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I play competitive table tennis. I go to a club 2-3 times a week that’s run by a retired University professor and his lovely wife. He lives in a nice house on the outskirts of town and he’s converted most of his considerable basement into a table tennis club.

He’s covered the walls with pictures of world-class table tennis players, and with pictures of us. He helps train us for events and he has pictures of all the regulars doing their trademark shots. And if we go to a tournament and get a trophy, we get another picture in the winners area.

A few things are warming about the whole situation. First is the fact that they open their home to all of us (over a dozen regulars) three nights a week. Second is the fact that his wife (also a University professor) prepares multiple, massive bowls of fresh fruit for us each evening that we play. And on top of that she bakes fresh cookies or cakes — every single time we meet.

But most intriguing are the people that come to play. We have everyone from car salesmen to IT professionals to medical doctors, and we represent a myriad of countries and cultures. The United States, the Caribbean, Iran, India, Pakistan, China — to name a few. And those are just the regulars. Hal (our host) regularly invites a number of international players to come and play at the club as well.

Outside, many of the people from these countries are openly hostile to each other. But inside that basement Hal has created a refuge — a sanctuary immune to the absurdity of reality. It’s incredible to watch what happens to the room after an interesting and spirited exchange. The whole room lights up with cheers and applause and laughter. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. Inside that basement we see a glimpse of what life should be like everywhere on the planet.

It’s actually sad when you wake from the moment only to realize that outside our little world people are killing each other over the stupidest things. I just wish more could see what Hal has created here. I wish more could sample our little slice of civilization.:

Oh, hell yeah.

I knew I shouldn’t have sold my Wii…now I have to find another one. Figured they be everywhere by now…

I am sort of a non-standard type of guy: I don’t like American Football, Basketball, or Baseball. My favorite participation sport is Table Tennis — a sport that’s quite unpopular in the U.S. (since it’s not done properly).

Well there’s another sport that’s a lot like Table Tennis in that it has a loyal following and is often confused with a lesser activity — Footbag. I actually had a guy show up on the blog and post about the sport, and then like a week later I ran into someone (at a Table Tennis tournament no less) who played as well.

Check out this video of it being done properly:

http://tinyurl.com/9uald

Yeah, this sport is for real. They have tournaments and the whole bit. It’s pretty hardcore if you ask me.

I am not good at finding and exploiting weaknesses in my opponents. This is true of any game I play, but I’m noticing it quite a bit in Table Tennis.

I find I have trouble beating people that are considered easy — even to people that I usually win against. Why? Because they see the person’s flaws and take advantage of them and I do not.

I am going to try and work on this.

I’ve figured out something major about generating power when looping in Table Tennis. I touched on it briefly in a previous post, but wanted to tighten my thoughts with a follow-up.

The failure to generate true power when looping comes from a simple, catastrophic mistake — performing a loop motion rather than simply coiling and swinging.

This distinction cannot be overstated.

I have briefly been exposed to this fact a couple of times in the past, but I never “got it” for some reason. I never realized what people meant when they said “let go”. Now I do.

Essentially, a true power shot has no boundaries or form when being executed. It ends up having a form, but it doesn’t follow one.

That’s the key. When an expert looper executes a powerful spin attack, they are really just coiling their body and releasing that energy into the ball. They aren’t “doing” a loop stroke, which is what 95% of players do (including myself up until last week).

The moment you try and “do a motion” or “perform a stroke”, you completely confine yourself in terms of power. A person doing this is restricted, tight, and wholly lacking in spin and speed.

What you have to do is coil and swing, but in a disciplined, technical way. That seems like a contradiction, but it’s not; the trick is that none of the discipline or technique is actively applied during the shot; at that point it’s already muscle memory. So during the shot it’s simply a coil and uncoil; the loop form that so many strive for comes naturally.

On The Table

So the next time you want to practice looping, try this:

• Get a picture of a good loop stroke looks like, i.e. a Waldner or Liquin example with the excellent body turn and weight transfer. Let the image soak in, then put it out of your mind.
• Tell yourself that for the rest of the night you’re not going to “loop”, but instead just “swing” at the ball.
• For the swing itself (we’re not calling it a loop yet), do these simple steps:

1. Coil the body fully. You want your shoulders roughly perpendicular to the end of the table.
2. When the ball comes, just unload on it. Don’t “loop” — just uncoil on it at full speed. Whip your body all the way around (almost violently) while transferring your weight forward to your front foot and grazing the ball. Think raw. Think wild.

It will seem completely uncontrolled and very different from your regular “loop motion”. That’s good. And you’ll probably miss a lot. That’s fine too.

Keep it up, and focus on staying raw. Within a few shots you’re going to land one of them, and when you do you’ll see the surprise on your opponent’s face. Your ball is going to have a silly amount of spin on it compared to your normal shot, and it’s going to come at your opponent a whole lot faster as well.

True looping requires a relaxed, loose movement and feels completely different from “trying to follow a loop motion”. Once you experience it you’ll see a night and day difference between it and what you were doing before, and at that point you’ll be looping.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m back playing Table Tennis. The group I’m playing with now is the best I’ve ever been exposed to, and my drive to improve my game has never been stronger (it’s hard to get motivated to excel at technique when no one can even return your serve). With this group I get beat more often than not; it’s an excellent environment for me to grow in.

Anyway, my main focus now is on properly generating power, i.e. using the correct technical movement to do so. The study of how to do this is precisely why I love the sport so much. Effectively generating speed (and especially spin) is euphoric.

My latest realization, or re-realization actually, is that tension kills power.

This is a “re-realization” because this is the sort of concept that I already “know”, but am unable to transfer into action. Basically, when I see my serve come back long with underspin (just how I wanted it), I immediately tense up as I get into position to loop.

After I execute I realize immediately that my shot was neither that fast nor that spinny. Why? Because I was all tight and restricted. I know this, I kick myself for it, but the next time I get back a return where I want it I do the same damn thing.

I have the same problem in Golf, actually, which makes this more than a post about Table Tennis. It’s natural for people to associate power with tension. I find with my Golf shots that when I “don’t try” — especially with my short irons — I can hit some incredible shots. I am at the point now where I tee off for most par 3′s with no more than a pitching wedge. That’s roughly 150 yards or so (the tee helps) with ease. I am not tight, I don’t swing hard, I just do the motion.

When I do this it feels absolutely amazing. I get the perfect Titleist click with no vibration in the club and my ball goes flying like I wound up and swung as hard as I could. Of course when I try to swing hard, I can’t get half of that power. But over and over I have to remind myself of this. I go for entire days struggling with consistency and power until I force myself to “start over” with the basics and relax.

So that brings me to Table Tennis. I am doing the exact same thing there, only my loop form probably isn’t even as good as my 9 iron shot — which is sad since TT is my favorite sport.

Ultimately the problem is simple — I’m still associating power with tension.

Once I can break this mental link I’m going to become very dangerous. I am starting to see the power of a relaxed grip in practice, but once I get into a match I tighten up to generate power. I simply have to figure out how to make a full turn, a full uncoil motion, and remain loose during the entire process.

The frisbee throw is really a good analogy for the backhand. Imagine trying to throw a frisbee a long distance if you kept your throwing hand tight and controlling. You couldn’t. The power of the throw comes from the ability to release fully from the coil. Once I subconsciously make that connection in Table Tennis my rating’s going to jump by a few hundred points almost overnight.

I realized something about myself tonight that’s worth noting.

It seems that when I approach a skill (say Table Tennis) I focus so much on being a student of the discipline that I almost ignore the element of competition altogether. That may not sound bad, but it is.

Essentially, when I study things, I study to master my technique. I don’t study to win. I want to win, or at least it would be nice to win, but it is far more important to me that I flawlessly execute my movements.

One could argue that I am not focused on the right thing for competition. I noticed this in my last tournament. I was working on doing x or y in my game, and I was losing. After one of the games a guy came up to me and said, “Why do you keep going to his forehand? He’s got a wicked shot on that side and he almost never misses! Don’t go over there!”

It was quite profound. I realized then that I wasn’t even paying attention to how to beat the guy. I found myself thinking, “Yeah, maybe I could beat him if I did that, but I should be able to beat him going to his forehand.” In short, in my mind I wasn’t winning because I wasn’t playing good enough.

To put it another way, finding the other guy’s weakness isn’t attractive to me. What I want to do is develop my own strengths instead — and subsequently overpower my opponent doing what I want to do. It’s utterly inefficent to do this without also attacking places where your opponent is weak.

I contrast this to my buddy Ken. He’s a competitor of the highest caliber. He’s the type to finds a new hobby and is competing in it at the regional level within a few months (when others would take years to do the same). He focuses directly on victory in competition. He masters technique as well, but the whole time he’s studying it, he’s studying with one goal in mind — winning. So if an opponent presents a weakness, he’s going to see it and be able to take advantage. I don’t seem to do that by default.

Perhaps I should do so more. I don’t want to do it so much that I lose what I love about my sport, but perhaps it’d be fun to win more often.

Well, it’s been humbling. I got to play with a large University team tonight and it was a masacre. I’m quite sure what was done to me is illegal in certain places. If it isn’t, it should be.

I might get into hackeysack.

So as one can tell from a recent post, I’m back into my favorite sport — table tennis. As can be expected, I’m hitting some sites and seeing if I can pick up any perls of wisdom. Well, while I was doing so just now I made a stunning realization.

The last time I studied table tennis, i.e. when I got started, I was not on the Internet yet!

Was there ever such a time? No Internet? Inconceivable. I honestly am unsure as to how I made it so long without it.

Well, I’ve found a club and am now able to get back into my favorite (participation) sport. I’m highly enthused.

I’ve been out of the game for like 8 months due to my move and everything, but I didn’t seem to have much rust when playing for the first time last night (and I didn’t even have my own paddle). I’ve ordered a new paddle and some accessories to herald my return:

• Donic Waldner Dicon Blade (my all-time favorite)
• Butterfly Sriver G2 Rubber (both sides)
• Table Tennis bag (Butterfly)
• Paddle case (Butterfly)
• Rubber cleaner (Butterfly)
• Cleaning sponges (Butterfly)
• Ball containers (Nitakku)
• Three-star balls (Nitakku)

Good stuff.

So evidently, based on my performance last night, I’ve been invited to a private club in some guy’s basement. He supposedly has three tables and tons of room, and is rather selective about who he lets join his little group. So that should be cool.

It seems there’s enough TT activity in this city to play seven days a week if I wanted to (I don’t), so that’s excellent. My intention is to make this a regular thing, i.e. at least 3 nights a week. That’s probably a good thing since this group goes to about a tournament a month.

Anyway, I’m happy to be back, and the competition I’ll be facing off against is several levels above what I have been exposed to in the past. I’m looking forward to what this’ll do for my game.

**By the way, just in case you’re confused, table tennis != ping pong. See to it that you don’t make that mistake. :)