What Am I Finding Out As I Learn Ping-Pong?

I’ve been learning ping-pong for about ten months at a weekly table tennis program for Parkies (click!), and last weekend I participated in the world’s first Parkinson’s Ping Pong Championship (click!).  As a person with PD, what am I noticing about myself as I learn this new sport?

I’ll answer this question by responding to four points about the benefits of table tennis that Russel McLendon elucidates in his online article, “Why Ping-Pong is Good for Your Brain.”  In his article, he quotes generously from a professor of neuroscience at NYU, Wendy Suzuki.

I’ll excerpt the exact text from McLendon’s article in large italics, like this:

“There is a lot going on in table tennis,” says Wendy Suzuki, a tenured professor of neuroscience at New York University and author of “Healthy Brain, Happy Life,” a new book exploring how physical exercise can affect the human brain. “Attention is increasing, memory is increasing, you have a better mood. And you’re building motor circuits in your brain. A bigger part of your brain is being activated.”

Sounds terrific!  Let’s take these points one by one (Note:  I bolded “dopamine” below):

1. Mood: “The one thing we know that can happen immediately, that certainly happens to me when I exercise, is the mood boost,” Suzuki says. “This is not specific to table tennis; anything that is aerobic will give you a mood boost, because it increases the neurotransmitters that are decreased in depression.”

Neurotransmitters are vital chemicals that regulate various brain functions, and aerobic exercise affects major ones like dopamine (movement, emotional responses, feelings of pleasure), serotonin (mood, appetite, sleep, memory) and norepinephrine (stress response). On top of boosting moods in the short-term, regular exercise is associated with reduced depression and anxiety over time.

This certainly is true for me.  The Wednesday-night Ping-Pong Parkinson sessions I attend typically lift my mood.  I work a full-time day job with long hours and lots of stress (most of it pleasant, although I often feel overwhelmed).  I also live day-to-day with Parkinson’s-related anxiety.  Usually when I come home from work on Wednesday, I feel washed-out and antsy.  I’m in no mood to venture from the house for anything.

But I force myself to go to Ping-Pong Parkinson, and without fail, I drive home afterwards feeling upbeat, great, and ready to face a new day.  (Linguistic aside:  I italicized the three words upbeat, great, and ready, because they show three different ways the letter combo “ea” can be pronounced in English. There are at least nine more; it’s what the children in our K-5 charter school in the Bronx discover for themselves and know well….*)

I don’t know if my mood lightens because of the physical activity, the social engagement with the coaches and the other Parkies, the mental stimulation, the hilarity when I knock a ball deep into the outfield…there could be many causes.  But the fact remains:  on the way to the Westchester Table Tennis Center my mood is neutral or down.  On the way home I’m happy.

2. Motor control: There are other long-term perks, too. “We know there are a lot of changes in the motor cortex, the part of the brain’s outer covering that lights up when you do any voluntary movement, and in the cerebellum, which is critical for fine motor control,” Suzuki says. “This is a wonderful example of brain plasticity, the ability of the brain to change based on an experience or environmental factors.”

Ping-pong is teaching me new motor skills and reinforcing them, as I keep practicing them over and over.  There are so many techniques to learn, and you have to pay attention not only to how you swing the racket in your hand, but how you hold your body in general and how you move your feet.

For example, the picture at the top of this post shows me practicing how to serve by swiping the racket along the bottom of the ball, which causes it to spin in the air as it flies toward my opponent.  If done correctly, once it bounces on the opponent’s side of the table it will cease its rapid flight forward and possibly bounce no more than a few meager inches, throwing my opponent into a tizzy and winning me a point.

You can see this happen each time I serve in the YouTube clip below.  You can also see that while my partner-coach (the very kind and helpful Fred) and I volley back and forth, I’m also working on my forehand, trying to sweep the racket up at an angle and hitting the ball on a slant, not smacking it head-on.  This takes skill – and now that I’m getting the hang of it, the next step is to increase the speed of the ball’s flight.

3. Memory: Aerobic activity can also raise levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that promotes neuron growth and survival, thus helping fend off diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In fact, exercise is a great way to get new brain cells, says Suzuki, who specializes in brain regions linked to memory.

“The hippocampus is special not only because it’s important for memory, but also because it’s one of the only brain structures that keeps making brand-new brain cells into adulthood,” she says. “In most of the brain, whatever cells you’re born with are all you get. But in the hippocampus, there’s a steady birth of new brain cells throughout our adult life. And the cool thing is we know that physical aerobic exercise will stimulate the growth of more brain cells and will help them survive longer. In studies of animals, that’s correlated with increases in various kinds of memory.”

Well, there you have it:  The aerobic activity helps fend off Parkinson’s.  Of course, when you’re first learning ping-pong, you aren’t playing at the sweat-inducing speed of a professional.  However, you’ll spend so much time chasing after balls that you’ve smacked into the outfield that you’ll work up a nice sweat, anyway.

4. Attention: “And the final one, the one we know the most about in humans, is that increased aerobic exercise will improve your ability to shift and focus attention,” she says. “Certainly that’s what you’re getting in table tennis. You’re getting improved attention, and you’re practicing your attention capacities — keeping your eye on the ball, anticipating what will happen next.”

This is what fascinates me most.  I noticed early on that if I kept my eye (and focused my attention) just on my racket as it meets the ball, not looking across the net at my opponent, I do well.  The ball sails across the net and bounces, as it’s supposed to, on my opponent’s side.  But this doesn’t come naturally to me.  Too often I’m looking across the net as I strike the ball, and inevitably the ball sails way off course, into the outfield, over the bleachers, out of the ball park, beyond the moon.

It’s a lesson I’m still learning; I haven’t made it automatic to keep my eye on my racket when it’s striking the ball.  Furthermore, the game is getting more challenging for me, as the coaches now want me to also focus on bending my knees, swiveling my entire torso from my hips, keeping my wrist stiff, and shuffling my feet sideways when I need to move to a better position.  And if I’m shuffling to the left, I’m supposed to move my right foot first, which is totally counter-intuitive.  In this last situation, I have to divide my attention between what I’m doing way down below with my feet, and what’s happening with the ball that’s flying through the air near my head.  It boggles my mind!

So here’s a clip from early January at the end of one of the Wednesday-night sessions.  I’m mostly trying to hit forehand with an upwards, slanting stroke (striking the ball at 10:00 or 11:00 if it were a clock), but when I serve I’m practicing a technique I just learned, of swiping the ball on its underside (6:00).

And I’m still a beginner at ping-pong!  Fred, my opponent, is so relaxed with his knees and waist, and he swipes the ball at an upward angle almost every time, following through until the racket is up by his chin.

Of course, I still work out at my gym, do yoga/stretching exercises at home, swim in our town’s pool, and walk/hike long distances when I can.  But now I’m adding this new sport, table tennis, to my exercise routine, and it’s been terrific so far.

Game on!

* learn, ocean, heart, bear, creative, theater, theatrical, rearm, hereafter…