Organising Fun Table Tennis Sessions for Beginners
In my view there are three types of table tennis coach – the bench coach, who is great at motivating players from the bench, the elite coach who is working with players who can already play the game and then there’s the teacher, who is working with beginners, teaching them the fundamentals of the game. All three types of coach have their own strengths to bring to the game.
In recent years, I have been working mostly as a bench coach and an elite coach, working to motivate players to bring out the best in themselves. However in the past six months a few opportunities came my way to work with complete beginners. It had been some time since I had worked with beginners as most of my time had been spent working with good club players and with the national squads, so going back to basics was a welcome change. In order to familiarise myself with all the latest trends in coaching beginners, as coaching trends are continuously changing, I did a lot of research to refresh my knowledge and last year as part of my new business venture www.ttfans.ie, I published a course “Table Tennis for Beginners”. This course is suitable for people who want to learn how to play the game and also for people who would like to learn how to teach the game to beginners. You can learn more about the course by clicking on the following link Table Tennis for Beginners (thinkific.com)
When working with young beginners, it is vital not only to keep the sessions very basic but also to make them fun. Although you may be dying to teach them all the technicalities of this brilliant sport, overloading them with too much detail at the start is likely to turn them off the game pretty quickly. In this article, I will offer my advice on how to plan table tennis sessions for beginners, which include plenty of fun elements to keep them engaged from start to finish.
Hand to eye co-ordination exercises
Before getting into the teaching of the first stroke, you need to show your players the correct grip on the bat. Free-Technique – TTfans.ie
It is also a good idea at this stage to test the player’s hand to eye coordination. The best way to do this is to get them to bounce the ball up and down on the bat as many times as they can without losing control. The key to success in this task is to keep the bat completely level (parallel with the ground) so that the ball bounces straight and to not hit the ball too hard, so that it is easier to keep under control. The first fun element of the session can be to count how many they can get and to keep track of and try to better their high scores. Once they have mastered the simple bounce on one side of the bat (ie their high scores are 30 or more), you can introduce the harder exercise of bouncing the ball on alternate sides of the bat. The bat must be turned in the hand after every bounce so that the ball bounces alternately on the forehand and the backhand side of the bat. Any player who can master these exercises and keep the ball under control has good hand to eye coordination and has the potential to become a good table tennis player.
Further more difficult hand to eye coordination exercises can be introduced such as alternately bouncing on one side of the bat followed by the edge of the bat followed by the other side of the bat etc. Increasing the difficulty of the exercise increases the challenge for the players. Players should only attempt the more difficult exercises once they have mastered the easier ones. Many young players enjoy the challenge of setting themselves high scores and trying to beat them or trying to beat the high scores of their friends. Any element of competition in practice sessions acts as a fun and motivating factor for young players.
There are also some hand-eye coordination exercises that can be done without the use of the bat, such as throwing and catching where two people stand opposite each other and throw the ball to each other. If they have mastered the straight forward catch, then ask them to throw the ball to the left or right and the other player must catch with one hand only. This exercise can also be done whilst doing fast feet on the spot.
Finally a fun game that can be added in is the drop and catch game. Again this is played in pairs. The two players stand facing each other. One of the pair has the ball in their hand. Both players put their hands up in front of them, the player who has the ball places their hands under the other players hands. The player then drops the ball and the other player tries to catch it before it hits the floor. Hand-eye coordination, speed and reflexes are all tested in this game!
Teaching the basic strokes
Once you move onto teaching your players the basic strokes, it is still important to keep the sessions interesting and fun.There are four basic strokes in table tennis: backhand push, forehand push, backhand counter and forehand counter, but which stroke should be taught first? Opinion varies on this question. Personally I would coach a very basic backhand push first as this is the most natural stroke for a complete beginner and in fact most new people to the game will automatically take up a backhand position with their racket and their stance when picking up a racket for the first time. However, the latest trend is to coach forehand first so that the player does not develop a backhand grip, which is difficult to change when learning forehand. By learning forehand first, they get used to a good grip which does not have to be adjusted to learn backhand.
Whichever stroke you decide to teach first needs to be clearly demonstrated to the players. When demonstrating strokes, I remind them about the grip, then I show them the correct stance for the stroke, I explain the bat angle required, the timing of the contact with the ball (eg peak of the bounce) and finally I demonstrate how the stroke is played indicating which part of the arm is used and whether rotation of the waist is required or not. This formula can be used for teaching any of the basic strokes:
- Stance
- Bat angle
- Timing of contact
- How to play the stroke
Take a look at my course Table Tennis for Beginners (thinkific.com) where I explain all of the basic strokes using the above formula or alternatively look at the Beginner’s module in the technique section of my website Free-Technique – TTfans.ie
So how can we make learning and practising the basic strokes fun? There are a lot of things for a beginner to remember, which you will have to keep reminding them of, so adding some kind of fun element will distract from the monotony of repetitive practice of a particular stroke.
Playing with the coach will always focus the mind, so if possible try to get some one to one time with each of the players. Having an age-appropriate dialogue with the player will also keep them engaged. Once the player has mastered getting the ball over the net a few times, you can set a challenge to see how many they can get and if they can beat their high score. Again any kind of challenge helps to keep their minds focused.
Once the player has developed some level of consistency in returning the ball over the net, you can start to teach them the importance of accuracy ie being able to put the ball where they want to put it. For this exercise you can use some kind of target for them to aim at. You can use a container that they can try to get the ball into or pieces of paper that they need to aim for or indeed you can use chalk to mark target areas on the table for them to aim at. Count and record how many times they hit the target, so that they can try to improve on their total at the next time of asking.
If you are working with a group of children, split them into teams and see which team can hit the target more times in a certain length of time. As well as adding an element of competition, this challenge brings in the added element of team spirit and can get highly competitive!!
Warming up & Movement exercises
It is important to instill good habits from the beginning, so introducing a warm-up at the start of every session is a good idea. The main objective of a warm up is to warm up the muscles before play to avoid injury. Whereas warming up is far more important at elite level, it is no harm for beginners to get used to doing a warm up before they play.
For beginners a simple warm up will suffice, for example a short jog followed by some stretches. However, young players will soon get bored of this monotonous warm up so introducing a fun game or some table tennis specific movement drills will add a bit of variety and fun to the session.
My recommendation would be to start with a short jog with some side steps, knee raises and heel kicks to raise the heart rate. This should be followed by a stretching session from top to bottom. Teach them to start at top and work down, this way it is easier to remember what comes next and nothing gets left out.
Start with the neck, then the shoulders, arms, waist, thighs, hamstrings, calves, ankles and wrists. There is a warm up exercises video in the fitness section of my website available to free members: Free-Fitness – TTfans.ie
Once this part of the warm up is done a fun game or fast feet exercises can be added if time allows. There are hundreds of games that can be played. The most important thing is that there is movement involved and if you can incorporate anything table tennis specific aswell, then that is a bonus.
I have listed some examples below. Rotate which games are used so there is always some variety:
Relay races – straight running, side steps, hopping, bouncing ball on bat, moving around obstacles.
Tag or team tag games
Tag rugby – the aim is to get the ball through your team from the top table to the bottom table
Obstacle course
Table cricket – the fielding team spreads out around the hall. One person from the batting team waits at the table. The bowler throws the ball high over the net and the batter hits it as hard as he/she can. If they miss the table they are out, if someone from the fielding team catches the ball before it hits the floor, they are out. Once all members of the batting team are out, the teams switch around.
Fast feet exercises are an excellent way of introducing table tennis movement exercises into your warm up. Again there are many variations and forms that these exercises can take. The players should start by running on the spot. You can tell them to go slow, medium or fast. Then you can introduce a table tennis shot into the routine, for example they run on the spot at medium pace and when you say “forehand”, they shadow play a forehand topspin. When you say backhand, they shadow play a backhand topspin. To make them concentrate a bit more, you can call numbers instead, so 1 is forehand topspin, 2 is backhand topspin, 3 is forehand push and 4 is backhand push. This exercise of course assumes, they have already learned the technique for these particular shots. Other elements can be included into these exercises, for example a tuck jump or a burpee.
One more exercise that I want to mention, which can be used either as part of the warm up or as a fitness exercise, is the forward and backward movement exercise. Whilst standing at the table players should run backwards and touch the wall or barrier (whichever is appropriate), then run forwards to touch the table. Start at a steady pace, then get them to speed up to full pace before taking a short break. Repeat 3 times. Table tennis shots can also be incorporated into this exercise by calling them out or using number commands as explained above.
Please note all of the footwork and movement exercises described above can be used as part of a warm up or can be incorporated into a fitness training session, not only for beginners but also for more advanced players.
On Table Games
Most of the games I described above under the warm up section did not involve the use of the table (except table cricket). There are also many fun on-table games that can be incorporated into your sessions. Most of the games, however, require some level of ability to hit the ball over the net so are probably best suited to improvers rather than absolute beginners.
One example that kids love is “ Around the Table” or “Around the World” (see video demo) https://youtu.be/Dd9NPJ0kLrY
To play around the table you’ll need at least three people. It all starts with a serve. Make sure the person serving has someone behind them to return the next shot, after the serve is made that person runs around the table ready for the next return, and every time you hit the ball you run around to the other side ready to hit it again. Everyone starts off with 5 lives, every time you make a mistake (lose the point) you lose one of those lives. When you get to zero you’re out, the last person standing wins.
When there are just two players remaining, you can either play a normal table tennis point, play two shots in a row or the player who hits the ball, instead of running around the table, must turn 360 degrees before the ball arrives back for them to hit again. Any mistakes result in a lost life.
Another fun game that involves actually playing on the table is Top Table. Again this game requires some level of ability. At the end of a specified length of time, whichever player is winning moves up a table and whichever player is losing moves down a table. This is made more exciting when the coach calls the changes so the players never know when the round will end. For more advanced players different scenarios can be introduced such as you have to serve backspin to the backhand side, the receiver has to touch short and the server has to flick the next ball. There are hundreds of different scenarios that can be used.
Other match play type games that can be utilised in training are badminton – table tennis, where the badminton scoring system of only winning a point when you are serving, is used.
Adding points – where you add 5 points to both players scores when the first player reaches 3. This forces players to really focus at the start and the end of the set.
Any score scenario – If you decide you want to practice closing out a match when you are ahead, you can decide on a score scenario of 9-7 up for example or if you want to practice coming from behind at the end of the set, you can set a score scenario of 7-9 down.
Again these scoring games are more suited to improvers or advanced players rather then complete beginners.
Not Enough Tables?
So what can you do if you have a large group of players and very few tables? This is quite a common scenario, particularly in schools who may have a couple of tables but would like the whole class to participate. Realistically you can only have maximum 4 people per table and when these people are beginners, even this is not really satisfactory. A session with a lot of players and very few tables will take a lot of management so that all the players feel like they have been given a fair share of time on the table.
The first thing to do is to see if there are any desks or other small tables that could be used as make-shift table tennis tables. Although not ideal, the players can at least try to hit the ball to their partner on the other side of the table. Books or other things can be used to form a make-shift net. In fact playing on an under-sized table like this can be quite fun as a change from playing on a normal table.
Then I would suggest that you create a series of activity stations where the players spend a certain length of time before moving onto the next station. In this way everyone should get around the same time at each station. Your stations could be any or all of the following:
The table tennis table
The fun-sized table
Ball tapping on the bat
Hitting the ball to a partner without a table
Hitting the ball against the wall
A physical exercise of some sort
Throwing & Catching (see page 2)
Drop and Catch game (see page 2)
Watching TT videos
The number of stations you set up will depend on how many players you have, how many tables you have, how much time you have and how much space you have. Rotate your players around the stations, so that everyone gets at least some time on the tables. This is the best way to make the most of your limited resources.
Conclusion
I hope that the ideas, suggestions and recommendations that I have outlined in this article help to give you some new ideas to incorporate in your sessions for beginners as the importance of keeping your sessions fresh cannot be underestimated, particularly when it comes to younger players.