table tennis coaching Page 2 of 5 Butterfly Online | Butterfly Table Tennis & Ping Pong Equipment

The Power of a Low, Short, No-Spin Serve

October 19, 2015

The Power of a Low, Short, No-Spin Serve Tip of the Week by Larry Hodges At the beginning level, players serve without spin. However, these serves are usually pop-ups that any intermediate (or advanced beginner) can easily attack. As players move up the ranks they learn to serve with spin. But eventually players come full […]

Brief Tactical Analysis of Fegerl vs Ovtcharov

October 17, 2015

Brief Tactical Analysis of Fegerl vs Ovtcharov Butterfly Table Tennis Coaching by Han Xiao Recently, one of the more exciting matches I’ve seen is a match in the European Championship men’s team finals between Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany and Stefan Fegerl of Austria. There were a number of excellent rallies in this match leading to […]

Effective Use of Timeouts

October 11, 2015

Effective Use of Timeouts Butterfly Table Tennis Coaching by Han Xiao Most players know that each player has one timeout over the course of the match. However, too many times I have seen matches between beginner or intermediate players where time outs are not used at all or are used ineffectively. In almost every match […]

Receiving Hidden Serves

October 4, 2015

Receiving Hidden Serves by Han Xiao Today’s topic comes courtesy of Larry Hodges, who is a coach at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. Larry has been talking to me a great deal lately about the huge problem of many high level players serving almost exclusively illegally in competition without umpires willing to fault them on […]

How To Play Table Tennis – Reverse Pendulum Backspin Serve

October 2, 2015

How To Play Table Tennis – Reverse Pendulum Backspin Serve Join table tennis superstar Elizabeta Samara as she teaches you how to hit her famous reverse pendulum backspin serve in ITTF’s “How To Play Table Tennis Series!“

Player Archetypes: Defensive Styles

September 30, 2015

Player Archetypes: Defensive Styles Butterfly Table Tennis Coaching by Han Xiao Last week, we focused on identifying common attacking archetypes, what their characteristics are, what traits a player needs to excel with the archetype, as well as some general tips for excelling with each play style. This week, we’re going to do the same with […]

Serving More Deceptively

September 13, 2015

Serving More Deceptively Table Tennis Coaching by Han Xiao Our topic today comes from Tae Hun Moon on the ButterflyOnline forums. The question is how you can make your serve more deceptive by creating a more confusing contact point and trick the opponent. This is a very common question among players since many players know […]

Getting More Spin on Your Serves

September 3, 2015

Getting More Spin on Your Serves by Han Xiao This question comes from Fabio Pellerin on the butterflyonline.com forums. Fabio wants to know how you develop a spinnier serve. For example, how you can increase the amount of backspin you put on your pendulum serves. This is a very common problem for many players, since […]

The Spin-Nospin Serve

August 23, 2015

The Spin-Nospin Serve by Han Xiao Today, we’re going to discuss one of the most classically successful serve combinations of the past couple of decades: the spin-nospin serve. This is actually a two-serve combination: a heavy backspin serve along with a nospin serve with the exact same motion. It is often extremely simple looking yet […]

Pushing

August 16, 2015

Pushing by Han Xiao Pushing is an underrated skill among many players, especially intermediate players who feel that they have a good grasp on how to push. We spend a lot of time on more glamorous shots such as our attacking shots, or other necessities such as footwork and blocking. Meanwhile, pushing is often a […]