How to teach bouncing the ball

Fatih Ugurdag Asked 10 years ago

I have an 11 year old son. I am trying to teach him table tennis. We practice about once a month and we have been doing that for a while. He can barely bounce the ball 20 times. He does not have ball control. I am an OK table tennis player myself and am trying to teach him but not making much progress. In my opinion, ball control (consistency) is very critical, and I feel I should teach him how to consistently bounce the ball first. Can you tell me how to teach it? (By the way, we also do regular game play. It is not that we are stuck with bouncing the ball.)

Alois Rosario Answered 10 years ago

Hi Fatih,

Get him to do things like rolling the ball along a table and hitting it onto a wall.  It doesn’t need to be a Table Tennis table, any table will do.

Then get him to do some balancing the ball on the bat and hitting the ball up to himself.  The more he does the better he will get.  Doing the skills only once a month won’t generate much progress because he will not remember the feel by the next time he hits the ball.  The more regular the better, even if it is for 2 or 3 minutes each day.