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.

I got Brian on the show to discuss his thoughts on the importance of fitness for table tennis and why he believes high-intensity shadow play could be the best type of cardio training (I have to admit, I completely agree with him). We also chat a little about Brian’s story and what it takes to become a top table tennis player.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Why the loop is the ultimate trump card in table tennis.

How to incorporate shadow play into your practice.

Brian’s story: from late-starter to US national team.

What exactly is table tennis talent?

The importance of table tennis-specific fitness training.

Why shadow training is the perfect cardio.

How to get over the fear of looking stupid.

TOP TIP: Why hand speed is > power in the modern game.

Where to buy your copy of Brian latest training video.

Links from this episode:

Thanks for listening!

I hope you enjoyed listening to my interview with Brian Pace. I feel like this was one of the strongest episodes so far!

As I said many times during the episode – I love this training video. I strongly recommend you buy yourself a copy and start training for table tennis-specific fitness and improving your ability to push through fatigue and maintain a solid technique.

Here’s the trailer…

Loop Fundamentals (Shadow Training Series) is available to buy for just $29.99 from Dynamic Table Tennis as either a digital download or a physical DVD. It would make a great Christmas present for any table tennis player!

If you do buy the video, let me know how you get on with it. I challenge you to complete the full 30 minutes, without missing a beat, on your first attempt. It isn’t easy. It even comes with a health warning at the beginning.

A big thank you goes out to Brian Pace for sharing so much good information and producing such high-quality, valuable training resources.

And also, a big thank you to our sponsor – ttEDGE

Running and producing a weekly podcast costs money (not a lot of money, but I do have to pay out for hosting each money and buy equipment and tools). It also takes up quite a lot of my time (probably about 4-5 hours per episode if you include prep, doing the interview, editing and uploading it, and then promotion).

In order to make it all a little more financially viable I have taken the decision to have each episode paid for by a sponsor. The format of the show will remain the same, except that after the interview I will give you a very brief message from them, whoever it might be. It could be promoting a product or service. It might be making you aware of a special deal. Anything really. I hope you understand.

And I have to say, I couldn’t be happier with our first sponsor…

ttEDGE is an online table tennis coaching service run by William Henzell (Australian #1) and Brett Clarke (former Australian national team player and coach). They produce top quality coaching videos and offer one-to-one online coaching and video analysis to platinum members of their website.

If you haven’t heard my interview with Brett Clarke yet, you can listen to that here.

It’s actually pretty unbelievable that you can have such an experienced coach as Brett Clarke, watching your videos and giving you one-to-one feedback and advice on your game, all included in the price of membership. I would probably charge £30 an hour just for this alone!

That’s the main reason why I believe joining ttEDGE could have a massive impact on your game. The videos are great, and will help you loads, but one-to-one access to a top quality coach like Brett is what’s really going to push you on to the next level.

If you are interested in becoming a member of ttEDGE, and I highly recommend you do, here is the link you’ll need…

http://www.ttedge.com/signup

Standard membership is free.

Platinum membership, which gives you access to everything and one-on-one feedback from Brett himself, is only $19.95 per month.

If you are interested in sponsoring future episodes of The Expert Table Tennis Podcast, please email me via ben@experttabletennis.com.

Fancy being a guest on the podcast yourself?

Your podcast needs you!

I like to have a variety of different guests on the show (professional players, up-and-comers, bloggers, top coaches, sports psychologists/scientists etc.) to keep each episode fresh and appeal to a wide audience of table tennis fans. One idea I’ve had is to feature you guys, the podcast listeners, from time to time. I think it would be a great way to learn from each other and share what is working in practice.

If you are a regular listener to the podcast, and fancy being on the show yourself at some point, then drop me an email and we can discuss how it would work. My email is ben@experttabletennis.com.

Please share the show

We had another brilliant month of downloads in November – our best ever – with 6,342 downloads in total.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been listening and sharing the podcast. I’m only releasing three episodes in December (I’ve decided putting out a podcast episode on Friday 25th would be a bit much) but if we show continue to grow in popularity then I see no reason why we can’t beat November’s total even with one less episode.

So, please continue to support the show and subscribe on iTunes, leave us an honest iTunes Podcast review, share this episode on Facebook or Twitter, or simply just mentioned it to a friend. I appreciate your help so much!

On next week’s show, I’m joined by Class 8 Team GB Para player Billy Shilton. We’ll be talking about his outstanding recent results, his move to live and train at the national centre in Sheffield, and his hopes and dreams for Rio 2016 and beyond.