What Smash Coach plans for table tennis players
With Pro or during your trial, Smash Coach plans the training that goes around your table tennis. You add the sport, say which nights you play, and its coach plans the strength, conditioning and mobility sessions in the rest of your week around those nights, together with any other sport or class you do. In the help centre's words, it plans around what you already do instead of on top of it. The coach is AI, not a person.
It leaves the game itself alone: no strokes, no serves, no footwork and no tactics. Those belong at the table, with your club coach. This page is about the part away from the table: what research says table tennis asks of your body, and, where the research runs out, our view, labelled as ours. The setup is at the end of the page.
Why does the app say Ping Pong?
In the Smash Coach sport list, table tennis is called Ping Pong. It is the same sport under its other name. The sign-up for table tennis players, which the Get your plan buttons on this page open, has an address ending in /tabletennis. Once you are in the app, it is Ping Pong in your sports stack and in the list you add sports from.
How hard is table tennis?
It depends on what you measure. By energy cost, table tennis is moderate. The 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, which rates activities from studies of adults aged 19 to 59, gives it a single entry at 4.0 METs (code 15660). One MET is a standard resting rate, and the moderate band runs from 3.0 to 5.9. Badminton has separate entries for social and competitive play; table tennis has one. The authors call their figures a starting point, not a precise value for any one person.
The rallies explain part of that. A 2018 review of table tennis physiology found that rallies in official matches last about 3.5 seconds, with around 8 to 20 seconds of rest between them, an effort-to-rest ratio of roughly 0.15 to 0.22. Its authors judged the energy demand of a match relatively low.
Heart rate tells a different story. A 2013 review reports average heart rates of 162 to 172 beats a minute across six official competition matches, against about 142 in training, and notes that more demanding training can push heart rate above match levels. It does not describe who played those six matches, and it adds that higher-level players tend to show higher heart rates, so a league match may sit lower. Its summary is that table tennis calls on short, intense anaerobic efforts during rallies and on the aerobic system to recover between them.
So both are true: moderate by energy cost, and high in heart rate in competition. Neither makes table tennis a strength session. For a racket sport with heart-rate data from amateur club matches, see whether padel counts as cardio.
Do table tennis players lift weights?
A 2013 review of the sport's physiology says they should, with a caveat. It states that it is important to include resistance training in a table tennis programme, while noting that table tennis performance is not associated with muscular force and does not require high levels of strength. Some coaches, it says, fear that extra strength might spoil fine coordination, the sense for a good stroke. Its answer is an observation: top athletes in all sports do some resistance training, to build or at least keep their general strength. That is a point about athletes in general, not a table tennis trial. Not every coach agrees: the same review cites a report that Chinese coaches often put skills and tactics first and pay little attention to strength training, believing results have little to do with physique.
The review gives a second, more specific reason. It describes the muscular endurance table tennis needs as the shoulder muscles' ability to keep producing powerful strokes, and says muscular endurance is firmly related to muscular strength. Our view: the table builds the skill and the repeated efforts, and the gym builds the strength underneath them.
Strength work also has the strongest general evidence on sports injuries. A 2014 review of 25 randomised trials in 26,610 people across mixed sports found that strength training cut sports injuries to under a third, while stretching showed no effect. None of that tells you what a table tennis player in particular should lift, which is why the table further down gives a general direction rather than a programme.
Does a long league night tire your legs?
It can. In a 2017 study, 14 national-level players played a simulated competition of four five-set matches. Straight afterwards, the maximal force of their knee extensors, the muscles at the front of the thigh, was down 12.5% on average. Part of the drop came from the nervous system: voluntary activation, how fully the players could drive the muscle, fell from 89.4% to 81.6%. The muscle's own electrical and contractile responses dropped by about 15% after the first of the four matches and no further after that.
The same study timed what the players actually did: 84.3% of their actions were low or moderate intensity, and 15.7% high. So most of the work was not high intensity, and the fatigue still built up over four matches of low, moderate and occasional high-intensity efforts.
Four five-set matches is a lot of table tennis. If your league has you play several matches in one evening, or you stay on to practise after your match, the study is closer to your night than a single match would be. If you play one match and go home, it is further away. Either way, it points to the front of the thigh as the place a long session at the table lands, and that is muscle the gym can make stronger.
How often do top players get hurt?
The data come from the top of the sport. A 2024 review of eight studies covering 873 professional players at the Olympic, Asian and national games, including 66 adolescent players at the Youth Olympic Games, found 10.0 injuries per 1,000 playing hours, and 64% of the injuries with data cost no time away from the sport; it could not say which body parts were hurt or why.
There is no matching figure for league players. The review left out non-professional players because their studies counted injuries in different ways, and we found no comparable dataset for adult club players to put in its place.
A shoulder that aches after every session, a knee that complains in your stance or pain that does not settle is a job for a physio or a doctor. A training page cannot diagnose it or treat it.
What the table trains, and what the gym adds
Put together, the research shows what an evening at the table gives you and what it leaves out. The evidence comes from national players, official tournament matches and descriptions of the sport; none of it was designed around club league nights. The gym column is our view, a general direction rather than a programme, and not what Smash Coach will plan for you.
| Quality | What matches give you | Add in the gym | Who was measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reactions and hand speed | All of it: the sport asks for quick reflexes and rapid decisions, and every rally practises them. | Nothing. That is table time, with your club coach. | A description in the 2024 injury review, not a measurement |
| Aerobic engine | Rallies of about 3.5 seconds with 8 to 20 seconds of rest; average heart rates of 162 to 172 beats a minute in six official matches. | Some steady aerobic work, which the 2013 review links to recovering faster for the next match. | Official matches (2018 review); the 2013 review does not describe the players behind its heart rates |
| Leg strength | Constant knee bend and quick movement, mostly at low or moderate intensity: 84.3% of actions in one study. | Heavy leg work such as squats, split squats and hip hinges. Heavier loads, 80% of your one-rep maximum or more, enhanced strength in healthy adults. | 14 national players (actions); the 2024 injury review (knee bend); healthy adults in 137 reviews (loads) |
| Trunk rotation | Trunk rotation, which the 2024 injury review lists among the sport's demands, along with rotation at the wrist, elbow and shoulder. | Trunk exercises that rotate under control, such as cable woodchops, and that resist rotation, such as Pallof presses. | A description, not a measurement |
| Thigh endurance | Fatigue: four five-set matches cut knee-extensor force by 12.5%. | Stronger legs, so a long night costs a smaller share of what you have. Our view; not tested. | 14 national players, simulated competition |
Read down the gym column and it comes to a short list: heavy leg strength, single-leg work, trunk exercises that rotate and resist rotation, and some steady aerobic work. Our view is that the upper body needs ordinary, balanced strength work rather than anything that copies a stroke, because the stroke itself is learnt at the table. Build up gradually, as the ACSM position stand recommends for healthy adults: a little more over time, as you adapt.
Can the gym sit closer to a league night?
Our view is that much of your training can sit fairly close to a league night. By energy cost the night is moderate, and most of what players do at the table is low or moderate intensity. The one study that measured fatigue after four long matches tested only the front of the thigh, and found it there; the 2013 review adds that the fatigue of repeated strokes sits in the shoulder girdle.
Fatigue seems to stay in the muscles that did the work. In 16 men, strength sessions 4 and 8 hours after aerobic exercise managed fewer leg press repetitions than without it, and the authors concluded that the impairment appeared to be localized to the muscle groups the aerobic work had used. Our view: heavy leg sets and heavy shoulder work compete most with a night at the table, because the front of the thigh and the shoulder girdle are where it lands; the rest of your training competes less.
If you lift and play on the same day, a 2022 review of 43 studies in healthy adults found that combining aerobic and strength training did not blunt gains in maximal strength or muscle size. Explosive strength did suffer, and more so when both were in one session than when they were at least 3 hours apart. Table tennis is not the aerobic training those studies used, so treat that as a rough guide.
The caveat is the thighs. If a long night leaves the front of your thighs heavy, as it did for the 14 national players, our view is that heavy squats and lunges are the sessions to keep furthest from it. What to do the day before a match is its own question, with its own page: the gym the day before a match. A tournament is a different load again: see tournament weekend.
Setting up table tennis in Smash Coach
Do something else as well, such as a run, a class or another racket sport? Crossovers covers two activities in one week, and the sports page covers the other sports.
Fixed days suit league nights. Setting up takes three steps:
- On You, under SPORTS STACK, tap + ADD and pick Ping Pong from SPORTS (add a sport). If it already carries a tick, it is in your stack: tap it there to open its settings.
- Choose Fixed days and tap your league night and any practice night: each day you pick is one session a week. If your nights move about, Flexible lets the app pick the days instead. Then set your usual session length (sport settings).
- Tap Save. With Pro or during your trial, saving rebuilds your plan around the new shape of your week.
Two switches sit on the same screen. Coach warm-up and cool-down adds a short warm-up and cool-down around your table tennis, written by your coach when it plans that part of your week, with Pro or during your trial. Add performance training tells your coach you want to get better at table tennis, not just fit it in: it creates a goal for the sport, which counts towards your three goals.
In the gym, workout mode walks you through each session one step at a time, counting your sets and your rest, and a single-leg move runs as a left step and then a right step. It works on the free plan. Exercises are shown as clean illustrations: the movement on a plain background, with nothing extra. The team is exploring video and moving images (exercise illustrations).
If the squat rack is taken, Equipment busy offers DO IT LATER, which moves that exercise to the end of the working section. If your gym lacks the kit, Equipment missing offers swap suggestions that train the same thing, with Pro or during your trial. Both change only the session you are doing (swap an exercise).