Table Tennis Footwork drills

I have written elsewhere about the footwork basics for table tennis beginners, so make sure you are familiar with the concepts in that article before starting to use the techniques I will be discussing below. One important point I'd like to make first is that footwork in a ping-pong match is not something that can be completely automated. Watch any good player and you'll see many examples where he or she will not use technically perfect footwork during a rally. When you have an opponent trying to put the ball into awkward locations, things are not that simple.

What these players have done is performed their footwork drills over and over for many years, and much like a virtuoso in music, they can improvise their footwork when put under pressure by an opponent. Consider your footwork drills to be the table tennis equivalent of music scales practice.

• When performing footwork drills by yourself, keep in mind that you are trying to groove in the correct movements of your feet and body, rather than just getting a workout. Start off as slow as you need to in order to get the movements right. You'll get faster later on as you get used to the various steps.