Liam Pitchford - Nature or Nurture???

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Liam Pitchford - God given talent or a product of environmental factors??

There has been much talk of Liam Pitchford of late, in the last few years this young kid has come along leaps and bounds. From playing in the little league, Liam has moved into the big time and left a trail of destruction where he has passed. Nicknamed by some as the Dragon slayer some of his most noticeable scalps include:

1. Samasonov.
2. Alex Smirnov
3. Kim Min Seok
4. Koki Niwa
5. Patrick Baum
6. Christian Suss
7. Robert Gardos

pitchford_2031492b.jpg

Image from the Telegraph UK

Since Liam begun to train in Ochenhausen in the German bundesliga there has been a massive leap in his table tennis game. This begs the question and the reason for this thread, is Liam an amazing talented player or is he more product of his environment namely the training in Ochenhausen

Various sources has told me that while he was younger he was talented but not as talented as his compatriot and teammate Paul Drinkhall. No one expected him to come this far in this short time frame.

It would be great to hear you’re thought on this.

My personal prediction is that Liam can reach the top 50 in the world and top 15 in Europe. Age is on his side as he is only 19 yrs old and most table tennis peak when there are about 25. With his contract with Ochenhausen extended by another two year, the world is really his Oyster? Or is it?
 

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Really nice discussion. I actually studied this at University for my dissertation. Looking at what developmental structures individuals go through to become experts in their given field. I have often wondered the question, how has Liam Pitchford improved so quickly over a short space of time. This is my personal opinion:

In the UK, Paul Drinkhall and Darius Knight were the main guys for many years. They were dominating the world cadet scenes, in fact they were the best team in the world as cadets at one point. Throughout their generation, not many players were pushing them from the UK. So in the training hall, Darius and Paul would always be the no.1 player unless outside training partners came in from China, Germany, Denmark, Austria etc. They never had that person to look up to. Whereas Liam was always looking up to Paul and Darius from a young age. He constantly had motivation in the training hall everyday to become them. Through vicarious experiences and lots more stuff he could always push himself. He was always chasing.

Liam made a great move when he was 17/18. He moved to one of the best clubs in German 'Ochenhausen' where the playing quality was so high. Players in that training hall are all playing atleast at top 50 in the world level. Liam now has that desire to chase again. He is training every day looking up to the individuals and wanting to be them. So not only is Liam training, he is training to win with a huge amount of motivation and desire.

I have spoke to Liam a lot on facebook, he has told me he wants to make the first team and start playing more matches regularly in the German League. So when Liam is training or playing matches he has fantastic goals to train and play to.

Expertise researches call this phenomena 'deliberate practice'. This is where your training with a goal, coaching feedback and always training with 100% concentration. Alternatively, when players don't have this they fall into 'practice; whereby the performer stops to learn and is not being pushed.

I think this is why Liam is now where he is today, his environment, the team around him and the willingness to succeed.

Interestingly, Drinkhall seems to be improving again. Perhaps this is because he is in the German League now around players who are better than him. To become successful you need to be out of your comfort zone.

There are many other developmental factors that could have caused Liam to be successful, including parental guidance, his coaches, no. of hours practiced, physio, injuries and more.

Here's my abstract to my dissertation, I will hope to publish it one day as it recevied a first class honours.

'The role of deliberate practice activities and accumulated hours of practice in the development of table tennis players was examined. This study included 10 expert participants ranked within the top 300 of the world in comparison to non-experts ranked within 1200 – 300. A significant relationship was found in terms of practice whereby experts engaged in a mean of 7501.8 accumulated hours of practice at the 11th year of practice in comparison to non-experts who accumulated a mean of 5441.6 hours of practice. The deliberate practice activities in relation to the two groups had no significant correlations, however when combined the findings did not support Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer's (1993) theoretical framework. Results portrayed that table tennis players enjoyed deliberate practice activities.'

So that leaves me with the question, are elite performers born with predisposed talent or god given abilities? I believe you need some standard base of athleticism from a young age, and need to have the right mindset for sport, then the rest comes down to the environment.

Just my few cents guys :)
 

Tom

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I think its a bit of both, but his high level training will be a big factor and having role models at his club in Germany. Also I knew Liam when he went to school and there were 4 high level junior table tennis players at the same school in a small town! They grew up together playing, learning and improving. This helped Liam a from a young age I'm quite sure. I think this is a big contributing factor as to why he can learn and improve so fast.
 
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In the UK, Paul Drinkhall and Darius Knight were the main guys for many years. They were dominating the world cadet scenes, in fact they were the best team in the world as cadets at one point. Throughout their generation, not many players were pushing them from the UK. So in the training hall, Darius and Paul would always be the no.1 player unless outside training partners came in from China, Germany, Denmark, Austria etc. They never had that person to look up to. Whereas Liam was always looking up to Paul and Darius from a young age. He constantly had motivation in the training hall everyday to become them. Through vicarious experiences and lots more stuff he could always push himself. He was always chasing.

Liam made a great move when he was 17/18. He moved to one of the best clubs in German 'Ochenhausen' where the playing quality was so high. Players in that training hall are all playing atleast at top 50 in the world level. Liam now has that desire to chase again. He is training every day looking up to the individuals and wanting to be them. So not only is Liam training, he is training to win with a huge amount of motivation and desire.

I have spoke to Liam a lot on facebook, he has told me he wants to make the first team and start playing more matches regularly in the German League. So when Liam is training or playing matches he has fantastic goals to train and play to.

Expertise researches call this phenomena 'deliberate practice'. This is where your training with a goal, coaching feedback and always training with 100% concentration. Alternatively, when players don't have this they fall into 'practice; whereby the performer stops to learn and is not being pushed.

I think this is why Liam is now where he is today, his environment, the team around him and the willingness to succeed.

Interestingly, Drinkhall seems to be improving again. Perhaps this is because he is in the German League now around players who are better than him. To become successful you need to be out of your comfort zone.

There are many other developmental factors that could have caused Liam to be successful, including parental guidance, his coaches, no. of hours practiced, physio, injuries and more.

Here's my abstract to my dissertation, I will hope to publish it one day as it recevied a first class honours.

'The role of deliberate practice activities and accumulated hours of practice in the development of table tennis players was examined. This study included 10 expert participants ranked within the top 300 of the world in comparison to non-experts ranked within 1200 – 300. A significant relationship was found in terms of practice whereby experts engaged in a mean of 7501.8 accumulated hours of practice at the 11th year of practice in comparison to non-experts who accumulated a mean of 5441.6 hours of practice. The deliberate practice activities in relation to the two groups had no significant correlations, however when combined the findings did not support Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer's (1993) theoretical framework. Results portrayed that table tennis players enjoyed deliberate practice activities.'

So that leaves me with the question, are elite performers born with predisposed talent or god given abilities? I believe you need some standard base of athleticism from a young age, and need to have the right mindset for sport, then the rest comes down to the environment.

Just my few cents guys :)

Hopefully Liam's recent improvements will provide the incentive for Paul to improve and they can have a healthy rivalry which will push both of them on to greater success. And in turn, this can provide the incentive for players like Sam Walker, Danny Reed, Helshan Weersinghe et al to work that much harder in their desire to be the best they can be.

On the flip side to Liam's recent dramatic improvements, why has Darius fallen away and hasn't hit the (relative) heights that Paul has?
 
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I think talent is a very small part of the road to success, at the end of the day it comes down to passion and drive and high level goals. Having interviewed Liam twice and having talked to him on numerous occasions I see that he is always working hard to better himself and always sets challenging but attainable goals. He's definitely seen a big improvement since moving to Ochsenhausen and taking up a place in the team. I think the atmosphere and environment is bound to have rubbed off on him. This is division 1 german league, it's the most professional league in Germany, everything he aspires to be is present there, the attitude and competitiveness, the training ethic, the desire to win. Exposure to that kind of table tennis is what any player needs to step up to that next level and with the results that he has had so far to back him I think that's a big confidence booster for him and he knows he can carry on moving further up the world rankings.

So in my opinion talent only plays a small part, you can have talent and still not be amazing, it's how you nurture it and so I think it's definitely not only the environment, but probably even more so, the attitude and ethic of the player and I believe that is what will drive Pitchford to continue having great matches and great wins. Definitely haven't seen his best yet I don't think :)
 
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Ladies and gentlemen, THIS.

Really nice discussion. I actually studied this at University for my dissertation. Looking at what developmental structures individuals go through to become experts in their given field. I have often wondered the question, how has Liam Pitchford improved so quickly over a short space of time. This is my personal opinion:

In the UK, Paul Drinkhall and Darius Knight were the main guys for many years. They were dominating the world cadet scenes, in fact they were the best team in the world as cadets at one point. Throughout their generation, not many players were pushing them from the UK. So in the training hall, Darius and Paul would always be the no.1 player unless outside training partners came in from China, Germany, Denmark, Austria etc. They never had that person to look up to. Whereas Liam was always looking up to Paul and Darius from a young age. He constantly had motivation in the training hall everyday to become them. Through vicarious experiences and lots more stuff he could always push himself. He was always chasing.

Liam made a great move when he was 17/18. He moved to one of the best clubs in German 'Ochenhausen' where the playing quality was so high. Players in that training hall are all playing atleast at top 50 in the world level. Liam now has that desire to chase again. He is training every day looking up to the individuals and wanting to be them. So not only is Liam training, he is training to win with a huge amount of motivation and desire.

I have spoke to Liam a lot on facebook, he has told me he wants to make the first team and start playing more matches regularly in the German League. So when Liam is training or playing matches he has fantastic goals to train and play to.

Expertise researches call this phenomena 'deliberate practice'. This is where your training with a goal, coaching feedback and always training with 100% concentration. Alternatively, when players don't have this they fall into 'practice; whereby the performer stops to learn and is not being pushed.

I think this is why Liam is now where he is today, his environment, the team around him and the willingness to succeed.

Interestingly, Drinkhall seems to be improving again. Perhaps this is because he is in the German League now around players who are better than him. To become successful you need to be out of your comfort zone.

There are many other developmental factors that could have caused Liam to be successful, including parental guidance, his coaches, no. of hours practiced, physio, injuries and more.

Here's my abstract to my dissertation, I will hope to publish it one day as it recevied a first class honours.

'The role of deliberate practice activities and accumulated hours of practice in the development of table tennis players was examined. This study included 10 expert participants ranked within the top 300 of the world in comparison to non-experts ranked within 1200 – 300. A significant relationship was found in terms of practice whereby experts engaged in a mean of 7501.8 accumulated hours of practice at the 11th year of practice in comparison to non-experts who accumulated a mean of 5441.6 hours of practice. The deliberate practice activities in relation to the two groups had no significant correlations, however when combined the findings did not support Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer's (1993) theoretical framework. Results portrayed that table tennis players enjoyed deliberate practice activities.'

So that leaves me with the question, are elite performers born with predisposed talent or god given abilities? I believe you need some standard base of athleticism from a young age, and need to have the right mindset for sport, then the rest comes down to the environment.

Just my few cents guys :)

I think:
Ives, D. (201x). Awesome title here. Awesome Journal Here, xx(xxx), xxx-xxx.
will start showing up in many sport research..
 
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Hopefully Liam's recent improvements will provide the incentive for Paul to improve and they can have a healthy rivalry which will push both of them on to greater success. And in turn, this can provide the incentive for players like Sam Walker, Danny Reed, Helshan Weersinghe et al to work that much harder in their desire to be the best they can be.

On the flip side to Liam's recent dramatic improvements, why has Darius fallen away and hasn't hit the (relative) heights that Paul has?

Hey Corby thanks for posting. It could be due to not making a first team club in Germany? Perhaps his goals and motives have changed since hes got older?

Sent from my S2 using Tapatalk 2
 

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Ladies and gentlemen, THIS.



I think:
Ives, D. (201x). Awesome title here. Awesome Journal Here, xx(xxx), xxx-xxx.
will start showing up in many sport research..

Haha I love this Yosua! :)

Sent from my S2 using Tapatalk 2
 
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Really nice discussion. I actually studied this at University for my dissertation. Looking at what developmental structures individuals go through to become experts in their given field. I have often wondered the question, how has Liam Pitchford improved so quickly over a short space of time. This is my personal opinion:

In the UK, Paul Drinkhall and Darius Knight were the main guys for many years. They were dominating the world cadet scenes, in fact they were the best team in the world as cadets at one point. Throughout their generation, not many players were pushing them from the UK. So in the training hall, Darius and Paul would always be the no.1 player unless outside training partners came in from China, Germany, Denmark, Austria etc. They never had that person to look up to. Whereas Liam was always looking up to Paul and Darius from a young age. He constantly had motivation in the training hall everyday to become them. Through vicarious experiences and lots more stuff he could always push himself. He was always chasing.

Liam made a great move when he was 17/18. He moved to one of the best clubs in German 'Ochenhausen' where the playing quality was so high. Players in that training hall are all playing atleast at top 50 in the world level. Liam now has that desire to chase again. He is training every day looking up to the individuals and wanting to be them. So not only is Liam training, he is training to win with a huge amount of motivation and desire.

I have spoke to Liam a lot on facebook, he has told me he wants to make the first team and start playing more matches regularly in the German League. So when Liam is training or playing matches he has fantastic goals to train and play to.

Expertise researches call this phenomena 'deliberate practice'. This is where your training with a goal, coaching feedback and always training with 100% concentration. Alternatively, when players don't have this they fall into 'practice; whereby the performer stops to learn and is not being pushed.

I think this is why Liam is now where he is today, his environment, the team around him and the willingness to succeed.

Interestingly, Drinkhall seems to be improving again. Perhaps this is because he is in the German League now around players who are better than him. To become successful you need to be out of your comfort zone.

There are many other developmental factors that could have caused Liam to be successful, including parental guidance, his coaches, no. of hours practiced, physio, injuries and more.

Here's my abstract to my dissertation, I will hope to publish it one day as it recevied a first class honours.

'The role of deliberate practice activities and accumulated hours of practice in the development of table tennis players was examined. This study included 10 expert participants ranked within the top 300 of the world in comparison to non-experts ranked within 1200 – 300. A significant relationship was found in terms of practice whereby experts engaged in a mean of 7501.8 accumulated hours of practice at the 11th year of practice in comparison to non-experts who accumulated a mean of 5441.6 hours of practice. The deliberate practice activities in relation to the two groups had no significant correlations, however when combined the findings did not support Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Romer's (1993) theoretical framework. Results portrayed that table tennis players enjoyed deliberate practice activities.'

So that leaves me with the question, are elite performers born with predisposed talent or god given abilities? I believe you need some standard base of athleticism from a young age, and need to have the right mindset for sport, then the rest comes down to the environment.

Just my few cents guys :)

A very well written and Insightful post ....

Please see my response to the above.

I am very happy to see that there is a lot of interest on this thread. This question of nature (innate natural talent) v nurture (Environment) has baffled scientist, psychologist and philosophers throughout the ages.
The question has not been completely answered but breaking new research in the field of physiology; sports sciences and psychology have helped to shed some light on this topic.
Although the debates about nature v nurture rages on in the scientific community, there has been a general consensus that nature set the limit of one’s achievement and that nurture allows us maximize or achieve this level.
In terms of Liam’s Pitchford massive improvement, I think nature has endowed Liam with characteristics that are suitable for table tennis. These include good eye to hand coordination, fast movement and reflexes. This sets the limit to how far Liam can progress; the training in Ochenhausen could be seen as the nurture that will allow Liam to achieve his potential.
Unfortunately in my opinion Liam will never been world or Olympic champion. The people who reach these heights are those who are endowed with a touch of genius. In China they are usually identified early and cultivated into future champions that can represent the Motherland.

Chinese sources have confirmed that Ma Long, Xu Xin, and Zhang Jike where identified and targeted when they were 12 years old to become future champions.
If sporting ability was weighted towards more nurture than nature surely there would be around 100-200 of Ma Longs or Zhang Jike as in China the training environment is nearly homogenous across the various provinces.
 
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[ Warning: Incoming wall of not that good formatted text. ]

Preface


Due to the fact that I don't know Liam Pitchford that well in general nor personal I'll just give you my personal experience about the factors a young player needs to climb the ladders up and how they correlate to each other.

[1] Location

[2] Timing

[3] Parental support

[4] Intercessor & mentor (not necessary to be the same person)

[5] Player itself with the important points:

[5.1] Character
[5.2] Stature
[5.3] Fitness (strength / flexibility)
[5.4] Coordination
[5.5] Eye (faculty of sight / range of vision)
[5.6] Lack of health / personal life drawbacks
[5.7] Stage of life / which part of life is TT
[5.8] Ratio: talent / training / playing style


Explanation


[1]

It starts with your country and if TT is a popular sport or not, which results in more or less developed infrastructures in terms of the density / professionality of training centers and the administration. You'll always have better possibilities in countries with good infrastructures.

If your player is lucky to be situated to next to a big training center it's all fine but if not, he's dependant of other factors, especially his parents.
As famous example take Timo Boll who has to be driven a couple hours a couple times per week by his parents to an adequate training hall.

If the players parents are not willing to do this, they might be willing to pay for tt colleges if they exist, but this is also a big thread for the young player itself and not all are mentally stable enough to do this.

Worst case for a young player is probably if he can just participate trainings he can walk to or bicycle to or if his parents aren't able to pay fees of any kind.

[2]

Timing here refers to a period of time or time frame where the player is able to get better and succeed in his region.

Important here is the amount of opponents or players in general and the amount of better / even opponents at local rankings.

To give an example for the first point, it's of course easier to become a top 20 player in Belgium than a chinese top 20 player due to the massive player base in China if we just focus on numbers. It's more propable to have 5 good players in a million players than in 20 players to exaggerate it a bit.

The remaining point might be illustrated in a good way if you imagine that your player in every local ranking he would participate, face the young Waldner, Xu Xin, Ma Long and only the first three would climb the ladder up. Of course he wouldn't have to play against them too long because they won't play low ladders over a long time but just imagine your player would always be the unlucky fourth person.

Even if this just contains him two years, his optimal frame for a needed fast development to reach the top is more or less gone.

You could argue here that if the players isn't able to beat the first three he isn't ready for higher leagues / ranked games but who of your players might have won against the above triple? Additionally to reach the top your player has to be ready at a certain time for certain steps and if this process is prolonged through whatever circumstances he might end his development at the age of 40 to make use of exeggerations a second time.

[3]

Although kind of self-explaining I'd like to point out a few things. Parents have to provide time,money and mental support for a young player throughout his young career.

Especially the way of punishment parents used to give the player if he doesn't fullfill expectations at school or in terms of his private behaviour is critical . Luckily I never had to deal with parents dealing physical punishments to their kids but a real common issue is to forbid him to attend training / matches because of bad school marks or because they don't help with the housework. In particular the first point results most of the time in an downward spiral and neither helps/changes the parents nor the player. Most of the parents I spoke to with their children changed their behaviour afterwards.

[4]

Young players don't have the ability to change nor the insight to internal processes of their TT administration. Hence it's important to have an intercessor for the player who believes in the player and is willing to use his knowledge to throw away rocks in the players path he isn't even aware of. This might range from registration dates to convincing other club members to give this player a special support.

The mentor can be a trainer, local player or an international star, simply everyone who increases/maintains the players passion for table tennis. As a personal side note, I don't think the trainer has to be somewhat nice / charismatic etc. , just professional. It's even not necessary that the player likes the coach, he'll acknowledge him by time if the advices he gives leads to an improvement of the player. That's the point where the player builds trust which is the most important thing between a trainer and player.

[5.1]

Just a few keypoints on this topic. Most important is probably the mental stability, the ability to concentrate to the point, the attention span and the ability fade out factors that might worsen his game.

In my opinion mental stability mainly covers to keep calm while playing hard game situations / infront of a big audience and big tournaments or short: to endure any kind of stress.

To give an example of some common but not well known / mentioned stress sources for young players playing versus older players:

- The oppenent nearly smashes the players hand during the hand shake
- The opponent shouts ( content doesnt matter ranges from "choo!" over self insults to "he just wins because of this/that" ).
- The opponent criticizes the players counting( by the way he counts / the voice level ) which leads to a junior which from now on just focus on fullfilling all of the opponents counting wishes and not paying attention to the next ball. This is pretty effective from the opponents side of view and every young player has to be prepared before a match by his coach of this kind of mental tricks.
- The opponent exploits his stature and wildly uses his arm while complaining about his game, maybe throws his blade or the ball away and often passes the net line to get into the young players zone (still in anger) for picking up balls. Again this behaviour should be known to the young player by previous coaching sessions and if necessary the coach needs to speak to the opponent.

To the fade-out argument, a player should never worry about the circumstances he has to play under at this moment. This might be too less space,bad light situation, loud audience, temperature, humidity or whatever a player doesnt like to play under because it draws away the attention from the ball.

[5.2]

As usual the taller the better and he shouldn't weight a ton. The weight aspect changed a bit from my coaching beginnings, a couple of years ago we mainly had really thin players which had problems building up leg muscles. Now we get mainly players with a little overweight which get muscles more easily and got tendons / joints which are used to more mass due to the previous overweight which becomes muscle mass over training periods. It seems we getting more people of one bodytype we didn't get before ( google for bodytypes for more information ).

[5.3]

I won't repeat all different kinds of muscles involved / needed to play table tennis but focus on the flexibility aspect.

Especially while learning the weight transfer for the forehand loop I often see juniors struggle not because of the lack of balance or leg strength but the restricted flexibility of the hips with all of it needed muscles.

[5.4]

Just another short remark to this one. The big names of ball sports most of the times also excel at other ball sports so include some soccer or volleyball / floorball exercises from time to time in your training schedule as an indicator of talent.

[5.7]

The stage of life mainly refers to the stage of puberty but not entirely. Important are the first girlfriends of the player and the remaining time for table tennis and on what he sets his focus. Most crucial are the future plans of the player and a good backup plan. If a player wants to study a time intensive subject like chemistry or physics he'll probably not reach a high TT level and the same applies vice versa. Indeed not many top players got a high school-leaving qualification. It's a coached duty to sensitize the player about this issue and to prepare a plan B incase the player doesn't succeed as suspected in table tennis. Most of the civil career paths should still be open for the player.

[5.8]

As a rule of thumb most talented players tend to be more lazy than not so gifted players. However both types of players should be reminded that they could lose to each other if they dont train properly and that talent or a current lead might not last forever. The playstyle is often suited to this category. Talented players tend to do just as much as needed which leads to blocking, counter playing, good serving kind of players like Waldner who most of the time did exactly the above. In comparison, not that talented players tend to play like a two winged attacking machine on speed with an extensive training routine but most of the time without dangerous serves nor alternative playing styles if a player outplays him.

Conclusion or TL;DR

Without a proper environment your player can be as talented as possible but he still won't rise. Under environment I'd like to sum all above points. The level a player can achieve given an optimal environment depends on his training and his talent. Talent sets the total upper bound whereas the training style and workload determines how fast he reaches this bound.

Keep in mind that this is just my personal coaching experience and in no way scientifically proven. If you want to read scientific papers about this subject or table tennis tennis in general I'd suggest to take a look at the ITTF site.

However, be warned that a properly choosen sample size or reproducibility is not given in most of the table tennis research papers and thus such "results" may not be set in stone.

Due to the fact that we live at the age of big data I'm not worried that this poor basis will last forever. :)

Guess the post length escalated quickly during writing ;), hope you still get some points for you out of it.
 

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Hey guys, I thought I would ask Liam some questions, he has read the discussion and very much enjoyed the read. Thanks for all your posts so far. I asked him a few questions, check them out below :)

Dan: What age did you start training full time?
Liam: I started training full time when I was 16 after I finished my gcses at school

Dan: Nice, up till the age of 16, did you train regularly ? Wasn't you in a school with friends similar to your age and standard?
Liam: I was practicing 3 to 4 times per week when the centre in Sheffield opened before that probably 2 times.

Dan: Cool, did you always have motivation in the training hall to succeed? Did you always push yourself?
Liam: Yeah there were 3 of us that are very good friends. We all started together and I guess that did help me because I always had someone to try and be better than.

Dan: Yeah I understand that's great. Did you ever believe you could reach where you are today when you were training at school level?
Liam: Yeah I always wanted to be able to practice full time when I was at school so I always had the motivation to practice. I always hoped I could, I used to play tennis before I chose table tennis so it always came quite natural to me.

Dan: Ah awesome thanks Liam. How is your training now in comparison to your developing years as a player. What do you commonly focus on now?
Liam: In general it is pretty similar..obviously now I am practicing more and with top players. It depends whether we have matches coming up or a long period of practice time but mainly I am working a lot on the forehand areas of my game

Dan: Nice one, have you always had a lot of coaching feedback throughout your career?
Liam: Not really when I was young but when I came into the national team and into Ochsenhausen I have.

Dan: That's good stuff What are your views on the nature vs nurture discussion?
Do you feel it's a mixture? Opportunity, talent?
Liam: A lot of people said to me when I was young that I had talent and so on and I guess I started to believe that but when I came to Ochsenhausen I saw that I needed to step up and really work harder than everybody else to achieve what I wanted in tt and I guess this season has started to bring the rewards

Dan: Awesome Liam thanks for the amazing answers mate
Liam: No problem
 
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