My 1 Month 'Out of This World' Experience in China

After the US Open I spent a month in China and had the experience of a lifetime. Thanks to my blog I was able to meet up with some of the best players in the World and have some incredible moments in training and competition.

I started with 2 weeks in Zhengding National Training Base, this is really China meets the West. It's a very commercial training centre now and there were a lot of foreign players there.

I was there for 2 weeks with a team of kids from my club in America. Every half day was multiball. It was 35+ degrees, the aircon wasn't all that great and the training was gruelling. It was 5-6 hours per day. Eventually I became used to the climate and pretty consistent with my multiball. I found what I like to call cruising mode where my mechanics made everything actually much easier.


Here once I get going I don't really miss for the majority of the bucket. I quickly learnt to manage without any breaks and made the most of my drills. My training partners were a reasonable level but in matchplay they weren't as good as I hoped. I went 2 weeks only losing a single match, partially on part of me playing well and partially on their inability to receive left handed serves.

On my final weekend Andrew Baggaley came to train for 16 days, I ate with him and his brother on a couple of occasions and had a short hit with him and mucked around did some lobbing etc. I haven't put any video of that together yet.

Beijing

I moved on and parted with my team and headed for Beijing. I had recently interviewed Guo Yan and had talked to her about coming over and taking a look at her club and training a little.

She was coaching the team in the Super League in Nanchang when I arrived so I didn't meet with her until later on. I was met on my first day by Zhou Fang Fang, former National Team and Guangdong Super League player. She would be my main training partner for the week. She was consistent and reasonable at feeding multiball. All the kids there I beat in matches the first day and on the second day I did it again with a -4 handicap. They were more beginner level for Chinese kids.

One of my first multiball boxes was 2 point forehand. I was already tired from Zhengding and had no time to rest. On my first day I soaked through 6 shirts and drank 7 bottles of water.



I was constantly making updates to my instagram account @mhtabletennis when the wifi would allow it so there are a lot of small clips there. On the last day before the weekend I was told to pack my stuff. I was going to train with the Beijing Team. It was a scramble and I got all my stuff together.

I went into West Beijing and stayed with my old coach, it was nice to see her after 3 years and it gave me a chance to catch up with a lot of laundry haha

I had lunch the next day with Guo Yan, she took me to a Beijing Duck restaurant and introduced me to some different foods that were famous in Beijing. I had roasted duck heart and pickled duck feet with wasabi (not so pleasant), along with the famous Beijing duck. Let me tell you it is much better there than anywhere else I have ever had it before!


The next day I trained with the Beijing women's team, my matches were horrifyingly difficult. I didn't play incredibly well and had some small problems with my knee. As hard as I tried, whether I made it to 8-8 or 9-9 and even deuce, I wasn't able to win a game. They always seemed to know what to do to close out each set. Even when I battled higher in the deuce scores they were more reliable in the end. It was a great experience and I noticed how much stretching they do before training, it's pretty long winded and intense.

I joined them for some of their physical training session which focused a lot on core strength and back muscles.

Chengdu

My experience in Beijing came to an end, I said goodbye to my friends and thank you to Guo Yan for her hospitality. I headed for the 2015 ITTF World Tour China Open in Chengdu. I was pretty nervous.

It's really hard to compete in an event on the Super Series, it's straight knockout, the stands are filled and there are only 8 tables. You cannot avoid being watched. Being one of the much lower players there made that difficult. At first I had a lot of doubts about my match, was there a possibility I could be beaten really badly? What would people watching think if I played terribly? Maybe I wouldn't even be able to receive serves.

As it turned out it wasn't so bad. The first game I ended up 9-9 after some pretty deceptive serving. Unfortunately he had the serve and won the game 11-9. The next 3 games were 5,5 and 6. My opponent was Yang Heng Wei from Chinese Taipei, currently 166 world ranking but peak 127 earlier this year (Feb). Not an easy match at all. So it was over! I could relax and enjoy the tournament.


During the week I met and spoke with a great number of players. Some I had interviewed, most of them I hadn't. I noticed how friendly the Europeans were, particularly the humbleness of Timo and Samsonov.

I spent my evenings having dinner with Timo Boll and Vladi Samsonov and their families, they were incredibly pleasant and I spent a lot of time with both of them during the tournament, watching them warmup and play matches. At one point I had a hit with Timo for a few minutes and used his bat, it was pretty quick!




I spoke at length on the bus with Joo Se Hyuk and also Jorgen Persson. In the stands I sat next to Kim Taek Soo and Yoo Nam Kyu and also spoke mainly to Taek Soo for quite a while. I shared the player's lounge with amazing athletes like Fan Zhengdong and Ma Long, Xu Xin and others. It was amazing to be so close to the best players in the world.



After the tournament I had a beer with Jorgen Persson and Jens Lundqvist. Both really nice guys. I spoke to Jorgen quite a bit throughout the tournament and at one point he left his jacket behind, I returned it to him and he swapped me one of his shirts for it!

I also took a selfie with Fan Zhendong and Zhu Linfeng in the player's lounge, why? Well why wouldn't you

The matches were great and the atmosphere was amazing. The fans were incredible. I signed well over 100 autographs during my time in Chengdu which was pretty overwhelming.

Now I'm back home in New Zealand and it's nice to come home and relax. But hell, what an amazing experience I had

TT4Life said:

Wow, great experienced , i'm heading to Zhengding to train about 1 month in late November. Can you share more information about the women club in Beijing ? i would like to know thanks sir.

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It's called Young Shine Table Tennis School, you can find them on Facebook and send a message and ask for more information there.

There was a training camp while I was there so I'm not sure what it is usually like.