In table tennis, every drill should have a purpose. One distinction that needs to be made is the difference between training and warm-up. When you see professional players warming-up at tournaments, they might do some forehand, backhands, and a simple footwork drill. That might be about it at tournaments. However, their daily training routine might look drastically different. Here are a couple thoughts on this concept.

Training
In the training hall, every drill should have a purpose. I would recommend that about 90% of your drills should be game-like… something starting with a serve and have some random, game-like, open-ended feature.

Warm-up
At the tournament, every drill should have a purpose. For me personally, one of the main things that needs warmed-up is my footwork. In this video, I’m demonstrating a very basic warm-up drill that I might use at a tournament. As you can see from the video, it isn’t very game-like. However, within about 4-5 minutes, I can say that my legs are starting to burn, I have a good sweat going, and I feel that my footwork is warmed-up!