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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Send us your own coaching news!

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?

Disabled Veterans Camp

We had nine players in the camp yesterday from 10AM-1PM. A big thank you goes to assistants Steve Hochman and Josh Friedlander, who volunteered to help out as coaches/practice partners. It was another great and highly enthusiastic group. We covered all the basics - grip and stance, forehand and backhand, pushing, and serving. We finished with the ten-cup challenge, where everyone had two chances to see how many cups they could knock over with Steve and I feeding multiball. 

The camp was made possible by a grant to USATT from the USOC. Not only is the entire camp paid for - the players don't pay a cent - but they sent a box of goodies for the players. Each of the players received a nice Stiga racket with sponge. It was an honor working with these servicemen. I'd like to thank them for all the hard work they put in, both in uniform and at the camp! I'd also like to thank those who made it possible - the USOC and USATT, the Department of Veteran Affairs, MDTTC officer Wen Hsu, and especially Jasna Reed, USATT's Director of Para Programs. 

Arm Problems Non-Problems

It's a miracle!!! Yesterday for the first time I tried out the new Bandit Therapeutic Forearm Band that I blogged about yesterday. (Paul Choudhury emailed me a month ago recommending this – I should have listened! But I did receive a LOT of recommendations.) I'd thought it would at most be a small help - after all, how much can something wrapped around the outside of the arm help an injury on the inside? Boy, did I get that wrong!

Another Eventful Day

Here’s a rundown of yesterday’s events.

• Disabled Veterans Camp. From 10AM-1PM I ran the first day of a two-day clinic for disabled veterans. (I did this last August as well, so perhaps it’ll be an annual thing.) It was supposed to be four days, but we didn’t get anyone signed up for Wed and Thur. We only had three signed up for the first day, but have about ten coming today.

  I went over the basics – grip, forehand, backhand, pushing, serve, receive, and looping. We used the robot a lot. There was a wheelchair player, so I spent some time with him going over the differences there. I also explained various organizations – USATT and Paralympics, MDTTC, and local leagues. The players were surprisingly good – probably close to 1000 level with a little practice.

  There was an interesting juxtaposition at the start – on three nearly adjacent tables we had two disabled military veterans (one in a wheelchair), two Buddhist monks in full robes who had come in for lessons, and two 2550 players (Wang Qing Liang and Han Xiao).

Tip of the Week

Become a Player of Routine.

Number of Hours and Hits in a Lifetime

Let’s do the calculation for myself.

The Spirit of Pong

It's here!!! This is my fantasy table tennis novel about an American who goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis, and ends up training with and learning from the spirits of past greats. It's in two formats, Print and Kindle, both on sale from Amazon. I've kept the price low - only $6.99 for print, $5.99 for kindle. Buy now so I can afford to eat tonight!!!

I was up half the night working on the kindle version - lots of formatting.) The cover was created by Mike Mezyan, based on a previous table tennis artwork I picked out. It's a relatively short novel, exactly 100 pages. Here's the description from the back cover:

Andy “Shoes” Blue wants to be a table tennis champion, but he’s just another wannabe American. And so he goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis. He is trained by the mysterious Coach Wang, and begins an odyssey where he learns the secrets of table tennis from the spirits of Ichiro Ogimura (who helped spawn China’s greatness) and Rong Guotuan (China’s first world champion in 1959, whose tragic story Andy must relive), and must face the mysterious “Dragon.” Can he overcome treachery and learn the final secret of table tennis in time to defeat his ultimate nemesis?