Practice by your self
Table Tennis General
Last updated 14 years ago
Chirag B Unknown Asked 14 years ago
Hello, i am a beginner at table tennis , matter a fact i started last week.
My question was that is there any way for me to practice by my self.
-- Thank you
Jeff Plumb Answered 14 years ago
Hi Chirag,
It is great to hear that you have started playing Table Tennis. Welcome to the greatest sport on the planet! (some people may think I am a little biased) :)
As a beginner there are lots of things you can practice at home by yourself. To start with you can practice bouncing the ball on your bat. Once you can do this without missing, you can do the same but hit the ball once with the forehand side and then once with the backhand side.
The next thing you can work on is your serve. If you have a Table Tennis table then you can practice this as much as possible. The serve is one of the most crucial strokes in Table Tennis. Even if you don't have a table you can work on your serve by practicing hitting the ball with as much spin as possible. To do this you need a fast action and a brushing action. This is not very easy to achieve so spend a lot of time practicing this.
Another way you can practice at home is to perform some shadow play. Shadow play is where you practice executing the shots without a ball. To get started just grab your bat and play 20 forehands in a row. It is a good idea to watch one of our lessons on the forehand first and get a good picture in your mind of how the shot should be played. Then simply play the stroke over and over. Shadow play is a fantastic way to practice Table Tennis by yourself.
Give these few tips a try and let us know how you get on. Good luck!
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Piers Grey Posted 14 years ago
Can I just add to what Alois said, if you don't have a table tennis table at home (its very unlikely because not that many people have the privilage of having one!!!), then you can just get a normal table (prefably one that looks kind of like a table tennis table) and push it so that one end is up against the wall. If you then play forhands or backhands so that it hits your side then the other side of the table; like you would in a normal game, the ball will return to you the same (depending on the sort of wall you hit it to will depend on the angle of tradectory, depending on how the ball makes contact with the wall, so if you hit it an angle going left to right, the ball will carry on going right and hit the right side of the table)
This is a great way to imitate an oppenent playing against you because of the way the balls returning it will be like as though their were an oppenent on the other side returning it to you.
This is really good for consistency as well. By hitting the ball at the wall to make the ball return directly where you hit it (just as long as you hit it straight, of course!) the ball will return in the same place everytime (depending on how hard/soft you hit the ball) so your able to groove in the technique for the required stroke you want to practice and make the technique solid which is a key thing to do when practicing in table tennis.
I hope this helps you
(Sorry, if this wasn't explained very well!, my grammars really poor today, so, if there is anything that I've said that you don't understand or would like to be said in a way to understand then I don't mind you asking me - I won't be affended by it!!!)