ITTA International Gavin Maguire: Blog 1 Season 13-14
02 October 2013
The ITTA has asked former National Senior Champion and current Irish international Gavin Maguire to give the table tennis community an insight into life as a professional table tennis player - the ups and downs, the preparation, travel, training and matches...this is his first blog of a series planned over the course of Season 13/14. Gavin has asked that the community guide this blog to a certain extent - any questions you would like answered or material you would like discussed in Blog 2 - post to comments below. Gavin is currently in Vienna, Austria preparing for the European Senior Championships with Team Ireland.
German Life - AUGUST 2013
So it’s hard to know where to get started on something like this, but after a lot of spade work from the ITTA, I was convinced, so I’m giving it a go! This is going to be a basic blog about life in Germany playing full time table tennis. I will discuss training daily, living with teammates and other players, how this life effects you’re mentality compared to being at home and training regular amounts in the normality of society. In other words, everything that comes involves table tennis and life in Germany will be discussed at some point throughout this blog for as long as it continues.
I have been living in Eilenburg, Germany for just over a year now, and training in the AMSIR TT Zentrum. Adapting to full time table tennis has at times been difficult as you have to have a lot of love for the game in order to find the motivation to train hard day in day out. It is sometimes is necessary if you’re not feeling confident in a part of your game to extra work. That can become increasingly difficult and it’s very easy to fall into a rut and get lazy. Doing the bare minimum because you feel you’re already doing enough when in fact all you’re doing is wasting time is something that can happen without you even noticing. This has happened to me on occasions but I try to remind myself why I’m there and what I’m trying to achieve being there. Living with international teammate Ashley Robinson and also Daniel O’ Connell of Wales has been of huge benefit to me and I hope to them as well. When you find yourself falling into a rut like I mentioned or lacking motivation you can take a day off, go out with friends or simply just talk and relax with people who know your situation and go through similar thought processes daily. I strongly believe the three of us will benefit from being around each other not only because we are very close friends but at the same time there is a small layer of competition which keeps us all going every day.
Last season I played for SSV Landsberg in Oberliga – Nord Ost (4th league, North East Region) we had quite a strong team with myself, Andrey Kolesov of Belarus and Juan Lamadrid Barraza of Chile all from the centre playing in my team alongside three other German players. The system is the match begins with 3 doubles, and then 2 rounds of 6 singles, the match being played up to 9 overall points. After a long season we eventually made it all the way to the last weekend of the season in a 3 way count back the two teams we had left to play on that weekend. It was one of the biggest league weekends I’ve ever played and dealing with the pressure of trying to win the league in front of a 100/150 strong home crowd was a new experience for me. Thankfully the team prevailed in both matches with strong performances in the doubles and from the number 1 (Andrei) leading the line taking the pressure away from the rest of the team. We won the league and have now been promoted to Regionaliga Sud (3rd league, South).
Our team has now had a reshuffle for the coming season as I we are again looking to challenge for the title in a much stronger division. Myself, Andrey and 2 of the 3 German players are the survivors, the team has now inherited Marko Petkov (Serbia) and Matias Contreras (Chile) who are from my centre so the team spirit should be at quite a high. I’m playing in position 6 to begin the season, so hopefully I can help the team achieve our goals. It is entirely possible that if/when it comes to 8-7 in the match, I’m playing the opposing number 6 for the win, draw or loss and this will be a new experience for me. Ashley is playing in the strongest Oberliga (4th League) in Germany for ESV Weil and will be beginning in position 5. His team are looking to get promoted and I am sure that Ashley playing in a lower position will be a huge factor in their success. An example of the strength of their league is evident when you mention names like Stefan Fetzner (Former Doubles and Team event medallist in World and European championships, and Dmitri Mazunov (Former top 100 player and World championships doubles medallist).
Ashley and I are of course looking for successful seasons given the work we are putting in. Some goals of mine and his are in light of selection for the European Championships and 6 Nations, we will be looking to obviously win as many matches as possible. Having our strongest player Paul McCreery in the team I think we should be able to manage that. All of that is without mentioning another top player on our bench, John Murphy providing the words of wisdom from the corner. The 6 Nations has been quite good to us in recent years with 2 gold medals in a row for the women and the same with silver for the men. The event will be in Wales this year, quite a central location for all; I’m expecting the competition to be very strong and very hard fought especially in a year of the Commonwealth Games. One would have to imagine a repeat performance would be a very good effort from our teams however we will of course be going for the win no matter who is in front of us or where we are expected to finish on paper. On Sunday in the individuals we will see the introduction of our strength in depth with Keith Knox and Peter Graham also competition in the 6 Nations. With these players, myself and Ashley I feel we are more than capable of getting a medal from one of us. Then there is Paul who will obviously be in contention for a Gold no matter who he comes up against, so Ireland’s chances are in good shape. In terms of on a more personal basis given my German league commitments, unfortunately I will not be playing in all of the domestic competitions but I will be trying to get home for anything I am available for, the only problem in doing so is the costs involved. Before Christmas my intentions are to play in the Classification in August and the Ulster Open in November.
July/August has been a very tough time in Germany, similar to the widely publicised ‘Pre-season’ period of the football season we have been undergoing a similar process. The centre here in Germany is renowned for its rigorous boot camp style pre-season training camp. The first week or two after a long summer break of 4-6 weeks are absolute torture. The head coach here Alberto Ammann loves every minute of putting the players through their paces, his most quipped phrase is ‘F*** YOU! Only the strong survive’ or in some cases he has a personal quote for some players, Ashley for example has obtained a typical Irish stereotype, the coach often says to him ‘Ashley, pub is closed.. No talking’. In terms of training during pre-season we have been running 3-4 times a week, Gym 2 times a week, along with 2 training sessions daily. Sunday is a ‘rest day’ with only 1 training 5-8. The training schedule during the season is fairly similar with a little bit less running and a slightly easier weekend provided you don’t have a match or tournament. However during pre-season there are often physicals at the end of sessions for players losing in a match or game etc. On the table we are doing a lot of training without serve/receive in order to speed up reactions. The aim is to increase speed and endurance on the table whilst there are no matches we need to be fresh and prepared for. We also have a lot of physical testing during this period in order to see where needs to be improved over the season and just make sure you are at an ok level to begin with. Strength tests include a 15 minute ‘wall sit’, 50 press ups in 60 seconds and 15 1 arm press ups. After the strength tests we undergo running tests, unfortunately this year I had a problem with my knee and couldn’t participate. The tests are 100m sprint in less than 13 seconds (I managed 12.9 last year and Ashley managed 12.8 this year). Then there is the Cooper test, 3200m in 12 minutes, 10,000m in 42 minutes and 10x400m every lap in less than 1 minute 15 seconds. So you can imagine how much the training camp can take out of the body coming into the beginning of the season, the benefits are only really seen in the second half of the season not immediately. As a result, I think my fitness and level of endurance during a match is the area over the last 12 months that has benefitted from being in Germany. I find myself able to go longer and rarely feel exhausted come the end of a tournament (Except the Classification, which is always a marathon!).
I’ve written everything I could think of that comes under the month of August. Next month I’ll be talking about the beginning of league, preparation for the European Championships and a typical day in Germany. Any questions that people would like answered feel free to leave comments at the bottom of this and I will respond as best I or with the help of Ashley and Dan can within the next blog.
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