Posts tagged with "table tennis"

Back Into The Game

After a ten month hia­tus, I’m back into my reg­u­lar table ten­nis rou­tine again. I start­ed out extreme­ly rusty, feel­ing as if I was learn­ing how to play again, but now I’m almost at the lev­el that I end­ed with. It feels like it’s advan­ta­geous to take a step back from play­ing so that I can for­get all my bad habits while remem­ber­ing all the the­o­ry, because I can tell exact­ly what I need to change to improve now. I wish I could say the same for my golf game when I get out on the cours­es every spring.

My bout with gas­troen­teri­tis left me with a small­er appetite and ema­ci­at­ed frame. The sud­den weight loss — bring­ing my weight pre­car­i­ous­ly close to 100 lbs. — has been rather notice­able; my sweaters are bag­gy, my rings slip off my fin­gers, and I’ve lost two notch­es on my belt. Most peo­ple strug­gle to lose weight, I strug­gle to gain it and stay above 120. Table ten­nis is one of the best things I can do to fix this. After every ses­sion, I’m rav­en­ous­ly hun­gry, and this usu­al­ly con­tin­ues through to the day after.

Table ten­nis is also one of the only sports that I enjoy enough to not have to drag my ass out every time, which is def­i­nite­ly an advan­tage when the venue is an hour away. Unfortunately, my sched­ule on Tuesdays and Thursdays now con­sists of:

  1. wak­ing up at six thir­ty in the morn­ing
  2. going to work for eight and a half hours
  3. com­ing home and sleep­ing for half an hour
  4. eat­ing a din­ner which I’ve pre­pared ear­li­er in the week (with no time to cook)
  5. trav­el­ling to the gym
  6. play­ing for two hours
  7. trav­el­ling home
  8. show­er­ing and falling asleep by mid­night

There are no breaks in between, which means that I have to watch the clock dur­ing almost every­thing that I do. It’s a com­plete rush from start to fin­ish. The upside is that when I’m at the gym, work­ing on bet­ter short-ball con­trol, or try­ing to achieve a back­hand smash, I can for­get every­thing else, which is some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen for me eas­i­ly.

Table Tennis At Pat's

Thursday, I went over to Pat’s for a long-planned table ten­nis marathon. Before we start­ed, he cooked us din­ner; rib-eye steak grilled on the bar­be­cue, a fresh veg­etable stir-fry, and bruschet­ta as an appe­tiz­er. The steak was mar­i­nat­ing all day in a gar­lic and oil sauce, and the bruschet­ta spread was made using extra vir­gin olive oil and basil that he grew him­self. It’s great to have a friend whose pas­sion is cook­ing and eat­ing.

We end­ed up play­ing for about an hour and a half, because we end­ed up speak­ing for so long and I had to work the next day. Every game was close, and every best-out-of-five match went to the fifth game, with a deuce for match point dur­ing three of the five match­es. He was lead­ing by one the entire time, but I adjust­ed my tim­ing and took less risks, and end­ed up win­ning the final match 12–10.

It was frus­trat­ing to be play­ing in his base­ment because I’m used to a much big­ger area with much bet­ter light­ing. The ball was hard to keep track of, and I did­n’t have the same floor­ing to maneu­ver on, so it felt like my legs were glued to the ground. My toes start­ed get­ting raw and painful about half way through, due to the fact that I usu­al­ly play with my weight shift­ed off the heel, but I was able to ignore it, con­cen­trate on play­ing, and fol­low through with a nar­row win. I real­ized that the dis­tance I stand away from the table is pro­por­tion­al to the dis­tance of the table to the wall. Unfortunately, this means that my tim­ing is all screwed up depend­ing on the loca­tion that I play. I need to work on being con­sis­tent in all play­ing con­di­tions.

The Political Olympics

I don’t enjoy watch­ing the Olympics. The cov­er­age we get (exclu­sive­ly from the CBC), is shod­dy. There’s no pre-planned time sched­ule for match­es or events, so I nev­er know what’s going to be on when I have time to watch. There was also absolute­ly no cov­er­age of table ten­nis, which has already end­ed, most of the medals going to China. Why is this? I sus­pect because Canada basi­cal­ly had no chance of plac­ing in the top three, so why would the CBC want to show them? Well, more like­ly not even in the top five. Even Google gave table ten­nis props with one of their dai­ly ban­ners, and with 28 Olympic sports but only 16 days, 12 of those sports aren’t going to have ban­ners.

There are also so many pol­i­tics involved, with dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tions, dop­ing, judg­ing, etc., that every­thing just seems taint­ed. There’s also all the frus­trat­ing media cov­er­age in the mix, such as Perdita Felicien’s hur­dle dis­s­a­point­ment splat­tered on the front page of most papers while Ann Muenzer’s gold­en achieve­ment gets a sports sec­tion blurb. And with sports that don’t need to be in the Olympics (why have syn­chro­nized div­ing AND div­ing AND syn­chro­nized swim­ming?), there’s not much to keep my inter­est.

Learning At The Table

I played three match­es yes­ter­day against three dif­fer­ent peo­ple and won all three. It felt pret­ty good, espe­cial­ly since I had nev­er played one of them before (he was a Canadian-born English teacher, work­ing in China). He also start­ed play­ing about a year before me, and was taught in what’s con­sid­ered the table ten­nis coun­try of the world. Knowing that he was using an anti-spin rub­ber gave me an advan­tage though; I did­n’t have to wor­ry about his spin, and since I focus on speed and place­ment, his rub­ber became point­less. I also have less respect for peo­ple who use the anti-spin rub­bers, because they gen­er­al­ly rely on the pad­dle to do the work for them, instead of prop­er­ly learn­ing how to counter spin. My habit­u­al ner­vous­ness when fac­ing a new oppo­nent was­n’t there.

I also won against one of the peo­ple I use to have great dif­fi­cul­ty beat­ing. He had a new pad­dle, with small ball-bear­ings imbed­ded along the rim. When one shakes it, the pad­dle sounds like a baby rat­tle. Apparently, it’s sup­posed to pre­vent rever­ber­a­tion, but I don’t under­stand the point. I count on feel­ing rever­ber­a­tion through my han­dle to give me feed­back on where I’m hit­ting.

I also beat one of my long time oppo­nents, although it’s more of an emp­ty vic­to­ry because I’ve learned his tricks and styles, so I know how to counter them. I won based on vital­li­ty over­com­ing his expe­ri­ence, not skill over­com­ing skill. It was inter­est­ing to find out that his pad­dle has a hol­low han­dle with a weight attached to a screw assem­bly in it. The weight can be shift­ed up and down through the han­dle to change the cen­tre of grav­i­ty of the blade.

Still, it’s good to know that I’m improv­ing. I can learn at the table now, in the mid­dle of a match instead of after­wards.