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  • Hi I'm Alois Rosario from PingSkills. Jeff Plumb and I are going to show you how to do the

  • very basic serve. If you have never played Table Tennis before and you are wondering

  • how do you serve, let me show you some basics. The first thing is that when you serve in

  • Table Tennis you have to hit the ball so it bounces on your side of the table and the

  • other persons side.

  • You can't just hit the ball straight over to the other side of the table you have to

  • hit it down into your side first. That is the only time in the game where you do hit

  • the ball onto your own side.

  • You might be finding the basic serve fairly complicated to start with if you are here's

  • a really simple tip. Start with your bat and ball really close together and then all you

  • need to do is to do the hit. So you are doing the hit and the ball will bounce on your side

  • of the table and then your partner's side of the table. So it is hit, bounce, bounce.

  • Really important to just keep practicing this to start off with just the hit, bounce, bounce.

  • Once you are feeling fairly comfortable with that you can move on to the next level of serving.

  • So the next level of serving is to make sure that the ball is behind the end line of the

  • table when you are throwing it up and hitting it. So you are not allowed to hit the ball

  • from over here for the serve, it has to be behind the end line. So let's have a look

  • at that. So now we are going to do the hit, bounce, bounce from behind the end line.

  • Let's progress a little bit further. The next thing we are going to do is to get this serve

  • legally correct. You need to have the ball on the flat palm of your hand. It has to be

  • on the palm, it's not allowed to be on your fingers or thumb and your hand has to fairly

  • flat. You can get away with having your hand a little bit cupped like that but it needs

  • to be basically flat with the ball on the palm of your hand.

  • The next thing is that you need to throw the ball up at least the height of the net off

  • your hand. So around that high off your hand before you hit it on to your side. This is

  • what a serve looks like. The ball on the flat hand, throw it up and then we do our

  • hit bounce bounce.

  • Now that you have got our basics right you are holding the ball correctly behind the

  • line now we are going to try and make the ball travel a little bit faster and to

  • a better position. To get the ball faster we need to get the ball lower over the net.

  • We also need to make sure that we are hitting the ball forward. If you hit the ball on it's

  • head the ball is going to bounce high. You want to hit the ball on it's back to get the

  • ball moving faster.

  • When you hit the ball, the ball also needs to be fairly low. If you throw the ball up

  • and try to hit the ball from here it has to bounce high over the net. So make sure

  • after you throw the ball up the ball comes down back to your bat level and your

  • bat moves forward. A common error I see is that when people throw the ball up they

  • also lift their bat up and so then they are going to hit the ball from too high. When

  • you throw the ball up keep your bat steady and then it just comes forward to get a nice

  • low fast serve.

  • I hope now you have got the basics of the serve. Make sure that you progress to

  • a level where you are able to hold the ball on the plan of your hand and you throwing

  • the ball up to the correct height from behind the end line of the table and getting that serve

  • nice and low.

  • If you have found this lesson useful and have learnt how to serve correctly go to PingSkills.com

  • and learn a whole lot more about Table Tennis.

Hi I'm Alois Rosario from PingSkills. Jeff Plumb and I are going to show you how to do the

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