Table Tennis is a spectacular sport with lots of hard hitting and spin, retrieving from several meters away from the table, smashing at over 180 km/h.

Unfortunately, that is not what makes a great table tennis player. In fact when you see the best players in the world they can all hit the ball fast. In fact when you look at even the top 400 players in the world they can all hit amazing backhands and forehands as fast as you could dream of. So what makes the difference. One of course is consistency of these strokes, but the other more vital factor is setting themselves up to initiate the strokes by having a good short game.

Prevention

How can you do this? The key factor is prevention. That is preventing your opponent from initiating the attack. If you can’t prevent your opponent from attacking, all your wonderful forehand and backhand strokes are worthless and you better get yourself a good cure, or a defensive block.

Return of Serve

Practice your short game. By this I mean being able to push the ball short, close to the net and low. You need to be able to do this on the return of serve. So if your opponent can serve short you need to be able to drop the ball back close to the net to stop them from attacking. This unfortunately, doesn’t come without much practice.

How to Push Short

The basics of pushing short are the same as for the push stroke, just make it much smaller. In fact for the short push you may only need your hand and fingers to get the ball short. Keep your hand nice and relaxed so that some of the speed and spin are absorbed. One of PingSkills’ early videos on the Backhand Push shows you the short push. Take a look at it and work on it.

This is the part of Table Tennis that many club level players ignore but is vital for getting to a higher level.