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August's Winning Entry for Our Contest |
Congratulations to Matthew Clune of San Diego, CA for his contributions to the Coaching Forum contest. The winning entry is listed below for your review and implementation into your training program.
Matthew Clune
San
Diego, CA
How to Use the Newgy Robot to Develop Chaotic Relaxation.
One of the key techniques to developing a higher level of play is to learn to relax while accurately focusing ones energy during a game, especially when making a stroke at the ball. Fluid motion may be that extra ingredient that has made a decisive world champion out of Waldner.
The best environment for testing relaxation ability is, of course, a chaotic one. Chaos is very easy to create with the Newgy robot, though it is not merely a matter of turning all of the controls up to 10! Here are the settings that I use. Place the head angle to deliver the ball onto the player's side of the table first, the spin control to topspin, the oscillator range levers to position 3 & 4, the ball speed to 10, the ball frequency to 5, and the ball oscillation speed to 6.
The oscillation lever settings sweep balls across the whole table, the high speed forces one to react quickly, the frequency (being at the midpoint) provides plenty of aerobic challenge, and the oscillation speed at 6 is chosen to form an unpredictable spray pattern.
These settings will prove at least 3 things to any developing player. First, returning most of the balls is impossible without relaxing the shoulders, elbow, wrist, and grip. Second, you really don't relax as much as you think you do, until you put yourself to a test like this one. Third, using the Newgy robot is the only way to provide a sustained test of your relaxation ability and the means to improve this essential aspect of your game.
