[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]The Chinese national table-tennis team is likely the most dominant team for any country in a sport in any sport. They are far more dominant than US in basketball and Brazil in soccer.
I have been to China 5 times and Sweden 6 times (the two most successful men’s table-tennis nations of the past 30 years) and the Chinese training is far more intense, the coaches are far more strict, and the players work much harder in China. However, in China, I can tell some of the players are burned out but forced to play. I went to Shanghai once in the summer when it was over 100 degrees, very humid, and with no air-conditioning in the training hall and after 5 minutes of warm-up, my entire shirt was soaked and I would go through many shirts in each training session. Some shirts were so wet that if I squeezed them, sweat would drip out.
Another time, I went to practice with the World University Champion team in Shanghai after taking time off from my studies at UC Berkeley where I did weight training but hardly any aerobic training which was a big mistake. During my first session in China, the coach was feeding me hard multi-ball where I have to play forehand from the backhand and the forehand. After some time, I couldn’t have been breathing any harder so had to take a break. I looked at the multi-ball bucket and there’s 200 balls left! I was wondering how I was going to make it through it but after many breaks, the torture was finally done. My legs had lots of lactic acid in them throughout the trip. The other players in the training group have been doing this for 6 hours/day since age 6 and were doing the hard footwork drills like it’s no problem! China has tens of thousands of players that from a young age are in special sports schools with little focus on education in hope of making the Chinese national team one day as table-tennis is the national sport. I heard the Chinese government spends billion/year on table-tennis. (taylorsmithconsulting.com)
I also went to practice with the Beijing team for 2 months in 1999 and was also allowed to watch the Chinese National Team practice and it was cool that Olympic and World Champions Wang Liqin, Ma Lin, Kong Linghui, Liu Guoliang, Wang Tao, Yan Sen, and others were all playing on 4 tables right in front of me and the Head Coach Cai Zhenhua sat down next to me and gave me a scary “Hi”. Those players are as famous in China as a Stephen Curry or Lebron James here. Later in the year at the 1999 Swedish Open World Tour, Ma Lin recognized me and pointed me out to Kong Linghui probably because I was a rare foreigner allowed inside the Chinese national team practice so remembered me. I met the Chinese Junior National Team coach Fang Wen who spoke English and in a later trip in 2007, spent a weekend with him in Guangzhou and also briefly met Olympic and World Champion Liu Shiwen’s former Guangzhou coach. After the Beijing trip, I can’t remember ever being so burned out from playing. I trained for 6-8 hours/day on most days.
When I went to practice with the Chengdu (one of the biggest cities in China) team in 2007, I was 210 lbs at the beginning of the trip and I would take a taxi twice daily to Subway and eat a Subway lunch and a Subway dinner. Along with 5-6 hours of training daily, I was 180 lbs after 2 months! The top Chengdu team players were likely 2600+ in US rating and after losing to everyone there the first 1.5 months, I then basically beat everyone there including players being considered for the Chinese Junior National Team.
Here’s a video of Chinese women’s national team physical training:
Zhang Yining, who has 4 Olympic gold medals, 10 World Championship gold medals, and 4 World Cup wins, said she wished she were an engineer and not a table-tennis player after she retired. I think it was another multiple Olympic and World Champion Wang Nan who said earlier that she would not let her kids play table-tennis for China. There is so much pressure in being a top table-tennis player in China that if you lose, the whole country is mad at you. Also, there are many young players ready to replace you if you don’t work your hardest. When current US coach Gao Jun was a member of Chinese women’s national team that lost to a unified Korea in the 1991 World Championships final, the whole country was mad at her as she lost her two singles. A movie was made in Korea about this World Championship gold medal run:
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