Importance of Footwork in Table Tennis

 Five reasons why footwork is very important in table tennis

• Footwork is essential because the proper foot movement will have well coordination with your serves and strokes.
• It enables you to reach the ball quicker and more easily, which in turn it enables to play a greater variety of strokes.
• Good footwork enables to play a better stroke and place return accurately, which puts opponent under time pressure
• Improved footwork and court position allows you to control the ball with the shots you play. It also allows you to control your movements around the court, which means that you get to play more shots every point.

• With a better footwork and an improved position, it significantly decreases the loads placed on different parts of our body at risky angles. In a desired position at any given time while maintains proper form to reduce the chances of injury. 

            Five ways on how to improve different fitness components used in table tennis       

1. Short sprints

Break your running distances down into short sprints of 10, 20, 30 and 40 meters. Repeat these sprints several times and allow plenty of time to recover in-between bouts. It’s no good running tired because this will only make you run slower, which defeats the object.

Sprinting improves strength, power and limb speed, which are all vital for table tennis. It also helps to build lean muscle mass, while reducing body fat and working the anaerobic system.

      

      2. Train Laterally

Table tennis is mainly a lateral movement game (meaning the main direction movements  are side to side). So, as I said at the beginning, “you become how you train”. A lot of your table tennis fitness training needs to be made up of lateral movements, such as lateral jumping.

Training laterally increases your ability to change direction quickly, improves leg strength, explosive power, stability, balance and coordination. Basically, everything you need to play table tennis!

      3. Use lots of jumping and bounding movements

Add jumping exercises to your fitness programmed, such as tuck jumps. These are great for improving your dynamic power and agility. They also need no equipment and can be performed when you only have a limited amount of space. You can adapt them in many ways by using different leg positions such as a pike jump or split jump. You can also add sprints and sidestep movements on landing. These are probably the best types of exercises for developing explosive power.

Jumping on and off boxes is another way to advance your jumping training and increase explosive power. Known as plyometrics, and used by most top athletes, this is an advanced form of training which is very good for strengthening the tendons and ligaments, and developing joint stability.

       4.  Develop arm speed

Players need fast acceleration in the shoulder, elbow and wrist. Resistance training bands are great for training arm speed and acceleration because they allow the player to mimic the movements of a stroke and target the specific muscles required to execute the shot. The gradual increase in tension of the band makes the trainer increase the speed against the resistance and improve their acceleration of the stroke.

      5. Train quick

General conditioning exercises; such as press ups, sit ups, lunges, squats etc. are all great for table tennis. However, the emphasis should be on speed, quickness and explosiveness, rather than simply good technique of exercise. Just have the player blast 6 quick press ups several times or add bounces to the press up or a jump to the squats. There are many ways to make these types of exercises more suited to developing explosive power.

 

THE END....

 SUBMITTED BY: Jamaica B. Reluya