Chen Meng

Career

She generally plays defensive counter-attacks where she’ll wait for her opponents to make the first moves before responding in a more passive but effective way. Chen Meng plays right-handed with a shake-hand grip on her paddle. She has relatively strong defensive techniques. Her style and approach to games are to play a series of defensive counter-attacks before playing a surge of late attacks. Her shorter frame of 1.66m doesn’t undermine her strength. She is renowned for astute playing and much of her play is focused on the strength of her shots and returns. For Chen Meng table tennis revolves around her defensive tactics. This may be why she is not known to proactively attack her opponents.

Teachers and Influences

Chen Meng’s number one influencer and idol growing up was her mother, Pang Min. This lady is a veteran of the sport and previously won the Qingdao City Army Table Tennis Championships. It was under her guidance and influence that Chen Meng developed a passion and drive for the sport. Pang Min nurtured her daughter’s talents by serving as her playing partner and motivator. She was particularly hard on Chen Meng during their sessions, but this enabled her to improve and grow rapidly.

Wu Naichan, a famous coach in Qingdao, was Chen Meng’s first competitive mentor after she’d adopted the sport seriously. With Wu Naichan’s precise coaching techniques, Chen Meng gradually grew as a ping pong player, despite her height disadvantage being obvious from a young age. By the time she was 10 years old, she had started her journey to stardom, thanks to these teachers and role models.

Advice for Aspiring Players

According to Meng Chen, it is important for aspiring table tennis players to get into positive habits and develop doable routines. She firstly suggests you get up early in the mornings, usually at the same times each day of the week, in order to build a routine, before starting your daily grind. This would be the first step towards enhancing self-discipline.

She also suggests that you draw up a training plan in advance so that you can have an exact idea of where and how you’ll do your workouts. Chen Meng doesn’t rely on luck or fortune to overcome obstacles and solve problems. In terms of training, she focuses on four categories, namely stamina, power, strength, and coordination. Having a set and planned schedule, according to her, would help you to stay on track and get the most out of your everyday commitments.

Her Workout Plan

Chen Meng incorporates a mix of cardio and strength workouts, but she places more focus on the latter. She prefers to use free weights in strength training to enhance her flexibility and mobility. She uses a medicine ball to strengthen her core and she performs lunges for improved stability and balance. Since table tennis requires special focus on body posture, Chen Meng pays extra attention to her legs and footwork during her workouts and warm-ups.

With this in mind, she emphasizes leg and core stability, for which she frequently does deadlifts, plyometrics – workouts that involve repeated stretching – and planking. Table tennis also requires you to squat a lot while moving from side to side continuously, which can be a burden on your upper legs. For this reason, she also targets workouts that sustain your quadriceps. Additionally, Chen Meng focuses a lot on arm and shoulder strength because your arms need to always be ready when playing ping pong. A technique she enjoys using in this regard is to have a trainer throw a medicine ball at her from all sides before throwing them back.