Do you think you could beat an Olympic table tennis player?
Table tennis is still regarded by many Australians as a backyard game rather than an Olympic sport. But the speed of the hits and the agility of the players surpass many other Olympic sports.
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00:00That's the best and the worst thing in table tennis, that people have the tendency to think
00:14that it's only a social sport because they have tables in the backyard or in the garage
00:19and they used to have a kid.
00:21My recommendation would be that find a local club, go there, get a little bit of coaching
00:27and you will understand that the sport is much, much bigger than you think.
00:45It's a sport, so I just love it, like for fitness, for the community, meeting people,
00:51enjoying it.
00:52What about you Sol?
00:53Yeah, table tennis for me has been a great journey.
00:56There are two takeaways that I've picked up over my course, they've been table tennis
01:04for life, live long to play ping pong.
01:10Yes, I mean the most common thing that I describe table tennis is like you try to play chess
01:33and you run 100 metres sprint at the same time, so you have to make the decision super
01:39fast, sometimes the ball is coming faster from the other side of the table, three times
01:43faster than the blink of the eye, so we don't have enough time to react.
01:47The speed of the game is extremely high, so in an elite level the ball travels with 110,
01:54120 k's per hour and that means that the distance from one side to the other of the
02:01table is less than three and a half metres, so the reaction time must be extremely fast
02:07and that's why we're using table tennis a lot of the muscle memory.