The Expert Table Tennis Podcast

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Tahl Leibovitz is a Paralympic gold medalist, is currently ranked #8 in the world in Class 9, and has over 25 years of table tennis experience as both a player and coach. Who better to join me on The Expert Table Tennis Podcast for the first episode of 2016?

Rio 2016 is just six months away and 40-year-old Tahl is training hard so that he can be in a position to give his all at what will probably be his last major competition. I caught up with him last week for about 40 minutes to ask him about his book Ping Pong for Fighters and to hear some of the lessons he’s learnt from competing at the highest level for so many years.

[Read more…] about #31 – Tahl Leibovitz: Ping Pong for Fighters

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Nick Ryder started playing table tennis in the early 80s at a young age. His dad was a coach and he was living in Yorkshire, which was one of the strongest counties for table tennis in the country. By the age of 14, Nick was already a very strong player and found himself #6 on the England cadet list.

Upon entering the juniors, Nick found the going tough and wasn’t sure whether all the hard work and sacrifice was really worth it. He slowly began to drift away from the sport and quit completely at the age of 20. He didn’t pick up a bat for twenty years, until coming back to the sport in 2012 after taking his son along to a local kids coaching session.

[Read more…] about #30 – Nick Ryder: Making a Comeback After 20 Years

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I first met Billy Shilton about this time last year when he convincingly beat Sam Priestley in Band 6 at the Nottingham Grand Prix during The Expert in a Year Challenge. He was a very solid young player even back then (and seriously under-ranked) but over the last 12 months he has come on leaps and bounds, winning a number of international Para medals.

Billy is now 17 years old and living and training in Sheffield at the national centre. He is still hoping to qualify for the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games in his new class (and is flying to Costa Rica next week to see if he can pick up enough ranking points to make it there), but obviously the big one for him will be Tokyo 2020, in five years time.

[Read more…] about #29 – Billy Shilton: Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Dreams

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Brian Pace is a professional table tennis player, national level coach, and creator of Dynamic Table Tennis. As a player he achieved a peak USATT rating of 2610 and was ranked within the top 300 in the world – so he’s played at the highest level!

I’ve been trying to get Brian on the show from the very beginning and we’ve finally made it happen. We have a great topic to discuss too; Brian has just released a brand new training video, Loop Fundamentals (from his Shadow Training series). It’s definitely the most unique and innovative table tennis training video I’ve come across, combining table tennis-specific fitness drills with shadow play to improve your strokes.

[Read more…] about #28 – Brian Pace: Shadow Training for Table Tennis

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You probably know Christian Ortner as half of Piing of Power, the guys who make table tennis videos for the ITTF, Butterfly and a host of other companies. He has been active in the online table tennis community for almost three years now and has justed started his own YouTube channel, Mr Piingo.

What you probably didn’t know about Christian is that he hasn’t actually been playing table tennis for very long. He only picked up the sport about five years ago, aged 18, and didn’t start taking it seriously until 2012. That means he has had to struggle through all of the typical barriers to entry for adult beginners and forge his own path in the sport. That includes losing to hundreds of small children and OAPs!

[Read more…] about #27 – Christian Ortner: Mr Piingo Mingles with the Pros