Tip of the Week

A Step-by-Step Sequence to Learning Pendulum Serves.

MDTTC Camps

"It's Monday . . . and there's no camp??? No lectures on grip, stance, forehand, and serves?" (Okay, it's really Tuesday, but this is what I was thinking yesterday.) Our ten weeks of camps at MDTTC ended Friday. I've now run about 180 five-day camps, six hours per day, or 900 days and 5400 hours of camp. That's nearly 2.5 years of camps. I've given each of my standard lectures 180 times, or about 1800 lectures in all. I've led in stretching (twice a day) 1800 times. (Well, actually less since I've sometimes missed the afternoon sessions.) And we're not done for the year - we have another camp, our Christmas Camp, Dec. 26-31. (Our camps are primarily for kids, but adults are welcome - we usually get 2-3 each week, sometimes none, sometimes more.)

MDTTC August Open

Here are the results (which I also gave out yesterday) of the August Open this past weekend, run by Charlene Liu. Congrats to Chen Bo Wen ("Bowen"), who finally broke through and won against Wang Qing Liang ("Leon") after a series of second-place finishes to Wang. It was a dominant performance - he didn't lose a game. Anther having a nice tournament was Nathan Hsu, who's been in a slump recently - but this time he won Under 2400.

I've been getting up extra early all summer to do the blog Mon-Fri (and the Tip of the Week on Mondays) because I had to coach all day at the camps at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. I also had to get up early on weekends to coach all day. Even on the two (2!) days I've had off since June I did the blog. (I was away for a week at a writers workshop, but that was NOT a vacation - that was hard work, and also started early each morning and often went late into the night. And don't even hint that going to the U.S. Open was time off, since I was coaching all day there!) Now that our summer camps are over (Week Ten ended Friday), and I finished my weekend coaching yesterday, I'm taking a day off. No blog today, and the Tip of the Week will go up tomorrow. I'm going to spend much of today lying in bed reading. If you hear a loud purring sound, that's me. Did I mention I have chocolate? (I'm also toying with doing something crazy, like driving up to Gettysburg, or the National Aquarium in Baltimore, or the National Zoo in DC. Or maybe I'll just stay in bed reading.) See you all tomorrow!

But I'll leave you with this. USATT is now rerunning some (or all?) of the 171 Tips of the Week I did for them from 1999-2003 (under the alias "Dr. Ping Pong") as a Daily Tip, which includes tips from other coaches. Here are a few recent ones by me: 

Orioles Photos

Yesterday I blogged about our visit to the Baltimore Orioles clubhouse, where the top juniors from MDTTC and I played most of their players. Here are the photos I promised! (I should have video of the Orioles pre-game show that featured table tennis next week.)

Here are two photo albums. All the photos in both albums were taken either by Qiming Chen or someone using his camera.

• Qiming Chen's Facebook Album (29 pictures)
• Larry Hodges Photo Album of Other Qiming Chen Photos (13 photos)

Most of the players in the pictures are identified by the photo name/caption, though you might have to click on the picture to see the full name/captions. In the second album there are two group pictures. Here are the captions for those two photos.

Kids Post, L-R - Chris Tillman, Darren O'Day, U.S. Open Under 12 Table Tennis Champion Derek Nie, Steve Pearce, Tommy Hunter, Orioles ping-pong table. Background - Chris Davis (back to us), Brady Anderson, Ryan Flaherty

Group picture, L-R - Darren O'Day, Tong Tong Gong, Tommy Hunter, Chris Tillman, Larry Hodges, Adam Jones, Nathan Hsu, Derek Nie (in front), JJ Hardy (in back), Qiming Chen, Miguel Gonzalez, Steve Pearce, Alexi Casilla, Manny Machado, and Troy Patton

The Atmosphere Inside the Orioles Clubhouse

Here's another article on the Orioles and Table Tennis

MDTTC Camp

Visit to the Orioles Clubhouse

Yesterday was an incredible day. As noted in yesterday's blog, we were invited to give a demo and take challenges from the Baltimore Orioles baseball team in their clubhouse/locker room. They have a nice Killerspin table and lots of room. Many of the players have been playing regularly for the past few years - and it showed! This was not a bunch of "basement" players; they were surprisingly good. About a dozen of them could show up at any table tennis club and battle with the regulars. (Photos are now up in Tomorrow's blog.) 

We were supposed to be there from 2-3PM, but the Orioles kept challenging and challenging, and we ended up taking them on for three hours, from 2-5PM.

Exhibition and Challenges with the Baltimore Orioles!!!

Today I'm leaving the MDTTC camp at 11:30 to pick up some players so we can go to Orioles Park at Camden Yards (about an hour away), where from 2-3PM we're giving a demo for and taking challenges from the Baltimore Orioles baseball team! They have a huge clubhouse which includes a nice table with lots of room. We'll be surrounded by (on average) 6'3" 230lb multimillionaires. (Average major league salary in 2012 was $3.4 million; the Orioles are a little above that. Here's their listing.)

This all started in May when Orioles star shortstop JJ Hardy and former centerfielder and now vice president of operations Brady Anderson visited the Maryland Table Tennis Center, where I gave each a lesson and then they played our local juniors. (Here's my blog on that.) They, along with Jeff Lantz, the Orioles Manager for Media Relations, invited us for a return visit. It took a while, but we finally got it arranged. We even had to get approval from Manager Buck Showalter - who I'm hoping to meet, along with a few others, such as Chris Davis, Adam Jones, Brian Roberts, Nick Markakis, Matt Wieters, Manny Machado, and others.

MDTTC Camp - Week Ten

Yesterday we started the final week of our ten weeks of training camps. The kids were restless! I've never had so much trouble getting them to quiet down as we got started. I'm not sure if it was because school's one week away or because it was the last week of summer camps. (A number of them had been with us all or nearly every camp.) I had to send two of them to sit in the lounge, only the second time I'd done that all summer. (The previous time was when two kids got into a pushing fight, I think way back in week one or two.)

The focus on day one, as usual, was the forehand. We had a new group of beginners. Several had surprisingly good forehands to start with - not from coaching, but from watching and playing in their basements or other places. Two of them had been playing regularly at a table at their neighborhood swimming pool.

Watching the Ball

Players often advise beginners to "watch the ball." I always thought this was somewhat silly as I can't imagine anyone, even a beginner, not watching the ball, assuming they are playing serious. It's rarely come up when I coach, even with little kids, who naturally watch the ball intently. There are some technical aspects, such as do you watch the ball all the way to contact, or only to a certain point, since you can't react at the end?

I advise players to try to watch the ball right to contact, to allow for last-second adjustments and to make sure they are seeing the ball as well as possible. Watching the ball all the way especially helps when doing spin shots, where you just graze the ball, such as looping, pushing, chopping, and serving.

Tip of the Week

Height of Service Toss.

How to Promote Major Tournaments

Over the years there have been numerous discussions on how to promote the U.S. Open and Nationals so as to bring in more players, more spectators, more press, and make it a better experience for all. There are many good ideas out there, and I read some excellent ones in a threat at about.com over the last few days.

But all of these excellent posters are missing the point - ideas don't get the job done. If you want to improve on these things, don't start by pushing ideas, no matter how good they are. Start by pushing to have someone officially in charge of implementing improvements. For example, if you think we need to present matches at the Open and National better, perhaps with more scorekeepers or better communication, don't press for more scorekeepers or better communication; press for someone to be in charge of presentation. Then there is an official person in charge of this, and he can officially push for these things, and they are far more likely to happen.

Want to increase the number of entries at the Open or Nationals? Have someone officially in charge of increasing entries. Want to have more spectators? Have someone officially in charge of bringing in spectators. Want more press coverage? Have someone officially in charge of media coverage.

You won't find success this way every time since not everyone officially in charge of something will do the job well. If they don't, then thank them for their services and put someone else in charge.

MDTTC Camp and a Day of Rest

After coaching 6-8 hours/day for 14 straight days, I'm finally off today. I was exhausted a week ago; there are no adverbs or adjectives in the English language that adequately describe my current state of exhaustion, so let's just say I'm tired. I went to bed last night at 11PM and slept to 9AM. That's unprecedented for me; I normally sleep about six hours/night.

However, I've got a "busy restful" day ahead. Nothing physical, but a few errands, and lots of paperwork stuff - editing, rewriting, organizing. Mostly stuff I've put off the last two weeks due to the busy workload. We have one more week of our ten weeks of camp this summer, and then I can go back to writing during the day, and coaching nights and weekends.

Yesterday's focus was the backhand loop. I had 4'7" 12-year-old Derek Nie demonstrate; as I think I mentioned in a previous blog, if he can backhand loop at a 2291 level (that's his rating!), then anyone can, right? However, the beginners aren't ready for backhand looping, and we focused on the basics.

The natives were restless yesterday - Thursdays is always the most "dragging" day, as it's four days into camp, but not the last day yet. I let the beginning kids go to games earlier than usual in both the morning and afternoon sessions. The more advanced ones are a bit more focused, and if anything, trained longer than usual before playing games.

MDTTC Camp

There seems to be two groups in this week's group of beginning kids: those who want to play real games (up-down tables games to 11, king of the table) and those who want to hit targets while I feed multiball (pyramids of paper cups, Froggy). Since we have twelve of these beginners in the 5-8 range, I've pretty much divided them into these two groups when we get to games. The better ones tend to want to play real games. None of the four girls want to play competitive games - they perpetually want to line up and take turns hitting the poor paper cups and Froggy. They're inseparable.

There is amazing improvement in their target skills. I end many sessions with the bottle game, where they line up and try to hit a Gatorade bottle that I assure them is filled with something disgusting, like squeezed worm juice, which I have to drink if they hit it. Both groups love this game - the competitive ones compete to see who can make me drink the most. Normally beginning kids in this age group don't hit it that often, but the last two days they've been incredible, hitting it over and Over and OVER! I've drunk a lot of worm juice.

I had a private session with one up-and-coming junior I've been coaching for the past six months or so, with a supposed rating of 950. Yeah, right - he can loop over and over against my block, and pretty hard. "You're really working me!" I told him as I was sweating pretty hard trying to block all his loops. He was looping forehands from his backhand side to my backhand block. Some people don't understand that blocking involves footwork; good blockers work hard to block well.

Nature Versus Nurture

Talent and Table Tennis

There's a lot of online debate and many books (from The Sports Gene to Bounce) and articles out about talent versus environment. How much are top athletes born and how much is made? There's no question that most of it is made, but is there such a thing as talent? Well, yeah. And remember that this is a blog, not a scientific study, so much of what I'm writing is based mostly on my experiences as a table tennis coach. I've also discussed the topic several times with my uncle, who chaired the neurology department at Johns Hopkins for many years.

Some say there is no such thing as talent, and that's nonsense. No two brains are identical, even at birth. There are many studies that show, for example, that IQ is mostly genetic, and yes, intelligence helps in table tennis. (It's a bit more complicated than that - there are different types of intelligence - but I'm not going to get into that here.) The brain is a complex organ that's evolved many built-in areas of specialization (verbal areas, spatial skills, facial recognition areas, etc.), but just as there are variations in the rest of the body, there are variations in these areas of the brain because of the variations in the DNA. Some of these areas help in sports such as table tennis, meaning some players start out with at least an initial advantage.