Basic footwork.

In Table Tennis most of your movement is sideways so it is really important to get that movement

correct. Some basic things that you need to think about are making sure that you are down

low in your basic ready position. Once you are in that ready position it is a matter

of moving sideways with either a little jump or a shuffle.

The easiest way to learn the basic footwork is to do it slowly and one ball at a time.

So i'm going to feed the ball out one at a time to Jeff.

We start with hit, jump, hit, jump into position and hit. And I am catching the ball

each time to give Jeff plenty of time to get the movement correct. Once you feel like your

movement is correct, then you can start to hit the ball continuously, so it is a hit...

and jump. Hit and jump, hit and jump, hit and jump, hit and jump.

The other really important part about footwork is to make sure that when you are hitting

the ball that you have stopped, so now let's focus on move... stop... hit... move... stop...

and hit.

Move, stop, hit. Move Stop Hit. Move, Stop, Hit. Move, Stop Hit. Let's have a look at

this in slow motion one at a time.

So it's hit, move, stop, hit. Move, stop, hit, Move, stop. and hit.

Why is it really important to be stopped? Because if you are not stopped you are going

to be unbalanced when you are making that stroke and then it is going to be difficult

to recover for the next ball.

So you can see that whenever Jeff's is hitting the ball now his feet have stopped he is in

position and then he makes his stroke. And Jeff can do it super fast.

So the footwork movement is called a shuffle step but in reality it is best if you are

jumping with both legs at the same time. You will notice that all the best players use both

their legs at the same time. They have got their feet wide apart knees bent and it is

almost like they have got a rod between their knees and all that is happening is that they

jump sideways this way and sideways that way. If at the start you are finding it difficult

to make that movement you can use the shuffle step to get there but in reality I want you

to progress quickly to making the jump and hit, jump

and hit.

If you have found this lesson useful to learn your footwork go to PingSkills.com and learn

a whole lot more about Table Tennis.