State Championships

(This also just went up as a USATT news item.)

Dear Table Tennis Leaders,

USA Table Tennis is making it a goal to have State Championships in all 50 states – and we'd like to do it in 2016. We want to turn these events into major events for both the players and the media. Here is a listing of all fifty states and which ones have a 2015 State Championships (including those with a State Games).

For most players, the State Championships should be one of the most important events of the year. Many can compete to become a State Champion, whether it be in men's or women's singles, a senior event, a junior event, hardbat or sandpaper, a rating event, or doubles. It gives them something to train and look forward to. It's also the time when players from all over the state get together for table tennis and fun, usually ending with everyone going out for dinner together.

We'd like to celebrate these champions by commemorating them on a USATT State Champions Page as well as on the USATT News page. We'd also like to have an annual Parade of Champions at the U.S. Nationals, where, between matches during the showcase events, we invite all the attending state champions to take a march around the playing arena as the crowd cheers.

We'd like to turn these State Championships into major events in the local media. To do this, the tournament director or publicity director would simply Google the local TV, radio, and newspaper listings to get contact emails. Then, the week before the tournament, send them press releases inviting them to cover the tournament. Afterwards send them a follow-up press release that they can use.

The More Two Players Drill Together the Better They Drill Together

One of the keys to improving is getting a good practice partner. Usually these are two players who are roughly the same level. But it's more important that they both want to improve, are willing to work together, and are regular to train on a regular basis. The more they train together the more used to each other they get, and the better each plays in these drills. This leads to both players' levels escalating up – an upward spiral to excellence! (Here's my article on How to Play and Practice with Weaker Players.)

I want to emphasize how amazingly better you play when you drill with someone regularly – you get used to their shots, and your own shots become more and more natural and consistent, as well as more powerful. Some might think this is artificial, since you are playing against the same player and shots, which isn't what happens in tournaments or leagues. But the key is how much this type of drilling develops your foundation.

Players still need to play others with different styles, especially matches – that's imperative - but drilling with a good partner develops the foundation that's so important to develop your game.

Once you find someone to train with regularly, take turns with the drills. But remember that in any drill, both players are doing the drill. If one player is doing a footwork drill to the other's block, then the other is doing a blocking drill. Players not only need to learn to move and attack, but also to control an opponent's shots.

Don't forget to get a box of balls and do some multiball training! (Here's my article on Multiball Training.) Multiball training makes up about 1/3 of the training of world-class players. (A version of today's blog might end up as a Tip of the Week.)

Leagues, Leagues, Leagues!

If I hear or read that word one more time I believe I will hurl myself off a ping-pong table. Okay, the 2.5-foot fall probably won't hurt me and I'll just brush myself and go back to work, but it seems leagues (ugh!) is all I see or do that last few days – except when I'm coaching or blogging. (And here I'm blogging about it!!!) (Oh, and there's that pesky time I'm spending working with my new publisher on my upcoming SF novel – which has a lot of table tennis – and I'm writing a new SF short story, but I won't talk about that on this table tennis blog . . . much. Today is also Back to the Future Day, but believe it or not, my intensive online search found exactly zero table tennis pictures involving that movie or actors Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd.)

I took yesterday morning off from blogging so I could work on the prototype USATT Regional Team League (that word again!). The goal is to create something that can spread to other regions, as I blogged about here. I kept running into roadblocks as the leagues (ugh!) in LA, NY, and the Capital Area are run a bit differently. I ended up deleting most of what I did. I got so tired of working on it that I finally called an early halt to it and worked on something else, and then went off to coach.

And then, last night, while mulling over it at about midnight after going to bed I had a spurt of inspiration and energy. I leaped out of bed, ran to my computer, and worked until 3AM – and it's (mostly) DONE! Well, except for the roughly dozen more bullet point items that need to be incorporated that I thought of afterwards.

I'm just inundated with work, and need to take the morning off to catch up. No blog today - back tomorrow. But here's a new highlights video!

Game of Pong

Here's the highlights video (8:02). 

Tip of the Week

The Power of a Low, Short, No-Spin Serve.

Memory Lane

On Saturday night we had the second meeting of the Capital Area Team League, held at the Washington DC Table Tennis Center. (We'll have results up by tomorrow.) Afterwards, while driving home, I realized I was within a mile of the house where I grew up – 1967-1979, ages 7 to 19, plus a year from 1990-91, ages 30-31. And so, on the spur of the moment, I took a tour down memory lane. (It includes some table tennis.)

I made a quick plan as I drove down University Blvd. Rather than turn left and go directly to the house where I grew up, I went straight so that I could do a more logical circuit of all my old haunts. However, I was pretty hungry so I stopped first at an Arby's (intersection of University Blvd. and Riggs Rd.) for a sandwich. This wasn't there before. After taking my order, the guy at the counter, whose nametag said Hasim, asked if I played table tennis – he saw I was wearing a Butterfly warm-up suit. It turns out he was a student at University of Maryland and played at the University of MD Table Tennis Club! (Which, by the way, I founded in 1981 while living in a dormitory there.) He knew the top players there, such as Toby Kutler, Charlie Sun, and Vikash Sahu.

It Was Going to Be a Short Blog Today

I blogged Monday (Columbus Day) because the local schools were open. They are closed today – the school calendar doesn't specify why, but I presume it's Indigenous People Day. (We're having a one-day camp at MDTTC for the kids out of school. We have so many coaches at MDTTC that I'm not needed today, so I'm working at home on some USATT league stuff.) So I was planning to be off too! (Also, I've been on the go every day for a long, long time - "I need a vacation.")

However, yesterday was a banner day for me, though not for table tennis reasons. (Though there's a big table tennis angle.) Life for me just got more complicated – for the better. Here's what happened….and I ended up doing a normal blog.

Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions - SOLD!!! – and Table Tennis!

I sold my science fiction novel to World Weaver Press. It covers the election for president of Earth in the year 2100, where the world has adopted the American two-party electoral system. It's a satirical drama featuring a moderate third-party challenge to the two main candidates, the conservative president and the liberal challenger, as they campaign all over the world for electoral votes and the presidency. I've been describing it as "West Wing in the 22^nd Century." The novel is 123,000 words long, which is 622 pages in double-spaced 12-point Courier New. It'll likely be published in a 9"x6" format, about 400 pages.

103 Best Table Tennis Animated Images

It took quite a long time to search down and shamelessly steal all of these from whatever pages I could find them, but it was fun. (Hey, I'm in there – twice!) It was a tough job, but someone had to do it, and now you don't have to. So instead of a regular blog this morning, we'll go with this. (They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so that makes this my longest blog ever at 100,000 words. Or is an animated image worth 10,000 words?) You can spend some time exploring these and perhaps put them up on your table tennis web pages. (I found a lot more than 100, but I only put up the ones that I liked.) 

I was a bit disappointed that no one's created an animated gif of a few seconds of this octopus table tennis (perhaps when he smashes near the end?) or this energizer battery table tennis (perhaps when he's playing alone at the end) – hint hint! The first ten are roughly my top ten, but after that it's not really in order. Have fun! (Note - I've since added more, so we're over 100 now.)

Emulating the Equipment of the Top Players

One of the best and worst habits intermediate players make is copying the equipment of the top players. There's no question that if you want to play like a world-class player, you should use the type of equipment that is used by world-class players (mostly tensor-like sponges), whether it's the same brand or something similar.

However, far too often players use specific equipment because the world-class players are using it, rather than using what's best for them. I'm going to use Butterfly's Tenergy 25 as an example. (Disclosure: I'm sponsored by Butterfly.)

I went over the 43 international players and 20 North American players listed as sponsored players at butterflyonline.com. Of those 63 players and 120+ racket surfaces, only one uses Tenergy 25: Koki Niwa of Japan, world #14 in men's rankings. (According to this bio, he uses Tenergy 25 on the forehand, with Tenergy 05 on the backhand.) Why is this? Because most world-class players (or those training to become one) take big swings at the ball from both sides, and so use the various surfaces designed for that – usually (for Butterfly) Tenergy's 05 (most popular), 64, and 80. Exactly zero used the softer FX, less powerful versions, for the same reason – at that level, the premium is on power.

So does this mean we should all use the same powerful surfaces as the world-class players? The answer to that is an emphatic It Depends.

Fill the Club

Want to fill your club and make it successful? But I repeat myself.

Far too often I've seen clubs struggle and fail because they focused on having a really nice club that people would pay good money for, and figured they'd gradually build membership up. The problem is a club with few members isn't very enticing for most new players, and so you lose them as fast as you get them. So the first goal is to fill the club, which will make it successful, as well as having a nice club. (Nice club generally means good playing conditions – floors, lighting, and enough room; clean and neat; and various programs, such as private and group coaching, a junior program, leagues, and tournaments.)

In addition to just having a nice club, here are three rules I believe are at the core of most successful clubs. (Much of this applies more to full-time clubs, but it also applies to part-time ones.) There are of course other models, but I believe that the bulk of the successful ones understand and follow these principles – and is a primary reason why we've had so many successful full-time clubs pop up all over the country over the past eight years, many of them following the model created by the Maryland Table Tennis Center, which I co-founded in 1992 and became the first successful full-time club centered on coaching and training.  

Tip of the Week

Back Foot Position on Forehand.

Sunday Coaching and Capclave

On Sunday I had two hours of private coaching and three hours of group coaching. In the adult training session, much of the focus was on hitting or looping down the line, especially with the forehand. After doing that down both lines, I had the players do side-to-side footwork where one player hit or looped forehands, alternating between crosscourt and down the line, while the other alternated forehands and backhands. I remember from David Sakai from years of drilling with him in the early 1980s that if you can play aggressively down the line, then you can play anywhere. It's a shorter distance, and once you master it, you've mastered the shot.

We also did a lot of serve practice. I had them do a lot on fast no-spin serves, which are especially effective to the middle (elbow). (Here's my Tip of the Week, Fast No-Spin Serves to the Middle.)

In the beginning junior class, we introduced them to up-down tables. This is where the players (ten of them) go on five tables, and each played a game to 11. (No deuce – 11-10 wins to save time.) When all are done, the winners move up, the losers move down, with the winner on the first table and the loser on the last table staying there. (I had an impromptu vote on whether we should call whoever loses the "loser" or "runner-up." It was 10-0 to call them "losers." So losers it is!)

In the two private coaching sessions, things were sort of reversed – one needed lot of work on the backhand, the other on the forehand. So we did a bit of saturation training on those.