As a indoor sport, table tennis is so popular. It’s something that’s riddled among strategies, rules, rituals and a little bit of superstition. When you watch a game on TV that you’re not familiar with, you’ll probably pick up an idiosyncrasy. However, the next moment you’ll find yourself looking up about what the game is all about.
If you have watched ping pong before, you’ll notice a lot of strange things about the players. And that might make you wonder if that’s a rule or a ritual. Why do ping-pong players behave in a certain way during a match? If these doubts are in your head right now, it means that you are certainly looking forward to improving your standard skills in ping pong to a professional level.
Though we all know that the best ping pong lessons can be learned only by practicing, practicing a lot, one has to practice in the right way so that his/her muscle memory becomes great enough to hit the ball correctly without thinking twice. That’s where the article is going to help you.
Reasonably, we, like every other ping-pong enthusiasts, are all after that enormous trophy! Therefore, in this article, we’ll investigate the most important factors that will help you achieve your expertise level.
Factors important for developing expertise in ping pong:
- Good Physique
- Early specialization
- Constant practice
- Professional equipment
- Self-discipline
- Intrinsic motivation
- Passionate coach
Now that you’ve figured out that you have got all the attributes of becoming close to professional-level player, let’s get started on the lessons:
1. Get the Perfect Paddle:
That’s the most basic step toward being a professional player. You’ve done all your practice sessions with a ticky-tacky paddle. Now it’s time for the perfect paddle to come into your hands. And if you’re wondering what it means by the perfect paddle, we’d suggest getting one that has a great grip with soft and tacky rubber, a rigid blade and an ergonomic handle that is made for your comfort to hold it for longer hours. The reason why the paddle is essential is that it will allow you to generate quite a lot of spins. Hence, you need to find a paddle that’s equally competent to your opponent’s. If you’re still not confident enough, go for a paddle that has a lower spin with a low rebound speed. Initially, focus on improving your speed, not your spin. Practicing with your favorite paddle will make your ping pong lessons enjoyable.
2. Ping Pong Robots can be of Huge Help:
A ping pong robot is drawn to train and improve your gaming skills. It will keep sending you a steady stream of balls at different levels of speed and angles. If you are looking forward to taking ping pong as a profession, these robots are of great help! If you can’t seem to find a partner much often, then it’s worth an investment. They help you improve your gaming skills, taking returns, aiming at the corners and learning to smash. Moreover, robots are well known for their ability to eliminate errors. This will enable you to put an end to your errors too while practicing with the robot.
3. Anticipate the Game:
While learning from your mistakes is a great way to improve your gaming skills, keeping that consistent, you should also start planning your strategies in advance. This will possibly help you in thinking ahead your time. Nonetheless, planning your strategy ahead of time requires a lot of real-time improvisation.
4. Exploit Your Rival’s Weaknesses:
Just as we mentioned about anticipation, it is needless to mention how you should attack at your rival’s weaknesses. It’s just a matter of time for you to learn and easily take control of your opponent’s weaknesses. So, where should you start? There are potentially loads of strengths and weaknesses a player might have. An expert player might have some minor weakness that you might not be able to pick out easily. Plus, advanced players are really good at hiding their weaknesses. Here are a few common weaknesses that we have come across:
- Poor defense
- Poor footwork
- Infirm backhand
- Cannot return sidespin serves
- Cannot attack backspin
- Inpatient
- Sloppy pushing
Well, finding the weakness of your opponent sometimes works better than other ping pong lessons. But before that finding your own weakness and working on that is a pro’s job.
5. Strike the Ball from Different Levels of Heights:
Most players have the habit of keeping the pace of the ball low and as fast as possible. However, we’d advice, play along with the height. Although we don’t mean that you cannot use different game shots. It’s just that hitting the ball from different heights and different angles make it challenging for your opponent. And that’s what most experts do during tournaments.
6. Spin Your Shots and Utilize Power at Optimum Levels:
If most of your shots come at great speeds, it won’t be that difficult for you to handle the game. Rather, it’s challenging and difficult when you keep the pace at a balance of fast and slow speed with consistent swing and spin. Hence, keep changing your types of shots with every different move and keep on trying new moves whenever applicable. This will surprise your opponent and bring about improvements in your skills.
7. Identify Your Mistakes:
There’s no better coach than learning from your mistakes. Self-criticism plays a fundamental role in identifying your mistakes and thus shaping your skill set. This lesson comes after you learn the other ping pong lessons and while working on to enhance your skill. You could entirely look for constant improvements. Try anything that you are comfortable with. If it’s about watching others play and learning from their moves and strategies that create a sense of development in your own self, go for it! Another tip from us would be, record yourself when you are playing and watch it afterwards. This is actually a great way in order to get a different perspective on a situation.
8. Train Your Strokes Until They’re Automatic:
When you first begin to learn ping pong, you must’ve used a lot of mental energy that formulates a clear image in your mind of how the stroke would actually feel like. Once you’ve your imagination accurately pictured, you should keep practising the same move until you don’t have to think about how to it’s done. This is when the player has reached his or her automatic stage. Your best performance will reveal when you completely play on automatic mode and when you don’t have to analyze your skills. It just happens naturally.
9. Practice More Than Your Compete:
By practice, we refer to the time you spend concentrating on the aspects you want to build up. The basic objective of practice sessions would be to develop your game. Next, when you compete, your objective should be to win the trophy, not to work on improving your skills. That’s why we keep mentioning how important it is to practice the game to blend in new tactics and skills and incorporate them into match-like situations before proceeding to the final competition.
Player Etiquette:
Obviously, you must be aware of the rules and regulations. Along with that, you’ll also need to know some etiquette in order for the match to go over smoothly, without any conflict:
Obey the rules:
It’s not only about ping pong, but generally, there’s nothing more frustrating than playing with an opponent who’s trying to gain an advantage by breaking the rules. Therefore, obey the rules yourself and make sure that your opponent is not trying to cheat, whether it’s intentionally or merely because of ignorance.
Service toss:
Most of the time, either of the players breaks the rule when they fail to toss the ball sufficiently high before striking it. Simply dropping it or striking it out of your hand is unacceptable and creates an inequitable spin, that makes it easier to win points. Again, that’s certainly not the right thing to do.
Service Visibility Part 1:
You must not cover the contact between the ball and the paddle in any given situation when tossing it. By concealing this contact, the server is able to pose the serve illegally. Normally, the player leaves a free arm (the one with what they tossed the ball) in front, covering the ball when it hits. Please move away from your free arm for your opponent to see how the service is done.
Service Visibility Part 2:
The ball, when it’s in your palm and ready to serve, it MUST be above and behind the edge of your side of the table. This is to say that it must be noticeable above the table during the match at all times. For some players, it is common to drop their serving hand below the edge of the table during the service movement – which by the way, is absolutely illegal and unfair.
Keeping the Score:
It is the service’s duty to call the score before starting the service next time. This is to avoid any sort of misunderstanding during the match. Also, the server’s score is said at first in order to avoid confusion. Moreover, it’s a great idea to state the game score at the end of each match.
Final Words:
If you’re really interested in learning ping pong, there are an array of coaching videos available online. They are very useful and can offer you many different perspectives to learn something new. There’s no end to how much you can develop your skill set with consistent practice and patience. And I fervently hope this article to help you to do your practice in a more precise way with some ping pong lessons. If you have any other tricks that you learned while playing, do share it with us. We’d love to know and add it in the list!
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