Table Tennis: The Beginner’s Guide

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How to Play Table Tennis in 10 Days is an accelerated table tennis course that will systematically teach you the proper fundamentals of table tennis technique in ten simple steps.

Table tennis is a highly complex sport but at its simplest, it can be broken down into just a few key parts. This is only the beginning. The first three grip, stance and footwork are the foundations you need to lay at the beginning. Many players and even coaches skip over these and jump straight into hitting balls. Do so at your peril! I like to think of this as the Mr Miyagi phase of learning. Mastering the correct technique is really important here if you are to develop consistency and accuracy with your shots.

How to Play Table Tennis in 10 Days

The final three serve, return of serve and match play are the finishing touches that will allow you to convert your newly learnt skills into points in a match. I am expecting you to require at least 5 hours per skill before you reach a good level of competency. You should come up with a realistic plan for your 50 hours of training NOW! You will also need to find a partner, partners, or club to practice with.

Finally, you need to buy a table tennis bat. To help you to understand what to look for in a good table tennis bat I have written the following article: The first fundamental table tennis skill you need to learn is a correct grip. There are two main grips in table tennis; shakehands and penhold.

Introduction

The penhold grip is a traditional Asian grip where the bat is held like a pen between the thumb and index finger. The penhold grip has some advantages it allows for more wrist movement and therefore more spin but it is also more difficult to learn. Penhold players either use one side of the bat for forehand and backhand or they have to master the tricky reverse penhold backhand stroke. There are still penhold players at the top of the world rankings Xu Xin but the style does seem to be decreasing in popularity, even in China.

The shakehands grip is the traditional European grip that is now being used increasingly by Asian players as well. I have used the shakehands grip since I started playing table tennis over 15 years ago and therefore I will be teaching this style of grip. There are many minor variations within the shakehands grip and everybody holds the bat slightly differently. I made the following video after spending 10 weeks experimenting with my grip during the beginning of That video has received a lot of positive feedback and it gives a much better explanation of my current thoughts on the grip than my original blog post which I wrote in I encourage you to spend some time developing your own version of the relaxed shakehands grip.

You want to get comfortable with it before you move on to playing shots. You should practice bouncing and controlling the ball with your shakehands grip.

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Table Tennis University is a brilliant resource for online table tennis coaching. They have two FREE video courses aimed at new table tennis players and both cover the topic of grip. The course contains 12 coaching videos covering all of the basics. Lesson 1 is an 8-minute video explaining how to correctly hold your racket. This course covers the basic skills and techniques you need to play the sport of table tennis.

Lecture 2 is a 7-minute video focused on developing the correct grip. I did a terrible job teaching stance to Sam. For the first month I basically let him stand however he liked and he developed a load of bad habits that he then had to struggle to fix later on. What that means is that you want to get your center of gravity as low as realistically possible and you want your feet to be at least 1. Sometimes stance and ready position are used almost interchangeably. Let your upper body muscles relax and your arms and shoulders can even hang forward a bit like a gorilla!

Your leg muscles will need to be more engaged and ready to move. One way to achieve this is through deep breathing; breathing from your stomach. Take a big breath in, inflate your lungs, and then let it all out. As you exhale allow your upper body to naturally drop down. You should feel your center of gravity sink, your balance increase, and your core become more solid. From then on maintain your stance and engage in some belly breathing. This will help to keep you relaxed and low. Once you understand the basics of stance you can test yourself with some balance and agility drills.

A great way to continue drilling in this new stance is to play one-on-one catch games using a table tennis ball with a partner. You could even do some ball control skills in your new stance for example: The final important aspect to cover before you start hitting balls is your footwork. Many players are taught all the strokes first, from a stationary position, and then footwork and movement is added in further down the line. This seems like a bad idea to me. Table tennis is an active sport where you need to play shots and then move.

Punching is obviously really important in boxing but so is footwork. You need both and they are inextricably linked. The two go together. Table tennis footwork is quite strange. This is going to feel very unnatural at first as very few other activities require this kind of movement. That is why you have a whole day to work on mastering this type of footwork. You should concentrate on getting comfortable with the side-step footwork first, especially with lots of fast changes of direction. You can practice this going around a table tennis table in circles if you have one.

Then you can move on to faster footwork patterns or trying to cover large distances with one step. Table tennis is a very explosive sport and if you look at any of the top players you will notice that they all have massive legs. This kind of movement is hard work! I would recommend keeping your bat in your hand while working on your footwork and also remembering to stay in your relaxed and low stance.

This will keep you to stay balanced when moving and make the practice more realistic to the experience of actually playing table tennis. You can find that here. I know it can be tempting to skip over the first three days and start playing straight away but I would really advise against it. You will pick up the four basic table tennis strokes so much faster having spent three days getting really comfortable with your grip, stance and footwork. Since then it has received over 25, views.

Day 1 – Grip

Nothing has changed either. The technique I teach now is pretty much exactly the same as what I was teaching in The key is to focus on control, consistency and accuracy. I will be saying this many times during the course. When you are first starting out consistency is king. You want your forehand drive to be natural and relaxed. If you are consciously thinking about your technique and which parts of your body should be moving where you are going to end up playing like a robot.

The key is quantity. You need to rally, rally, rally. After five hours you should have reached a point where you are quite comfortable with the forehand drive. Your target should be to play controlled shots in a row without a mistake. Once you have reached that level you know that the stroke has begun to transfer into your subconscious.

Some people find learning the backhand drive easier than the forehand drive. Others find it more difficult. The principle, however, is exactly the same. You want to develop a stroke that is controlled, consistent and accurate. You should be aiming for that shot target and trying to get as comfortable and natural with the technique as possible.

Beginner's Guide to Table Tennis

Here is a video of Ma Long the current world 1 demonstrating his backhand drive technique. The video includes the forehand and backhand drive. You may have noticed Ma Long pointing out his use of the thumb on the backhand.

Many players have their thumb slightly higher on the rubber for a backhand in order to give more stability to the stroke. This is one of the reasons I favour the relaxed shakehands grip from Day 1 because the slight pinch technique between the thumb and index finger gives you the ability to use your thumb on the backhand. While you can often get away with this in practice and rallying it can really hold you back in match play.

Now, there are a lot of paddles out there in the market right now and it can be really overwhelming when it comes to choosing a paddle. In my honest opinion, one of the best table tennis rackets out there for beginners is the Palio Expert 2. Many of the experience players that I have talked to about beginner paddles find this paddle to have the best value, quality, and overall ease of use. Not to mention that it comes with a case, which is crucial in protecting your paddle from the elements.

This paddle, in my opinion, is the best way to build the foundation for your game. I started off playing table tennis without any prior advice or tips and I paid the price because of it. To this day, I really wish I would have started off with this Palio Expert or at least a decent racket. First, I decided to buy a cheap paddle from a department store that broke within 2 weeks.

Then, I decided to buy a Stiga premade paddle from my local sporting goods store for 40 bucks really not worth my money. Lastly, I bought a paddle that was not suited for my playing style and was for more skilled players. That paddle made learning a much longer, tedious process. Taking care of your paddle is also important as well. Stickier rubbers will attract a lot of dust from the air and sometimes from the ball if the floor is dirty. I recommend cleaning your paddle after you play with a little dab of water and a kitchen sponge to help keep it in the best condition. Or, you can use the Butterfly racket care kit , which has great reviews and is sure to get the job done.

The second most important thing to consider buying is ping pong balls. Standard regulation 40 mm size balls usually come in white or orange. Top of the line balls can cost anywhere from dollars a ball, which is really pricey. What you want to buy is training balls. They essentially are easier to use, especially for beginners. You can get a pack of Here. Spin is a really important part of the game, and to help you better understand spin, Stiga has spin training balls.

These are designed to help you easily see how the ball is spinning and in what direction. If you are looking for just regular balls to practice with then it would be smart to buy in bulk. I highly recommend a 50 count pack of Regail 3-star table tennis training balls; which are a great price for your money, not to mention they will also last you a long time. People step on them, they get hit too hard, some have defects or they simply get lost. Although, if you happen to have a club in your area, they might have ping pong balls already available for you to use.

But it's always smart to have some back-ups at home to practice with. Tables are one of the more expensive items on the list but they are worth it in the long run. Having a good durable table is important in playing table tennis. You might not even have to buy a table; you might have one at a friends that you can use or your local club might have some.

Regardless, if you have the budget and space, buying a table is one of the best ways to improve your game in a short amount of time. Gym shoes will work just fine for people starting out. Table tennis involves a lot of lateral movements when you get to the higher skill levels. I strongly recommend for anyone trying to get better to buy themselves a pair of shoes that work well with table tennis. But don't worry, there are actually a lot of options when it comes to shoes. You can use Badminton shoes, indoor soccer shoes, regular tennis shoes, squash shoes, volleyball shoes, and of course shoes designed for table tennis.

I have these particular shoes and they have worked really well for me. You will want to order half a size down from your size though. The basic rules are important to know when starting out. Serving the ball has a lot of rules involved to try to make it as fair as possible, so try to bear with me here. When you serve you have to have the ball above the table in plain site and then you can throw it in the air and hit it.

If you hide the ball with your body or an arm it is not a legal serve. I remember when I first started out and I just hit the ball right out of my hand. It took me awhile to get use to this new way of serving but it really improved my overall serving game. Once you make contact with the ball it must first hit your side of the table then bounce over.

Another thing you have to remember is that you have to make contact with the ball within the sides of the table. It must be hit behind the white line closest to you. You can, however, hit it as far back as you would like. When a let occurs neither opponent gets a point and the serve must be redone. But be careful if this happens to you.

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