Playing in table tennis competitions is not easy for beginners or amateur players. It can bring but the best or even the worst in any player. Any form of weakness in your game can be used against you by your opponent in a tournament.
This guide will explain the five qualities of a table tennis player that can help beginners or amateur players to become competitive and win more matches.
It will take a lot of training and practice to become a good table tennis player. Here are five essential qualities to make you become a better player.
Table of Contents
Speed
As we may already know, table tennis is a fast-paced sport that requires speed. The serves, strokes, and footwork involve the use of speed and quickness.
Professional table tennis players use a combination of rubbers to enhance their table tennis rackets’ speed and power to have an advantage over their opponents.
Before discovering the sponge
If you do not have enough strength to do your shot, you need to look at how you make the shots. Generally, it is not the problem of the arm.
You don’t need to move your arm when making a shot. It would help if you focused on the strength of your waist instead. When you hit the ball, you move your waist first and use it to make your arm move. Even though your arm didn’t exert the force, but it still requires you to move.
Before hitting the ball, you need to contract your arm instantly, rubbing the ball together with the combined force of the arm and the waist so that the ball can have a great spin.
It would be best if you no studied the ratio of friction and impact. Even professional players are not focused on these. They deal with the ball according to the data. The best way for you to increase your shot’s speed is to find someone to teach you the skill of playing arc shots.
You may search for some tutorial books online to get some special guides for beginners to learn how to play table tennis the right way and the quickest way for beginners to develop the right table tennis skills.
Skills
There are two types of skills in table tennis, basic and advanced table tennis skills. The basic skills are required to start playing the game from the beginning to the intermediary level. A good table tennis player must be able to master basic and advanced skills.
When you start to play table tennis, get a pre-assembled racket like the Stiga Pro Carbon or Killerspin Jet 800. You don’t need to buy blades and rubbers for professional players since you haven’t reached that level yet.
Only when you have played table tennis for some time, and your overall skill improves and progress well, can you start to consider buying blades and rubbers catered for professional players.
If you are serious about playing the game, you should find a serious partner and practice the basic strokes with him. It would help if you started playing loop with your partner. Make more loops and play as many as you can for a long time without losing the ball.
By doing this, your playing skill will gradually improve. Then you can start to train your forehand and backhand with different strokes.
Accuracy
A good table tennis player must be accurate in their techniques. Professional players execute powerful and precise shots to be able to dominate their opponent. It is one of the qualities of Chinese table tennis players that makes them the best players globally.
To improve your accuracy, you can make use of the table tennis robot to throw multiple balls. You then move in the corresponding direction.
It is to train the collaboration of your eyes and feet. Your eyes see the ball, and your feet should keep up with the pace, and use your racket to hit the ball.
When the eyes see it, they have the essential judgment, and your hand will adjust to doing the accurate shot.
There are no shortcuts but keep practicing. You can try to hit the ball at the drop point where you want the ball to drop. Let your table tennis robot oscillating and shoot the ball in a different direction. You can then move and hit the ball to the same drop point and make sure that it accurately drops to the place where you want the ball to fall to.
Anticipation
Another good quality of a table tennis player is to be able to anticipate their opponents’ actions. By applying effective tactics and strategy, a player can calculate and predict their opponents’ action and reaction. A professional player always tries to anticipate his opponent’s serves, returns, and strokes.
The quick judgment ability is the premise of fast movement. When it comes to starting the way, everyone knows that the footwork must be fast, and the action must be fast.
However, before moving, you should first develop the habit of focus on the ball. It would be best if you always observed the other player’s racket’s momentary action and the direction of the ball.
To anticipate the ball’s landing point, move to the most suitable position as soon as the opponent returns the shot.
Footwork
Footwork is one of the most effective qualities of a professional table tennis player. The modern table tennis game is full of attacking players, so the ability to return offensive and aggressive shots will depend mainly on excellent footwork skills.
Many players like to practice fixed-point while performing footwork training. For example, side-to-side speed training is not practical when playing in competition.
If you want to develop good judgment ability to achieve rapid movement in the game, you need to do some irregular footwork exercises.
In the beginning, amateurs can master the primary movement method through fixed-point exercises. After proficiency, they must consciously practice the indefinite movement.
If you can master the above five qualities, you will be more competitive when playing in table tennis tournaments and win more matches.
References for more Table Tennis Tips
Warren Davies
1 thought on “Five Qualities of a Table Tennis Player”
Great ,l guess you’re a coach.