How to Play Table Tennis Alone (Effective tips)

Table Tennis is enjoyable and anyone who starts playing gets literally glued to the game. When you have a playing partner you enjoy the most. However it is not possible to have a training partner/opponent every time you want to play. What would you do in such cases when you don’t have a playing partner ? Your objective is to just play alone or even improve.

There are a lot of things you can do even when you can’t find a partner. Let’s explore what all things you can do in this article.

Focus on Physical aspects as table tennis has become more demanding in the era of plastic balls. Physical fitness will also improve your game!!

How to play table tennis alone

Let’s take a look at the various things you can do and practice ping pong at the same time.

• Continuously hitting the ball at wall -

  The objective of this drill is to create consistency. You may have seen that table tennis is all about one bounce and hit. You can create such scenario by hitting the ball at wall and then hit it after first bounce when it hits the floor. Try to keep an objective of hitting this continuously 5-10 times.

• Service Practice -

  Service is important aspect of game and you can do service practice without any partner. Just grab a bag of balls and use any table at home to practice your serves. Simple and effective way to improve your game.

• Shadow Play -

  Lot of people focus on shadow play which is simple. Practice in front of a mirror and you will start to improve your form and technique. You learn more by doing repetitions.

• Physical Exercises -

  Table Tennis is getting more and more demanding in terms of physical aspects. It is still very less physically demanding than other rackets sports but still this is an area that will help for sure. If you are playing against a pimpled player, than strength and endurance exercises will help for sure.

SEE ALSO: Table Tennis Exercises you can do at home

• Just racket and ball -

  You can do simple game by bouncing the ball on the bat. Make it hit continuously for 100 reps or more. This will help in improving hand eye coordination.

• Metal Bat attack -

  One thing you can do is to use a metal table tennis bat. Obviously this sounds ridiculous at first but this will improve your technique if you think about it. The heavy weight racket will allow you to hold the racket properly and make you practice the shot technique effectively.

• Spinning Exercises -

  Spin is important part of table tennis and one simple tip you can use is to create backspin on the balls. Try to brush the ball at the bottom and see if the balls comes back to you. Practice more and you will become a master at generating backspins.

• Robot Practice -

  Probably the best and most effective method to practice table tennis alone. A Ping Pong robot can feed you balls on table and you can practice alone. A robot is costly but if you are serious about practicing alone than this is the only tip that you should follow. The reason is the robot can allow you to do repetitive shots and allow you to gain consistency on the table. It will also allow you to improve technique and make your game fluid. The robot can also feed you balls at higher speeds and thus you will also be able to improve footwork. A lot of professional players also use a robot to practice their shots.

  With a Robot, you can practice topspins, flicks, backspins and not only you can practice your shots but you can make your shots more consistent. Table Tennis is not about brute force, you may need power shots in game but first you need to make proper contact with the ball and that you can practice with a robot. If you don’t hit sweet spot than even with using lot of power, you won’t be able to transfer it effectively to the ball. In my view, a table tennis robot is the best practice partner for playing alone.

• Imagination and Mental Training -

  A lot of players at high level do mental training, table tennis is a fast game and if you want to improve you need to be calm composed and able to judge where your opponent will hit. Yoga and meditation will help you clear your mind and allow you to improve concentration. The more you are able to predict, the better you will be able to play table tennis.

Below is a great video by PingSkills youtube channel on how to practice table tennis alone -

Conclusion

As you can see, You can play table tennis alone even if you don’t have a playing partner. You just have to be dedicated to the sport ;)

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