Ask William Henzell!

Dan

says editing a big TTD Team episode... stay tuned 👀

Dan

says editing a big TTD Team episode... stay tuned 👀
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Ok guys,

William Henzell will be answering questions in this thread. Any questions you would like to ask William leave it in the comments below :)

On board to the TableTennisDaily forum is William Henzell who is a right-handed Australian Table Tennis player. He was born in Adelaide and moved to Sweden at the age of 14. His highest international ranking was 108 in 2010. He has represented Australia many times, including securing Australia's first Commonwealth Games table tennis singles medal with a silver medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. He was inducted into the Australia Table Tennis Hall of Fame at the age of 26, 20 years younger than any other of the inductees.

William_Henzell_460x300.jpg

Image thanks to Ezra Shaw/Getty Image

William is very knowledgeable and will give you a good incentive to table tennis. For more on William Henzell visit: TTedge

 
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I would like to know that what is your thought on the coaches in different countries, if you have any experience from the training by different coach. Especially after how the article report about how those Chinese player being train. It would be more interesting for me if you would like to talk about how the coach would train the kids from the very beginning level.
 
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@ TTOski - I moved overseas at 14, spending the next 10 years in Sweden and 2 years after that in Germany. If you keep working away at your game, with the right coaching, training and matches, then you will improve.

@YosuaYosan - many different reason for this. Partly a numbers game: if you have thousands and thousands of players working their hardest every day to become the best player possible then you can't really fail. They train incredibly hard from a very young age - you'd struggle to find too many European parents who would be willing to ship their children off to become full-time TT players before the age of 10! They are also technically sound.

@dici - difficult question as each coach has their own way of teaching and handling the players. I've got a couple of articles coming up on my blog on the website about my experiences of working with my different coaches.
 
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Hi 7th. I just got back after a few weeks in Europe and I'm trying to keep my training up to a reasonable level in Australia. I'm doing around 5 sessions per week most of time at the moment. I'll be heading back to Europe to train at the Werner Schlager Academy later this year which I'm really looking forward to - it's a brilliant set-up and the week I spent there significantly helped my game.

I'm not 100% sure what a returnboard is. Would you mind elaborating?

Thanks and that's good to hear! We're happy with how the coaching videos are looking and have tried to be as detailed as possible. There are 27 videos currently up at www.ttEDGE.com and more are going on each week. The most exciting videos we are creating at the moment are match analysis vids of some of the top players in the World. We should be releasing one of these (Timo Boll vs Ma Lin) on our youtube channel (www.youtube.com/tabletennisedge) soon.
 
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Hi William :)

What is your take on the below,

The AGM also approved a trial of a new method of play, it’s very simple, whoever loses the previous point gets to serve next, the intent of this trial is to see if it reduces the domination of the service and its follow up as the this method of play would ensure that a game was always won against the opponents serve.

What do you think about this ?
 
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Not a fan. I believe part of the intent of this trial is to stop players winning sets with dubious serves (as many of the top players are serving completely against the current rule). This won't solve the problem whatsoever.
 
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I been critical to many of the changes that were brought in without being properly thought through. Banning speed glue was good - that stuff was nasty and dangerous for the players.\

The booster witch-hunt that has taken over is a joke. You should see the amount of people sitting in the racket control room at every tournament testing to see if there a 3.00000 or 3.000001 parts per million (ppm) of VOC (volatile organic compounds) or if the rubber is 3.99mm or 4.00mm. It's the same stuff that mothers put on their babies' bottoms for goodness sake!

The service rule is very poor. There are a large number of top players who are deliberately hiding their serves behind their heads and shoulders on every serve. The players who are serving according to the rule are facing a massive disadvantage.

Equipment is of course very important. I change my rubbers every couple of weeks.
 
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Hi 7th. I just got back after a few weeks in Europe and I'm trying to keep my training up to a reasonable level in Australia. I'm doing around 5 sessions per week most of time at the moment. I'll be heading back to Europe to train at the Werner Schlager Academy later this year which I'm really looking forward to - it's a brilliant set-up and the week I spent there significantly helped my game.

I'm not 100% sure what a returnboard is. Would you mind elaborating?

Thanks and that's good to hear! We're happy with how the coaching videos are looking and have tried to be as detailed as possible. There are 27 videos currently up at www.ttEDGE.com and more are going on each week. The most exciting videos we are creating at the moment are match analysis vids of some of the top players in the World. We should be releasing one of these (Timo Boll vs Ma Lin) on our youtube channel (www.youtube.com/tabletennisedge) soon.

I saw this returnboard on Youtube lately, and I thought it looks kind of fun if there's no one else around to hit with:

Awesome site and Youtube channel! I look forward to watching future match analysis videos. I think that at the point where pros have achieve the highest shot consistency, one has to plan the moves out to keep the opposing side off-balance, like a chess game.
Have you ever thought about teaming up with Pingskills? They also post table tennis tutorials like you guys do.
 
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That looks pretty cool :) If you don't have a practice partner for the day then why not?! My concern is that it would train you to hit medium length topspins down the middle of the table but if your still learning the basics then it wouldn't be much of an issue.

I've known the Pingskills guys for a long time and they have done some great work for table tennis over the past few years. I've got many of my own ideas and approaches that I'd like to try out. Glad to hear you like the site!
 
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Chinese rubbers shouldn't be harder to deal with than any other rubbers IMO. An OFF+ blade with just about any rubbers is going to be super fast. I haven't used h3 neo so I can't comment specifically on that. But I've seen so many players who are tricked into buying the most the fastest (and most expensive) blades on the market in the hope that the more they spend, the better they'll become.
 
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Hi William ,

Thanks a lot to taking time out to answering our questions ! I was curious as to how to plan our practice schedule around tournaments ? For example , do you taper out the number of hours , concentrate on your service and return games etc. It would be great if you can enlighten us on the mental preparation part also before a tournament .
 
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Hey William
What do you think if you see this

Just kidding, lucky Wang
Now my real question:
Do you regret to become a top player ? I know it is amazing to make his hobby to his job but with another job you would earn much more money except you play for China :D
 
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Hey William,

I was wondering how many Chinese players have you played, and out of those who did you think was the hardest to beat and why? Or just who in general Chinese or non-Chinese did you think was the hardest to beat. I don't know if it was just a good style of play match for you or something, but you seemed to do very well against WLQ in the video, despite the fact that in that video he was still probably at or close to the top of his game.
 
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Hi ttmonster. I normally cover this sort of thing in my blog on ttEDGE.com. But I'll do a blog post on this topic soon and post on here when finished.

@bolforte - no I don't regret it. I've been working in Australia for the past 3 years after moving home after 12 years in Europe. I recently quit my job to set up ttEDGE.com and to work more on my table tennis again. Turning up to the same place all day long every day (while dreaming about my 4 weeks of holidays for the year) did not suit me and I'm happy to be more involved in table tennis again.

@scylla - Of the top players, I've played Wang Liqin 3 times, Wang Hao once, Ma Lin in doubles and Ma Long in doubles. Yeh, I had really good chances to get close to beating WLQ in Beijing. He struggled against my tomahawk serve all through the match and I was able to dominate his backhand continually. I did also play him at the 2006 World Cup and got mashed - that match was not fun and I felt pretty powerless at times. I didn't have my tomahawk back then and he didn't have any problems with my pendulum serve.

I would say that Ma Lin would be a nightmare to play if he's playing well. Such a good short push and then follows it up with forehand topspins over the table. I'm half way through doing some match analysis videos of his match against Timo Boll at the German Open this year (which involves watching each point about 15 times!) so I'm getting to know his tricks well. I didn't mind playing Wang Hao and we had a whole heap of backhand - backhand rallies. I lost 4-1 but didn't have any real chances to get on top at any stage.

My best win (albeit in doubles) was against Ma Long at the 2007 French Open. Adam Robertson and I beat Ma Long and Qiu Yike which was a pretty surreal experience.

There haven't been too many matches against the top players where I've been completely killed, really only that one against WLQ. But beating them is a completely different story and you'll need to be able to beat them in so many different areas of the game. They don't go down without a fight and can vary their play enormously when needed.
 
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