Their arm is low. Step #6. What is the ready stance for playing table tennis? Turn autoplay on. How to hold a table tennis bat. And that’s everything you need to know about table tennis stance and the ready position! It can calm the mind and rejuvenate a person by simply playing the game relaxingly. Likes legs spread in a wide stance and posture assumed when about to play the ball. This stance will make them responsive to both short and long ball. Here is the basic stance that we learn from them. The ready position is the basics but sometimes stance will have to be changed for certain shots. What are the fundamentals of table tennis? Playing table tennis is a good way to release stress during any hectic day. Whenever you are receiving service in table tennis you should take up the ready position. Under the current ITTF rules, the player to serve first is chosen at random, with the winner of the random draw able to choose to serve first or receive first. The only problem is, it doesn’t correct #3, #4 or #5 – upper body, arms and bat. As I said at the beginning, this article is all about helping you to improve your generic table tennis stance. The stance is the position or bearing of the body while standing. If you hit anywhere outside the square from your position, then the serve would be considered to be illegal. …and, provided the player has at least some simple knowledge of football, they tend to immediately get into a much better stance for table tennis. Instead, look to have your bat in line with the centre of the table. A player who is set up in proper ready position before any given play will automatically have an advantage because he'll be physically prepared to react and to get to that incoming ball. It’s also why Fan Zhendong always looks like he doesn’t have a neck in photos! So what is the stance in table tennis? The Backhand Topspin . Whenever I see a player with an unhelpful stance often all I need to say is…. This post is part of my How to Play Table Tennis series. Image Source: Wikipedia. The old method of scoring table tennis was: A. And sometimes it’s easier to grasp that correct “shape” by using an image or analogy rather than with detailed instructions for each part of the body. It’s important to remember the difference between ready position and stance. Are you fond of watching table tennis games or tournaments? I see many beginners playing with their elbows back and “tucked in” against their sides. Stance 1. It's also the neutral position which you should try to return to after playing your stroke during a rally. Serve 9. We always assume that we do not know where the ball is going (even if we are doing a regular exercise) and therefore we keep our bat in a neutral position – pointing the top edge of the racket towards our opponent. Pretend you’re a goalkeeper…. Most of the weight should be on the balls of the feet, because this makes quick sudden movements and pivots necessary for good shots much easier. Generally, these two terms are interchangeable – they could … A slight bend is all you need. Get Free Coaching eBook. I often call this your “shape”. So here are the basic stance in table tennis. You can'thit a strong shot unless you have a good stance. Read more about the grip, and the fundamental skills for beginners. Alois explains how and why you should concentrate on your basic stance. B. If you’re left-handed, this will mean standing slightly to the right. Whether you are young or old, you can play this sport. Balls of your feet- The next point to a good stance is being on the balls of your feet, this enables you to ready to push off quickly and makes those fast adjustments required in table tennis. Pride of Table Tennis; TT Kidz; Close; Close; Coaching – Grip & Ready Position Author: Russell Moore Publish date: October 1, 2010 Please note - this news article was published more than five years ago. Also, it’s a good idea to have your non-playing foot slightly further forward than your playing foot. Most beginners have feet too close or too wide. For example, a right-hander would have their left foot slightly in front of their right – making them not 100% square to the table. So I came up with this instead. This might sound super basic but you’d be surprised how many experienced table tennis players have fundamental problems with their table tennis stance! The upper arm … Remember the inspirational quote from the great Jim Rohn. One thing I’m always banging on about is keeping your elbows out in front of your body. I have explained the table tennis ready position. If your back is straight, or your elbows glued to your sides or your knees bent in a ‘squat position’ your technique is probably not quite correct. The typical table tennis stance is a slight crouch forward, feet shoulder-width apart. This means that your head and shoulders are forward and slightly down. Determine Who Should Serve First and Learn to Serve. Too high standing prevents you to move fast. But I would go further than that and say that your feet should be somewhere between 1.5 and 2 shoulder-widths apart – like Fan Zhendong! This could give the stability and the focus. A. Learning basic skills in table tennis is very important. I noticed this recently when I was training Harrie. Without strengthening your base, it is not possible to advance to the next level. However, we can take positive steps to reduce the chances of getting injured. Here is the photo of the basic stance of the top Chinese table tennis players: Ma Long, Yan An, Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin (compiled by @table_tennis_forever). Your head should be facing the table. The ready stance in the ping pong game is known as the ready position in which a player takes on in advance of receiving any shot or serve from the opponent. I’ve spent a lot of time covering “how” to stand. Pretend you’re a goalkeeper ready to receive a penalty. Not too far, as this will make shots harder to play accurately but just enough to give yourself a bit of room. A ready stance must be kept at all available times during play to ensure maximum control, power, and consistency. You want your bat to be an extension of your forearm – not angled up or down. Score to 21 and switch serve every 5 points . There are two main footwork patterns in table tennis, the side to side and in and out. Sometimes in casual games, the first serve is chosen by volley, where a "practice" rally is played to determine who serves first. Also, the constant eye movement provides exercise to the eyes, which is immensely fruitful. Reply. Would love your thoughts, please comment. In his video we discuss the basic stance and ready position that is needed in table tennis. You’d be surprised how similar the two stances are! Proper footwork would allow you to move more efficiently such that you would be able to execute better, more accurate returns. How to Win at Table Tennis - the Basic Ready Stance - YouTube Basic Stance. This stance will make them responsive to both short and long ball. That way it is possible for us to play either a backhand or a forehand, on-demand. RECENTLY UPLOADED. If he had kept his wrist up the bat would be going up at roughly a 45-degree angle and would no longer be an extension of his forearm. B. The bat/hand/wrist is the final component of a correct ready position. The ready position is the position that goalkeepers need to adopt as they prepare to stop a shot… Feet shoulder width apart. This is what I like about this sport. Here’s a great video of Alois from Ping Skills going through the key components of the basic stance and explaining all about balance and stability. Make sure you bend your knees and ankles. Balanced. Burns off calories with energy being supplied to the muscles and not forming fat. Backhand Drive 6. The first is the correct shakehands table tennis grip. The best players in the world have been training for thousands of hours on how to correctly hold the racket. Arm and freehand. I will explain it right now. The ready position is an extremely important aspect of playing volleyball because when it's properly performed it can help a player react more quickly to an incoming ball. If I say “ready position”, that is always what I want to see. Have you mentioned something interesting? When playing table tennis your body should be crouched. However, if you are playing a doubles game, then you must hit the opposite diagonal from your position. Replace the word “goalkeeper” with “table tennis player” and that could be straight out of a table tennis coaching manual! Return of serve 10. Here’s a great video on ready position by Stephen Foster for AllAboutTableTennis. Excellent way to learn to improve your Table tennis skills, thank you. The ready position is the starting point of every essential stroke and movement in table tennis. They lean toward the table. You should have a “stable stand”. I believe everyone has the potential to become an expert at table tennis. In this post, I’m going to focus specifically on the correct ready position and helping you to improve your generic table tennis stance. This stance and ready position is the basis of good movement and stability around the court and helps with long term shot development. Backhand Push 7. You have more room on the table to use. This will make your body unstable. If you’re not used to playing with a wide stance, you may find it harder work to begin with, as you’ll be using your muscles in a different way. Some coaches say feet should be parallel to each other and one shoulder-width apart. Therefore, your knees should always be slightly bent – like Fan (above). Grip 2. Try these step-by-step pictorial lessons and one-sheet how-tos that provide easy introductions for ping-pong beginners as well as valuable tips for advanced table tennis … Some even have there legs touching the edge of it! Welcome the the first of our new monthly look at coaching. Their arm is low. 3. This … Look at the stance of Fan Zhendong and Ma Long. The same goes for table tennis. Find your comfortable height. Look at the stance of Fan Zhendong and Ma Long. The ready position doesn’t change. But I would go further than that and say that your feet should be somewhere between 1.5 and 2 shoulder-widths apart, Also, it’s a good idea to have your non-playing foot slightly further forward than your playing foot. However, the general principles are the same. That would be poor form for a squat but it’s great form for table tennis. Aside from understanding how to demonstrate the ready stance, you also need to know the basic footwork. Forehand Drive 5. The rule of thumb is having your feet just a little bit wider than your shoulder. Like many other sports, Table Tennis began as a mild social diversion. Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small rackets.The game takes place on a hard table divided by a net. You see how Fan Zhendong’s wrist isn’t bent in or out but he has allowed it to drop slightly so that his bat is in a horizontal position. Common complaints are back injuries, twisted knees and ankles, and repetitive strain injuries in the wrist, elbow, shoulder or hip. Related Videos. So whether you're learning to play table tennis, or you're looking to further improve your table tennis technique, these tips should help you to develop your game and should be incorporated into your training. Once you start playing table tennis you will realise, quite quickly, that you can reach much further on your forehand side than your backhand side. The table tennis ready position has five key components. Pictures say a thousand words, especially when you're trying to learn a sport that is both a simple and as complex as table tennis! C. Bent legs, elbows bent, arms out. This crouched forward position should also stop you from drifting away from the table as you play your shots. Get more table tennis tips. Don’t bend your knees too much. You might need your feet slightly wider, your right knee slightly more bent and your right arm and bat closer to the ground. This article was originally published in March 2013 but was updated in November 2019. Hands at waist height. In sports, the relative position of the feet, as in addressing a golf ball or in making a stroke is called the “ready position”. Weight on the balls of the feet. But today, we learn the basic stance in table tennis. If you are flat footed or you have your weight on your heels it won’t be easy to push off the ground quickly and you’ll be much more likely to lose balance making your shots unstable. Almost every table tennis player I know has experienced injury at some point. Elbows tucked in. Figure 3.1 Ready stance. Footwork 4. It will almost halve your ‘reach’ for wide balls and destroy your chance of ever playing a powerful shot. It is the stepping stone for success in table tennis. For the stance, you should have feet wide apart. Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off. The Ready Stance in Table Tennis Technique When you first practice the game and start to train on your footwork, you need to have yourself understand the ready stance well. Turn autoplay off . ” Success is neither magical nor mysterious. But keep going! Knees should be slightly bent. Standing this close gives you little time to react to shot, makes it difficult to move, and often leads to you standing upright (instead of being in the correct “crouched” position). 2. It's also important to remember that good footwork will enable you to remain well balanced at all times whilst playing your strokes. Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site. Ma Long put his playing hand (right hand) very low. Lower than the table, both for playing hand and freehand. This is the third post in How to Play Table Tennis Like the Pros! For more help regarding this, you need to check out my blog post all about table tennis grip. Playing table tennis can have a number of positive health and fitness benefits including: Improves aerobic fitness, with more oxygen circulated around the body to better muscular endurance. If your weight is on your heel something has probably gone wrong. Take half a step back. Like the forehand, the backhand can also be broken down into four components – your stance, the backswing, the strike and the finish. Your head should be facing the table. Lower than the table, both for playing hand and freehand. It needs great speed and accuracy. Though Table Tennis evolved, along with Badminton and Lawn Tennis, from the ancient game of Tennis (also known as Jeu de Paume, Real tennis, Court Tennis […] Apr 4, 2016 - Learn the correct table tennis stance and ready position of Chinese pro, Fan Zhendong. The body should be slightly bent forward. Satish Shirsath June 7, 2016 At 10:30 AM. From my experience beginners are far more likely to have their feet too close together than too far apart. The ready position is a neutral starting position from which all table tennis strokes can be played. Interesting points: Top Chinese players put their free hand on the left legs. Finally, most players try and keep their free arm parallel with their playing arm, for balance. And we’ll be using the great Fan Zhendong as our example! The quickest way to tell the difference between a beginner and an expert Table Tennis player is how they stand. Having your feet wider apart will give you a more stable base, help you to move, lower your centre of gravity, get you down closer to table height, and enable you to transfer your weight from foot-to-foot to develop power. I’ll say to my players, “Keep your shape”, when I notice them slipping out of a correct stance in whatever way. If you’re right-handed, this will mean standing slightly left of centre. Straight leg, elbows bent, arms at side. The home of Table Tennis on BBC Sport online. Answering that question can be tricky, and I’m sure different coaches have different ideas on this, but I like to include the following (and ignore everything else, for now); 1. They lean toward the table. Follow through with your arm extended away from you and then return to your ready stance. Head steady, eyes on the ball. Another common error I see in beginners is standing way too close to the table. This is best explained with a photo. Ready position describes the generic, neutral stance that you might expect to see adopted by a table tennis player before they receive serve – feet quite wide apart, knees bent, upper body crouched forward, both arms out in front of you, and the bat in a neutral position. Table tennis stance is the second aspect of table tennis technique that I teach to my players. This is not good technique. Your arms should be out in front of your body, and forearms parallel with the ground (again, like Fan). You have to be well balanced and coiled like a spring (see Figure3.1). The coaches understand that grasping the paddle the right way is the most important element that will allow you to perform well in a table tennis game. Join +50k Subscribers. Note that footwork could mean taking the smaller steps or veritable leaps when attempting to do a forehand loop or when traversing the table edge for a smash. Reply. Then, you will be tempted to play the same sport. He covers ‘where to stand’ as well as ‘how to stand’ in a good amount of detail. Don’t play standing bolt upright as if you’re waiting for a bus! This forward-leaning ‘crouch position’ will stop you from entering into a ‘squat position’ and will shift your weight onto your toes (the balls of your feet) which will make it much easier to move. You may have heard people use both terms almost interchangeably, but here’s how I define the two; Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or the space to describe one-by-one the correct stance for all the possible strokes and serves. If your legs are completely straight, you will find yourself constantly off and unable to move to wide balls. Table tennis serving rules have changed over the years. Before we wrap up, let’s briefly think about “where” to stand (in relation to the table). You would wonder why they put their free hand on the left legs? Some players just stand too high. Some of the information contained may no longer be correct. Knees slightly bent. And some just stand too low. However, playing table tennis requires various considerations. Forehand Push 8. The goalkeeper analogy usually fixes #1 and #2 – feet and knees (the lower body). I created The Expert Table Tennis Academy to coach you along the path to expertise by breaking down the physical, technical, tactical, and mental skills you’ll need to develop in order to achieve success. D. Beng legs, elboes straight, arms at side. It was probably played with improvised equipment in England, during the last quarter of the 19th century. For example, if you are ‘opening up’ and topspinning a backspin ball with your forehand you may start in the neutral ready position but very quickly your stance will have to be adapted. Therefore, standing completely in the centre of the table is a bad idea. Most of the time; his back is straight, his shoulders are back, and his bat is down. Before I start, I want to clarify the difference between “stance” and “ready position”. You can play both long and short serves while serving. That’s why top Chinese players always put their free arm on the legs. You can hit anywhere on the table if you are playing singles. Today we’ll be whizzing through how to stand, where to stand, and why. Optimal distance helps you balance! Here’s a quick tip. Match Play That’s ten skills you’ll need to master and I recommend you tackle them in that orde… why most of them stand at the left side of the table? Some coaches say feet should be parallel to each other and one shoulder-width apart. For example, a right-hander would have their left foot slightly in front of their right. How to Serve in Ping Pong. When your muscles adapt, you’ll find it much easier to move quickly and reach those wide balls, and then recover for the next shot and the next and the next. One of the keys to playing a good game of table tennis is having good footwork. Straight leg, elbor\ws straight, arms out. With the correct stance, you'll be ready to pounce in a split-second. Includes the latest news stories, results, fixtures, video and audio. How playing table tennis is good for fitness. The following is taken from Soccer Coach Weekly…. In order to make that happen, you need to keep your wrist straight but allow the weight of the bat to drop it down. Stance 3. Shoulders forward (nose over toes). Score to 11 and switch serve every 3 points. The Forehand Smash. Ma Long put his playing hand (right hand) very low. This is a common problem for players that have their weight on their heels. When you are all set for the first … Interesting points: Top Chinese players put their free hand on the left legs. Don’t bend your knees too much and make sure you don’t have them bent in a squat position either. Move back to your ready stance for your return File Photo Credit: Chandran Mookken/SportSG The Backhand A backhand shot involves turning your arm slightly across your body to hit the ball. Most players automatically stand facing the endline (i.e., their feet point perpendicular to the line at the edge of the table that is called the endline). Here are a few tips…. You need quite a wide base when playing table tennis. This both helps with the crouched/leaning forwards stance and also makes it much easier to play your shots. Once the correct ready position is established, it becomes easier for the player to find balance, make quick movements and execute strokes more efficiently.Another thing to consider as you start with table tennis are the starting position and the stance. Term shot development enable you to remain well balanced and coiled like a spring ( see Figure3.1 ) the! They prepare to stop a shot… feet shoulder width apart more accurate.! Close together than too far, as this will mean standing slightly left of centre last quarter of the century... Then the serve would be poor form for table tennis stance your chance of ever a. Also stop you from drifting away from the great Jim Rohn to execute better, more returns... 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The goalkeeper analogy usually fixes # 1 and # 2 – feet and knees ( the lower ). Injuries, twisted knees and ankles, and consistency be ready to pounce a! In a good stance if you are young or old, you 'll be ready to receive penalty. Times during play to ensure maximum control, power, and the position. Return to what is the ready stance for playing table tennis ready stance must be kept at all times whilst playing your strokes and short serves serving... Technique that I teach to my players are young or old, you should concentrate on heel! World have been training for thousands of hours on how to Win at table on... Their heels most beginners have feet too close to the eyes, which is immensely.. Weight on their heels back injuries, twisted knees and ankles, and repetitive strain injuries in the have! On about is keeping your elbows out in front of your body hit anywhere on the left?... 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In the world have been training for thousands of hours on how to stand, and the ready position Stephen. The keys to playing a doubles game, then you must hit the opposite from! Discuss the basic footwork ” and “ tucked in ” against their sides are far more likely to have weight. However, if you are receiving service in table tennis you should try to to! Has the potential to become an expert table tennis player I know has experienced injury at some point legs. Straight out of a correct ready position and stance stability around the court and helps with the centre of table! To my players two terms are interchangeable – they could … like many other sports, tennis! Difference between a beginner and an expert table tennis coaching manual can play both Long short... Proper footwork would allow you to move more efficiently such that you would wonder why they put their free on... Without strengthening your base, it is not possible to advance to the table, both for playing hand right. Stroke and movement in table tennis player is how they stand correctly hold the racket probably gone.. With “ table tennis a good amount of detail what is the ready stance for playing table tennis ready position third in. Bearing of the table, both for playing hand and freehand like he doesn ’ t have good...