Next up is a question from Hector who wants to know what should I look for when buying
a table tennis table in terms of the colour, the weight, the brand.
What things should he consider, so what is important when choosing a table tennis table.
The main things to look at when you are considering a table tennis table are firstly the thickness
of the top.
Now we're not talking about this whole thickness here, this is just a skirting this part here.
We're just talking about how thick the actual piece of wood is that the ball is bouncing
on so that's the thickness that you're looking for there.
As a guide if you can get anything around 18, 20mm, or even more then that's better.
The thicker the better because the thicker it is the more even bounce you're going to
get all over the table.
Think about it in the extreme if you had a really thin piece of wood it would be too
flexible, too soft, and then the outside would be a bit different to the inside so a nice
thick piece of wood is what you're really looking for.
As far as the types of brands there's a whole lot of brands out there.
It's more about just sticking with a brand that is pretty well known, we use the Stiga
tables at the moment but there's literally lots and lots of brands that you can use.
Stiga, Yasaka, Butterfly, DHS etc, etc.
If you do need any advice just ask us on the ask the coach page of the website and we'll
give you some feedback as to what we think about different brands of tables.
The next thing you need to think about is also thinking about the net and how easy that
is to take off.
So the net that we've got here is a Stiga net.
It's pretty sturdy, it's got a screw down the bottom here which you loosen and then
that just comes off on one side and then you do the same on the other side and that's pretty
easy to take off there.
A simple way of rolling these up, and I see players sort of rolling them up a little,
just put the two clamps together and then you just roll them over like that and then
that's all set there for you for the next time you want to use the net.
So now let's think about the table.
So the other really important things about the table are how portable they are.
So especially if you're going to be setting up the table and putting it down all the time,
we're lucky here in the PingSkills shed we can leave it set up all the time but certainly
at home you might be looking to have it out in your lounge room or somewhere else so you
need to think about how portable and how easy they are to fold up.
These ones here are very easy so you see that the table comes apart in two halves then all
you need to do is lift up the table like that, it locks in and you've now got half a table
there and the other thing then is how good the wheels are so the bigger, the thicker,
and the chunkier the wheels that you can get the better.
If you've got little castor wheels they're going to break really easily especially if
you are moving them a lot and on floors like concrete floors and things they will break
very easily so the bigger wheels that you can get the better it is.
The next thing you think about is how easy it is to move but also how easy it is to store
so you can see here that that's going to store pretty easily because that's the width here
and that's the base of the space that you really need.
Now I'll go around here and just fold up the other one for you.
So now, always store them face to face, and you can see that now basically it stores in
a very small area that you can put away and tuck away in a corner of your room so that
now you've got a whole room that you can use again.
So they're the main things that I like to advise people on when they're buying a table
tennis table for the first time.
So the thickness of the wood, how easy it is to fold up, the size of the wheels, and
the portability, and then also the storage area.
And those things may have different relevance to you but if you think about for yourself
what's important in a table for you and then go from there.
For me, number 1 though, is the thickness of the top.