Stellan Bengtsson camp at Alameda TTC

I signed up, any other bay area players going?  Taking a week off from work for it!

Five day camp with Stellan, wife Angie and assorted other high level coaches (www.alamedattc.org).

Nice wigspan! Yes, a report, and, any chance of you getting some photos? I'd be interested to see what its like

Originally posted by Honey Nice wigspan! Yes, a report, and, any chance of you getting some photos? I'd be interested to see what its like

Sure thing: if I survive.  Five straight days of training, five hours per day....

Sound advice.  I rarely play two days in a row, have never played three in a row let alone 5.  It's going to be a test.  Looking forward to it a lot tho.  I'll post on this thread, 8/3-7.  

Camp is still on for next week.  Hoping for a wide spectrum of players so I won't be the worst one!

Being the worst means a week full of opportunity
Being the best (on the first day) means you shouldn't be there!

Camp starts tomorrow, will post here at the end of the day.  I think I'm ready, tho I haven't played much this summer due to my two clubs being closed for some time (the last time I hit a ball was about a month ago, seems like forever!).

Notes: forgot my phone so no pictures!  Will hopefully get some tomorrow.

Overall: two sessions per day, 10-12:30 and 2-4:30.  I thought the space was nice: good lighting, about 10 tables set up, nice grippy floor with good cushioning.  I got there a bit early and met Stellan and Angie.  Both very nice and I felt immediately at ease around them.  I have never been around a player of Stellan’s caliber and experience level and sometimes I had to remind myself that the guy was world champion and has coached other world and olympic champions.  At no point did I ever feel any kind of attitude from either one of them.  Rather amazing actually, considering where and who we were.

We started with 15 minutes or so of warm up exercises (light stretching, bouncing, twisting, etc.) and then were assigned a partner and warmed up fh-fh and bh-bh for maybe 20 minutes.  Fortunately I got a good partner for this session.  For the next two hours we did a series of drills which I’ll describe in detail.

Drill #1: Stellan described this is “Waldner’s favorite drill among his top 10.”  I guess that makes it Waldner’s favorite drill of all time?  Your partner blocks and you hit two off the bounce fhs, step back, hit two fhs at the top of the bounce (all loops), and then step back again and loop two balls from below the level of the table.   Then back to middle distance and short distance.  Fortunately I’ve done a similar drill with my coach so I was used to the forward/backward motion.  It’s not easy to do at first.

Drill #2.   Partner blocks and you loop two balls from close or medium distance from the bh side and then two from the fh side (all to her backhand corner).  This exposesd one of my many massive weaknesses: switching to fh after hitting a bh.  The assistant coach pointed out  that my initial step to the fh side was too sideways, i.e., parallel to the table.  So that the resulting stroke is all arm (since my body is already parallel to the table it has nowhere to turn).  He said I needed to step backwards with the right foot a little so I can turn my hips into the ball when I hit that first fh.  This of course was awkward but I could really feel it working when I got it right.  That’s going to be a hard habit to break but at least now I know what to do about it.  Angie also pointed out that I tend to stand too upright, with my weight too far back.  That’s one of those “oh no I don’t” moments but you know the coach is right and you just think you’re on the balls of your feet but you’re really not.  Ok, something else to work on.

Drill 3. More looping and blocking.  This time the looper goes cross court once and down the line once, both fhs.  So blocker is alternating fh and bh.  

Drill 4. More or less a standard 3rd ball attack drill where you serve underspin, your partner obligingly pushes the return long to your forehand and you open up.

That was it for the morning session, we did some stretching to finish things up and had lunch.

The afternoon session started again with the same warm-up exercises we did in the morning.  I’m a bit hazy on the details because I didn’t write things down this time.  We were assigned different partners and this time I got one of those jrs who likes to hit the ball hard.  All of them, all the time.

Again warmed up with countering/looping for 15-20 minutes.

Drill 1. This was a footwork drill involving your partner hitting to your elbow.  You play one bh, one stroke from the elbow, another bh, and then a wide fh.  Stellan explained that the elbow stroke is a fh where you move your left foot first towards the left to make room for a fh stroke.  So the sequence is: bh, fh, bh, fh.  Your partner is supposed to put the elbow ball right at your elbow but I found this very difficult to do.  It was difficult to get anything going with the jr because he was hitting the ball way too hard.  Obviously this drill involved a lot of switching from bh to fh which I continued to have problems with.  To say it was ragged is an understatement.  I could practically feel the waves of pre-pubescent ennui emanating from my partner as I missed ball after ball.  Angie pointed out to me that I tend to drop my racket in between strokes, rather than keeping it out in front of me.  The assistant coach also gave me a short lesson on stepping back with the right foot rather than parallel to the table.  Again.

Drill 2.  This was a variation of drill 1 where the blocker is supposed to place the ball randomly on the 2/3 of the table on your bh side (that is, the entire left side is fair game, plus a bit on the right).  So essentially you’re hitting bhs but then one will be at your elbow or slightly to your forehand and you have to execute that step to the left, hit the fh, and get back in place for the next ball.  Random drills like this are usually a miserable disaster for me and today was no exception.

Drill 3. At this point we did a short pushing drill.  Stellan emphasized that it’s important when pushing to not reach out for the ball with your arm straight.  Keep your elbow bent and straighten your arm as you push through the ball.  This of course means that you have to really step forward and get that leg under the table as much as possible because otherwise you won’t get to the ball at all.  We did about 10 minutes of that.  I felt a bit awkward doing this drill, which of course is the tall-tale sign that you’ve been doing it wrong all along.  Still, at least we managed to hit 10 or 15 in a row at a time and keep them short.

Drill 4.  In this drill your partner blocks and you hit four fhs: two from your fh side of the table to your partners bh, then move the the center (where your partner places the ball) and hit one again to his bh, then you step left again and hit one cross court to your partners fh, which he blocks down the line and you start over.  I felt I was moving well and did ok at this one (note: all fhs).

Drill 5.  This was a “points” drill.  Somebody gets the ball and serves until the receiver wins three points in a row, at which point the receiver gets to serve.  The goal, I guess, is to wrest the serve away from your partner and keep it as long as possible.  I thought this was a good drill because you felt the pressure once you had those two points in your pocket.  It was like facing many mini game and match points, one after another.  It was also nice that I could just play for a bit and not have to think about sequences of fhs and bhs!

We finished up with more stretching and that was it for day one.

I had some back issues yesterday which I'm going to have to be careful about.  Still a little sore this morning (power company is jackhammering street outside my apartment so up a little early!).  Should be ok as long as I take care of it (stretching, keeping warm, etc.).

Maybe 20 or 25 players total, evenly split between adults and kids. Some people only come for the morning or afternoon sessions so the average attendance at any one time is about 16 or 18.

I wasn't nearly as sore this morning as I thought I would be and made it through the second day ok although my back was bothering me on and off.

Day 2.  We started with the same set of warm up exercises (which I will try to write down, as they are very effective) and the usual countering/looping. 

Drill 1.  Blocker blocks randomly to loopers fh on the right 2/3 of the table.  Looper places all shots down the line.  I did pretty well on this as it didn't any involve switching between fh and bh.

Drill 2. Another random drill where looper hits two bhs cross court and blocker places every 3rd ball randomly (in other words looper knows the sequence is: bh, bh, anywhere, bh,bh, anywhere, etc.).  I agreed with my partner to forgo the random bit and place every third ball to my forehand so I could practice stepping back with my right foot instead of sideways when switching from bh to fh.  This worked out well, as I'm starting to get at least of glimmer of a feeling for doing it right.  When we switched we did the same thing, then he asked for really random 3rd balls and did pretty well at it.

Drill 3. fh footwork drill.  Looper hits two fhs cross court, steps to middle of table and hits two fhs to same corner.  Next two balls go wide to his bh and he has the option of hitting bhs or fhs (I chose bhs).  The first bh is down the line, the second cross court, at which point blocker places the next ball down the line and you start over.  As the looper I did ok at this but the sequence evaded me as blocker and I only started getting it right towards the end of the drill.

Drill 4.  This was a serve and return drill that I honestly can't remember the point of (I only have written down "serve return drill").  We ended up playing points, one person serving for the first half, the other for the second half.

During the stretch at the end of the session Stellan was on the phone with Jorgen Persson, who told us to "train hard and focus."

At this point we went out to lunch at a local vietnamese place and I got to ride in the car with Stellan and Angie and we had a nice table tennis conversation.  Not something I can do with many people so I took advantage of the opportunity!  On the way back I asked him what sort of physical training he did as a player and surprisingly he said he did a lot of weightlifting, particularly lower body.  He said he could squat 400 lbs in his day, which is pretty amazing considering that's close to triple his body weight.  He said that other players do different things, some like to run, some do weights, it varies from player to player.

The afternoon session went as follows:

Drill 1.  Another looping/blocking drill.  Looper plays two fhs down the line, the blocker blocks the second loop cross court where the looper moves to block it down the line with a bh.  The original block then loops two fhs down the line and the original looper blocks, the second one going cross court and so one.  So you switch between looping fhs and blocking bhs.

Drill 2.  Falkenberg.  The looper gets to choose when to step around and hit the first fh.  Surprised myself by doing ok at this, usually struggle with Falkenberg but today I was moving well and was easily able to cover all the fhs.  Didn't hurt that my partner during this session had pips on the bh, so ball was a bit slower coming back. (assistant coach actually pointed this out to me first.)

Drill 3.  Was a serve return drill whose purpose totally escaped me.  My partner didn't seem to care and was just serving and returning at random.  Unfortunately for me she had a really good serve return so I spent most of the time during this drill walking back to the barriers and picking up balls.

Then we played a round of "top table" in which I lost every game but one.  Bit of a frustrating end to the day but that's ok.

Almost all the emphasis in the first two days has been on footwork.  In terms of stroke technique the only thing has been a little lesson on the bh.  Stellan says the emphasis on the bh should not be on cocking the wrist to an extreme position but rather just pulling the racket back and letting the action come from the forearm, the wrist snap being kind of an after effect of that motion.  I was surprised by this because everybody emphasizes the wrist motion in the backhand.  Well, another thing to consider.

One image from today sticks in my mind.  When I was doing the serve return drill with the pips player she was serving very spinny underspin balls that I couldn't keep short, and she would smack the resulting long return, usually for a clean winner.  Stellan came over and reminded me of the elbow motion we learned yesterday.  She served the ball, exactly the same way, he stepped in and carefully pushed it short, she returned it with a long push which he stepped around and looped to her bh corner, out of her reach.  The whole sequence was like watching water flowing down a river, so smooth and effortless.  There was no tension in his motion, no sense of force being applied, yet lots of power.  More like watching a dance than anything else.  Ah well, the guy's been playing for what, 40 years?  He's good.


Edited by wingspan - 05 August 2009 at 19:09

The whole sequence was like watching water flowing down a river, so smooth and effortless. There was no tension in his motion, no sense of force being applied, yet lots of power. More like watching a dance than anything else.

I love these bulletins wingspan! Keep em coming!

Yeah it's been really good so far. Too much info to digest all at once tho. I will be practicing this stuff for a long time afterward.

We're at lunch break on the third day right now. Morning session was multiball with stellan, I'll write more about it later.

Day 3.
Left my notes in the gym today so writing this from memory.

The morning session was split between multiball with Stellan and drills.  For the multiball, Stellan asked me what I wanted to work on and we focused on just that.  Two players received multiball training at one time (so one could rest while the other drilled) and the other player I was with was doing different exercises so I think Stellan  tailored the sessions to each player.  

First I asked him if we could practice flips since this is a stroke I don't use very often and am not really sure how it's done.  He fed me maybe 10 balls and then we stopped and he said that I was putting my right foot down at the same time as striking the ball.  He said I should step in and plant my foot before striking the ball.  The rhythm should be like "bam bam", foot ball.  That made a huge difference: once my foot was planted I could flip the ball more easily, keep it lower, and strike it harder.  It was difficult though and I really had to concentrate on getting that foot down first.  He told me a funny story about how the forehand flip was Waldner's weakest shot and when they played doubles together Persson was always scared when Waldner got a short topspin serve to his forehand.

The second multiball drill was recovery from flip.  The first ball was short to the fh, I flip it and am then supposed to recover to ready position, the next ball is long to my backhand which I'm supposed to loop.  Then start over with another flip.  The first thing I noticed when doing this drill is I started to concentrate on recovering and getting ready for that backhand, so immediately reverted to striking the flip at the same time as planting the foot.  Since I rarely flip I wonder how that habit developed and the only thing I can think is that I do it when I push on the serve return.  In any case, it took a real force of will to plant foot, flip ball, recover, and loop the bh.  Not easy.  Unnecessary to mention that Stellan was not feeding the balls very quickly or hitting them hard.  When we were done he said "You want to see how I feed the second ball when I do this with Persson?"  Sure.  He feeds me a short one, I step in and flip, and before I even know it happens he smacks the second ball past me on the backhand side.  I mean, ridiculously hard and fast.  And yes, Persson gets to those and gets them back.

For the third session I told him about my problem with long spinny serves to the bh side.  His advice was (if you can reach you may pat yourself on the back) more or less the same as I got on this forum: you need to loop them.  The trick is to go right over the top of the ball and forget about the side spin.  My problem on these serves is I come up from below the ball and try to lift it, like a normal loop against underspin.  Stellan explained that with pure sidespin there's nothing to lift so those returns are going to go long.  So we did a bunch of those, him feeding me side spin serves (both left and right) and me more or less successfully getting the shot right.  You really have to brush right over the top of the ball, the stroke is very horizontal and the resulting "loop" is pretty flat.  But it works.

The second half of the morning session was looping and blocking drills, with similar variation to ones I've already described.  We spent some time on long pushes and opening up against them.  There was a technique lesson regarding the forehand where Stellan explained that the time to adjust the racket angle is on the backswing and once you start swinging forward the racket angle should be fixed.  That is, don't try to change it at the last second.  You have to commit to the angle and then swing in one plane.  Later I asked him about using the wrist on the fh and he said that many players develop some wrist motion on the forehand and that it varies from player to player.  As players advance their wrist become more flexible and looser and they use it more in subtle ways.  So basically, not something for the beginner to worry about (last comment added by me).

The afternoon session was more looping and blocking drills, with again the emphasis on footwork, especially moving around the fh side of the table.  I tried really hard to think about moving that right leg back instead of sideways but of course every time I thought about the leg I missed the loop.  That one is going to take a lot of time...  We did some serve and return drills and ended up with a mini-match against our partner, in my case a jr who I could easily beat 18 months ago but lost quickly against today, two games, maybe 5 and 6.

Wingspan
if you get a chance ask him about Ogimura's (World champ and Coach to Swedish National squad) ideas and the effect on Swedish And european tt training methods.


Edited by pingpongpaddy - 06 August 2009 at 19:14

Thanks for the nice comments guys! Didn't have access to a computer yesterday, last couple of updates will be later today.

Originally posted by pingpongpaddy Wingspan if you get a chance ask him about Ogimura's (World champ and Coach to Swedish National squad) ideas and the effect on Swedish And european tt training methods.

I did ask him about it.  He said the Ogimura was very influential and was way ahead of his time ("like Jimi Hendrix", he said).  He said that there was a chain, starting with Hans Alser (and someone else, I don't remember) and Ogimura in the 60's, then Stellan in the 70's, and Stellan inspired the next generation (Waldner, Persson, etc.).  So really it was a chain reaction, none of it would have happened without Ogimura's influence.

Another memorable story: he said that the Japanese were very strong in the 60's and early 70's (I don't remember the exact years) then went downhill and have only recently started to have a good program again.  Stellan was talking about this with a Chinese coach and that guy said it was because "they don't miss enough".  What?  Missing is bad right?  The coach explained that the Japanese had been coached never to miss in practice, the result being that they became very conservative in their ball placement, putting everything short and in the center of the table.  The Chinese on the other hand feel that if you're hitting the table every time in practice you're not going for enough.  About 70% on the table and 30% misses is about right.

I have a few Stellan quotes and bits and pieces to add.

 

Stellan described how different drills facilitated the development of footwork and certain other skills relevant to the game. He then took questions, and was asked: “Do you have any suggestions for someone who is lazy and does not want to move his feet? Stellan responded “Chess”.

 

One day during warm up Stellan commented to Dave H – “It is good to slowly raise your heart rate when warming up, but if you run any more slowly, you will be going backwards.”

 

Regarding table tennis Stellan said, “Table tennis is not life and death, it is far more serious than that.”

 

Regarding Ogimura, Stellan said that at one of his camps before quitting they had to hit one thousand forehands in a row and one thousand backhands. If either partner missed they had to start over. He remembered one time a player being very upset that he missed on number 982. He said Ogimura had a background in gymnastics and that the training was very intense and physically demanding. He mentioned one team member that quit after the start of the training.

 

Stellan’s knowledge seemed pretty broad. He played short pips for a while and even was able to give me some very insightful advise on my long pip stroke.

 

Personality wise Stellan and Angie are very down to earth and approachable. When we were drilling it was quite common for them to be bending over picking up balls and returning them to the sweaty fatigued players. Stellan seems to have a very ordered and meticulous personality. We have a row of chairs between the barriers for people to sit, and one day before the students arrived I noticed Stellan walking the row re-centering the chairs so that they were in a straight line. Also Stellan and Angie both like their coffee.

 

For me I thought it was a great camp and some things that I kind of knew in theory previously started to gel for me so that I could actually incorporate them into my game. I still have a long way to go though.

 

Wingspan was looking pretty smooth at the end. On Thursday he got pared with a really fantastic partner who seemed to have this uncanny ability to block every ball to just the right place for the drill. Once or twice I even saw him reach out and take a long ball out of the air and block it to the appropriate place without missing a beat. Really quite impressive. Seemed to be quite an amazing athlete, and a handsome bloke to.

 

Anyway, I am pretty exhausted now since I had the full camp plus some other evening club duties. So I am vowing not to strike another ball until … until… until… well until tomorrow mornings beginner kid’s class anyway.

Once again, great updates wingspan, and alphapong. Have really enjoyed reading this thread. Must try out some of the drills.

Any photos?!

I decided to put this in the HOF rather than let it fade away

Did anyone have a 'Ding! Ding!' moment in this thread? This was mine, talking about serve return:

"Stellan explained that with pure sidespin there's nothing to lift so those returns are going to go long."


Edited by Tinykin - 08 September 2009 at 23:01

Originally posted by Tinykin Originally posted by Tinykin Did anyone have a 'Ding! Ding!' moment in this thread? This was mine: Talking about serve return: "Stellan explained that with pure sidespin there's nothing to lift so those returns are going to go long."

Yep!

Mine was the 70%-30% hit/miss ratio

This is something i've applied to my chopping very succesfully - to get a good floated ball I use a chopping action, but primarily come accross the ball sideways with the action [my lp's are grippy btw]- this produces more side than backspin, but looks and sounds very similar - the side and lack of backspin are causing all sorts of problems to people not reading the spin and over looping the next ball.
Never get any credit for it though as most people think its my funny rubber doing it all by itsself ;0) 

I bet he won't like  you for revealing the secret of his success

Camp photo: http://www.alamedattc.org/stellangiecamp.htm