Table Tennis exercises by yourself and without a table?

Question

Is it possible to improve your table tennis skills by yourself without a table as well?

If so are there exercises that one could do to improve your table tennis skills by yourself?

Answer 1

One article discussed various solo table tennis training drills. Topics included:

• Serving Practice
• Shadow Play and Ghosting
• Solo Footwork Drills
• Video Footage Analysis
• Table Tennis Robots

Each topic had several practical pointers and tips.

One table tennis forum post dealt with this question and had two suggestions:

1. Shadow play (mentioned in the first article above)
2. Purchase a return board

Regarding the return board, one poster noted:

return boards have proper rubber on them, and can actually help you, unlike folding the table up

These resources suggest that there's a wide range of drills that one can do without purchasing any equipment - at minimum shadow play and footwork drills can be done without any equipment. At the high end, buying a robot or doing video analysis can be costly, but can provide good returns if solo practice is very important.