One-Sided Coaching

Had an interesting coaching session with 10-year-old Daniel yesterday. He’s about 1700 level, but tends to play way too passive in matches, and so we spend nearly all our time working on his attack – especially his opening loops, forehand or backhand.

When we were warming up for our session yesterday he was looping to my block, and kept going into the net. It was rather noticeable that the ball was sliding off his forehand sponge. I checked it, and sure enough, the surface was rather slick – it was worn out. The rubber on the other side was fine. He had a backup – his dad’s – but it had a slow sponge on one side. So with either racket he had one side that wasn’t really usable. (He’s getting new sponge today.)

What to do? We spent most of the 90-minute session doing one-sided drills, where he’d play all forehand or all backhand. We skipped ones where he’d have to do both forehand and backhands. For example, in multiball, I had him do a lot of side-to-side forehand looping off both backspin and topspin. Then I’d feed backspin to his backhand, then a quick topspin to his forehand, and he had to loop them all with his forehand. We did similar backhand drills.

Result? Perhaps because he was so focused on just one side at a time he had perhaps his best shot-making session ever. If he could bring into match play the shots he was doing yesterday, things might get scary!!!

NBC News

I’m off this morning to the club for a taping with NBC News and Navin Kumar, he of the Parkinson’s and mechanical heart. More on this tomorrow. (I had to get up at 6AM to do this blog…)

Thoughts on the Plastic Ball

Here’s the new coaching article by Han Xiao, where he analyzes how it has changed the game.

How to Serve Faster

Tip of the Week

What to Think About in a Match.

MDTTC Featured in Montgomery County Magazine

This is the Olympic Sport of . . . Table Tennis came out over the weekend, featuring my club, the Maryland Table Tennis Center. The player pictured - and one of the main ones featured - is Ryan Dabbs, 11, who I’ll be coaching at the U.S. Open. To get that picture of him smashing a winner I lobbed up about 50 balls, one at a time, with him smashing and cameraman taking pictures until he got the perfect shot.

Weekend Coaching Sessions

It was another busy coaching weekend. In the junior class on Sunday, we did a LOT of side-to-side footwork, just forehand to backhand, with the focus on grip. Why? Because I’d noticed a number of the kids changing their grips for forehand and backhand. They needed to find a grip where they could hit both forehands and backhands with little grip change. (Some minor grip changes are okay, but not a lot.)

In the adult training session we did a lot of down-the-line practice. A number of players were trying to hit their forehands down the line with contorted upper body and arm movements, so we spent time working on that – hitting down the line is no problem if you position yourself properly (right foot more back, more shoulder rotation) and time the ball right (a little later, by the back leg). We finished the session with a lot of service practice.

Vision and Growing the Sport

Success at developing table tennis, and anything else, involves three things: Vision, Planning, and Implementation. If you want to be a successful leader, be a VIP – Vision, and Implementation after Planning. (Should I trademark that? I just made it up!) If you don’t know where you are trying to go, you won’t get there. If you don’t plan on how to get there, you won’t get there. If you don’t implement your plan, it won’t happen and you won’t get there. Two out of three doesn’t cut it.

Someone can be successful without all three if they are in partnership with someone who complements them so that, together, they have all three. Or one can do perhaps two of these three things, be successful on a small scale, and claim victory while others are pulling out their hair in frustration.

In my 39 years in table tennis, nothing has been more frustrating than to watch leaders unable to understand this simple concept, or to watch those few who did understand it meet up with this opposition. I’m sort of flabbergasted that after all these years, I got fed up and ran for the board – and lo and behold, our new CEO Gordon Kaye, does understand this concept. Here’s an example.

Bernie Bukiet in USATT Insider

The profile on Bernie Bukiet by Tim Boggan was in yesterday’s issue of USATT Insider, which is emailed to USATT members and to those who sign up for free subscriptions. Many “old timers” who knew Bernie well still miss him – I’m told he was one of the great sportsmen of his time. Take some time to read about this past great, and others in the USATT Hall of Fame. (Here’s a nice picture of Bernie.)

Dave Sakai, a great friend of Bernie’s, called me yesterday to talk to Tim Boggan about it, since Tim is staying with me while we work on the next volume in his History of U.S. Table Tennis series. (Dave had introduced me to Bernie many years ago the one time I met Bernie before his death, alas, in 1995.) Tim says that Dave, like Tim in the past, was nearly in tears about it, since Bernie was so loved by all who knew him.

Help! I’m Being Held Prisoner!!!

For the past nine days I’ve been held prisoner in my house by the 84-year-old man pictured here, a ruthless slave-driver and sadist. Each day he holds a racket to my head in a threatening manner and forces me to sit at my desk from 5AM to 2:30PM, coercing me into changing historical photos and designing the pages for some 1988-89 historical book that’s mostly a constant repetition of the words Boggan, Seemiller, Butler, O’Neill, Onifade, Teekaveeraki, Gee, and Bhushan. It must be some kind of code; I have no idea what these words mean. He assures me we’ll finish this weekend, but I don’t trust him.

At 2:30, he takes custody of my computer, with links to all my accounts, and threatens to use his extensive computer knowledge to delete all my books at Amazon. And then I am forced to go to a local table tennis club and play ping-pong with the cohorts of this man, hour after hour, day after day, with no respite. They keep calling me “coach,” but I think that’s code for “You are our prisoner and will do as you are told.”

Strangely, many of his henchman appear to be children, many of them Chinese, and they are all armed with ping-pong paddles. They seem to know how to use them; I am very afraid. I believe that they became this person’s partner in crime when he visited China back in 1971 – he is so arrogant that he even wrote about his experiences there, in a book and in Time Magazine, practically daring the U.S. State Department to come after him – but after meeting him, they too are afraid of him

Top Ten Craziest Shots I’ve Ever Done

Some of the kids I coach were talking about the craziest shots they’ve ever done. So I’ve compiled my Top Ten list. How about you?

Tip of the Week

Fast No-Spin Serve to the Elbow. (Having trouble learning to do this serve? If you see me at a tournament or club, I’ll demonstrate.)

Balancing the Three Big Interests in a Big Event

With the US Open coming up, once again the triangulation needed between the three big interests is important. Who are the three big interests?

"Ping Pong’s First Fantasy Novel a Smashing Read!"

Here’s the review from MH Table Tennis. Disclosure: It’s my novel!!! (And that’s why it goes first in my blog.) There’s also a 5-star review at Amazon:

“A fascinating story of an American wanting to be the best in the world of table tennis, going to China for some magical and intriguing training sessions, and how he eventually achieved his hard-earned success. The best part is in the journey of it - vivid, colorful descriptions of the matches, processes, psyches, and sometimes point-by-point analysis. This was a real page-turner, and was one of the best binges I've been on.”

As noted in my blog yesterday, there have also been news items at the below:

• ITTF News Item
• Butterfly News Item
• USATT Insider
• Something in Chinese. This was translated for me by someone who wished to remain anonymous:

Foreigner publishes new ping pong-themed book The Spirit of Pong, with way-cool cover.

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.