Coaching Tip of the Week Page 5 of 22 Butterfly Online | Butterfly Table Tennis & Ping Pong Equipment

Coaching Tip of the Week: Don’t “Guide” Your Loop

July 26, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) Many players, when learning to loop or when under pressure, try to guide the shot consciously. This is a mistake and leads to a weak and erratic loop. Instead, let the shot go, accelerating smoothly through the shot. Don’t try to “muscle” it – that just leads to spastic shots and a […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: What Do You Do That Threatens Your Opponent?

July 19, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) If you don’t have something that threatens your opponent, then you can’t threaten the opponent. So, how do you develop something that threatens an opponent? You can’t do it by just training everything equally each session. You need to spend a huge amount of time developing the things you can do that […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Changing the Pace

July 5, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) A major weakness of many players is an inability to change the pace, and thereby throw their opponent’s timing off. Not doing so is a quick way of helping your opponent’s timing. Many players try to change the pace, but do so unsuccessfully – either because they don’t know how to do […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Forehand Attackers Should Serve & Backhand Attack

June 28, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) If you are primarily a forehand attacker, many of your opponents will get used to your relentless forehand attacks, often from the backhand corner, especially after your serve. Why not throw them off with a backhand loop? This is especially effective against an opponent who routinely pushes your serve to your backhand […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Don’t Play a Point Until You Have a Game Plan

June 21, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) In the movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” there’s a famous quote, “Don’t move until you see it.” It comes from a coach who is telling his chess-playing star not to move until he sees the line of moves he’s about to play. Similarly, in table tennis (which we often call “Chess at […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Tournament Experience vs. Practice

June 14, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) Many players practice for many months, not playing in any tournaments until they feel they are completely ready. Then they enter a tournament . . . and flop. They don’t understand it, so they go right back to practicing for many months, avoiding tournaments again. When they again feel ready, they enter […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: What to Do in the “Big Points”

June 7, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) Some players have reputation as being “winners” because they seem to be able to pull out close matches. There are two aspects to this. One is mental – nervous players don’t do well in close matches. The other aspect is tactical – you need to learn what to do tactically in a […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: How to Play the Attacker/Blocker with Dead Rubber

May 31, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) One of the more difficult styles to figure out is what to do against a player who attacks and blocks with a “dead” surface – either a slow inverted surface or short pips. The inverted may be slow because it’s designed that way (often for beginners) or because it’s old and used. […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Patient Decisiveness

May 17, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) Some players are too patient – they mostly just keep the ball in play, rallying while missing opportunities to score. Others are too decisive – they jump on every ball with little patience or judgment. Develop a sense of “patient decisiveness” – in other words, pick your shots carefully, but once you’ve […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: How to Play a Player Who Attacks With Long Pips

May 10, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) One of the most difficult shots to handle is a ball attacked by a player with long pips. You have little time to react to an attacked ball, and so have to rely on your reflexes – except your reflexes usually aren’t tuned to reacting to a ball attacked by long pips. […]