Blogs

Larry Hodges' Blog and Tip of the Week will normally go up on Mondays by 2:00 PM USA Eastern time. Larry is a member of the U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame, a USATT Certified National Coach, a professional coach at the Maryland Table Tennis Center (USA), and author of ten books and over 2100 articles on table tennis, plus over 1900 blogs and over 600 tips. Here is his bio. (Larry was awarded the USATT Lifetime Achievement Award in July, 2018.)

Make sure to order your copy of Larry's best-selling book, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers!
Finally, a tactics book on this most tactical of sports!!!

Also out - Table Tennis Tips, More Table Tennis Tips, Still More Table Tennis Tips, and Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips, which cover, in logical progression, his Tips of the Week from 2011-2023, with 150 Tips in each!

Or, for a combination of Tales of our sport and Technique articles, try Table Tennis Tales & Techniques. If you are in the mood for inspirational fiction, The Spirit of Pong is also out - a fantasy story about an American who goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis, trains with the spirits of past champions, and faces betrayal and great peril as he battles for glory but faces utter defeat. Read the First Two Chapters for free!

October 5, 2026

Tip of the Week
Coaching Against Yourself.

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September 28, 2026

Next Blog Oct. 12
I’ll be out of town Oct. 4-9 at the Huntsman World Senior Games. But the Tip of the Week will still go up on Monday, Oct. 5.

Tip of the Week
Complex Versus Simple Tactics.

People’s Daily Table Tennis Video
Here’s the video (2:54) about table tennis, US-China relations, and Ping-Pong Diplomacy. They came to MDTTC and interviewed us. I speak on the video several times – but my voice is hoarse as I’m battling a cold. They did an excellent job! (Video works on my phone, and was working on my computer, but now I’m having trouble getting it to run on my computer – I’m getting some sort of QR Code that has to be scanned.)

One thing - they cut off parts of my answers to save time. I mentioned going to China for a senior team tournament last year, but I was also there for the 2005 Worlds. They asked about sightseeing in DC, and I mention the White House and museums, but I spoke a bit more on things to visit at the National Mall, including the Capitol, the various memorials, and more on the museums.

Weekend Coaching
I had a long weekend, coaching in five junior group training sessions, eight hours total. I did a combination of walk-around coaching, feeding multiball, and some as a practice partner.

One thing that came up a number of times is recovery after playing a forehand from the wide forehand or backhand. So often players do these shots, go off-balance or recover slowly, and can’t get to the next ball on the other corner – and they think they’re slow. Nope, they simply didn’t recover properly. Here are two Tips on this:

Working with a group of the younger kids – ages 5-7 – is both the most fun and most nerve-wracking. It’s like herding hyperactive Tanzanian Devils on jackhammers while freefalling in a tornado. But if you successfully get their attention, you can trick them into having a great workout and rapidly improving. One player did one hundred side-to-side forehands in a row for the first time.

I ended two sessions with my infamous “worm juice.” As I explain to them, each morning my lawn is covered with big, fat worms. So, I gather them all in my arms and squeeze their guts out into a bowl, and put it in a bottle – worm juice. (Okay, it’s green Gatorade poured into a water bottle, with the label taken off.) I put it on the table, and they rapidly rotate, three shots each, from the backhand corner, middle, and forehand corner, then rotate around for their next turn. If they hit the bottle, I have to drink the worm juice. I point out to them that I know they are too nice to actually hit the bottle – “Friends don’t make friends drink worm juice” – and besides, as I keep repeating, “You’re not good enough to hit the bottle!” Of course, they are determined to hit the bottle, and I end up drinking a lot of worm juice. And now they can’t wait to come back to our next training session!

I also had them take turns, rapid-fire, seeing how many shots it took them to knock a plastic bowl off the table. The younger kids practice their fast serves, using my two big rubber frogs as targets.

In one session, I was playing points with a kid. He suddenly made a really good flip return of my serve for a winner, catching me off guard. I said, “Stop receiving before I’m ready to serve!”

Huntsman World Senior Championships
They are in St. George, Utah, Oct. 5-8. There will be about 12,000 athletes from 91 countries in 40 sports, including 221 table tennis players. I leave early on Sunday morning (Oct. 4), returning on Friday. I’ve been training pretty hard for this, both for the regular sponge events as well as hardbat. I’m in six events: Men’s Singles 65-69; Men’s Doubles 65-69 (with Rudy Miranda); Mixed Doubles 60-64 (with Jenny Urquiola – I’m playing down an age division, which is allowed); Elite Singles (Over 50); Hardbat Singles 65-74; and Hardbat Doubles (with Mark Kraut). Results will be in Omnipong. 

I was training three times/week (one hour each) with MDTTC coach Lidney Castro, playing practice matches, shadow-practicing, and lifting weight for nearly an hour, three times a week, with lots of stretching, plus many hours of serve practice. The downside is that I came down with a very bad cold, and was mostly out for ten days until late last week. I’m back to training, but I’m still a bit tired from battling that cold. But I should be fine for the tournament. I’ll have an easier training schedule this week as I want to be energized for the tournament. Unless something bad happens this week, this will be the first time in three years I’ve played this tournament without an injury coming in. (Currently my right foot, right knee, right side, right shoulder, right arm, and right upper back all seem in perfect working order – notice a pattern there?)

Major League Table Tennis

Butterfly Training Videos

New from Matt Hetherington

Want to Win More Table Tennis Matches? This Is the Key.
Here’s the video (1:29) from PP Table Tennis

Great in training, poor in matches? Are you training with the wrong spin intensity?
Here’s the article from Tom Lodziak.

New from Acceleraq

New from PingSkills

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich
Dozens of new videos!

New from Biomechanics Applied to Table Tennis

12 Lessons & Stories You Need to See
Here’s the video (8:09) from Doctor Karol Table Tennis.

How I Prepare for WTT: Pro Interviews & My First Win vs China
Here’s the video (22:09) from Andreas Levenko.

New from GlobalTTStudio

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

5 Things to Know Before You Head to the 2026 U.S. Open
Here’s the USATT news item.

Ready...SET...GOOO (NCTTA Registration is open)
Here’s the news item from the National Collegiate TTA.

ICTTF Appoints Jiaxin Li as China Director to Lead New Classic Series
Here’s the news item from the International Classic Table Tennis Federation.

New from ITTF

No Rules, Just Ping-Pong
Here’s the video (2:55) – another Mr. Bean episode!

I Challenged World No.19 Flavien Coton!
Here’s the video (10:50) from Table Tennis Daily!

Crazy Rally With Everything
Here’s the video (27 sec) – this rally between two regular club players had everything!

Beat Me, Win €100 [Germany]
Here’s the video (14:58) from Adam Bobrow!

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September 21, 2026

Tip of the Week
Are You a Tree or a Squirrel?

Alas, I've been sick in bed the last few days, and it's getting worse. No blog this week. 

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September 14, 2026

Tip of the Week
Playing the Fisher.

Weekend Coaching – Working with Younger Players
There’s a natural progression when training junior players. But it’s easier for a coach to treat them all mostly the same, or just stick them in a multiball group where they all do repetitive stroking and footwork drills. You likely make adjustments for beginning players who can’t yet do anything beyond basic strokes, but then you just have them drill and Drill and DRILL. That’s a quick way to shut off the flow of enthusiastic players who love the sport and who will practice hard and become strong players. As I’ve written here before, telling kids ages 5-10 and often older that if they train hard, they can become top players, is usually counterproductive unless you also give them a reason to want to become top players. And that means having them do age-appropriate drills. You can’t expect a five-year-old to do 90 minutes of drills several times a week and end up an enthusiastic player who wants to be great. You just end up with a bored kid who wants to switch sports or watch video games.

But the two aren’t in any way contradictory. Instead of having them do “boring” side to side drills, have them do the same drills – but with targets on the table that you challenge them to hit. (Or, in my case, I warn them not to hit it – which, of course, gives them great incentive to hit it.) They end up getting the same practice while wanting to come back and do it even more. That’s how you develop enthusiastic future top players and likely lifelong participants.

The amazing thing is that if you do this when they are younger and first starting out, as they get older they quickly grow out of it and become serious players who work hard to improve. After that first year or so, they no longer need targets, though they are still valuable tools in some cases. They become more self-motivated as they both love the sport and want to improve.

I spent much of the weekend working with the four youngest kids in our junior class. Two were five, two were seven. They smacked many water bottles, knocked over many stacked cups, and clobbered our poor rubber frogs over and over. With the plastic bottle, I simply have them do normal footwork drills as I feed multiball, while they try to hit the water bottle, which on this past weekend I told them was a 10,000-year-old one from China, worth $10,000, so please, Please, PLEASE do not hit and damage it! When they do, I pretend shock. They are FAR more enthusiastic about this then if there is no target. (With four players, I usually do two at a time, alternating a drill, usually about three shots each, with two doing ball pickup. With three, only one is on ball pickup.) As to the frogs, I have two of them (from Amazon), which I put at the far corners of the table for beginners and younger kids to practice their fast, deep serves. I have them count how many times they hit the frog, and how many times they smack it in the nose.) With plastic cups, there are two options. You can have them work together to build a giant pyramid or wall on one side, and then you feed multiball as they knock it down. Or you stack ten of them in a pyramid, and they each get ten shots to see how many they can knock down. They have fun, and without realizing it, they get lots of stroking, footwork, and accuracy practice!

Table Tennis Master Larry Hodges on Strategy, Longevity & Coaching Champions
Here’s the interview with me (32:40) from Huntsman World Senior Games and Active Life. This is in advance of the Huntsman World Senior Championships in Saint George, UT, Oct. 5-8, where I’ll be competing in a number of events, both sponge and hardbat.

Major League Table Tennis

New from MH Table Tennis/Matt Hetherington

Butterfly Training and Highlight Videos

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

New From the Table Tennis Teaching Channel

New from GlobalTTStudio

New from Acceleraq

Can Zhang Jike Fix My Backhand Flick In 7 Days?
Here’s the video (10:34) from Table Tennis Daily.

Four Steps to Learning the Forehand
Here’s the video (21 sec) from Liu Wenyu.

You’ll Never Master the Reverse Pendulum Without These 3 Details
Here’s the video (5:01) from Andrea Levenko.

How to Attack Half-Long Backspin | Why Right Foot First?
Here’s the video (11 min) from Ti Long.

Is the Level in the USA Really That High?
Here’s the video (15:37) from Enzo Angles.

The Game Between the Points
Here’s the coaching article by Di Liu.

New from PingSkills
Ask the Coach.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from ITTF

MotoraidoEng Table Tennis
Here’s a Facebook page devoted to spectacular and trick table tennis shots – from a motorcycle repair shop!

Anything But a Ping-Pong Paddle
Here’s the video (15 sec)!

Everyone Laughs At The New Guy Until The #1 TABLE TENNIS Player Can't Score A SINGLE POINT On Him!
Here’s the video (1 hr 32 min) – I haven’t watched it yet.

Move Over Marty Supreme, It’s Mr Bean’s Time to Shine!
Here’s the animated video (3:03) from Mr. Bean and Table Tennis England!

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September 7, 2026

Tips of the Week
Here are all the Tips of the Week I put up during my seven weeks away. (A nine-day writing workshop, followed by my European Tour - see below.) As noted before, I’m taking a break from creating new Tips, and am going through previous ones.

European Sightseeing
I was in Europe Aug. 6-28, sightseeing in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, plus short stops in Netherlands and Poland (which I visited for several days back in 2019). I’ve now been to 37 countries, as well as all 50 US states. I could write many pages about this trip, but this is a table tennis blog, so I’ll keep it short. The main tour was a 13-day Nordic guided tour (with 38 people) of the first three above – DEN, NOR, SWE, and FIN, the Copenhagen to Helsinki tour. I did a lot of sightseeing on my own as well, and walked the streets of the major cities, including:

  • Netherlands: Amsterdam
  • Denmark: Copenhagen, Odense, Aarhus, Hirtshals
  • Norway: Bergen, Flam, Oslo
  • Sweden: Karlsta, Örebro – Stockholm
  • Finland: Helsinki
  • Poland: Warsaw
  • Czech Republic: Ostrava, Prague
  • Slovakia: Bratislava

In my ongoing search for Dr Pepper whenever I travel, I have concluded that Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia are uncivilized (no Dr Pepper). It took four days, but I found one on the last day in Denmark, so I guess they are semi-civilized. I found on the first day in Sweden, so they are civilized. :) I also collected a massive number of souvenir magnets from all the major places I visited. 

I played in the Czech Classic Open in Ostrava on Aug. 23, competing in Over 40 and Over 60 Hardbat. (I think Ostrava is the center of European Classic TT - hardbat, sandpaper, wood.) I went 10-1 in matches, getting the bronze in Over 60 (don’t get me started on that SF match...), but dropped out of Over 40 in the QF when my knee started bothering me – I didn’t want to take the chance of injuring it further, especially since I was exhausted, and that’s when most injuries occur.

Here are the 37 countries I’ve been to, in order: USA, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan (let’s not bicker), Japan, China, Bahamas, Portugal, Ireland, England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Vatican City, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Egypt, Panama, Ecuador, Jordan, Austria, Dominican Republic, Scotland, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia.

Weekend Coaching
I worked with our elite junior group for two hours on Sunday. I’d say the focus for that session was balance and recovery. When players can’t get to a ball – often to the wide forehand – they almost always say they were out of position or just too slow. Actually, almost always it’s because they were off balance on the previous shot, and so recovered too slowly.

I also had two group sessions with our intermediate group, which actually includes our beginners. I spent one whole session with three kids ages 5, 6, and 8. I could have run drill after Drill after DRILL – and that’s exactly what I did. But instead of boring them to death and either turning them into zombies who don’t really want to play or driving them to another sport, after about 45 minutes I put targets on the table (mostly my water bottle), and had them do drills while aiming at them for the last 45 minutes. (“Don’t you DARE hit my rare, thousand-dollar water bottle,” I’d say – and, of course, that just motivates them to do so.) THAT’s how you get kids that age excited about playing, and THAT’s how you develop self-motivated kids who want to play and become champions.

Butterfly Review of “Ping-Pong Paddles Can’t Talk!”
Here’s the review, by Steve Hopkins. You mean you haven’t bought a copy yet??? Here’s where you can buy it from Butterfly!

Table Tennis History – September Issue
Here’s the new issue!

Three Table Tennis Coaches That Changed History
Here’s the video (1:52).

Five Things Every Beginner Should Know
Here’s the video (21 sec) from Liu Wenyu.

Why I Never Became a Professional Table Tennis Player
Here’s the video (32:30) from Matt Hetherington. Here’s a 36-sec excerpt.

Coaching and News from All Over
Since I’ve been away for a while, rather than linking to everything that’s happened, here are links to major table tennis sites that have new items. Have fun!

Conga Pong in Paris
Here’s the video (17 sec) from Ping Pong Pang Crew!

She Beat Me at 11. Now She's World #1 in U13, U15 and U17.
Here’s the video (14:16) from Adam Bobrow!

World’s Easiest Trickshots… But Only 1 Try
Here’s the video (14:42) from Pongfinity!

Non-Table Tennis – Science Fiction & Fantasy Sales & Publications
I’ve sold ten different stories to Black Cat Weekly – and they’ve published three this past month. Here they are!  (You have to buy the issue to read it.)

  • The Long Adventures of Captain Quick (Aug. 2, 2026) - Captain Quick is a superhero who keeps getting killed – but if he can survive as a ghost for 70 billion years through the next Big Crunch and Big Bang and learn from his mistakes, he’ll get another chance. And another. And another. How long will it take him to defeat the Punner, the Puzzler, and the Puffin?
  • Comic-in-Chief (Aug. 30, 2026) - The US presidency has reached the point where it's purely entertainment, with the current president a standup comedian who does a nightly routine. When he's challenged by an even better entertainer - a literal clown - he must decide how to meet the challenge.
  • The Pleading Eyes of the Screaming Lettuce (Sept. 6, 2026) - With Earth about to be destroyed, an alien robot probe can only save the most worthy sapient life. How to choose? And why does food and medicine all over the planet suddenly start talking and making friends with perplexed people? The two are connected!

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August 31, 2026

Tip of the Week
Play Into the Weird Stuff.

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August 24, 2026

Tip of the Week
Pushing: Five out of Six Doesn't Cut It.

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August 17, 2026

Tip of the Week
A Levels Approach to Tactics.

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August 10, 2026

Tip of the Week
A Journey of Nine Feet Begins at Contact.

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August 3, 2026 Tip of the Week

Tip of the Week
Exaggerate the Opposite Motion on Serves.

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