14-Year-Old Prodigy Will DOMINATE You In Table Tennis!

I always want to be the best at everything, of course, so when I experience a devastating loss, I think that really pushes me and drives me to work harder so that next time I might be the one to come out on top. She works really hard all the time. She has a positive attitude. I can't say enough good things. As far as somebody to work with, there's nobody better. She's just always so positive about it and I'm really glad to see my sister going on to do great things in the table She is certainly one of the top female players at her age group in this country. I'm Faith Hu. I'm 14 years old and I'm a member of the U.S. Table Tennis National Team. My favorite place to play, which is at home because it's very convenient. It's in the basement. Most of the time I play with my mom. My mom was a professional table tennis player in China and now she's a coach. My sister was also on the cadet national team a few years back, so growing up I just watched them play and that's how I was introduced. My father brought me into this sport and he also was a coach in China, so I started also like at the same age as Faith, seven years old. I remember when she was really young, she picked up the paddle and just started mimicking what we did and she really enjoyed just hanging out with us and playing. When she saw I, you know, training her sister and she kind of like really liked it and then she asked me, can you teach me mom? I want to play. I want to have fun. Table tennis is a super fast sport. The balls come so quickly, so your reflexes have to always be on top of the game and then we have to move fast with footwork because the balls come so fast. You have to get in place quick enough I like to say that I picked it up naturally just because I was always around it and I naturally just fell in love with it and started playing. Going with my sister to her tournaments really impacted my decision to play table tennis. LYTTC, Lilia Table Tennis Center, is a very professional training table tennis center. A lot of good players go there. I have a lot of friends there and Corey is also a great coach. I've been with him for a long time. I've been Faith's coach for a few years now. I started coaching her maybe when she was 10. When she came and I started to work with her, she was already a really good player. With Corey, he is very strategic with match play, strategy, and tactics and that's what I really like about his coaching. Technically, she's really, really sound. She doesn't have any really mechanical flaws, forehand, backhand, footwork, speed, quickness. She plays very relaxed and loose. I'm going to serve. Faith is going to open with a with a topspin backhand flick and then I'm just going to block her to work on her maintaining her offense and working on her consistency and maintaining good technique. When she misses, she sometimes gets a little bit defensive and she has to learn to forget about it when you make a mistake and just move on to the next ball. That's really good. Her speed and her quickness is probably the strength of her game, so we work on that a little bit every time. In the country right now, an under 15 year old for girls, she's number three. Ultimate goal for Faith is for her to play in the Olympics in either 2024 in Paris or 2028 in LA and hopefully both. Here are some of the trophies and medals that I had over the years. This one was my first ever trophy that I ever got. It was my 10 and under NJ state championships I won. This one was my first ever national championship title. It was 10 and under singles champion. I've been on the national team for four years now. There's three tournaments that will decide whether you're on the national team or not. So it's the two youth national ranking tournaments and then U.S. nationals. At the end, your overall ranking for all three tournaments combined, if you were top four, then you make it to the national team. The national team competition, I really like it because when we're out on court or on the table, we're really competitive with each other. But when we're off court, we always encourage each other. We push each other to become better and we're all friends and it's just a really great environment to be around. I remember once I knew that I couldn't do it, I was just like, I give up. My brother once told me this, give it your everything. Even if nothing happens, it's okay if you fail, knowing that you give it your all. If you don't, then it's the what if, what if you gave it all, would you have gotten that title? So my brother was the one that really inspired me. Back when I was in high school, Faith and I would work out, I would say three to four times a week. We usually like going for runs. We'll do ab workouts as well as strength and endurance workouts. This includes jump rope, ladder, and push-ups and sit-ups. Today, we're going to be more focused on strength training, ab training, and footwork with the ladders, sit-ups, and planks. I think these workouts are really important because it helps your strength and your endurance. Especially in table tennis, it's a very fast sport, so you have to have really strong reflexes and really fast agility. You have to be very compact when you're playing. Your strokes have to be short and powerful. Most of the power comes from your abs because you're turning your body, so your abs are your core, the center of a lot of the strokes in table tennis. I'm ready to go out when you're ready. Okay, ready? I win. I'm doing online school right now because, unfortunately, COVID shut down in-person school. Right now, my school system is hybrid, which means that I go to school every other week. This week, I happen to be virtual, so I'm doing school online. Sometimes it can be difficult balancing your school, your regular life, and table tennis. There were many times where I had an important tournament during the school year, and I had to really cram in a lot of work to make sure I could keep up, and making up a bunch of tests after can be difficult sometimes. Every Tuesday night, Princeton Pong has something called a league, and a league is basically kind of like a practice tournament. It doesn't count for real tournament ratings, but there are some good matches, good competitive play, which is right now the closest thing I have to a real tournament, so it's really good practice for me. I've been playing with Faith for about two, three years. She's a great player. She's very consistent, very fast, and her backhand's very smooth. I've known Faith for about two years in different tournaments. Her basic is really consistent. She almost never missed. I lose every time I get into a rally with her. I think she will continue to be one of the top players in the country. As a 14-year-old in the sport, she is definitely at the top of her game right now. Whatever she does, she will try her best. She's very hardworking, so that makes me very proud of her. Thank you for watching my episode. Make sure to like and subscribe, and click here to get your own No Days Off shirt.