Physical Fitness - Training by Yourself in Table Tennis/Ping-Pong

I've done more than my share of aerobics over the years, although at home and not at a gym. Provided you have enough space (and you don't need a lot), just moving around to some good music can be a great way to get the heart rate up. You can make it as low impact or high impact as you want, just by changing whether you are jumping up and down a lot or a little. And all in the privacy of your own home!

These days my aerobic sessions are more a combination of aerobics and shadow play. I have plenty of space to work with, so I can perform my shadow play footwork drills. When my heart rate starts to get too high, I switch to some easier walking and arm waving type aerobics for a while, until it drops to the lower end of my working level. Then I go back to another shadow footwork drill, and repeat for about 45 minutes. This gives me a combination of footwork practice and aerobic exercise. But if you can do shadow footwork drills for the whole time, go ahead!

Table Tennis Robots

I use my ping-pong robot for fitness as well, although I tend to use this more in the middle of my season. At the beginning of the season I prefer to use my combination of aerobic and shadow footwork drills. As my fitness improves, I slowly start to bring in more work on the robot. It's very hard work which is why I don't start on the robot at the season beginning. But for a combination of fitness work and table tennis practice by yourself, a robot is hard to beat.

I use a Butterfly Amicus 3000, which is very good but also quite expensive. The Newgy Robots (540, 1040 and 2040) models are much cheaper and considered good value in table tennis circles.

Interested in Table Tennis Robots?

Weight Training

I have also used weight training for a number of years to improve my strength and power, and help ensure that I don't lose too much muscle mass when doing a lot of aerobics. Since I am not trying to be a bodybuilder, I stick to working my whole body once a week (two workouts in which I do half the muscle groups per workout). Beginners and most intermediate players won't really need to do weights unless they wish to though.

I use a home gym with mainly free weights and dumbbells (a personal preference from my bodybuilding days, but a home gym with cables will work fine as well. Or even a gym membership, provided you use it! And if you have never done any weight training before, I would most definitely recommend getting some expert help on lifting technique before launching into lifting weights. Using poor technique when lifting weights is asking for a career ending injury.

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Useful Devices

I use a heart rate monitor (a fairly basic Polar model) to help with my aerobic workouts. I find using a monitor allows me to see at a glance how hard I'm working at any time. Although many people recommend the 'talk test' (where you should still be able to talk to a friend while doing aerobics), I find it a lot easier to have the monitor tell me exactly how hard I'm working without having to guess.

Interested in Heart Rate Monitors?

Conclusion

Next: Mental Training in Table Tennis/Ping-Pong

Return to Training By Yourself in Table Tennis/Ping-Pong - Overview

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