Published on May 30, 2021 Last Updated on July 14, 2021 by Sorin Petroj
Have you decided to play table tennis and want to develop some table tennis skills for beginners which are the basics?
Maybe, you are not a newbie and just returning from a hiatus. Irrespective of the reason, you need to establish some beginner skills on the table to handle that tiny bouncing ball.
In this guide, we will elaborate on a few techniques to play accurate shots as a beginner to lay a foundation for more advanced strokes that you can create lately. Also, exceptional Table Tennis Clubs in the United States provide excellent training conditions, such as Westchester Table Tennis Center and Sunrise Table Tennis Club.
Table of Contents
Basic Table Tennis Skills – The 12 Fundamentals For Beginners
If you played games a long while ago, you would know they require proper equipment to play. Even for beginners, the right piece of equipment is mandatory.
And the next thing you need to keep in mind is to practice as much as you can. With practice, you can play those strokes with much more control. Your body has muscle memory, so you need to adopt the correct approach towards a shot.
This develops over time, and you can’t have a crash course for that, despite the claims of some coaches. You need to focus on your basic table tennis skills for beginners and then proceed.
Now there are 12 fundamental table tennis skills for beginners in the game. And we will discuss them in the following text.
1. Serves
There are three basic types of serves in table tennis + another combination of these. These are topspin serves, backspin serves, and clean empty service without rotation. When you use the combination of them, you will serve with more incredible speed and accuracy. You have to practice these serves on both sides of the line.
Other types of services are a bit more complicated, and we will discuss them in the section for more advanced table tennis players. Certainly, here we will mention which services they are and why they are good. These are long side rotation serves, internal serves, quick surprise serves, and backhand short serves from the middle of the table.
While serving, make sure your ball stays close to the table or stays low when it bounces. It means you don’t need to slam it into the table rather than across it. Another important thing is to throw the straight ball high with an open fist.
When the ball starts to fall, make contact with the racket in front of you and decide at the last moment whether it will be short or long. You achieve the long one by shooting the part of the table that is closer to you, while the short one by hitting the part of the table tennis table that is closer to the net.
Practice finishing the ball in different areas right in front and target other areas on the opposite side. You can bring in the topspin or backspin later.
2. Footwork
To develop better footwork, you need to shadow practice a lot. This way, you will have agile moves from one corner of the table to another. You need to reach the ball as swiftly as possible and try to get the feel of what it is like for the ball to come to you.
You can practice by pretending to hit the ball as it comes to you and in the direction where you want it to end up. Moreover, you can use your forehand first and then try out the backhand as well. This way, you will be flexing your muscles.
Use your backhand when you jump to the other side of the table and keep your forehand in play when the ball comes to you. Just shadow practice it all because the ball is not coming to you so that you can scratch even more.
Timo Boll practicing footwork with an exercise drill 2-2
It is one of the most important table tennis skills for beginners for footwork. It is not that hard to work with, and it improves reflexes, and at the same time, you learn the basics about movement and small steps in table tennis.
We mostly recommend beginners to improve their footwork by playing with their partner in the following way:
The partner will only stand on the forehand side and share three balls with you. The first on the forehand, the second in the middle of the table, and the third on the backhand. You have to return all three balls with a forehand by moving each time as much as you need to reach.
Another thing beginners can improve the footwork is playing one ball forehand, the other backhand, and returning it to the partner in the same place. That way, he will be able to share the balls with you, and you will be able to move to reach each one.
3. Forehand drive
This is where you will get the real feel of the ball when making your first return shot. You will get to feel the ball as it comes back to you. With driving skills, you will get the feel quickly. Some lessons will teach you to learn the stance and grip first.
But to get the feeling, you will need to learn to drive first and get comfortable with the stance and grip. Get the feel, and try to make adjustments accordingly. This will allow you to get in the driving position and make shots more comfortable.
Video where I personally show the forehand drive
We use both body and hand in every movement, and in the meantime, we follow the ball with our eyes. This is the most important thing to learn on time. Not to play out of place and only out of hand, but always add a little body movement.
The next things are the legs and movement. Always jump a little and move depending on the ball. This will allow you to move to heavier and faster balls later automatically.
4. Backhand drive
Similar to the forehand, only, in this case, the position of the posture at the table is more natural. The legs should be slightly spread and in the same plane left and right. Lean forward slightly and make contact with the ball with the racket open and close the racket slightly at the last moment.
Video of the backhand drive
As an example of a strong backhand player, I cite Aleksandar Karakašević from my country, a special example of how this shoot should be reported. From him, you can learn spins and other moves from the backhand side.
However, as a beginner, it is important that you have the right posture, moves correctly, and do not push the ball but a little with your wrist to take a kick. That means, arm, elbow, and wrist, everything should work together.
5. Forehand and backhand pimples
When you are done working on your basic playing shots, it’s time to create more shots. You have to develop a significant amount of timing in your game. It would be best if you hit the ball at the right time with accurate force.
These are the next steps that beginners learn and children who mostly pimp at the beginning. It is only important to open the racket at a certain angle, as you can see in the following video, and slightly forward and down together with the wrist of the pimple ball.
Video of forehand and backhand pimples
It would help if you learned to make these pushes more aggressive. This is because you will be giving your opponents a long and heavy ball to middle the shot.
You can generate a lot of power and surprise your opponent. You can fast push directly to the foreside of your opponents, which catches them off guard and attack the next ball.
There are also empty pimp balls, which means that you do the whole movement correctly, but at the last moment, you do not add a wrist but push the ball.
Then your opponent may think he is a strong pimple and, in fact, you were pushing the ball, and he will raise you a high ball that you can hit hard.
6. Looping
With looping, you can develop better skills to create those backspins with the help of your backspin serve. This is one of the most common ways to start your match. You can practice this by having your partner serve with a backspin.
The serve must be in a way that you have to use your backhand or forehand. But instead of doing that, you will have to use a loop as your return stroke as you are working on your loops only. If your partner can block these, catch the ball, and start all over again.
The loop is the strongest weapon of every table tennis player. Beginners should learn this move correctly in order to perfect and accelerate it later. It is best to learn this if you give your partner to pimple long balls and make a topspin attack.
7. Chopping
Chopping should be done against the wall to quickly respond to the ball coming at you with a pace behind it. This is something completely different when you are rallying at the table with your partner.
You can also do this by drawing a small line or guessing that you need to hit the wall just over the line that is only three feet away from the floor. This is approximately the height of the net.
Now drop your ball on the floor and when it bounces back up to you, try to chop it right against the wall just over the line and do it again when it comes back to you and keep practicing.
You can ask your partner to serve you a topspin, and then you do the chop. Your partner needs to catch the ball and serve you another topspin, and the cycle continues. Make sure to practice this both with your back and forehand.
When you are dealing with the backhand and forehand chopping, you will get the feel of the real game where you will have to work on both sides. Ask your partner to drive on both your sides so you can use your back and forehand for all the return shots.
8. Forehand flip
The flip with your forehand used to be an advanced skill in table tennis in the past. But now, it is considered to be a fundamental skill. If you can’t aggressively play your return shot, your opponents will quickly dominate you. So, aggressive play is something you need to learn in modern table tennis.
Forehand flip is done by entering short pimp balls, similar to topspins. The difference is, not with the whole hand, but only with the wrist. Since the ball is close to the net, you can’t achieve such a big swing, but you can attack the opponent with your wrist and make him defend.
It is very important to approach the ball with one foot under the table. Players who play with the right hand should approach with the right foot and vice versa. When you do a flip kick, you return your foot to the starting position for the successive balls.
9. Backhand flip
Just like the forehand flip, the backhand flip is also considered to be a fundamental technique. It would be best if you used your backhand flip to return all sidespin and topspin serves that are short. Backhand pushes were used for these serves in the old days, but these backhand flips have replaced them.
You also have to get down on your knees and approach with one foot under the table with this move. This is because the ball is close to the net, and when you make contact with the ball with an open racket and make an upward movement with your wrist.
It is best to practice when you pimple short balls with your partner and when you enter one of them with a flip. The top of the racket should be lowered as close to the table as possible and then move up and forward. Then you return your foot to the starting position to be ready for the further course of the game.
10. Backhand and forehand blocking
Blocking is another very important part of the game and is one of the basic table tennis skills. If you can block with forehand and backhand, you will cut off fast shots conveniently.
Unlike looping, with blocks on both sides, it is important to adjust the angle of the racket. You will achieve this by slightly closing the racket depending on the strength of the topspin.
The other thing is that you won’t hit the ball like in forehand drive, but lean the table tennis racket a little. That will be enough to return the ball to the table because it already has the strength and acceleration from the opponent’s topspin.
11. Forehand topspin
This is a shoot that many players really like to use. It is the first step towards progressing from a beginner to a more advanced player.
Even after many years, many players don’t know this move but have been playing matches on safe balls for years.
However, when you learn topspin from the forehand side, you will see that you are entering a new era of table tennis. The stroke is performed by shifting the center of gravity of the body to one leg and then striking the ball forward with a lowered hand to perform a rotation.
Above all, concentrate on making contact with the ball as thin as possible due to the rotation with which you will give your opponents a headache. You will adjust the angle of the racket so that the racket will be more open if there are more pimp balls and more closed if you perform a topspin on clean balls.
The wrist plays an exceptional role in forehand topspin because you make the final move with it. With the wrist, you can also make feints towards the backhand side to surprise the opponent.
12. Backhand topspin
Now you need to practice your backhand as well. Most beginners tend to focus more on the forehand than the backhand, and it’s a huge mistake. It would be best if you started practicing your backhand strokes right away.
This way, you will bring your wrist into play to control the ball even better. With your backhand topspin, you will also be able to relax and accelerate with timing. It will also allow you to find the proper grip for your table tennis racket.
Your backhand topspin needs to be a lethal weapon. But it would be best if you focused on the speeds here. For increasing the speed of your shots, you just hit faster and sooner.
Table Tennis Skills – Final Thoughts
Over time, these table tennis skills and techniques have drastically changed. But people still hold on to the primary table tennis skills for beginners and follow the new trends. This is the best way to approach this whole ball game.
There are various other shots that you can practice and include in your basic training. Remember, it’s not about creating your shots; it’s about practicing them with accuracy and precision.
You are learning basic table tennis skills, and you can’t develop something overnight that others have achieved with years of practice.
The more you work on a particular shot, the better you will get. Once you are done with the basics, you can begin advanced-level shots and create the shots as you play the ball.
All in all, all the things we talked about, you need to practice often and often in training to automatically start using them. Table tennis is a very fast sport, and you have to exercise moves in order for your body to react instinctively without planning.
When you practice each of these 12 basic table tennis skills for a few months, you will be surprised how you achieve the result yourself without planning a specific move.
