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Coaching Tip of the Week: Locking Up Your Opponents

(By Larry Hodges) The easiest and simplest way of beating a player is to “lock him up.” This basically means forcing him to do what he doesn’t want to do. A classic case would be to force an opponent with a weaker backhand to go backhand to backhand with you. Another example would be take […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Finding Simple Tactics That Work

(By Larry Hodges) The opening lines to my book, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers, is, “Tactics isn’t about finding complex strategies to defeat an opponent. Tactics is about sifting through all the zillions of possible tactics and finding a few simple ones that work.” But how do you find these simple tactics that work? Simple – […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Shorten Stroke on Receive

(By Larry Hodges) Returning serves is all about ball control. In a rally, the incoming shot is usually more predictable than a serve, which has a much wider range of variation – topspin, sidespin, backspin, at all speeds, amounts of spin, directions, and depths. To control your return of serve, shorten your stroke. This cuts […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Should You Experiment If You Have a Big Lead?

(By Larry Hodges) With games to 11, few leads are really safe. It only takes a short series of careless shots, and what seemed like a big lead becomes a big loss. However, if you do have a big lead, and the match won’t be over if you win that game, consider experimenting with different […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Play Both Weaker and Stronger Players

(By Larry Hodges) Many players who want to improve make the mistake of trying to play mostly stronger players. The result is the opponent controls play, and all the player can do is react to the stronger player’s shots, or go for wild shots. A player may develop some shots this way, but it’ll be […]

Coaching Tip of the Week – Use Quick, Deep Pushes to Set Up Your Attack

(By Larry Hodges) Many players use pushing as a neutral “sparring” shot. Instead, use it as a weapon. You do this by pushing quick, fast, heavy, and deep, usually to the opponent’s wide backhand, either deep to the corner or even outside the corner. (You should also sometimes aim to the backhand and at the […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Use It or Lose It!

(By Larry Hodges) When a player finds a part of his game is not working as well as he’d like (because he hasn’t been practicing it, is getting older or slower, or because it simply wasn’t a strong shot to start with), the tendency is to use that technique less and less. Result? The technique […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Should You Stick With Your Best Shot If It Is Missing?

(By Larry Hodges) The situation: Your best shot is missing, and you are losing because of this. Should you keep using it, or abandon it? It takes years of tournament experience and hard thinking before a player can consistently make a sound judgment in a situation like this as to whether to change his strategy, […]

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