Intensive Training in Shantung

     To prepare for the 2012 London Paralympic Games, my coach arrange I and other 4 team mates to go to Weifang of Shantung for 10-days’ intensive training from April 9 to 18.

Actually it’s a large sports training centre for table tennis and soccer.  The famous Laonang Table Tennis School was there.  It was heard that the present male world champion,  ZHANG Jihe, bred from it.  The school recruits 200 children and teenagers for table tennis training and studies.    They have table practice in the morning and evening.  In between, they have lessons in the afternoon.

To suit us and the disabled table tennis national team, part of it was modified to be wheelchair accessible including the table tennis training hall, the apartments and the restaurant.  Ramp was built in these buildings.  Nevertheless, it is a pity that not all facilities are wheelchair accessible.  There’s no ramp in some blocks, particularly the multi-purpose building in which phone facilities, snacks and commodities tuck shops, hairdresser and general enquiry are placed.  In addition, the toilets in some apartments are too small to fit the wheelchair user.  I think only the beautiful hotel is totally wheelchair accessible.

     We had morning and afternoon training sessions.  In the morning, some youngsters with good table tennis skills were arranged to assist our training.  They would sometimes have competition with our standing players.  Then, we would have our own training sessions in the afternoon.  With great honour, we got a few sessions’ playing with the disabled table tennis national team.

I think that it is unrealistic to expect we would have great progress from just 10-days’ training.  The most important is that I can experience the Chinese style table tennis training method and learn some specific table tennis skills from it.

Last but not least, I hope the training can boost up my confidence to get ready for the 2012 ITT Para Chinese Open held from April 19 to 25.