How To Go From Casual To Competitive Table Tennis – A Guide

If you’re reading this article, the chances are that table tennis isn’t one of the most popular sports in your country. 

In my native Argentina, most people don’t even know that table tennis is a sport, let alone an Olympic one. 

Like me, most table tennis players started out playing with their coworkers, friends, or family. Eventually, we realized we wanted to take things one step further and treat our hobby more seriously. 

If you want to become a ‘proper’ table tennis player, this article is for you. In short, the best way to become a competitive player is to join a club. We’ll explain how you can do it but also give you other alternatives to become a self-taught player if joining a club isn’t an option.

1. The Easy Route – Join A Club

If you want to become a table tennis player, joining a club is the best thing you can do.

Most clubs will host group training sessions and open play sessions, while also giving you the possibility to book 1-on-1 lessons with the club’s coaches.

As a beginner, it’s extremely important that you get feedback from a qualified coach. I can’t stress this enough.

You see, when you show up to the club for the first time your technique will be incorrect in many ways you don’t realize. Your grip, your footwork, and your strokes will be flawed in many ways.

As coaches, we have years of experience seeing the same mistakes being made time and time again, and our job is to use our experience to help correct your technique.

Being a technically sound player is essential in table tennis, you can’t get away with incorrect technique as this will hinder your development in both the short and long term.

The players who improve the fastest are the ones who are constantly working on their technique, no matter the level. 

These players are the ones who’ll be able to hit the ball the hardest, with the most consistency, the most harmonically, and the ones who will recover in time the fastest after they play their strokes.

If you look at the greatest table tennis player of all time, Ma Long, his technique looks a lot different now than it did 10 years ago. 

He never stopped improving his technique, even if he was already the best in the world. This is why he was able to stay at the top of the world rankings for such a long period of time.

Incorrect technique leads to the opposite of all we just mentioned: inconsistency, incorrect contact, slow recovery times, etc. This is why it is essential to correct your technique, the sooner the better.

Bad habits are hard to change, I get it, but it is completely possible to do so if you put in the work. Age is also not an excuse, as I’ve seen 50, 60, and even 70-year-olds correct their technical errors.

So, if you intend to take table tennis seriously, you should focus on improving your technique, and for that, the best way is to join a club with a coach who’s qualified to teach you how to do it.

But how do you join a club? Simple – just google “table tennis in (your area/country)”. Let’s say I was from Berlin, this is what shows up from a quick Google search:

The next thing I would do is spend half an hour going through their reviews, single out the best options for my goals as a player, and give these clubs a call.

You should ask what days they’re open, if they host group training sessions, if there’s a coach, what the monthly fee is, etc. Some clubs just let you do your thing independently, I would avoid these as a beginner or I’d complement free play sessions with 1-1 sessions with a local coach.

Then, just show up to the club, talk to the coach about your objectives, and get to know the rest of the players. 

Having played at different clubs for more than 9 years now, here are my top 2 tips:

1. Don’t be shy, most clubs love to have new people coming in, and making new friends is one of the best perks of this sport.
2. Be willing to learn and listen to other players, you can ask stronger players for their advice after you play with them. I still do this to this day and it helps a whole lot.

2. The Hard Route – Become A Self-Taught Player

If joining a club isn’t an option because there are none near your area, then you can improve by teaching yourself how to play table tennis.

The results will not be the same and you will probably develop some bad habits, but you can reach a high level by teaching yourself regardless.

I tried teaching myself when I first started playing, and the results were incredibly underwhelming.

When I was 17-18, I used to go to a club that had coaches around, but they almost never gave us any technical advice nor did they care about our development.

So, I had to try and teach myself how to play. In my case, it didn’t work out and my level stagnated even though I trained quite frequently. I started improving once again once I switched clubs and had a better coach correct my technique every training session.  

Speaking of this latter coach, he was mostly self-taught. There are players who have a certain feel for the sport, and their game sense and analysis skills make it possible to think of theories to understand why things happen as they do and work on the solutions.

Others, such as myself, and the majority of players, need to be told things clearly to understand and correct them because we wouldn’t notice otherwise. 

If you want to become a self-taught player, you’ll need to know another player (maybe a relative, coworker, or friend) who wants to improve at table tennis as well.

This way, you can train with them, record your training sessions and matches, and watch coaching videos afterward to compare their teachings to what you’re actually doing.

Fortunately, there are now more and more resources on the web to learn all of the basic skills of the sport (like this website!). 

If I were you, I’d start by reading our ultimate beginners guide to table tennis. In addition, here’s our guide to planning the perfect table tennis training session.

If you’re going to watch coaching videos, try to focus either on Chinese or European technique. Personally, I would strongly recommend you try to learn European technique and use European equipment. 

Many coaches on YouTube will teach the Chinese way to play, which isn’t wrong, but it’s very physically demanding, the strokes are longer, and it’s easier to get Chinese technique wrong than it is to get Euro technique wrong.

Many players think that because they’re swinging their playing arm wildly and performing long strokes, they are playing the Chinese way. 

This is incorrect, as Chinese technique has many nuances and small details, even if the technique is longer and it requires you to swing your arm more.

As a beginner, I suggest that you don’t go down this path as it’s much harder to be consistent and effective by trying to play this way.

European technique is much shorter and more efficient, and this will make it much easier for you to improve your consistency and your overall skills. If you’re reading this article, chances are that players in your area will play the European way.

In terms of equipment, another good idea is to invest in a robot or a return board to train your basic strokes. 

You can also submit videos of yourself playing on platforms like Reddit or Discord to receive feedback from stronger players on your technique.

Take Your Ping Pong Hobby To The Next Level

To sum up, joining a club is the best thing you can do if you want to become a competitive table tennis player. 

As you improve, you’ll have more fun, get in shape, make friends, and you’ll be able to represent your club in various leagues and tournaments. 

You could even travel around your country to play with your friends. I’ve done this in the past and I can assure you, I had a blast in every one of my trips.

If joining a club isn’t an option, you can still teach yourself by reading guides on the web (such as this one!) or watching instructional videos.