Newgy’s Blog

Newgy proudly sponsored the 2014 America’s Team Table Tennis Championships for the sixth year, this past weekend, May 24-25, in Rockford, Illinois. The tournament attracted 42 teams consisting of 170 table tennis players.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Division 1

1st Place: Team XNT5

Nie, WenJie (2265)
Lee, David (2230)
Tran, Michael (2176)
Qi, Wei (2448)

2nd Place: Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies

Pech, Keith (2280)
Oulkin, Danny (2278)
Pech, Seth (2229)

3rd Place: Team Collegiate

Skolnick, Mlcaiah (2334)
Skolnick, Gabriel (2333)
Pereyra, Patricio (2290)
Castillo, Maria (2156)

Division 2

1st Place: Midland TNMD

At(man, Mark (2153)
Snider, Nicholas (2177)
Yost, Thomas (2132)
Hamilton, Don (2126

2nd Place: TGL Logistics

Wolski, Wojciech (2347)
Zyworonek, Arkadlusz (2052)
Wolski, Michael (2044)
Jablonskl, Zbigniew (1941)
Horodenski, Karol

3rd Place: University of Minnesota ’A’ Team

Kubesh, Benjamin (2007)
Peng, Peng (2002)
Huynh, Benjamin (2153)
Ye, Cheng (1938)

Division 3

1st Place: NCTTA

Teotia, Seemant (1954)
Del Vecchio, Martin (2156)
Chimule, Shardul’(1977)
Frayne, Elliot (1909)

2nd Place: Royal Challengers

Buente, Kevin (1917)
Kini, Vivek (2144)
Pan, Zack (2095)
Dousmanis, Christos (1909)

3rd Place: It’s Short but it’s Thin

Moyant, Kyle (1508)
Neimark, Dashiel (2029)
Scarp, AJ. (2110)

Division 4

1st Place: Rock River Rowdies

Evans, Bryant (1743)
OIIngou, Serge (1689)
Belts, Steve (1669)
Zmijewski, Ariel (1656)

2nd Place: BCMVP

Mak, Henry (1904)
Chau, Tim (1724)
Veksler, Dan (1712)
Currey, Robert (1705)
Putta, Ramnath (1673)

3rd Place: University of Minnesota ’B’ Team

Tranter, John (1788)
Nguyen, Brenda (1651)
Srivastava, Rishabh (1611)
Vu, Dat Tien (1557)

Division 5

1st Place: Duluth Young Guns

Simone Jr., Angelo (1505)
Scott, Sam (1663)
Green, Eric (1680)
Perez, Jose (UR)

2nd Place: Kung Fu Pandas

Lorenc, Slawomir (1722)
Parvathaneni, Subba (1595)
Morris, Mathew (1552)
Mu, Edward (1479)

3rd Place: U.S. Para Nationals

Van Emburgh, Jenson (1366)
Seidenfetd, lan (1468)
Scrivano, Danny (1366)

Most Valuable Player

1st Place: Qi Wei

2nd Place: Sid Naresh

During practice, most table tennis players focus 100% on themselves. They think in detail about their own footwork, their own strokes, and their own serves. They rarely consider their opponent. In table tennis tournaments, they are mistakenly focused on themselves, wondering why they can’t win.

By performing beautiful forehand loops, your opponent will not drop dead. You can’t win a match based on your awesome footwork. The only way to win a table tennis match is to beat your opponent! In matches, you should be 95% focused on your opponent and only 5% focused on yourself. At the elite level, there are many detailed strategies. I’ll deal with them in a future article. For now, here are 10 basic questions that you should be asking yourself between games and between points!

Does my opponent prefer backhand or forehand when attacking?

Does my opponent prefer backhand or forehand when defending?

Where is my opponent’s middle (the transition point between backhand and forehand)?

Does my opponent win the majority of the points from strong attacks or does my opponent win the majority of the point from my mistakes?

Does my opponent feel more comfortable close to the table or far away from the table?

What are the most common serves that my opponent is using?

If my opponent has a particularly tricky serve that I continue to miss, what other options do I have to return it?

Does my opponent attack my short serve? Does my opponent attack my long serves?

Does my opponent have any particular trouble with a specific serve?

Does my opponent have any particular trouble with a specific shot that I’m using or does he have trouble with a particular spin or particular location?

If you go through this list between every game, you will be able to better form strategies throughout the entire table tennis match! Remember, winning is not just about great playing, winning is about making your opponent play poorly!

Samson Dubina

Congrats to all the winners of the Newgy Cincinnati Open 4-Star Table Tennis Tournament this past weekend!

Open Giant RR
1st Samson Dubina
2nd Tapabrada Dey
3rd Hesam Hamrahian
4th Danny Dulkin
5th-8th Ali Khatami, Alex Averin, Seth Pech, and John Allen

U2400 Giant RR
1st Danny Dulkin
2nd Seth Pech
3rd-4th Nick Snider and Tapabrada Dey

u2000 Giant RR
1st Harsh Khandelwal
2nd Kosal Tith
3rd-4th Willians Calipo and Greg Smith

U1600 Giant RR
1st Chad Ryan
2nd Kevin Swan
3rd-4th Joe Ciarrochi and Yi Yan Xue

U1200 Giant RR
1st Yueling Zhang
2nd Newell Millard
3rd-4th Matt Seeds and Lin Wang

U1000 Giant RR
1st Laura Paglin
2nd Aubrey Morris

Most club table tennis players can’t train 40 hours per week due to work, school, family commitments and just life in general. However, most players can dedicate around 10 hours per week to improve their table tennis skills. For my training students, I ask them to work hard to produce the best possible 10 hours that they can do. I ask them to do 4 hours of table tennis matches, 1 hour of serving practice, 1 hour of physical training, 1 hour of video analysis, and 3 hours of training with the Newgy Robo-Pong 2050 table tennis robot.

Playing matches against various playing styles is an important part of a weekly training program because it “tests” your table tennis skills. You should be able to properly regulate WHAT to practice based on how you perform in practice matches.

Serving practice is one of the fastest ways to improve. If you can score 2-3 more points each game, that is a major improvement. Even if you can’t win the point outright, a good serve should set you up for the next ball. When serving, focus on keeping the ball low, with good spin variation, and good placement variation. Try to develop a very similar motion while giving slight changes in the spin – heavy sidespin, sidespin backspin, no spin, and sidespin topspin.

Physical training is a vital aspect that every table tennis player needs to work on to move to the elite level. At your current level, physical training might not seem very important. However, at the elite level, it is critical. I would recommend focusing mainly on speed and flexibility exercises for the legs and core. Top table tennis players say that 70-80% of their looping power comes from the legs and core (not the arm).

Video analysis is the most neglected aspect of table tennis training in the US. Without visualization of your strengths and weaknesses on a weekly basis, you are probably training incorrectly. Record at least one session per week and take some time to watch it slowly while taking notes. Ask a friend or coach to watch it with your and take a somewhat critical approach to analyzing your game.

Table tennis robot training has helped me tremendously and I’m sure that it will help you too. Instead of thinking about the score, you can focus on the areas of your game that really need to improve. You can focus on making changes to your footwork, short game, blocking, looping, smashing, chopping, and serve return. Start the drill very slowly with +50% wait adjust so that you can perform them correctly. As you become more consistent at that speed, slowly decrease the time between balls by 10%.

Here is a sample weekly table tennis training program from one of my students:

Monday: Robot (1 hour) and Physical Training (30 min)

Tuesday: Club (2 hours)

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: Club (2 hours) and video analysis (1 hour)

Friday: Robot (1 hour) and serving (1 hour)

Saturday: Robot (1 hour) and Physical Training (30 min)

Sunday: Rest

Samson Dubina

The Newgy Cincinnati Open 4-Star USATT table tennis tournament is this weekend, May 9-10, 2014 at the College Hill Recreation Center – 5545 Belmont Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45224.

The format will be giant round robin groups of around eight players with the top four players from each group advancing to the single elimination stage. This tournament will feature awesome playing conditions with 16 professional ping-pong tables in a 17,000 square foot gym.

Admission is free for spectators!

Tournament sponsors: Newgy Robo-Pong, Martin & Associates, Wil-Cut and Wide-band

Tournament staff: Barry Carlin, Tom Leslie, Greg Thompson, Perry Wilson, Pierce Scott, Randy Burnett, Joyce Burnett, Sam Dubina, Nancy Dubina, Roger Liu, Karen Pon, Raymond Johnston, Orlando McEwan, and Seth Pech.

Click here to see the draw for this tournament.

Below is a list of helpful mental strategies to keep in mind while competing in a table tennis tournament, provided by Pro Table Tennis Player and Coach, Samson Dubina.

1. Watch your opponent in a prior match and study his or her style, serve, and serve return. Before beginning a match, also make sure to check his or her racket.

2. Be ready to work hard for your win. Earned – never given. Don’t expect your opponent to miss your trick-serve at 10-9. Be ready to work hard to earn each and every point!

3. Before beginning a match, don’t look at your opponent’s rating – it probably isn’t accurate anyway. Focus your attention on your strategy, not his or her rating.

4. Focus on having fun and applying your strategy. If you think too much about the benefits of winning or the consequences of losing, you will have unnecessary pressure.

5. Reflect between points and ask yourself questions. One mistake won’t hurt you, but if you continue to make the same mistake again and again, you will lose.

6. If you lose a match, admit that you lost. Making excuses will not help you to think clearly for your next match.

7. Be absolutely sure to go through your pre-point and post-point routine, every time.

8. Enjoy close games. Be excited when the game is close and be excited that you have the chance to perform.

Good luck to everyone playing this weekend!