Footwork
From TableTennisTraining
Footwork is key to becoming an advanced player and is often one of the more neglected parts of table tennis training. The goal of footwork is to position the body in the optimal position before beginning a stroke (although the backswing of a stroke is often integrated into the footwork movement). Footwork requires a lot of physical stamina and players will often reach too far for the ball with their arms, rather than moving their whole body to the best position. This results in poor ball control and weaker shots when the arm becomes "disconnected" from the upper body so that the upper body muscles don't contribute to the force of the stroke.
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Maintain balance while moving
You should try to keep your center of gravity below you when moving, so that when you stop you are balanced while hitting the ball. One of the more common reasons for players to miss a ball even when they have proper stroke technique is that they are falling backwards or sideways while trying to strike the ball. This means you will move quite differently than when you normally walk or run (while running, we typically move in sort of controlled fall, with our center of gravity slightly in front and pull our feet forward to prevent a fall). This rule may need to be relaxed if you need to cover a large distance quickly.
Push off with opposite foot to start motion left or right
To start moving to the left or right, you should always push off with the the opposite foot. For example, if you want to move to the right, you push off with the left foot while lifting the right foot. If you simply start by moving your right foot without shoving with your left foot, you will not be able to achieve the necessary footwork speed to play a forehand-dominated, looping style. This technique is critical, for instance, when stepping around to forehand loop a ball sent to your backhand court.
This is one of the most important parts of proper table tennis footwork (and probably one of the most overlooked parts, both in play and table tennis literature). It's really hard to see it while watching a player, however. Generally, you can see that some players seem to move much more fluidly, but because they are so well balanced during the motion, the use of the push off is not very obvious.
One possibly helpful tip in teaching juniors is to mention that the motion is very similar to the one used when moving from right to left in dodgeball, since most kids have played dodge ball in school. Any halfway decent dodgeball player has long ago mastered this skill (including the need to maintain balance during the motion).
Maintain good traction
One thing to be aware of is that the push off will make you more sensitive to slippery floors, because you use friction between the floor and the shoe to achieve the sideways push. Generally floors are slippery because of dust and/or grit, so once you master the push off technique, you will probably find the need to keep a wet towel or even just some wet paper towelettes beside the table to clean the soles of your shoes between points when playing on a slippery floor.
If you have the time and opportunity, of course, it's also a good idea to clean the playing floor around the table with a wet towel (be sure to dry the floor before playing).
Keeping the floor clean or at least keeping your shoe soles clean is more important than using a soft rubber sole shoe, but a properly clean soft rubber shoe will give you better traction than a regular tennis shoe. Table tennis shoes and volleyball shoes both use soft rubber soles and I recommend them. However, if you don't keep the soles clean on a dirty flooring, it is my feeling that they slip more than a regular tennis shoe. Update: there are now some non-soft rubber table tennis shoes that also will give you good traction, but are less subsceptible to the problems of soft rubber shoes on dusty floors, so you may want to give these a try.
Shuffle movement
The most fundamental movement in table tennis is a rapid shuffling of the feet to the left or the right. Your feet should barely lift off the ground. Shuffle movements are very quick: both feet start and stop moving within fractions of a second and your feet will generally move AT MOST a few inches to the left or right. Shuffle movements allow you to make fine adjustments to your position before you stroke the ball.
Two-step Side-To-Side movement
This movement is fundamentally the same as the shuffle movement, but it's used to cover much more ground. Against slower balls, it's not uncommon to use a two-step movement for initial position, then use a shuffle step to make a fine adjustment in position.
Example of two-step movement to the left: 1. Push off with the right foot. 2. Lightly lift left foot and step to the left. 3. Right foot follows quickly after.
One step movement
When a player doesn't have much time to react, he may be forced to use a one-step movement to get into position. As this generally results in a non-optimal body position, it's typically to necessary to employ a blocking stroke or a stroke where the power comes mostly from the wrist and forearm.
A one step movement is executed by pushing off with a stationary foot and moving the other foot, leaving the player in a wider than normal stance. After stroking the ball, the player should quickly return to a narrower stance that provides better mobility.
Step around to loop from backhand
Cross-over movement
Step in with playing leg to loop over the table
It's important when forehand looping to have your "playing leg" reasonably close to the ball in order to effectively use your body's power in the shot. The "playing leg" is the right leg for a right-handed player, or the left leg for a left-handed player. When looping beyond the edge of the table, the playing leg should be further back than the other leg to allow maximum weight transfer forward when the ball is struck. However, when looping over the table, the playing leg should be in front and under the table to maintain proper balance during the loop. Note that since the playing leg is now in front of the other leg, it is more difficult to place the loop wide relative to the looping hand (e.g. right handed loopers will have trouble looping wide to the right), but an over-the-table loop also gives the opponent very little reaction time and this makes up somewhat for the reduction in possible target areas.
