Why are pros still warming up with flat drive rallies?

says Where will table tennis be in the future? And what ideas...
says Where will table tennis be in the future? And what ideas...
Member
Oct 2010
416
98
644
Read 12 reviews
Really like this question actually. A good reason for this is that its quite a soft exercise so its slowly warming your body up before you get into the more strenuous looping. Especially if you are on a training day. Think of it as a cold car in the morning you wouldnt just accelerate it straight away and strain the engine, youd warm it up a bit and go through the gears.

In this sense it potentially serves as a means to reduce injury, however if you are training seriously then of course you should do a proper warm up and stretch before hand. When I was training everyday in the past 2 sessions in a day, you would eventually find that, especially during the second session of the day, you would spend far less time warming up with flat drives as your body is already functioning and fluid, so would very quickly go into loops.

From another perspective I would definitely say that warming up with flat drives is very much ingrained in the culture and psyche of table tennis. Like an accepted norm. In this sense its just gone along with the times, I would encourage people to try something different from time to time.

There is nothing wrong with doing a warm up (running etc) and as long as you are well stretched going straight into loops. However this is still a basic fundamental that is required in the game for blocking etc. I also would argue that almost everyone (including my self) has spent too much time dedicated to diagonal flat drives, and I wish I had dedicated more of this time to other exercises, as I believe I would be a better player for it.
 
Top