This was another great podcast with someone that has a lifetime worth of experience in the game as a player, but also a lot of knowledge as a coach. We enjoyed sitting down and chatting with Thiago Monteiro about whether table tennis players fixate on the wrong things when they are trying to improve their table tennis game. Key areas we spoke about…

Major League Table Tennis has taken the US by storm, and it was a great opportunity as the second season kicks off to sit down and catch up with the MLTT Founder and Commissioner, Flint Lane. Flint is aiming to bring the dream of having a full time professional table tennis league in the USA alive. Season 1 saw an exciting new format for the sport,…

Matilda Ekholm is a player well known for her passion, her scrappy left handed battles in rallies, and her exceptional feeling for the ball. While many know her as a multiple-time European Championships medalist, and now the Director of Coaching at PingPod in the USA, not everyone knows the hurdles she overcame in her impressive career. In this pod…

A great and lengthy discussions with Dan Ives from the renowned table tennis brand TableTennisDaily, about the state of athlete image in table tennis. This was a good chance to dive into the topics of athlete interactions with fans, how media presents table tennis stars, and how table tennis players could break into bigger audiences and become more…

We had a great chance to sit down and chat with Vitor Ishiy, one of the mainstays of the Brazilian National Team and a 12-time Pan American Championships gold medalist. We spoke with Vitor about the difficult task of handling pressure in high stakes table tennis matches. As part of this discussion we spoke initially about how pressure can affect a …

We reached the tenth episode of the Talkin' Smash Podcast, and it was our pleasure to be joined by PingPod CEO Max Kogler to talk about one of the biggest topics in the table tennis world. It's no secret that table tennis is a huge sport recreationally around the globe, but the numbers translate poorly into competitive representation. One of the ke…

Thiago Monteiro has had a lengthy career representing Brazil, winning multiple Pan American Games medals and competing in three Olympic Games. Monteiro has spent the majority of his career living in France, the rewards of making the bold decision to leave Brazil to pursue a full time table tennis career. At that time no player had moved away perman…

To kick off Talkin' Smash in 2024, there's no better guest than Dan Ives. A great friend of podcast host Matt Hetherington, spanning back over a decade - these two have banter. Ives created TableTennisDaily over 12 years ago, starting out as a YouTube channel and a small forum for the most die hard table tennis fans. Over the past decade TableTenni…

In Episode 7 of the Talkin' Smash Podcast I spoke with one of Germany's top female players, Sophia Klee. After a promising start in the sport, as the 2017 European Top 10 Cadet Girls Champion, and European Cadet Girls Doubles Champion the same year, Klee faced a challenging situation at the beginning of 2022 when she was struck with a brutal injury…

In Episode 6 of Talkin' Smash Podcast powered by JOOLA, I sat down with my good friend Ryan Willard (again) at the JOOLA North American Team Championships on center court. I have some new guests lined up coming into next year and will take a little pause to organize and record new ones as we head through December. Ryan is a great creative mind and …

I was fortunate enough to take the opportunity to film a couple of podcasts with Lily when she visited, in the second one - Episode 5 of Talkin' Smash, we talked Serve Receive. Lily prepared some good blogs this year about her experiences playing on the tour and deep diving into some specific matches. One which stood out for me was her account of t…

Former British International Craig Bryant joins host Matt Hetherington for this episode of Talkin' Smash on his specialist topic of the serve. Craig, recently taking the internet by storm as a reputable professional table tennis coach with a particular focus in the area of improving service, has a wealth of knowledge in the sport. The topics of con…

Peak Performance Table Tennis expert trainer Kevin Finn joins host Matt Hetherington to talk about common misconceptions for physical training in table tennis, as well as his ideas about building athleticism in the sport. Kevin Finn is a certified strength and conditioning coach and table tennis player, who is using his skills to try and bring both…

Talkin' Smash host Matt Hetherington is joined by JOOLA's 3-time US Olympian Lily Zhang to discuss more about the contrast of experiences during her career so far. From the tough decision to pack up and relocate overseas as a full-time player for the first time, to making the -arguably even more difficult - decision, to come home to live back in th…

In the first ever episode of the Talkin' Smash Podcast powered by JOOLA, host Matt Hetherington is joined by one of the recognizable faces in US Table Tennis - Ryan Willard. Commonly seen as an MC/Host and Commentator, Ryan's journey in the sport spans from being first exposed to the sport at SPiN New York, all the way to hosting the World Table Te…