Learning the proper basic skills of table tennis is very important to all players especially beginner players. Table tennis is not such an easy game to play perfectly for the first time. A beginner player should practice a lot for learning and improving his skills. Without knowing the basic fundamental skills, no one can improve their skill level. Success is not a magical number; you should work hard for improving your skills to play table tennis perfectly.
There are so many coaches, mentors who can teach the proper way to learn fundamental skills of table tennis. But, developing yourself is totally depends on you how much effort you should put down to learn the all skills.
So, in this article, we will discuss about 10 table tennis fundamental skills so that a beginner player can easily learn and understand about these skills.
What Are The Table Tennis Fundamental Skills
There are so many skills for learning to play table tennis properly. But without knowing the basic skills, no one can learn or play with high level skills. The player should learn first the basic things properly.
Sometimes coaches or mentors put so much effort to teach the basic skills perfectly because it is more important to learn first the fundamental criteria to play table tennis by a beginner player. All players should master these basic fundamental skills. Then they can able to compete with any high level players by playing different types of high accuracy shots perfectly.
In the below, we put a short list of the basic skills of table tennis:
Grip
Footwork
Forehand Drive Technique
Backhand Drive
Forehand Flick
Backhand Flick
Forehand Push
Backhand Push
Forehand Fast Serve
Forehand Pendulum Serve
Table Tennis Fundamental Skills
These all 10 so necessary fundamental skills one should be master on it. So, in this article, we try to describe in detail fully about all of these fundamental skills. Let’s start learning about these skills.
The first two are the main foundation of learning the basic skills of table tennis. Some players do not know about the main foundations. They are jumping to the next level to learn these skills. But without a foundation, nothing will sustain a long time. So, we recommend to learn serially we put all these skills in the below.
The middle instances are the basics of different kinds of table tennis strokes. We will explain all about basic strokes such as drive shot techniques push and flick shots also. So, a beginner player can easily learn the basic forehand and backhand strokes techniques easily.
The last two are the final touch of this fundamental skill training. Here, we will discuss about the ping pong skills table tennis serves. This will help you to convert all the above skills to the next level of your game. So, stay humble and learn proper things with all the necessary fundamental skills of table tennis.
But one thing we must say is that if you think to learn these all fundamental skills within 5 or 10 days, it is too hurries. It is not a good fact to you. You should take time to learn properly each basic skill. So, it may take a long time. So, you should be patient in completing this training course fully.
Grip:This is one of the most important foundations of all skills. If players cannot grip the ping pong paddle, they cannot play the right shots even if they know the all other basic skills of table tennis.
There are mainly two kinds of grip. One is penhold and another one is shakehands grip.
Penhold grip is usually used by Asian players mostly. This is a traditional Asian grip. But this is slightly difficult to learn by the beginner’s players. So, we suggest learning the other type of grip.
Shakehands is a traditional European grip. This is used by all players in recent times even Asian players also. As a liker shakehands style, you should hold the paddles. Most important thing is to feel better with this grip. The player should grip the paddle as they comfort best. It is an easy way to hold the paddle. The player should practice a lot with this gripping style.
Footwork:This is another important thing about your basic skills in table tennis. Many people do with a wrong way to jump first about the stroke basic skills. But this is a totally wrong way at all. Without knowing the footworkproperly nobody can do the stroke perfectly and accurately. So, in this article, we suggest first learn this footwork before jumping into the other stroke skills.
Table tennis footwork is not like other sports at all. It is too different from other game’s footwork. Sometimes in this table tennis, players need to move far distance or sometimes move a little distance depending on their shots. But this footwork is really different from other activities. That’s why a beginner player must practice the whole day along with this kind of footwork.
In this table tennis game, players most of the time should move sidesteps according to the ball’s direction. So this is important to practice a lot with a sidestep. They can draw a circle around the table and start practicing on this circle. They should try to cover long distances with only one step perfectly with the ball direction.
We suggested keeping your legs flexible and stable while moving according to the ball’s direction. The player should keep the paddle also in their hand while practicing footwork. It may feel like a realistic playing environment so that they can practice properly.
Forehand Drive TechniqueIn this step, one player should keep the focus on control, consistency, and accuracy. This is the high time to practice with some stroke perfectly. In the above, players practiced clearing their movement and footwork. Now they should hit the ball. They should learn how to play with accurate shots.
The forehand drive is not an easy task you would watch in the game on the TV show. This is high time to play in the real game. You should keep in mind that at the very first time you do not need to hit the ball harder. Just focus on consistency. You should keep practicing by hitting the ball consistently. That’s the right job for this time.
Sometimes players try to hit the perfect shots every time they would hit. But that no need to hit the perfect shot every single time. For the first time, you just learn how to stroke the ping pong ball with the paddle. That’s enough for you. You should learn day by day not the very first time. You should play or strokes very relax. So, it will help you to play the natural playing.
Players can ready a plan to stroke every 100 balls without any mistake at all. At least continuously they should hit the ball with more control. This is the key. Keeping a good quantity of hitting the ball is a very good sign to learn the forehand drive properly. So, every player should do this. They should learn the feeling and timing and the controlling more in this step.
Backhand Drive:This is not so more different than the forehand drive. It is almost similar with each other. The key thing is you should learn to play shots with more control, and keep consistency.
Some players are the master of the backhand drive. They can find this shot so easily than the forehand shots. But some people don’t think so this same thing. They can feel comfortable playing forehand shots. So, it mainly depends on their feeling. Both the drive is almost similar.
So, every player should focus to learn control while striking the ping pong ball. This is the main important thing. They should aim to hit the 100 balls without any mistakes at all. This challenge should be taken by themselves while practicing many hours on the table. It will help to keep consistency more. They can play or hit the accurate shots with more control.
Players need to hold the paddle handle properly for playing this backhand drive. They can hold their thumbs slightly higher on the rubber. It gives more stability while striking the ping pong ball. The shakehand grip will help a lot to play this backhand drive. So, you can get the benefit to learn first the grip on this training. This is really needed for this case. So, we put the grip on the first point of our training list or basic skills.
Finally, when you realize that you are comfortable playing the backhand shots, you should practice then both forehand drive and backhand drive. This will improve your both drive shots undoubtedly. It will work better if both drives would be clear to play.
Forehand Flick:This type of forehand flick shot usually advances level shots. But now in this modern era, this is moved to the fundamental skills. Most of the mentors and coaches are considered this flick need mostly in the basic skills. The table tennis game is becoming the world’s top most favorite game. So, there are huge amounts of players increasing day by day. In this race, beginner players should know the accurate and perfect flick shots too. If anyone cannot repeat the shots aggressively, they cannot dominate the opposite players. The player should learn to return the ball aggressively.
To learn these forehand flick shots, first, you should need to step your right foot forward to the table as well as the body should need to lean to the right side. This is the perfect footwork to play and keep stable your full body.
Now they should hit the ball properly. This is more important to contact the ballwith the paddle perfectly depending on how much backspin is on the ball. While hitting the ball, your elbow should need to keep nearest to your body.
After hitting the ball, the player should need to back the previous natural position. And make ready themselves to face the next upcoming long ball. We would recommend keeping in mind something important while hitting the ball. They should not pull the racket behind their body fully. They should concern about this. Then when they are ready to contact the ball, they must stroke the ball in a lower position with more acceleration.
Backhand Flick:The backhand flick is invented by the European players. This was played mostly in previous. Nowadays, this shot does not play so much in the game. Though it is rare to play in a real table tennis match, these are considered standard shots. This shot is used mostly to attack the short ball with topspin. That times this backhand flick help to face the balls with more topspin. So, every player should learn this too in their beginning time. In the below, we put all steps to learn this backhand flick. One more thing you should know is that there are two types of the backhand flick. One is a banana flick and another is a strawberry flick.
At first, the player should need to keep their elbow forward while facing this type of topspin ball. It is the best way to stroke the ball perfectly. They should need to practice a lot in their house.
They must step forward to the table while hitting the ball. They can also point their body to play the shots when the ball is at the highest position.
Loosen grip helps a lot to return back the racket easily and smoothly and fast. So, they should keep stable their body while playing the backhand flick. If they are too far away from the table, they cannot accelerate the ball properly. So, it is most important to keep themselves close to the table.
Forehand Push:This is also an important skill to learn. Beginner players always mistake a thing that is they try to learn first the techniqueswithout knowing anything. These forehands push slightly difficult to learn by the beginner players. So, for learning these skills, they should do work hard a lot.
To develop or learn this skill, they should know about the timing first. If anyone can be the master of this timing to hit the ball, they can easily play this forehand push.
Backhand Push:This is also almost similar to the forehand pushes. Beginner players do it with the proper timing. This is more important to contact the ball perfectly at the correct time. So, some players do not focus to learn the timing. They just do work hard to learn the techniques only.
But without proper timing, they cannot improve their skills. So playing backhand push, they must do work hard and do a lot of practicing.
Forehand Fast Serve:This is the most essential serve style for beginners. If any beginner player can learn this skill, they can able to dominate opposing players easily. So, this is a really good skill for the players. From the beginning, they should learn this fundamental skill.
Forehand fast serve is a technique to serve the longest distance with fast speed. In modern times, every player wants to serve in this style. Professional players easily take this serve. So the beginner players also need to master this skill for dominating the opposite players.
Using fast serve they can get more benefits as well as they can also put the opponent players under so much pressure. They can play rallies and also counter-rallies easily if they can be the master of this skill. They can easily attack first and get so advantage to put pressure on the opponent players on the next rally.
Forehand Pendulum Serve:Using this serve anyone can defeat or put more pressure on the opponent players. This forehand pendulum serves easy to learn but difficult to master on it because it’s a variation of serve. Players always want to serve with more spin. So, this service can help to generate more spin while serving or attacking with the ball.
The player should learn side spin also because it will help a lot to improve the forehand pendulum serve. To play this type of service you should also learn to change the grip style immediately. They also learn the rally side serves.
Players also should keep stable their bodies to play this service properly. While hitting the ball player should not move in the back too far, otherwise, they cannot generate more spin while serving. So, this is important to keep stable and flexible more.
They also should contact the ball at the net high because of generating more spin. So, every beginner player must do more practice for learning this basic skill.
Final Words
At the end of this article, people can learn some important basic fundamentals. Every beginner player should need to learn these skills. So, they must do a lot of practicing to learn these skills properly.
For dominating the opponent players, a beginner should need the ability to play all kinds of shots. So, they can start with the basic skills. In this article, we try to put 10 table tennis fundamental skills so that players can get help to learn in the right way.
