OOAK Table Tennis Forum

My daughter, Melisande, is 7 years old. She's developed an interest in TT after sitting with me, watching videos, watching me practice at home, and watching me edit my videos. She expressed an interest in learning. I'd recently heard an interview with Tin Tin Ho in which she said she learned to play when she was 5! I figured we'd give it a go!

On Friday afternoon she had never picked up a bat. I gave her an old Palio beginners' bat. It's been sitting around in the garage for a few years, and its rubbers are shiny - I'll replace them soon, I think.

I showed her how to pick up and hold the bat, and asked her to try to toss the ball with her left hand and let it bounce on the bat, once. She tried this for about 10 minutes, maybe managing it once.

Then we went to the club on Friday night, where they have a beginners' coaching session. She absolutely loved it. She worked on balancing the ball on her bat, and then learned about closed bat face, vertical bat face, and open bat face. She did some multiball, and was shown how to do a kind of backhand push with an open bat face.

Today we went to the gym to practice (she helped me too). She did some work on her balancing, and then I fed her some multi-ball.

I've never done this before, so this is as much a lesson for me as for her! Still, here's the footage of Melisande's first ever practice session!



She absolutely loved it again, and can't wait to go back!

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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!

Thanks for posting! She's definitely ready... they can learn very quickly at this age. I'll show this to my 6yr old daughter... see if I can encourage her to try something similar.

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Glad she's interested. My 7 year old is too hooked on Minecraft and his trampoline.

Remember to keep it fun, check out this as a source of fun activities, many don't involve a table.

http://www.ittf.com/ittf_development/Tops_Manual.pdf

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Donic Waldner Senso V1,FH Baracuda Big Slam 2.0mm ,BH Victas Triple Regular 2.0mm

This is great! I love the idea of using balloons!

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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!

Good start! Its all about getting the hang of timing for now.Just getting the ball to hit the bat is an achievement.

My daughter is now 9 and she has been interested since she was about 7 also. She gets a hit with me when I have her on holidays and TT is on too. My TT table got packed away at home for ages, so the club became the only place to hit. but when it was setup, I had the robot on it and let her have goes at hitting balls from that...it was amazing how well she did. I also did some multi-ball before letting her free on the robot to prepare her. When we hit at the club, which is not often but she loves, she hits pretty well now. I think we have maintained a rally of about 15 balls each as our record. This can include both FH and BH shots, but mainly FH. Her shots are generally lob-style balls and she doesn't have great control on where she sends them (and she just LOVES "edging" me ), but I think for the amount we've done this, she does pretty well. We went to a christmas party at the end of last year and the friend whose place it is has a TT table. When the grown-ups weren't playing, she and other kids got on and hit. Without me lobbing balls to her, I was pretty impressed with how well she was returning the balls to the other kids. (The main one was a 12 year old boy who wasn't much more advanced than she is). Her "training" held her in good stead

Keep this work up with your daughter LC, and she'll be a long way advanced by 9. My friend, Sahmaniac (on the forum), had his son playing at about age 7. He has just turned 11, has competed in junior and adult competitions at the club and has competed in International Junior competitions for about 2 years now. (Mind you he has been trained heavily by Simon Gerada, one of Australia's premier coaches, for about 3 years now ).

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Friday soon came around, and Meli was very excited to go for her second visit to the club. This time she joined in the warm up - it was funny to see her skipping along and doing the same exercises as people three times her height! Still, she persevered and finished it with a smile on her (rather red) face!

She then did some training with various club coaches, and seemed to be having a super time. She also had a go against the robot, which she said she enjoyed. For the last while, she was taught by none other than Lois Peake, England #10, who has an injury, so wasn't training.

Meli was very excited to be being given one-to-one attention by one of the best players in the country, and said afterwards: "If I work hard, I can be as good as Lois".

Lois said to me afterwards that she thinks Meli is a natural, and that for a 7 yo who has only played twice, she has remarkable hand-eye coordination. I'm taking it all with a pinch of salt, but Meli seems to be loving it so far, and as long as she's having fun, it's all good.

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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!

This is cool My kid just turned 6 and I plan on introducing him to the sport. I got him interested by letting him play with my racket a few times and giving him the spare hobby bat that we have at home Ü I hope I could bring him to the club this month. Way to go daddies hehehe

Any tips from the other daddies in the forum? Ü

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Stiga Offensive Classic
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