Practicing by myself?

Jonn Jonn Asked 18 years ago

What is the best way to practice by yourself? No one in my family or friends play table tennis, but i am really big into it, and is quite good. Are there any good methods i should use when practicing by myself?

Alois Rosario Answered 18 years ago

Hi Jonn,

Practcing by yourself is never a substitute for playing with someone else.

My first suggestion would be to try and find a local club. Let us know through the 'Contact Us' page, which country you are from and I will see if I have any suggestions.

The things that you can practice by yourself effectively is your serving.

Work on placing your serves to difficult positions on the table. Then you can have a go at trying to generate some spin. Have a look at the Lesson on the Serve.

Apart from that you can get some benefit by putting the table up against a wall and hitting the ball constantly to improve your rhythm and control.

You can do some control routines such as bouncing the ball up on your bat and seeing how many times you can do that successfully. Then you can try flipping your bat over between each hit for a greater challenge.

Recommended Video

#8 - Fast Footwork

In this session you'll focus on increasing the speed of your footwork. To do this we ask you to forget about consistency and concentrate on speed. You should be playing at a pace where you can get around 4 or 5 balls on the table. If you are getting 10 or 20 balls on then you need to up your pace again. It's important to play right to the edge of your ability to actually increase your skill level. We also continue to develop the new serve you have chosen to work on.

Watch Now

Jonn Jonn Posted 18 years ago

hey thanks for the tips!

im getting a new table soon so i cant wait to do soem of the stuff you told me.

also im trying to get my brother to play and get him good lol so i would have a practice buddy :D

Ji-Soo Woo Posted 18 years ago

Yeah, whenever you find yourself partnerless, there's nothing like service practice for helping your game. I guess the one other thing I would add is that you could purchase a robot so you can practice hitting against different spins - but they are quite expensive.