How do you learn to sidestep properly?

What Lula said is pretty comprehensive. It has pretty much all you need.


Shadow strokes/footwork drills in front of a mirror can really help with getting the coordination for good footwork. But you do also have to have some means of practicing it at a table like in the video Dominikk posted.


And jddavid has a point that, if there is something that would cause your joints to be at risk, it may be a question whose answer has diminishing returns. But if you are not too old and you are in good health, then the things you need to do to develop the footwork would be practicing the skills. Because, for someone in adequate physical condition, the movements are not so much the problem. The issue is that your body, your nervous system, does not know how to do the movements and the brain processing is not up to speed on knowing when and/or where you need to move to soon enough.The hardest part of that equation is actually the reading the scenario, brain processing and knowing where you need to move to a decent amount of time before the ball has crossed the net.


So, it is not so easy to learn and takes a lot of different approaches to training those skills into your system.....into your muscle memory. Therefore, take note of everything Lula listed in his post. It is all in there.

Also the weight of your body should be shifted forward, so your heels would be ready to lift off the floor. No matter how strong your muscles are, you just won't be quick enough without that. The agility ladder helps you understand that.

UPDATE: Encountered a video about my point:

Originally Posted by vossi39

Best footwork drill is Falkenberg… And helps with with BH/FH transition…If it only wouldn’t be so exhausting 🤣

In the end, all the footwork drills are important. If you don't know how to do a one step or a step around, I would say it would be worth learning those first before trying to perform the falkenberg. But, when you know the basics, it is a fine drill.

To me it sounds like a two point drill using one step footwork would be a good place for OP to start. But in the end, you need to train all possible footwork drills.

Everyone already made brilliant post(s) so if I may, I will just add a small tip from my own training experience.

I also struggled with lateral movement - which isarguably the most important and frequently used movement in TT.
My coach made me do multiple BH (random amount) before pinging it off to the far FH side which I was too slow to react/move to back then.

I did shadow practice at home, read some materials about it and immediately know what I was doing wrong: I move left by moving left foot first, and move right by moving right foot first, which often threw me off balance and caused the recovery to my ready position very slow, or at best, sluggish. The 'correct' (better players may give input about this) way is the other way around: move LEFT by propelling (putting weight and launch off ground) your RIGHT foot, and vice versa.

I found that (personally), propelling is easiest done by focusing the launch point from a designated part of your foot. In my case, I'm on my toes a lot (pun intended). If it sounds a tad bit dangerous, I guess heels can be used in exchange for better injury protection, but any part will do once you've programmed it into your muscle memory (which takes patience from lots of practice ofc 😀)

Yesterday training session: coach gave me a similar exercise and I nailed it MUCH better. Not perfect yet, but I felt readier for every ball.
(You can try something like 2-3x BH, far FH, middle FH, repeat).

Just my two cents, hope it helps!

In terms of strengthening exercises I think that information is covered in a lot of different ways already.

I think it is important to understand two things:

1) One of the things that makes footwork a challenge to learn in TT is the fact that you first have to learn how to coordinate the upper body and the lower body WHILE MOVING AND TAKING A STROKE. Why is this hard, the upper body and the lower body are working in synergy, but they are counterbalancing each other. They are not doing the same things at the same time. So, you can be strong and able to do all the movements separately. But you need to learn to coordinate what everything below the waste does with what everything above the waste does.

2) Even when #1 is taken care of, you have to learn to read where the ball is going to move there. So, when you can do the footwork drills in shadow form, and then, you get good at doing the drills with multiball, when fed the ball and you know where the next ball will go, you will have to do this a lot, A Lot, A LOT, to make it so, in random play, like what happens in a match situation, where your opponent is trying to give you balls that are hard to return, you read the play and make the right movement. I can't over emphasize how getting from drills where you are developing the muscle memory, to convert that to the brain processing to read the play and plug in the correct muscle memory to make the movement to the ball when your opponent is trying to mess you up, takes a lot of work.

So, if strength training is all that is needed, the subject is covered. But if, in your head, you know the right movement, and in drills where you know what is coming, you can perform the correct movement, but in match play you are still stepping only with one foot and reaching for the ball instead of doing the footwork to be in position, then strength training won't help you learn how to read the play and make the most efficient movement to the ball. You would need to go through step one above till your body knows the exercises, and step 2 above where you learn to practice the footwork drills with a live ball, to step 3 where you can do the footwork well enough in a random situation:

So, moving towards this: although this is the most evil version of what I am talking about that I can imagine and ZJK is training the skill I am talking about at a pace that is notably faster than could ever happen in match play since the ball feeder is sending the next ball before ZJK's next shot lands on the table. But notice the random nature of the drill and how hard it is for ZJK to keep the footwork even though he mostly does:

Originally Posted by UpSideDownCarl

In the end, all the footwork drills are important. If you don't know how to do a one step or a step around, I would say it would be worth learning those first before trying to perform the falkenberg. But, when you know the basics, it is a fine drill.

To me it sounds like a two point drill using one step footwork would be a good place for OP to start. But in the end, you need to train all possible footwork drills.

If I look at my play (and certainly it is considered low level 😃) 90% of my footwork needed is covered by Falkenberg. I find this a perfect excercise to include in most training session to keep and extend your quickness and specifically combined with FH/BH transitions (adjusting grip).
But of course to be complete in your footwork, other drills will be needed...


One additional aspect, which is not really covered very well in footwork discussions, is the discussion of strategic movement following your own stroke. If e.g. you have pivoted to use your FH on your BH side and played a parallel shot your next best movement should already be toward your forehand as 80% of the returned balls will be played there.
And this need to be part of your drills as well, that depending on the placement, you need to already move to be in the best position for the next shot. And this starts already after your own shot and not with the return of your opponent.

Ladder exercises.