Great work guys! Congrats on completing 5 hours of footwork in 1 day! Even for conditioned athletes, it is really challenging. Today, we talked about the importance of warmup, body positioning, distance from the table, timing, various footwork movement, various types of drills, peeling the ball, gumming the ball, and transitioning from drills to matches. As I reminded you throughout the day, it isn’t just about working hard for 5 hours, it is about learning new skills, writing them down in your notebook, remembering these new skills, and training very hard to develop these skill in the coming weeks and months. I’m really looking forward to the 1.5 hour interactive lecture tomorrow and the 5 hours of footwork.
Each night, I’ll be posting 1-2 youtube videos and 1-2 facebook videos. Thursday and Friday afternoon, I’ll also be livestreaming the mega camp through the Samson Dubina Table Tennis Academy facebook page. Make sure that you follow Samson Dubina Table Tennis Academy on Facebook and subscribe to Samson Dubina on youtube for the latest updates.
Most of you have taken about 2-3 pages of notes so far! This is a great start. Before bed, make sure that you write down a few more comments regarding your training sessions and the feedback that I gave you. If you can’t remember everything that we worked on, just review the outline listed below…
Wednesday (Session 1)
For the entire week, the focus will be on developing various aspects of footwork. For this first session, we will be working on short movement linking consistent forehand and backhand loops together. The target goal for this session is consistency in developing low, deep loops with plenty of spin to the target location. The first lecture will be on timing for looping and blocking. The second lecture will be on the necessary steps to combine practice with match play. There will be plenty of coaches walking from table to table offering assistant through every drill. Throughout each session we encourage note taking and video recording.
3:30-3:40 Light Jogging and Stretching
3:40-3:50 Forehand Warmup
3:50-4:00 Backhand Warmup
4:00-4:10 Looping/Blocking Timing Lecture
4:10-4:30 2 forehand loops – 2 backhand loops
4:30-4:50 1 forehand – 1 middle – 1 backhand
4:50-5:00 break
5:00-5:10 Lecture on practice vs matches
5:10-5:30 2 forehand loops – 2 backhand loops (12th ball is free)
5:30-5:50 1 forehand – 1 middle – 1 backhand (12th ball is free)
5:50-6:00 Closing Comments and Note Taking
Wednesday (Session #2)
Still focusing on our main topic (footwork) we will now take a step further and implement variations within the drills. In the first lecture, we will unpack the concepts of peeling vs bruising the ball learning about speed and spin variations. In the second lecture, we will learn about linking serve and return together with the drill. The focus for the week is not merely to teach you new skills but to help you develop a training routine that you can use throughout the entire year. Because we have players of various skill levels training, each player will sometimes be given separate drills that are level appropriate for him/her.
6:30-6:40 Light Jogging and Stretching
6:40-6:45 Forehand Warmup
6:45-6:50 Backhand Warmup
6:50-7:00 Lecture on Variations
7:00-7:20 2 Forehand Loops – 2 Backhand Loops (1 bruising / 1 peeling)
7:20-7:40 1 forehand – 1 middle – 1 backhand (middle ball bruising / corner balls peeling)
7:40-7:50 Break
7:50-8:00 Lecture on linking the shots
8:00-8:20 players choose which drill, but starting with the serve
8:20-8:40 Players choose same drill, but start with receive
8:40-8:55 Match Play
8:55-9:00 Closing Comments and Note Taking