7 Table Tennis Tips for Beginners – 2024 Guide
Table tennis is a famous indoor sport played in many schools and colleges, even in the workspace, to have some fun with your friends and colleagues. If you are a beginner in playing table tennis, the focus must be on improving your techniques and skills. Here are some table tennis tips that will help you to improve your gameplay.
As a beginner, you must learn everything about table tennis to become an overall better player. You must know the rules, everything about the types of equipment, the top players and their special techniques and different techniques to enhance your skills. Check pingpongbeast.com before you buy any table tennis equipment and get experts reviews, advice and buying guides if you are unsure of what is best for you.
Table Tennis Tips for Beginners – 2024 Guide
1. Enhance your spinning skills
The first table tennis tip for beginners is to work on the spinning skills. If you know how to spin the ball in table tennis, you have done a great start as a beginner. Almost every shot in table tennis has a spin. Making a spin to your shot can easily confuse your opponent, and it will be difficult for him to determine which direction the ball will come.
The spin changes the direction of the ball after the first bounce. The more spin, the difficult it will be to determine the direction of the ball. To land your shot more effectively, you can add more speed to your shot, giving no time to the opponent to predict the direction of the ball.
2. Mix up your serves
A good quality shot involves mixing up your serves. Mixing up your serves will make it difficult for the opponent to predict which side the ball is going to hit, and they might miss a couple of shots by making a wrong prediction. You can alternatively use fast deep serve or tricky sidespin serve. You can start with a deep serve to the elbow for an effective start.
This doesn’t give the opponent enough time to think of a suitable shot to counter your shot. There are more tricky and effective shots that can increase your winning chances dramatically. For example – Ma Lin’s ghost serves, forehand pendulum serves, reverse pendulum serves and many more.
3. Don’t miss the service and return the service properly
You can easily win a match in table tennis if you concentrate and don’t miss any service and return them properly. If you can control the ball and try not to miss a single shot, it will make the opponent lose their calm and might make a mistake or miss their shot. The same applies to you as well. If the opponent is hitting every ball on target, don’t lose your calm and give your best shot.
Don’t try to push much while returning the service. This allows the opponent to attack first, and you can easily miss your service and give your opponent some free points.
4. Attack first whenever you can
Another great tip for beginners is that they should not give the opponent a chance to attack. Try to attack first and attack whenever you can. Attacking does not mean hitting the ball with all the force. It will probably make the ball go out of the table, or you can miss the service by trying to attack too hard.
Attack with enough force so that the ball hits the table and reaches the opponent with enough speed and spin to force him to miss the service. Slow loop, flick shot, heavy spin push, topspin are some common aggressive attack shots you must learn while playing table tennis. Understand the opponent’s weakness and use your shots accordingly to win the match.
5. Control the pace of the game
In table tennis, winning a game is all about controlling the game’s pace. You can easily play the slow shots but hitting the fast shots added with spin takes months of practice and experience. Once you understand your opponent and predict their shots, you can easily control the pace of the game and impose better tactics to make an easy victory for yourself.
Play against good players to gain more experience on how to understand your opponent. You can learn a lot about controlling the pace of the game by playing against experience and skilful players. Control the pace of the game and let your opponent make mistakes turning them into your winning points.
6. Improve your footwork
The most important skill in a game of table tennis is to make proper foot movements. You cannot win a game without making any movements. To win a game, you need to make quick movements and move according to the ball. A single delay in footwork can make you miss your shot.
Your footwork determines your body movements and how quickly you can move sideways, front and back. The footwork increases your movement speed and gives you the momentum to hit every service no matter how fast they are. It also helps you to make a perfect balance of your body.
7. Learn new skills from the best players
All the top players in the world have their special techniques and skills. Watching them play live or watching their videos can help you to learn new skills and techniques, and you can apply the same in your match. There is a reason why they are the best. Learning even a single skill as a beginner is a good start in learning table tennis. Chinese players have the best skills in playing table tennis.
Final Thoughts
Reading the tips won’t do any good unless you don’t apply them in your match. As a beginner, you must focus on learning the basic skills and techniques and practice them until you can’t perform them with perfection. Get a professional coach to train you and improve your skills so you can play like a professional. Once you understand the game, you can think of your own tips to achieve victory for yourself.
