#27 – Christian Ortner: Mr Piingo Mingles with the Pros

The Expert Table Tennis Podcast

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!

What sets Christian apart from your typical adult beginner, however, is the fact that as part of his work he regularly “mingles” with the world’s best players and coaches. Very few hobby players get the chance to play with Michael Maze or ask Timo Boll for some advice! In today’s episode, we hear all about Christian’s experience of being a hobby player surrounded by professionals, and he shares some of the advice he’s received along the way.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• What on earth is “Mr Piingo”?!
• About the work Christian does for the ITTF
• What a typical day is like for Christian
• How he first started playing table tennis at age 18
• Some of the things he struggled with at the beginning
• The #1 tip Timo Boll gave him that changed his view of the game
• Stories from meeting other professional players
• Why Dimitrij Ovtcharov believes Ma Long is the best ever!
• The importance of using deception and “feints” in your game
• TOP TIP = Why you must never give up
• How to follow Christian and Mr Piingo

Links from this episode:

• Mr Piingo on Facebook
• Mr Piingo on YouTube
• Mr Piingo on Instagram
• Piing of Power
• Christian Ortner (Ratings Central)
• Werner Schlager Academy

Thanks for listening!

Thank you so much for joining us for Episode 27 of The Expert Table Tennis Podcast with Christian Ortner. I feel like he was an ideal guest because he had a table tennis story that a lot of us can relate to (starting quite late and struggling to improve) but then at the same time he was able to drop in plenty of advice from some of the world’s best players such as Timo Boll and Dimitrij Ovtcharov.

I don’t know how much time Christian will have over the next few years to focus on improving his game (he’s a very busy guy) but I’m sure that if he continues playing as much as possible, and enjoying it as much as he clearly does, he’ll be shooting up the ratings and seeing some really superb results.

Thanks for a brilliant interview Christian!

And 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 [e-mail].

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 [e-mail].

Please share the show

By the time this episode is released (at 6am on Friday 27th November) I reckon the podcast will be up to roughly 5,300 downloads for the month. In October, the show received 6,169 downloads so in order to beat that we need to get 900ish over the last four days. I’m sure that with your help that’ll be easy and we’ll be setting new records (I always get excited on the 1st of the month – “stats day” – when I count up all the numbers from the previous month. I’m a geek. I know).

So please 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!

I’ll have a brand new amazing guest for you next Friday. I hope you have a great weekend.

The post #27 – Christian Ortner: Mr Piingo Mingles with the Pros appeared first on Expert Table Tennis.