When you're considering your table tennis equipment we always talk about your table
tennis bat and the balls and we also talk about the tables but one thing that is often
overlooked is the table tennis net.
With these older types of nets you can make some adjustments but as you can see it's quite
a floppy sort of net. If the ball hits the net it's going to dribble over a lot of the
time and sometimes even if it hits the middle of the net it dribbles over and we've all
seen those nets that we've played with at clubs and at schools.
You can adjust this slightly so you can pull it tighter so that's what you're really looking
for. You're looking for the net to be really tight and not allow the ball to just dribble
over when it hasn't hit near the top of the net.
The other thing that some nets come with are these strings that go through the net and
being able to tension that is also another way of improving the quality of the net that
you're playing with. But these old ones, very limited in how much you can do as far as keeping
the net height correct and keeping the tension correct on the net as well.
What does a better net look like? Firstly the clamp system is a little bit better. So
here this one has a clamp system where you're winding the clamp up which gets a nice firm
attachment to the table. The other things that are really important here are the height
adjustment. So underneath here, on this one, there is a little height adjustment screw
that when you turn it it changes or lifts the height of the net. So that is going up
or you can go down.
And the final feature of this is the tensioner. So this one here you can tighten or loosen
the string that goes through the top of the net. Again to get a nice tension at the top
of the net so it stops those balls from hitting the middle of the net and going over.
This is pretty easy to attach to the table. We just slide the clamp on to the table and
underneath we tighten that screw as we saw before. And now that is nice and firmly attached
to the table. We can go around to the other side and do the same. So attach it to the
table. It's nice and firm and there you can see now that that net is quite well tensioned.
I can again adjust that tensioner to make it a little bit tighter and I can adjust the
height of the net to just make sure it's correct.
Most good nets will come with a net measurer. So what that does is it just sits on top of
the net and it needs to sit where it is quite flush to the net so you can see there that
that is dangling so that means that it is up a little bit too high. So I need to adjust
the height of the net by bringing it down fractionally and once I do that then you can
see that it's sitting nicely on the table there which means that the net is at a good
height.
Getting your net right in your training environment is really important. If you are training at
home or in your club and the net is at that height and you're practising your serving
and you're practicing trying to keep that ball nice and low and short with your pushing
and then suddenly you get to a tournament and the net is the correct height you're going
to be hitting the ball into the top of the net on your serves or on your short pushing.
So really important, get your net height right.
Another difference between the cheaper nets and the better nets is that the cheaper nets
tend to be quite hard and inflexible so that's made of an almost plasticy type of material.
Whereas the better nets you can see have a bit of stretch in them. So that just stops
the ball from dribbling over the net as easily.
These are the things I want you to look for when you are selecting your net. The first
one is a nice solid clamp that's going to stay on the table. The second thing is the
ability to adjust the height of the net. This one has a little screw at the bottom where
you can move the net post up and down slightly. And the third one is the ability to tension
the net. That will give you a nice net height that is going to be consistent and when you
get to your tournament you're going to be playing under the same conditions.