How to Warm up to Play Ping Pong

Series Summary

Table tennis, also called Ping Pong, is a sport which tests the players' hand-eye coordination and reaction time to the extreme. It is one of the most popular sports in the world in terms of numbers of players worldwide, and is played competitively in international tournaments. Table tennis was first played in England in the 1880s, likely as an indoor, miniaturized version of lawn tennis. Soon equipment was manufactured, and the name Ping-Pong was trademarked in 1901 by J. Jaques & Son Ltd., who later sold the name to Parker Brothers.

In this series of free videos you'll learn how to play table tennis. Expert Scott Browder shows you the basics, from how to pick a ping pong table, paddles and balls, to the basic types of shots you'll need to become a ping pong master. You'll learn the handshake grip and the pen grip, how to loosen up and stretch before a match, and how to hold your body and the proper form and stance for playing table tennis. He'll teach you how to serve, how to return a serve, and various types of shots, including the slice, the slam, and a variety of spins that will confuse your opponent and have the competition doubting their skills!

Video Transcript

"SCOTT BROWDER: Hi. This is Scott for Expert Village. And we are going to continue on with our lessons that we started with the beginning ping pong. Today, we're going to talk about intermediate ping pong. And there's a lot of little tricks and spins and different types of shots that you can hit in intermediate ping pong that are a little bit more advance than what we talked about in the beginning ping pong. So right now, we're going to go ahead and start out with just, again, we want to get, stay nice and loose. So we're going to work a little bit of side to side motion with the waistline. You can put your paddle down. And just put your hands on your hips and you're just going to do some twisting back and forth again, not too far to where you're going to pull something. And just try to loosen up that lower back because that's going to take a pounding. Also, you want to be able to loosen up your legs because you're going to be, instead of just standing there, knocking the ball back and forth with Aunt Tilly, you're going to be moving from side to side, pushing off with your legs. So we want to make sure that our body is warmed up. And whatever type of exercises that you want to do to get to that point where your body is nice and warm and ready to roll, go ahead and do it that way and then we'll be ready to begin."