Instructer's Guide - Teaching the strokes

TEACHING THE STROKES

The best way to teach a stroke is to know it well yourself and have experience teaching it. In these next few sections, we will first go over how the stroke is done and then common mistakes which students make.

One thing to note is that although kids don’t have the hand/eye coordination of adults, they are natural imitators and will mimic a perfect stroke much more easily than an adult. Rather than tell them all the finer points of each stroke, learn to demonstrate and then fix individual problems.

The best way to teach a stroke is to guide the player through it. Methods for doing so will be explained in each section as they come up. There are several problems you will encounter, however. First and foremost will be the player’s own resistance. Not intentional resistance, but most kids tense up when learning a new stroke. You’ll be surprised at their strength! Tell them to relax the arm. You should guide the stroke until they have the feel of it, first without the ball and then with it. Then have them practice the stroke a few times on their own without the ball.

It will be shown how to guide a player through a stroke, both for lefthanders and righthanders. It is assumed that the instructor is righthanded. If you are lefthanded, reverse the instructions, teaching lefthanders the way it is explained for righthanders and vice versa.

Ready Position for Strokes

Before teaching any strokes, you should teach your kids how to stand at the table. Have your players stand in a slight crouch with the knees slightly bent. Weight should be on the balls of the feet, which should be slightly farther than shoulder width apart.

Note that in table tennis, a player’s middle is his playing elbow. This is because all shots rotate on it, and the forehand and the backhand shots are equal distance from it on either side. This means that a player who favors neither side should stand with his playing elbow lined up with the middle line of the table. Since most players favor the forehand at least slightly, they should stand with the elbow a little to the left of the middle line.

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Last Update : 06 Kasım, 2002

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