Gym traning to improve table tennis skills ( WITHOUT TABLE)

if you are serious about training get a personal trainer, generic exercises and exercise plans do not take the most important factor into account : you.

finding out your strengths and weaknesses and developing a program to tackle them is what personal trainers do. if that is not an option then you are going to have to do a whole lot of studying, reading and experimenting to do this yourself, it will just take a whole lot longer to get where you want to go (but you will learn a lot).

I did some reading some time ago, what I figured out is that agility drills and strength&speed drills would be useful for tabletennis skills. Isometric training might also come useful (e.g. resistance bands), but my impression was that there is less of a consensus about that. All in all, look for drills on youtube that improve 1. explosiveness, 2. agility, 3. speed, and give preference to those that include lots of lateral movement

good luck

I train at the gym - I recommend anything that improves cardio and the muscles used in TT but muscle building or building mass is not necessary and perhaps counterproductive. TT requires fast short movements, good reflexes/footwork, good core strength and powerful legs will also help. Leg work - squats, leg press/leg extensions, and cardio exercises, eg cross trainers, bikes, treadmill/running etc to will help. As above, any lateral exercises eg Rear delt Fly,cable work or any which are close to FH or BH stroke movements also useful, plyometrics have been said to help also, but I think specific TT drills will also make a big difference

Doing shadow footwork drills with a mirror actually helps. Falkenberg, one-step, 1-2-3, forehand backhand. Ladder drills--they are footwork drills where there is a rope ladder or a drawn ladder on the floor and you step through it in footwork patterns--would help.

I cycle through shadow footwork drills, ladder drills, ab work and stretching.

There are a lot of things you can do with Kettle Bells that force you to use similar muscles as you need to use in TT looping. And there is this weight called a SmartBell that can be used in ways that would strengthen the core in just the way you would use it in table tennis play. You can even do table tennis footwork drills with the smartbell in place of the racket. The smart bell is about 4 lbs so it would be like a weighted racket to force you core to work more when you are doing a shadow stroke as though you were looping underspin.

Ladder drills:


Drills where you are jumping up onto a platform and jumping back down off of that platform also are good for the legs.

I recommend ladder drills too.
There are also many other footwork drills that any serious player should be doing off the table.

I also agree with maze on doing the correct workout at the gym, else you are going to make certain muscles bigger and slow yourself down.

Other than that, I recommend you to watch a lot of table tennis and talk alot of table tennis.

I would also recommend you to train with low weights and many repetitions in preventive measure against injuries. Table tennis can be a very arduous sport for your muscles.

if you want to get to improve racket speed this is what you can do:
get an old blade and rubbers that you dont use, nail a piece of metal onto it, preferably an alloy so it wont rust. Even tie a piece of heavy wood onto it then shadow play at home. You will get quite tired at first but then it will get easier and when you hold a normal racket it will feel very light which is good

try some of this. This is for basketball in the US but it should translate very well to TT.

Coordination exercises, upper body vs lower ext coordination

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I would also recommend ladder drills. It's great to do as warmup and it has helped me improve my footwork a lot.

I think gym like weights is not necessary and some even advise against it.
other exercises like speed, reaction, agility could be good.
but the best thing is just to train tt until you hate it.
guys like ovtcharov that you see videos of them doing fitness stuff you have to remember that he probably has around 6 hours a day of table.

this is if you only care about table tennis.
if you want to go to the gym for other reasons then it's ok, but just keep in mind that it has nothing to do with tt.