Is it illegal to stamp your foot while serving?

[azlan]

Absolutely legal mate...and not only during serves. You may stamp your feet during smashes, chops, spins..basically every single shot that you make, as long as you don't mind disintegrating your knees by the time you are 40yrs old.

 

[jyechen]

At my club, stamping your foot gets pretty annoying with the heavy stompers because the floor kind of gives and things really start to shake with the stomp. D:

 

[azlan]

It does get annoying with the echo resonating in the hall. Plus, it puts off other people playing there as well. I guess, we have to be considerate to others too

 

[YosuaYosan]

It does get annoying with the echo resonating in the hall. Plus, it puts off other people playing there as well. I guess, we have to be considerate to others too

Thats one point i forgot to mention
Dont forget to be considerate

 

[dici]

It does get annoying with the echo resonating in the hall. Plus, it puts off other people playing there as well. I guess, we have to be considerate to others too

I don't think I have enough time to think about that if I'm doing smashing/drive loop. It just like after hours and years of training during the primary school, my body already remembered all this move automatically >.>

 

[Dave Cochrane]

i had a discussion with the ittf rules committee and he said if the opponent says it is distracting then you should call a let as it is a disturbance of conditions of play, if the player keeps doing it and umpire keeps calling let he said use yellow card for time wasting.
so basically as an umpire i would only react if opponent says something, also it depends on the hall, i.e won't sound too bad in a big hall with proper GERFLOOR flooring but in a small local club it may echo round the whole room etc.
to be honest in england we never need to pull a player on this because i can only think of a couple of players who do it so i believe it isn't as effective as it used to be because the serve no longer being hidden players can judge quite well.
again you can say i'm wrong but this came from a member of ittf rules committee and what they say is law.

 

[markog99]

they stamp to distract their oponent

 

[kaikaz]

it is not illegal but annoying. But the reason they do it is: if you serve you can hear what spin is on the ball, if you stamp your foot its impossible to hear any sound of the ball and you have to guess what spin is on the ball. I think this is only necessary on the highest level, where they have to keep the oponent guessing. On my level its just annoying and someone from my club does it aswell and he says he starts to get troubles with his knee, not sure if its from stamping on the floor but you never know...

 

[Paxton]

Hi,,,I feel that the this an interesting topic...but I am interested to know that
what are the reason to stamp the foot...I am wondering about that...
regards

 

[olvarox]

I often stamp to disguise the speed and spin of the serve.
I like to give a fast heavy spinned serve with stamp first, and then stamp just as hard to give the next floating short ball serve. That really works!
It also gives me the feeling of standing real steady on my feet to hit the third ball.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

I know a defensive player who stamps his feet frequently during the entire rally. He will stamp his feet while hitting shots, and he will stamp his feet while doing some funny footwork thing that makes it look like he is out of position while the opponent is about to hit the ball. When he does that he always looks surprised but it definitely throws some people off. I think it is funny.

But on the serve, I think it covers when you make contact so the person receiving cannot hear when the ball contacts or what kind of contact has been made. Different contacts create different kinds of spin or speed. And I think it helps the server put a little more body into the motion of the serve which could translate into more speed or more spin depending on how you contact the ball.

 

[olvarox]

I agree with Carl and forgot to mention it myself. The downward body movement one creates by stamping is yet another increase of speed/spin on the serve (when desired).
If you think of it, it's quite logical. For a good service, you use:
- your wrist
- your elbow
- your shoulder
- your trunk (twisting from the hips)

Let's say you use all these bodyparts excellently, then there's one more thing left to perfect the whole thing: your legs.
I feel it also provides me with consistency, since you kind of bend your knee to a certain extent, and then block the angle at comfortable position, hence the stamp ensures you have your point of contact always at exactly the same height.
This last sentence might seem complicated, so I'll try to elaborate a little bit more:
Let's say you've found the ideal height just above the table to make contact with the ball when you serve...
---> If you have any "bending" legs, you'll have to focus on bending them to the ideal position every time again.
---> If you block the bending angle and work with a "stamp", you automatically have the ideal position and you don't have to take it into account anymore.

These are My Thoughts on the subject, feel free to criticize

 

[WiWa]

I think stamping is a bit too much in terms of contribution to service quality. Shifting your weight from one leg to the other is useful, but stamping is just to annoy opponents. I consider turning the body while serving more important, which I think is harder to achieve when stamping. It gives u some additional racket movement speed and it makes u face the table right after the serve. Samsonov is the master at using his serve movement to get in a neutral position for returning the next ball.

 

[olvarox]

I must say I've never had an opponent complaining about my stamping.
In any table tennis hall in Belgium you can hear the stamping as soon as you enter the building

I do agree that stamping during the rally, with the intent to annoy your opponent, should be receiving penalty from the ref.