where the ball comes, that is why I don’t have to move, I can Read the Game,” said the great Jan-Ove Waldner.

Some will misunderstand this, taking it literally. Waldner did have to move, of course, but if you watched him play it often seemed like he wasn’t moving – because he was moving before the opponent hit the ball, and so was already there, waiting. Most players react to the ball as it is coming toward them, or perhaps as the opponent is hitting the ball  - but this is way too late if you want to be a good player. Instead, you develop the habit of watching and reading the opponent, and reacting to where the ball is going the instant the opponent has committed, usually at the start of his forward swing. Here is my Tip on this, React to Opponent’s Swing.

This also helps if you want to develop a strong defense – you have so much more time to react if you are reacting before the opponent hits the ball then if you wait until afterwards. Here’s my Tip that covers this, Brick-Wall Blocking Defense.

Of course, it helps to be light on your feet – which is more technique than physical. I’ve known overweight players who were light on their feet. Here’s my Tip on that, You Can Be Light on Your Feet.

Pong Road
On Friday night I saw Pong Road, a roughly 30-minute video (in three parts), “an episodic documentary that follows Rocky [Wang] along his journey. Get ready to see ping pong that you've never seen before.” Alas, it’s not online yet so you’ll just have to wait until they do so, or there’s a showing in your area. They do have more segments planned. Here’s their Facebook page, here’s “The Story,” which explains more about Pong Road, and here’s their About Page, with more on Rocky Wang, and on Mark Weismantel, who was the “director, cinematographer, editor, sound designer and art director.”

I’ve known Rocky since he was 13, in 1987. He’s also from Maryland, but strangely I first met him in Colorado. I was (at various times) the manager, director, and one of the coaches for the Resident Training Program for Table Tennis at the Olympic Training Center from 1985-1990, where many of the best junior players in the U.S. lived, went to school, and trained, from 1985 to sometime in the early 1990s, when the program ended. My first memory of Rocky was when he joined us that September in 1987. I walked into the dorms and saw this little kid doing a split between the two walls, holding himself up like this! (The walls were a little closer – and yes, that’s Jean Claude Van Damme demoing here.) Rocky would reach about a 2500 level before quitting in the early 1990s for 12 years. He started up again around 2006, and since then has been coaching (often at Spin NY – see video ad below) and running table tennis events for a living.

Tip of the Week
Feet Parallel to Table is Usually a Backhand Stance.

Weekend – Pong Road, and History of U.S. Table Tennis, and Coaching
I had a hyper-busy table tennis weekend. Here’s a rundown.

On Friday I saw Pong Road, which features table tennis player and coach Rocky Wang on the road, at MDTTC (my club), Ashville, NC, and at a tournament in Knoxville, TN. I’ll blog about this later this week. I also managed to see Dark Tower on Saturday night and Game of Thrones on Sunday night. All were excellent, though the critics don’t seem to agree with me on Dark Tower. (I’ve read the five very long Game of Thrones books by George R.R. Martin – who I’ve met - but not the seven Dark Tower novels by Stephen King.)

ITTF Hall of Fame
One of my pet peeves is how international organizations can sometimes be so . . . short-sighted. Here is a classic example. How do you get into the ITTF Hall of Fame? Well, for players, the eligibility rules are very simple: “Eligibility for the highest honor in international Table Tennis requires that the player must have won 5 Gold Medals in World Championships or the Olympic Games.”

This is downright silly. Winning a gold medal in Singles, where you were the best player, is worth more than winning it in Doubles (Men’s, Women’s, or Mixed) or Teams, where your finish is largely determined by other players. The result is a travesty of justice. The rules dramatically favor players who happen to have strong teammates.

Let’s take Stellan Bengtsson as an example. He won Men’s Singles at the 1971 Worlds, and won Men’s Doubles and Men’s Teams in 1973. He had five other silver and bronze medals at the Worlds, but in the end, he “only” got three golds. He was ranked #1 in the world for most of three years, and won 67 international titles. Because China had far more depth in their players, the odds were stacked against Bengtsson, especially in Mixed Doubles and Men’s Teams – though he battled with them over and over. (He did have Kjell Johansson and Hans Alser as teammates, and Stellan and Johansson won Men’s Doubles and Teams in 1973. Johansson also won four golds at the Worlds, three in Men’s Doubles and one in Men’s Teams, and made the final of Men’s Singles in 1973, but also isn’t eligible for the ITTF Hall of Fame, based on their rules.) Table tennis wasn’t in the Olympics yet, so Stellan (and others before 1988) didn’t have that opportunity.

Moving to the Wide Forehand, He Zhiwen, and Update on History of USATT, Vol. 20
Most of my students have figured out that while I can still move quickly to my left (i.e. to step around my backhand to attack with my forehand), I don’t move very well to my right anymore. And so they take great glee in finding chances to go that way. I actually encourage it – I want them to develop good tactical habits, and so the last thing I want them to do is develop a habit of holding back when they see the right tactical move. If I leave my forehand side open during a rally, they should jump on it, making it a habit that will carry over in real matches.

This problem with moving to my right has been true for a number of years, but for the last month or so I’ve been having problems with my right knee, which made it far worse. At the USA Nationals, where I was mostly coaching and attending meetings, I did manage in my free time to win Over 40 Hardbat Singles, but most players didn’t realize just how much trouble I was having moving that way – and I used a variety of tactics to cover for it. A knee brace really helped.

I aggravated the knee again during my recent writing workshop vacation – while carrying my bags upstairs to my room! And so I spent much of the nine days there hobbling about with the knee brace, which I always wear now when I coach.

What’s scary is that I had problems last year with my left knee. What happens when both go down?

Timmy Boggan’s Coming to Town! [Sung to the tune of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”]
He’ll be here at 10AM, and when he says 10AM, he means exactly 10AM. Knowing Tim, at 10:01AM we’ll be working on Volume 20 (!) of his History of U.S. Table Tennis. As noted in previous blogs, I do the page layouts and photo work. Mal Anderson has already scanned the photos and sent them to me. We’ll be working from 7AM to 5PM for the next 10-12 days (working around my coaching schedule on weekends), with Tim looking over my shoulder and periodically saying things like, “That goes there, you fool!”

Tim keeps strange hours, going to bed every night around 7PM and getting up around 3AM. So he’ll be puttering around my house each morning, impatiently waiting for me so we can get started at 7AM. But he’s a USATT Hall of Famer and the USATT Historian, so who are we to judge?

This is a tricky time for me—or should I say exhausting? After I finish my work with Tim, I’ll be leaving nearly every day to the club for a few hours of coaching. And then, after getting home perhaps at 8 or 9PM, because I won’t have much time in the morning (those 7AM starting times), I’ll be up late getting the blog done mostly in advance, as well as other USATT and MDTTC stuff that can’t be put off. Basically, for the next 10-12 days I’ll be living off Mountain Dew.

In honor of Tim, let’s all sing together - and if you video yourself singing this and put it online, and either put it in the comments below or email the link to me, you'll be in my blog tomorrow!

You better play smart,
Don’t put the ball high,
Better have heart,
I'm telling you why,
Timmy Boggan’s coming to town!

He's making a list,
Of playing advice,
Gonna find out who's games aren’t nice,
Timmy Boggan’s coming to town!

He Zhiwen
One of the strange things about being at a club where we have ten full-time coaches, where I’m the only one who’s not Chinese, is often I don’t know what’s going on. Others assume I do since they are all talking about it – but in Chinese!!! So I didn’t know that He Zhiwen was even at our club until he’d been there about a week. I had just finished a long coaching session, and as I was walking to the front of the club I saw this elderly lefty pips-out penholder practicing with one of our top juniors. I stopped to watch because there was something about this player, whose strokes looked like machine guns as he almost mechanically smacked in ball after ball, both blocking and hitting, obviously a great player. So I asked Coach Jack, and he was surprised, thought I knew.

He was the famous Spanish player He Zhiwen, 55 years old, formerly a Chinese National Team member. He has now been at my club (MDTTC) for about three weeks, and I believe will be there another week or so. Last year at the World Veterans Games he won the 50-54 Men's Singles without dropping a single game. He was top ten in the world in the 1980s. In 2012, at the age of 50, he was ranked as high as #59. When he left the ranking list in 2016 at age 54 he was #82. He’s a lefty pips-out penholder. Here’s discussion of him at the Mytabletennis.net forum, with several videos posted of him competing at the Westchester Open this past weekend, where he made the semifinals of Open Singles. Here’s a Best of He Zhiwen video (4:57). Here are more videos of him. (He seems to have two spellings for his name, the other one being He Zhi Wen.)