Table Tennis Blog

Henzell Seeking Sponsorship

Jeff Plumb — Sun, 13 May 2012 12:50:55 +0000

Australia’s number 1 player William Henzell has spent the last year in Austria at the Werner Schlager Academy in preparation for the London 2012 Olympics. With less than 100 days to go until the opening ceremony, William would love to head back over to Europe where he can get the best training and competition.

To help him achieve this William is seeking sponsorship. He has already been on ABC TV and has more interviews lined up with channel 9 news, fox sports news, and ABC. Through these interviews he can offer good exposure on TV, radio and newspaper.

If you want to find out more about William Henzell then you can watch the ABC interview. He is a 9 time Australian Singles Champion and this will be his third Olympic Games.

If you’re interested in sponsoring Henzell then contact me.

Big Changes Are Coming To PingSkills

Jeff Plumb — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 11:34:18 +0000

While Alois has been busy answering your questions, I’ve been busy rebuilding the PingSkills website and it’s nearly ready to be released. So what changes can you expect?

The DVDs are moving into the lessons page

Personally I think that the lessons, DVDs and Ask the Coach section are the main features of the site. Currently there are too many navigation items at the top of the page and these can get lost. The other problem is that people are unsure of whether they should get the DVDs, stick with the free lessons or go for our premium membership.

To make things clearer and simpler, the DVDs are being turned into a number of videos and being merged into the premium member lessons page. At the same time the free lessons are also being merged into the premium lessons page so now we only need one link to all of our lessons. Each lesson will be clearly marked if it is for premium members only.

Will I still be able to buy a DVD

For a short time. We are going to have a runout sale and offer the DVDs at a huge discount. The percentage of people buying DVDs has been dropping steadily over time and it’s got to the point where it’s not worth getting more DVDs made. So if you want a DVD then watch out for the runout sale and scoop up a bargain. If you like the downloads then be sure to check out the new range of monthly, 6 monthly and yearly memberships that we’ll be offering.

All lessons will be immediately available to premium members

Currently when you sign up as a premium member you get access to new videos each week. If there is a particular topic you are interested in but it only comes out in week 20, you have to wait. Well not once our new website is released, you’ll be able to access every single video. Depending on your membership level, you’ll be able to download a certain number of videos each month to your computer or smartphone.

Mobile Optimised

I’ve been busily modifying all of the web pages so that they’ll look great on your smartphone or iPad. The video lessons, ask the coach and the Vault will all be easy to watch and read on your mobile phone.

HD video is coming

The beauty about having videos under our lessons page is that they are easy to update. Now that we’ve got a great camera that can shoot full 1080p HD footage, we’re going to start replacing our old footage. Our free lessons are the first videos on the list. Some of these were filmed around 5 years ago and look very dated. So slowly over the next year we’ll be re-filming and editing a lot of videos. Once we update the free lessons, we’ll most likely re-shoot Serving Secrets Revealed.

When will I get to see the new site?

I’m just finalising the last few changes and then I’ve got a day or two of testing to do which means that the new site should be up and running within the next week!

I’m really excited about these changes. I hope you’re going to find the site easier to use and much more helpful in helping you to improve your Table Tennis.

Thank You PingSkills

Jeff Plumb — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 11:11:32 +0000

It sure is nice to be appreciated. Mcrey Banderlipe II was kind enough to make up this sign for PingSkills. He also sent this message:

Thank you Jeff, Alois, and Pingskills.com. Table Tennis is really a fun and life-changing sport.

We’d have to say that we agree. Thanks so much Mcrey for making up the sign. It really was a nice surprise to see it!

Getting More Females Involved In Table Tennis

Jeff Plumb — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:51:04 +0000

Australia has a problem with the lack of female athletes playing Table Tennis. You may recall in one of our earliest PingPod’s we spoke with Ashleigh Stevenson about this issue.

Well now there’s some good news. England’s Steve Rowe has devised a quite unique solution. It’s called Aerobic Table Tennis.

“I was trying to think of ways to get more females involved in table tennis, so I looked at what females like to do for exercise in general”, said Steve Rowe. “I researched and found out that women like Aerobics and Yoga; I took the idea of Aerobic Table Tennis to our local sports development in Wigan UK, Wigan Sports Development and they have made Aerobic Table Tennis part of the Active Women Project.”

Now Steve is taking the project world wide and is looking for clubs to come on board. If you’d like to get more females involved at your club and think Aerobic Table Tennis might benefit you then register your interest and Steve will be in touch with you.

Watch Aerobic Table Tennis In Action

75 and Going Strong

Alois Rosario — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 23:00:33 +0000

Here is a story from one of our readers.

Hi Alois

You might find this hard to believe but at the age of 75 I am still playing competitively and even crazier still hoping to improve!

I am English and have lived in France for the past five years. Table tennis here is very well organised, lots of clubs with excellent facilities all provided by the government. The funding of sport here for the community is a million times better than the UK which came as a surprise to me. I started as far back as 1949 playing in the leagues in the UK and continued for around 45 years giving up finally in my late 50′s. When I moved to France in 2007 I had not played for around 15 years but decided to join a club just for fun and to enjoy it, I had no intention of taking it seriously again. My first visit was a bit intimidating, a large hall with about 20 tables with some very fit young men bashing the ball hard with a coach barking instructions.

In all my years in England I never had a coach, I just learned as a kid and that was that! After a few months going down to training sessions I got the bug again and was invited to play for the 5th team. I now play three times a week with a match on Fridays and two other training sessions. Since I last played the game has developed enormously and the vast range of types of bat and rubbers was mind boggling. I have finally settled on a Butterfly chop for the forehand and Stiga long pip Defender on the backhand. I play at a modest level but the great thing for me is the pleasure I get from it. To my surprise I feel I am improving and my win percentage is now coming up to 50%. One nice thing about playing at an advanced age is the pain of losing is less than it was mainly because I am so grateful to be still playing! When I watch a young kid doing his nut having been beaten by the old man, it makes me smile. It’s a bit like looking at an old film of what I used to be like!

I spotted your Pingskills site on the web recently having looked at one or two of your videos which were very interesting so I decided to join up.

Best wishes

Bill Clarke

I Love The Match Strategy Course

Jeff Plumb — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 09:41:00 +0000

I’d love to make the following observations about the match strategy course

1. It is a great initiative and I have found these episodes very helpful.
2. I really liked your incorporation of clips from real matches that you used to demonstrate the points being made.
3. I still can’t believe that we get the benefit of all of Alois’ experience simply by being a member of PingSkills Premium. So a very, very big thank you to both of you for making this possible.

Chris Roe

PingSkills Match Strategy Course Videos

Check out the list of videos available in the PingSkills Match Strategy Course

How Can I Beat Alois?

Jeff Plumb — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:02:33 +0000

When you step out on the court, what you should you be thinking about tactically? How do you develop a game plan?

Well there are certain tactics that you should have in your mind. We’ve developed the PingSkills Vault to help you keep track of these things. When you create a new opponent, you’ll be presented with a list of questions to help you get started.

To help you understand the types of information to record, we’ve created a video called game plan as part of our match strategy course in our premium lessons. In this video Alois takes you through the tactics he would use against me in a match.

To make things equal I’ve recorded the tactics I would use against Alois.

My general tactics against this opponent should be:

I should try and stop Alois attacking

To sometimes play wide to his forehand as he likes to pivot and use his forehand from the backhand side.

My opponents best serve is:

a pendulum with backspin

I find this serve most difficult to return when my opponent serves it short to my forehand.

Against me my opponent tries to:

Always get the first attack in with his forehand.

To keep the rallies short by playing in an attacking manner.

My best serve against this opponent is:

the pendulum with topspin

This is most effective placed short to their backhand.

Returning serve I should try to:

push short to their forehand.

Should I sometimes return long and wide to Alois’ forehand to stop him always pivoting.

Where should I place the ball?

My first forehand attack is most effective to Alois’ backhand

My first backhand attack is most effective to Alois’ backhand

During the rally I should play to Alois’ backhand.

Do you have any suggestions on other tactics I should employ to beat Alois? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

We’ve just passed 2,000 likes on our Facebook page

Jeff Plumb — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:16:54 +0000

A huge thank you to everyone for supporting us here on the website and on our Facebook page. We’ve just passed the 2,000 likes figure which is a huge number of people.

On our Facebook page, we post interesting questions, ask for your feedback and let you know when we have new videos on our site. So if you haven’t liked us yet then head over to our Facebook page and click the LIKE button!

Watch Our Exclusive Ask the Coach Video Responses

Jeff Plumb — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:48:38 +0000

Now if you ask a question, and we answer it with an exclusive premium member only video response, you can watch the video even if you’re not a premium member. We feel that since you asked the question, you deserve to see the video.

If you’ve previously asked a question that we’ve filmed a premium only video response to, you can now go back and watch the video. The easiest way to find your questions is using the My Questions link. Answers with a premium video response are marked with a “P”.

I hope you enjoy the new changes.

Guess the athlete on the MHTT Blog to win a PingSkills Super Pack

Jeff Plumb — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:20:00 +0000

Matt Hetherington is having a competition on his blog. Each day he will reveal some more clues about a player and you need to guess who it is. You are allowed only 1 entry. All correct entries will go into the draw to win the prizes. Those who guess the athlete in the last 3 days will get 1 entry into the draw. If you guess correctly before then you’ll get a bonus entry! There are 2 Super Packs up for grabs.

To find out all about the competition and how you can be a part, check out all the rules on Matt’s blog.

Good luck!