How to boost the CNT contenders?

A big part of the China success is their scouting reports for their biggest competition threats, and associated clones practice, probably worth 3-5 points a game, on the average.

I coach at a club with a bunch of former professional players from China. I also lived in China for a few years playing. The formula for success is simple: take thousands of kids, make them practice 50 hours a week and throw out those that do not improve fast enough. At the end of 10 years, you are going some amazing players. You also have several teams of 30-60 people constantly living and training together knowing that if they do not perform, they can be replaced at any time. It is a brutal and harsh system that could only exist in China. It also leaves many players broken mentally and physically. However if you want to have a group of people that can beat the Chinese, that is probably what it is going to take.

@berndtjgmann. Fair point. We need to raise fully fledged human beings, too. We need those maybe even more than table tennis champions

I think this is ridiculous -- this dogma that we need to recognize the future stars of tomorrow in the cradle and nurture them (or if needed, warp them) into table tennis champions, prima ballerinas or virtuosos before they hit the dreaded age of 10, by which time the tragic truth otherwise strikes us: they have failed their meaningless, achievement-devoid life.

The Chinese might have their way, they clearly can rely on numbers and a massive pool of amazing players as well as a constant renewal of generations from which to pick and nurture the best; it is probably a bad caricature too. The ones who make it to the top must have individual qualities that allow them to carve a path through what would otherwise be a gigantic waste of their time: hours and hours and hours of boring, mindless, repetitive drills.

I'm quite sure that whatever the solution, it's not to force thousands of hours of mindless drills onto a child. I think passion is the fuel, then you need to involve the intellect and critical mind of the player so that they can practice with a purpose. Then you need discipline and hard work and repetition: it takes many, many, many hours just to understand the problem that you have to address and then some more to solve part of it.

Most of us never make it past some point despite years of playing, simply because we don't understand what we lack. If an entire dimension of the sport is flying past me, practicing more-of-the-same is essentially a big waste of time. A good coach/structure can save you a tremendous amount of time by showing you what you're missing (might take a VERY keen eye and good inter-personal skills) and giving you the support you need to learn/progress. In fact, good coaches/structures/players to mimic and pushy parents carry kids all the way up to great heights, provided that the kid is mildly interested (... and remains interested throughout their teen years). But at some point you're no longer a kid and people can't carry you any longer.

If you look at all table tennis champions, they have a form of maturity/lucidity that makes them acknowledge their fundamental limitations/flaws, call them as such (not "o it's my style") and work on them. Waldner kept reinventing his game for years, and the Swedish team as a whole to overcome the Chinese. And Ma Long didn't just say "my backhand[/my mental] isn't top notch, but o well." I think that the less your environment mechanically carries you upwards, the most important it is to take it upon yourself to identify what's holding you back (technical skill? mental? physical aptitude? bad facilities/training conditions? lack of support?) and to fix it.

My bet is it's far from easy.

Anyway, this is all more of a random digression than an answer to the original question. To be realistic: we're talking about professionals. People for whom table tennis is maybe -most likely- a passion, but definitely a job. I don't know what your job is, but do you actually have incentive to become better at it? Do you feel that you have to become the best at it? The very, very best in the world? Ye thought so.