Most serves are too simplistic. They get the job done, but simply aren't done with real trickiness in mind. For example, a player serves backspin with a backspin motion. They may learn variations, such as a side-backspin serve, where the racket travels in a different direction in hitting the ball, or a pure sidespin. But the direction of the racket at contact is somewhat easy to see.

Why make it easy on the opponent? Sometimes, just before or after contact, change the direction of your racket so your opponent has to pick up whether you hit the ball before or after the change of direction. Better still, learn to hit it either before or after the change of direction, giving different spins with the same motion. You can also develop a semicircular serving motion, so the opponent has to figure out where in that semicircle you spun the ball - there will be different spins depending on when you hit the ball.

Developing serves where you hit the ball on different parts of the swing are tricky. What's easy is doing fast changes of direction just before or after contract, where the serve itself is seemingly simple, but the opponent is caught off guard by the change of direction of the racket. For example, with a forehand pendulum serve, right after contact pull the racket away from you, as if doing a reverse pendulum serve. Or set up to do a reverse pendulum serve (with racket close to you, with the motion going away from you), but "miss" the ball on the out-swing, and then do a regular pendulum serve, with the racket hitting the ball moving toward you. In both cases, it's a forehand pendulum serve, but you've added deception to make things harder for the receiver. Isn't that the goal?

Some players do this type of thing on every serve; some do it as a "surprise" to catch the opponent off guard. Try it out and you'll be surprised how many "free" points you get!

Developing good serves involves watching players with good serves, getting good coaching, and lots and lots of practice. But sometimes, after all that practice, it's hard to execute the serves in a game as you do in practice. There's a simple reason for that - pressure. There's no pressure when practicing serves, while in a real match there is. It's especially difficult to serve fast & deep under pressure (where players often either miss or slow them down for safety, thereby lowering their effectiveness), in controlling the depth (where that "perfect" half-long serve - where the second bounce would be right on the end-line, now goes long and gets looped), and serving very low to the net. How to overcome this?

Easy - put pressure on yourself! After you've practiced your serves to the point where they are near where you want them, imagine you are playing real games. Imagine an opponent. Really get into the mind-set, and soon you'll feel the same pressure. Then you can practice serving under that pressure. Make sure that, under this pressure, you can still control the speed and consistency of the deep serves, and the depth of the half-long serves (second bounce right about the end-line), and the height of all serves. Most players tend to serve a little longer under pressure, and so their short serves suddenly get looped.

You might also add to the practice by putting targets on the table, to work on your accuracy under pressure. Put a bottle on the corners and practice hitting them with your deep serves at "deuce," or even "down match point."

If you can't execute your best serves under the pressure of a match, then you haven't mastered those serves, no matter how well you do them in practice. So . . . master them!

You push the ball long, and the opponent does a slow but spinny loop. And you block it off, over and over, and can only stare at your racket in frustration. This is often the bane of every beginning and intermediate player. They know they have to aim lower, and yet, the next time they face another spinny loop, they still block off the end. Why? 

It's simple - a player does what he practices. And the huge majority of your blocking practice is likely against either players with less spinny loops, or who are looping against your block, and so have less spin than one against a backspin. And so your natural instinct is to block as if the ball has less topspin – and so you go off the end.

First, the basics. To block a spinny loop, you must close your racket more than you would against a less spinny loop. Your instincts may tell you to do one angle, but you likely have to close it even more, perhaps aiming for the net, perhaps even the bottom of the net. Give the ball at least a light punch - that way the spin won't take quite as much on your racket. Once you’ve made one good block off this spinny loop, remember the feel and the contact, and repeat. (It might also be helpful to watch top players block against spinny loop – the visual image of how effortlessly they do it will help.)

Now that you know the above, it's easy to block spinny loops, right? Wrong. You have to practice it. And that means finding someone with a spinny loop so you can practice against it. And the best way to practice against it is with an improvised multiball drill. Get a bucket of balls for your partner. He serves backspin; you push it back; he loops; you block. And that's it - you DON'T play out the point. As you are blocking, your partner should be reaching for the next ball. Result? He gets lots and lots of looping practice, and you get lots and lots of blocking practice, and specifically against spinny loops. As you get better, block more and more aggressive, and as you improve, perhaps practice counterlooping or smashing them.  

Once you've mastered this, the next time you face that spinny loop in a tournament, you can become the bane of your opponent!

You've spent a lot of time working on a shot, and it's now somewhat ingrained. Suppose, in a match, you make this shot several times . . . and then miss an easy one!!! The shot didn't feel right. A common response would be to try to adjust the shot so you make it the next time.

NO!!!!!

Why would you try to adjust a shot that you've already ingrained? Instead of starting with the missed shot and trying to adjust, remember the feel of the good ones, and simply repeat. The last thing you want to do is spend time thinking about the missed shot, which is a good way to ingrain that bad shot.

Next time you play, whenever you make a good shot, remember the feel, both the stroke and the contact. Do not ever forget that feel. Then, when you miss, just remember the feel of the shot, and it'll come back. You do have to adjust for the incoming ball (such as the spin), but the shot itself should be pretty much the same each time.

In that rare case where you absolutely cannot get it right, and the shot just feels wrong, then and only then would you have to analyze it and figure out what is wrong. Once you figure that out, it'll feel right again, and then you'll have the feel of the right shot again. Don't forget it!!!

Why fix a problem you've already fixed?

Table tennis is often advertised as a sport that all can play, where size makes no difference. However, it's not necessarily true. While you don't have to be tall to win (1971 World Champion Stellan Bengtsson at 5'5" and three-time World and 2-time Olympic Women's Singles Champion Deng Yaping was 4'11"), or short (four-time US Men's Champion Jim Butler, 6'5", or 1989 World Men's Doubles finalists Zoran Kalinić/Leszek Kucharski, 6'5" and 6'4" respectively), being big or small does make a difference tactically and in choosing a playing style. It's how you use what you have that counts. Current world #1 Fan Zhendong of China isn’t particularly tall at 5'8". Here are some relatively current players:

• Tomislav Pucar (Croatia), 6'5½", current men’s world #45, and #30 in 2020.
• Omar Assar (Egypt) 6'5¼" (196 cm), current men’s world #24, and #16 in 2018.
• Koki Niwa (Japan), 5'4", who retired in Nov., 2022, was men’s #5 in world in 2017 and had 17 monthly rankings in the top ten.
• Mima Ito (Japan), 5', current women’s world #6, and #2 in 2020.

Taller players generally have an advantage in power and reach. They have extra power primarily because a longer body (and especially playing arm) provide a naturally longer swing. They also create extra power by putting their weight into the shot. The extra reach allows them to more easily reach short balls and balls to the wide corners. However, the extra reach brings out a weakness: the center weakness. The farther apart the forehand and backhand strokes are (with the elbow roughly marking the midpoint), the larger the area that a player has to decide whether to use a forehand or a backhand, and the more the player has to move to cover for it.

The advantage of reach for a tall player can backfire. Shorter players have no choice but to move, and so are often forced to develop good footwork. Taller players aren't forced to move as often, and so they often do not develop good footwork. To compensate, taller players need to really focus on developing their footwork.

Shorter players have an advantage in foot quickness. The lower a player's mass, and the closer to the ground it is, the quicker the start. Taller players can compensate somewhat by bending their knees, using a wide stance, and crouching to lower their center of gravity. However, the larger muscles of a larger player do not fully compensate for their size, although training can. But a shorter player who trains equally will tend to be quicker.

The reason the larger muscles of a larger player don't quite compensate for their extra mass is that mass increases to the cube, while muscle strength goes up to the square. In other words, if you double in height without changing proportions, you become four times as strong, but your mass goes up eight times – so your relative strength is actually half what it was before. That's why insects and birds have such thin legs, while elephants and humans have relative tree-trunks for legs.

A shorter player also has an advantage in hand/arm quickness, both because the arm weighs less and because a shorter limb is easier to move quickly than a longer one, due to leverage.

Size is not the only factor in quickness. Constant practice of a specific motion increases quickness as the nervous system learns to react faster and faster. It's called neuromuscular adaptation and is why an advanced player reacts to a shot faster than a beginner. The type of muscle also makes a difference – "fast-twitch" muscles move quicker than "slow-twitch" muscles, which are primarily for stamina. Everybody is born with a certain percentage of each, but training can change the composition to an extent, as well as the efficiency of the muscles. Great sprinters have mostly fast-twitch muscles, while distance runners have more slow-twitch.

A shorter player also has a slight advantage in reflexes. Nerve impulses travel from the brain to the muscles at about 300 feet per second (205 mph), and so a shorter player reacts slightly faster. If the distance from the brain to the wrist on two players differs by one foot, the shorter player will be able to change his racket angle about 1/300 second faster than the taller player. A 70 mph smash travels about four inches in that time--and table tennis is a game of inches. But the taller player can simply back up maybe four inches or more, and use their longer reach to cover the slightly extra angles that allows the opponent, and use their extra power to make up for the slight loss of quickness.

An extremely tall player has a disadvantage in that the table is only 30 inches high. To compensate, a tall player must learn to stay very low, which can be hard on their legs. However, the tall player has an advantage in hitting lobs, which shorter players may have great difficulty with.

None of the above should be taken as gospel when choosing a playing style. There are very quick players who are tall, and powerful players who are short. (In fact, some short players use their natural quickness and lower center of gravity to throw their entire bodies into the shot even in fast rallies, and so develop great power.) But as a guideline, the above is a short summary to what tall and short players have to deal with and how to do so.