Thursday 15th May 2008
The Australian Closed is getting nearer (only 2 weeks away) - so now seems like a good time for another personal table tennis blog update.Competition
I've played one more important competition since my last update (the 2008 Maccabi Challenge), and a few more weeks of winter pennants. The upshot of this is that I'm not playing too badly in competition, but I still have a couple of issues that I need to fix.In pennants, I lost a couple of matches than I could possibly have expected to win, but I was overtrained on both occasions (with a higher than normal resting heart rate), and unlucky on one of them (lots of nets and edges against me), so I'm not reading too much into that.
In the Maccabi Challenge, I won one match 3-2, and lost my other two matches 2-3, so I was once again in close contention. I also videotaped the Maccabi Challenge with my new Canon HG10 hard disk videocamera, and I took the opportunity to review the footage. I'll discuss what I saw below in the Training section.
I've got another tournament coming up this weekend, and Round 4 of local Grand Prix on Friday 23rd May, so I've got a couple more opportunities to test myself in competition before I head to Cairns, Queensland, to play in the Australian Closed Championships.
Training
- Fitness - During my last update (April 21st), I reported I was at 196 pounds, and 14.7% bodyfat according to the callipers - although I estimated my bodyfat at around 20% according to my calculations. Today I'm weighing in at 190 pounds (86.2kg), and 12.7% bodyfat according to the callipers. Doing my own calcs, I'd say I'm actually really about 17.6% bodyfat. I'm still holding my muscle mass, so now I've lost about 16 pounds of bodyfat since March 3rd.
I'm going to try to drop another pound or two before the Australian Closed, which should put me at around 85kg, and about 16.5% bodyfat. Not exactly super athletic but much better than the 95kg and 25.2% bodyfat I was at in January!
- Training Routines - I'm still aiming for 3 hours or more of training a day, except in those cases where my morning heartrate is up (indicating overtraining), or where I have an important match or tournament coming up. As you would expect, it's getting easier as I continue to drop weight. With only a couple of weeks until the Closed, I'm not going to increase my workload now, and I'll lighten up in the week before the Closed to give me a good chance of coming in nice and fresh for the tournament.
My body is still coping quite well with the training, with no injuries or bad aches and pains to report.
- Motivation - Despite having a few close losses recently, I'm still feeling motivated to get up and train each day. I'm now over 30 days into my 3 hour a day training routine, and I'm still feeling good and raring to go. It just shows the difference it makes if you build up your workload slowly and give your body time to adjust to things. Plus I think the use of walking aerobics really helped me train without pounding my aging joints into the ground. So yeah, I'm pretty psyched at the moment.
- Technique and Tactics - This is probably the area where I'm learning the most at the moment. As I mentioned above, I videotaped the matches at the 2008 Maccabi Challenge. On Tuesday 13th May, I sat down and looked at the footage, with a particular eye on my technique and my tactics. Here's what I found:
- Something was still wrong with my forehand technique. I couldn't pick it up at normal speed, so I went to slow motion mode and compared it to a slow motion video of Kong Linghui in training. Having the two videos side by side, I could see three problems - (1) I'm dipping my right shoulder during my backswing, and ending up with my right shoulder higher than my left on the follow through. This is adding an extra complication to my stroke, and affecting my recovery. In comparison, Kong (and Waldner as well, when I checked his technique) keeps his shoulders pretty much even during his backswing, and finishes fairly even on the follow through. (2) My stance is still a little too narrow, and (3) I'm not maintaining a forward lean throughout the rally, which makes it harder to move quickly around the court, and get into position to hit my forehand correctly.
I started trying to consciously correct these issues during my pennant match that night, and ended up beating one of the players who beat me 2-3 in the Maccabi Challenge. I've since done a couple more sessions of training, striving to keep a forward lean, wider stance, and square shoulders, and I must say that my forehand consistency has improved another notch, and my court coverage has improved too. I'll take some more video of my play at the tournament on Sunday, and double-check whether I'm successfully correcting these three problems. But I feel pretty good about my forehand at the moment - I think I'm getting it to the point where it is fairly sound technically.
- Tactically, I'm still tweaking things a little. I went through a small phase of being too aggressive after watching some videos of Joo Se Hyuk and discovering that he almost never forehand chops, but loops virtually everything that comes to his forehand (unless his opponent can get the ball at his playing elbow). Watching Joo, combined with my change in forehand swing angle (which I mentioned in my last update), inspired me to try to copy him a bit too much, and I was trying to counterloop too many balls with my forehand. I'm still way too heavy and need to put some serious hours at the practice table working on my counterloop before I can start trying to replicate Joo's tactics in a match. At the moment, I need to stick to the tactics that are best for me, which is to chop well, and look for the opportunities to attack that my defensive game creates. With the continuing improvement of my forehand technique, I have more confidence that I'll be able to take advantage of these opportunities when they arise.
- Something was still wrong with my forehand technique. I couldn't pick it up at normal speed, so I went to slow motion mode and compared it to a slow motion video of Kong Linghui in training. Having the two videos side by side, I could see three problems - (1) I'm dipping my right shoulder during my backswing, and ending up with my right shoulder higher than my left on the follow through. This is adding an extra complication to my stroke, and affecting my recovery. In comparison, Kong (and Waldner as well, when I checked his technique) keeps his shoulders pretty much even during his backswing, and finishes fairly even on the follow through. (2) My stance is still a little too narrow, and (3) I'm not maintaining a forward lean throughout the rally, which makes it harder to move quickly around the court, and get into position to hit my forehand correctly.
