Fred's 3rd Vid

[JKC]

Had a look through the stuff I got today and no one wants to watch a long vid anyway so here is the link:-
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Y_AFJmDvg
 
We haven't found as much time to practice this month but should be able to get back into it more again from now on.
 
I have spotted a few things to look at, but all comments and suggestions welcome.

[speedplay]

If my trained eye isn't mistaken, it looks like he has reduced his back swing since the last time.

He does look extremely talented, but I guess that some cred must be given to the consistent feeder, right? Cause if he has the ability to hit/play like that on random feed balls, he would beat the crap out of most 10 years old at my club! As it looks now, he would probably give them a good fight.

Keep up the good work!

[pingpongrob]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont think that waldner was any better at his age either. I think that Fred has very good Eye to hand co-ordination and he is actually moving to the ball slightly. He's going to be a really good player, I think he will be beating his dad by the time he turns 10. What you really need is one of the tables where it can be lowered to Fred Height.

[JKC]

The backswing has reduced and it is something we are working to get back at the moment. If I had posted the vid I took a couple of days ago his shot looked like a block with a long followthrough across his chest. Thankfully we have got out of that habit because it wasn't pretty.
He is only really consistent if I place the ball in an area about 1 foot wide, but this is increasing and his mobility is increasing too. He is quite good at spotting he should move left but not so quick to move right, prefering to lean and drop his right shoulder instead (something to work on I think).

If you listen carefully after he hits the hard shot in the middle, you can hear him laughing at me as he has just earned himself a chocolate finger.

[JKC]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont think that waldner was any better at his age either. I think that Fred has very good Eye to hand co-ordination and he is actually moving to the ball slightly. He's going to be a really good player, I think he will be beating his dad by the time he turns 10. What you really need is one of the tables where it can be lowered to Fred Height.

I haven't seen any vids of Waldner playing at that age, I don't think he started until about 6. Boll was playing at a similar age of course but I don't know how often or what training he was receiving. I suppose many of the Chinese players were playing at that age too but I don't suppose vids exist as there are so many kids playing they would find it difficult to spot which ones were the extra talented ones to video.

[Skippy]

I really don't know what you guys can work on till he either gets a little taller, or he's able to back off the table a bit and play.  Clearly consistency in the forehand, and movement are the things that he can work on at the moment.  I suppose even though his consistency goes down a little it's probably still a good thing to drill him in moving around the table hitting the forehand.  I saw him do the drill a couple times, so I know he can do it.

[speedplay]

A crazy idea that I got, might not work at all, but I have noticed that a lot of young players are great at looping and counter looping, but they can't block for s**t! So, by feeding him light topspin and learn how to simple block them back by angeling his blade could be useful.

They few times I have coached the youngsters at our club, I have tried to teach them how to block and tell them how effective it can be, but they simple can't block, they either hit or lift the ball back.

[JKC]

Blocking is a good idea if he doesn't get used to playing that shot too much and start doing it when he has time to play a forehand. He seems to be developing the block naturally when I rush him a little and he has no time to have a backswing.
We are still doing the movement exercises from the previous vid and he does move his feet more inbetween shots anyway now although not always in the textbook way. The backhand is developing too away from the table, maybe 1 out of 2 are returned onto the table when the feeding is good. Serving is an area we will look at this month, he is the ideal height to develop some sort of tomahawk serve. We are also looking at improving his accuracy so he can aim for 1 side of the table or the other as at the moment it depends how early or late he is on the shot. This will help me to feed more accurately too although it is beginning to be good practice for me too returning these random balls as accurately as I can.
He is getting easier to video though as all the footage this month came from 7 mins of vid on a 512Mb memory card so I don't need to spend ages trawling through videos to find stuff worth showing.

[JKC]

Should have taken my video this afternoon instead of Thursday. The backswing is more or less back to normal and Fred managed to hit 33 forehands in a row without making a mistake in what was presumably a 67 shot rally.

[Der Echte]

Keep at it Scooby-doo, I mean Fred. Stay loose and have fun.