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This is an evolving website and Table Tennis Community. Your suggestions are welcome.

Want a daily injection of Table Tennis? Come read the Larry Hodges Blog! (Entries go up by 1PM, Mon-Fri; see link on left.) Feel free to comment!

Want to talk Table Tennis? Come join us on the forum. While the focus here is on coaching, the forum is open to any table tennis talk.

Want to Learn? Read the Tip of the Week, study videos, read articles, or find just about any other table tennis coaching site from the menu links. If you know of one, please let us know so we can add it.

Want to Learn more directly? There are two options. See the Video Coaching link for info on having your game analyzed via video. See the Clinics link for info on arranging a clinic in your area, or finding ones that are already scheduled.

If you have any questions, feel free to email, post a note on the forum, or comment on my blog entries.

-Larry Hodges, Director, TableTennisCoaching.com

Member, USA Table Tennis Hall of Fame & USATT Certified National Coach
Professional Coach at the Maryland Table Tennis Center

Recent TableTennisCoaching.com blog posts

Tip of the Week
The One-Two Punch of Tactics.

Weekend Coaching, Grip Changes, and a Wrenched Neck
I worked with two kids this weekend who had seemingly parallel but opposite problems. One had a nice topspin backhand which he could take right off the bounce. But his forehand was basically all flat, very little topspin. So we spent some time on that. It’s almost tempting to turn him into a forehand hitter (perhaps with pips) with a looping backhand, like Sweden’s Mattias Falck, who made the final of Men’s Singles at the 2019 World Championships and won Men’s Doubles at the 2021 World’s. But it’s a myth that pips-out players don’t topspin the ball – they actually stroke up and forward at contact to generate enough topspin to control the ball, just not as much as an inverted looper. Anyway, let’s see how this player develops.

Another was the opposite – a looping forehand but one of the flattest backhands I’ve ever seen. He basically stabbed at the ball. The problem was that in simple drills, he could make some nice backhand kills with this shot – but there’s no margin for error, and it’s unlikely he could make these shots consistently in game situations. So we worked on adding a little topspin to that shot.

Tip of the Week
Why Rapidly Improving Players Often Don't Have Good Serves - and Getting the Best of Both Worlds.

USATT Coaching Certification
As of this morning, there are 101 USATT certified coaches. This is actually up from previous numbers, which have been mostly in the 80s the last few years. But it’s a far cry from the 318 we had when I left as USATT Coaching Chair five years ago in 2019, my second tenure as coaching chair. (I stayed on as a member of the coaching committee until 2023 when I was term-limited out.) How did we lose over 2/3 of our certified coaches? Three primary reasons in my opinion.

Tip of the Week
Adjust in One Game.

Weekend Coaching and Training
This weekend was lazy feet day, as I was all over a number of players who weren’t moving their feet. With the beginning/intermediate players, the emphasis is on the reflexively stepping toward the ball instead of leaning. I demonstrated that once you lean in the direction of the ball, your weight goes on that foot and you can’t really move anymore. With the more advanced players, it’s more about having active feet where they move every shot, even if it’s just inches.

During a serving session, I challenged the players to serve backspin so the ball came to a stop on the table, or even bounced backwards. I first demonstrated that to do this, you need to really brush the bottom of the ball -  many players try doing this by hitting the midway between the bottom and back of the ball, which leads to a light backspin at most. Two kids did it for the first time, while others are now determined to do so.

Using my best fake Russian accent, I tried to convince the kids my name was Yuri Vil, a world champion coach from Russia. They quickly figured out that “Coach Yuri Vil” is “Coach You’re Evil.”

Tips of the Week

USATT Election and Team Trials
Page down for segments on them. I decided to start with the more positive stuff.

No Blog Next Week
I’ll be out of town Oct. 6-11 (Sunday through Friday). I’ll be competing in the Huntsman World Senior Games on Mon & Tue (Oct. 7-8) in Saint George, Utah. Then I fly directly to Houston for the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame Inductions and Banquet on Thursday (Oct. 10), where I’ll be doing the presentation for Dennis Taylor. I’ll write about this in my next blog in two weeks. I think you can still sign up – lots of US TT celebrities will be there!

Tip of the Week
How to Play the No-Spin Ball.

Tip of the Week
The Only Thing That Matters.

Weekend Coaching, Tips, Training, and My Right Foot
I had a busy week, both coaching and playing. I coached the Intermediate junior group on both Saturday and Sunday, and the Elite Group on Sunday. With the Intermediate group, besides the usual stroking and footwork drills, we did a lot of service practice. One kid, age about eight, had a breakthrough – he can now serve a heavy enough backspin serve that it stops on the table and rolls backwards. He’s pretty excited about it. Then I really opened his eyes by explaining and demonstrating a “heavy no-spin” serve – so now he’s practicing that. (The key to heavy no-spin is making it look like it’s actually heavy backspin, so the opponent opens his racket and pops the ball up. You do this by using the same fast motion as heavy backspin, but contact the ball near the handle.)

One kid was struggling with his forehand – he extended his arm almost straight from the shoulder. I had him bring it in, even exaggerate a much shorter stroke, and he quickly develop a much more consistent and reliable forehand – hit one hundred of them while doing side-to-side footwork.

Tip of the Week
Written Coaching Material for Table Tennis.

Weekend Coaching and My Own Training and Dieting
When I told the kids in my multiball groups on Saturday and Sunday that, no matter what, they were not to hit my water bottle (which I’d conveniently placed on the table), they of course knew exactly what to do. Well, most of them. I did have to quietly whisper to the youngest in the group, a girl about age 6, that when I tell them, “Don’t you dare hit my water bottle!” that what I really meant was, “Hit my water bottle.”) I always find it best to keep it fun while teaching the foundations of the sport, and hitting targets (and my exaggerated exclamations of unhappiness when they do) are all just part of that. So is my constantly changing name. This past weekend I claimed I was “Coach Go Away,” and you can guess how that came off.

My water bottle took a beating. I also had to petulantly walk off a few times when they called me. (“Coach, go away!”)

Tip of the Week
Plan Your One-Minute Break.

Weekend Coaching, Playing, Aching, and a New Player
COACHING. . . In the Beginning/Intermediate session, I spent a lot of time as a practice partner, with the players rotating so I hit with many of them. As usual, we did lots of footwork drills. I always explain the purpose of a drill, something many coaches don’t bother with. Kids are curious, and letting them know why a certain drill is important gives them a reason to work harder at it. A good example is the 2-1 drill, also known as the forehand-forehand-backhand drill or the Falkenburg drill. That’s a three-shot drill as follows: Backhand from backhand corner; forehand from backhand corner; forehand from forehand corner; and repeat. As I explain, this covers the three most common moves in table tennis – covering the wide forehand, covering the wide backhand, and the step around forehand from the backhand side. (The drill usually starts with the backhand.) We also did a lot of serve practice.

Tip of the Week
If Serving Practice is Drudgery Then Perhaps Your Serves Are Too Simple.

Getting in Shape and Out of Retirement
On Aug. 1, 2024, just one month ago, as I flew to Scotland for 18 days, I weighed 210. (I’m 5'10', age 64.) That tied me for the most I’ve ever weighed. I’ve been around 205 for most of the last few years. And it’s cost me – I’ve had a number of matches (in hardbat events) where I might have won except I simply couldn’t move as well as I should, and worse, I’d be out of breath during the match and my legs would simply die. I blew the biggest lead I’ve ever blown against a really strong player in one match when, at the end of the match, I was completely out of breath and my legs had the energy of wet spaghetti. It also was a reason why I avoided regular sponge matches – I was too out of shape to play effectively.

Tips of the Week
Since I’ve been out of town and not blogging for the last five weeks you may have missed the Tips of the Week that still went up every Monday. Here they are!