Saturday, September 4, 2010 marks the first day of my new table tennis journey. It has taken me a long time to start playing again. Table tennis has always been a part of my life since my dad is Joe Newgarden. You may have heard of him. He LOVES table tennis (he likes to call it ping-pong) and liked it so much growing up that he invented a table tennis robot to play against, the Newgy Robo-Pong. He eventually turned it into a business, Newgy Industries, Inc., which is now a thriving family business that I am proud to work for. When I was younger he would try to get my sisters and I to learn to play and it hasn’t been any different since I started working for him 2 ½ years ago. Well he finally got me.

I started on Saturday training with Carl Hardin, a good friend of my dad’s and also a great table tennis coach. We started out with the basics. First the handgrip. I actually got it wrong when he asked me to show him how I hold the paddle. The correct handgrip felt a little weird at first but Carl said I would get used to it after awhile and I did. Next we moved on to the proper stance. Feet apart, knees bent. Got it. Then I had to move side to side like that which was a little tricky. Which foot to move first? I kept getting confused. If you’re going left, you move the right foot first and if you’re going right, you move the left foot first, he said. Ok. Got it. (Little did I know it wasn’t going to be that simple once I had to actually swing my paddle and hit a ball at the same time as all that footwork.)

Next Carl had me bounce the ball on the paddle some and then we moved on to my forehand. I practicing dropping the ball on the table and hitting it forehand and then moved onto practicing the forehand on the robot, the Newgy Robo-Pong 2050! Once I was comfortable with that, we worked on my backhand, same routine. Next I practiced alternating both forehand and backhand on the Robo-Pong. This is where all the fancy footwork came in. I eventually got it but felt like I had to really focus on my footwork as well as my strokes. Even after being around the sport my whole life you can’t understand how much really goes into playing table tennis until you’ve done it yourself. It was pretty fun and actually a good workout for me. All of this in just my first training session. So much to learn and master. But luckily for me I have all the tools right at my fingertips to continually get better. I plan to set aside about an hour a few times a week to play at our Table Tennis Training Center in Gallatin, TN (which conveniently also happens to be in the same building as my office). More to come next week…

Jena Newgarden

My coach used the Newgy Robo-Pong table tennis robot to develop my table tennis game early on in my table tennis career. When I was 13 years old and beginning table tennis, some other young table tennis enthusiasts and I were invited to Carl Hardin’s table tennis camp in southern Ohio. One of Coach Hardin’s main teaching tools was the Newgy robot. My strokes were horrendous. I was not sure why I was inconsistent; one of my main problems was that my racket angle was always changing right before contact.

Coach Hardin began having me practice stroking the ball using this consistent robot. He started with slow topspin to my forehand using the slow frequency setting. With this consistency, I learned to keep my racket angle set. If my angle changed, I would hit the ball into the net or off the table.

Another hindrance in my game was my loop against backspin. Throughout the week, I would play against opponents of all levels. When I played against an opponent with heavy chop, I would always loop the ball into the net. Coach Hardin said that I was using the same angle for the topspin stroke as I was for the backspin stroke. I did not believe him. So, back to the Newgy robot we went. With the help of the robot, he showed me that it was nearly impossible to lift the backspin by hitting the top of the ball. By setting my angle more open, I learned to consistently lift any amount of chop. (Note: the most recent chopper I played was rated 2453. I won at 6,4,6. I guess I learned how to loop against chop.)

The first table tennis camp helped my game so much that six months later, I attended my second camp. My strokes were beginning to develop, so Coach Hardin decided to move on to advanced techniques with the Newgy robot. My strokes were much better, but I seemed to be using so much energy for such a weak loop. I needed to learn to accelerate at contact. The robot was the ideal tool. Feeding me consistent topspin, Coach Hardin taught me about speeding-up my racket when I hit the ball. By accelerating the stroke at contact, I was getting more power with half the amount of energy. The robot was perfect for giving me a never-missing, consistent ball to topspin.

Coach Hardin always says that a player’s main focus must be consistency. Ninety percent consistency is a good goal. He would set the robot at random to my forehand, and I had to move and loop the balls with a consistency of 90% on the table. As soon as I achieved this goal, he would immediately increase the frequency. As soon as I accomplished that, he would increase it again. We continued with this type of training to develop speed, without losing control.

Carl Hardin always tried to make table tennis as fun as possible. An added bonus to some of our robot practices was using Pong-Master. Pong-Master is a table tennis game that uses different size pads on the table to be used as targets to hit. Pong-Master also keeps score with the amount of times the player hits the pads. Coach Hardin stressed the fact that, at any level, ball placement is very important. All the young players at the camp enjoyed competing to see who had the best ball control. I was always very competitive, so having a goal to aim at, always inspired me to work harder.

The Newgy robot helped develop my table tennis game into what it is today. Back then, after just two years, Carl Hardin’s coaching techniques raised my game from 1100 to 2100! Using the Newgy robot to develop correct strokes is definitely a winning strategy that I guarantee to raise anyone’s table tennis game!

Samson Dubina