OOAK Table Tennis Forum

What is your stance like, both when receiving serve, and playing in a rally? I notice many of the great players have very wide stances - I'd say 2x or more the width of their shoulders. I've tried emulating this, and it's effective for seeing the ball, keeping me low, and generating power, but I find moving is trickier - it's as if my body is too well planted, and pushing off from the left to go right, or the right to go left is much harder with a very wide stance. By contrast, if I adopt a narrower stance, with my feet slightly wider than my shoulders, I need to crouch more, and although movement is probably better, my knees and thighs hurt more. Maybe I need to do some specific strengthening exercises for this?

How do you stand, and why? How does your stance impact your footwork?

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Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
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There isn't really a right answer to this. A wider stance is better for the active, usually higher level, player. There's more need to lower the torso a bit for taller players, etc.

IMO general rule of thumb for club level players is to get lower if you have to reach/hunch low for longer strokes, or if you need some help getting a gauge on the level of the ball (like perceiving a tricky serve), but it's not the biggest deal for those who don't need optimal power stroke stance.

Any further thoughts on this?

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Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!

If you feel like you're well planted, it's probably because you're standing flat footed or on your heels. You should be standing on the balls of your feet. Also, do more drills that force you to move side to side until it becomes natural.

Just note they're practicing for quite high level of play. It's a good idea to crouch to ball level for the kind of power shots you see on TV, bounce when aggressive at the table, and try these things to learn how they work. But these are consequence of a certain style & level and not necessarily the best outlet for effort unless that's specifically the game you're practicing for.

What's really important is to track the ball with your body when it comes in (so that the ball is reasonably within the "sweet spot" of whatever shot). Sometimes getting wider helps, sometimes it doesn't.

+1 for the gent who said weight is planted on heels. I also agree that there can be a thing as TOO WIDE. What is important is that stance is wide enough and knees/waist bent AND weight on front to allow quick and explosive movement. We all gotta discover what that is for ourselves.

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I was taught to imagine you had a credit card width between heels and floor, ie not much of your weight on the heels.

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Your stance has to be natural and comfortable. A lot of the time, though, the problem is not the stance width (unless you were a senator from Idaho).

There a different issue, it is very common and a lot of people are unaware they have this issue. It arises because most people have one leg stronger than the other, usually the right leg for right handed people, so when they think they are in a balanced ready position they are actually keeping quite a bit more weight on their dominant leg! This gets worse as the point goes on. If you have trouble moving to wide balls to one side more than the other (for a lot of people wide to the forehand side), this is probably what is causing it. If there is much extra weight is on your right leg, then you can't move to the right without falling down. Instead you have to first shift your weight to your left, then push off and move to your right, which takes to long if you can do it at all.

What you need to do is spend some time in practice playing so that it feels like there is actually a little more weight on your non-dominant leg. At that point you will actually be balanced and able to move equally well to either side. There is a chance you have been playing unbalanced for so long that when you are actually balanced it will feel strange.

The problem with this, of course, is that if you have to think about it constantly, that runs against the zen aspect of table tennis. But you have to practice for it to become natural. There are movement exercises you can do to develop balance also, it is not hard to find ways to deal with it once you are aware of it -- which does not mean that you will fix it quickly. You will probably never move like those Chinese guys in the video, but you can't even make a facsimile of it if you risk falling down when you try to move directly to one side.

Also, the stronger you get, the better this is.

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