Chapter 273: A Feast
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
"For today’s practical training, our ping-pong team will send three trainees. Each of you is responsible for one person. You determine your own training contents, methods, and programs." Ping Wang grinned slyly, then continued, "To ensure fairness in our selections, we won’t use any of our original team members, but three ’outside assistants’ to receive your training."
Dai Li and the other two all nodded agreement. They were all Sports Team coaches, and Youdi Wei had more than ten years coaching experience and knew plenty of people on the team. If today’s trainees were ping-pong team players, since they might already know the coaches, the trainee and coach could deliberately collaborate in order to get a high grade.
But if the trainees were from other places, and had never met the coaches before, then there weren’t any potential conflicts of interest. This made it less likely that any shady deals would happen.
Coach Ping Wang finished, then took out his phone to make a phone call. "Mr. Zhang, please come here!"
After a short while, three old men came in. They were all dressed in sport suits, with ping-pong paddles in their hands. The three were in their sixties, with well-proportioned figures, ruddy faces, and energetic appearances.
Are they the so-called outside assistants? Why are they so old? Dai Li, Youdi Wei, and Guang Wu were all shocked. They had guessed that Ping Wang would invited three athletes from the Qingcheng city team, a sport university, or even sport schools, but they had never expected him to find three old men.
"Please allow me to introduce our assistants. These three are our Retired cadres of the provincial Party committee, and are experienced ping-pong lovers."
"This is Mr. Zhang, who once won the championship in the Qingcheng Amateur Ping-Pong Games. This is Mr. Liu. He won three successive championships in provincial transport system ping-pong games. This is Mr. Chen. He used to be a professional ping-pong player, and participated in national competitions. He is our senior!"
"For the rest of the day, you will take care of these three seniors," Ping Wang instructed. Then he turned to the old men and said politely, "Gentlemen, these our our three coaches, you can pick whoever you want."
Mr.Liu was the first one to respond. "I’m the oldest among the three, so I will choose the oldest coach." As he spoke, Mr. Liu pointed at Youdi Wei.
Youdi Wei was indeed older than Guang Wu and Dai Li, which could be easily distinguished from their appearances. But after being selected by Mr. Liu, Youdi Wei felt bitter in his heart. He had never trained an older person before. As Mr. Liu mentioned, he was the oldest of the three trainees. There was a saying: Old people do not talk about muscles and bones. When getting old, people began to have poor physical qualities and less flexible movements. In athletic events, the older one was, the more disadvantages one had.
People at this age were suitable to play Taiji boxing or square dance, but they were not fitted for fierce competitions.
After Mr. Liu chose Youdi Wei, Mr. Zhang stepped forward and pointed at Dai Li. "I will follow this young man!"
"Then I don’t have any choice," said Mr. Chen, naturally following Guang Wu. Mr. Chen used to be a professional ping-pong player, while Mr. Liu and Mr. Zhang were only amateurs. It looked like Mr. Chen had a better foundation.
But in fact, the three were at similar levels.
The three were all in their sixties. Mr. Chen had been a professional forty years ago, and at that time, being an athlete required a "poor peasant" identity rather than talent. If one was not a "poor peasant," no matter how gifted he was, he could not be an athlete.
Not only being an athlete, but also being a worker, becoming a civil servant, or going to college—only "poor peasants" had such preferential treatments.
Moreover, at that time, many people could not feed themselves, and were commonly malnourished. Without enough food, how could they have sufficient energy for training? Therefore, even professional athletes didn’t have high competencies.
On the other hand, ping-pong amateurs in mining enterprises often acquired better skills. In the era of vigorous development of a planned economy, factories didn’t care about marketing, they only focused on production. At that time, workers were better than civil servants, since they had urban residences, received so-called "Treasury grains," and enjoyed the same treatment that civil servants did. While enterprises controlled production resources, they sometimes offered extra benefits to the workers, which ordinary civil servants could not have.
Therefore, in that era, many factory workers had better living conditions than professional athletes. As the saying went, "Study when poor, play sports when rich." People who lived in better living conditions had more energy to play sports.
...
Dai Li didn’t have any experience in training elderly people, either. So when facing Mr. Zhang, Dai Li reacted just like the other two; he didn’t know where to start.
This Coach Ping Wang is indeed difficult, finding three old men for us! Although the three all have some ping-pong basis, they are still lagging far behind when compared with young professionals. Besides, this is the provincial team; they are not competitive at all in front of provincial team members. Hence, I can’t use the same methods to train them that I used training professionals.
But these three are not ordinaries, they should be at the top among amateurs. Therefore, the normal training methods for amateurs won’t work on them, either.
Furthermore, considering their ages, they can’t receive extreme exercises. They couldn’t bear such exertion. If they were sent to the hospital due to overtraining, I would be in big trouble.
Ugh, it’s so complicated... Definitely more difficult to arrange plans than to train athletes. To design plans for elderly people, I must consider their ages and physical endurance. Plus their bodies are weaker than young people’s, and once I increase the tasks, they may not bear it. I must focus on their reactions all the time, and adjust my plans on the spot.
Wait, I got it! At this moment, Dai Li finally understood why Ping Wang had found these old men.
Ping Wang found these old men because he wants to evaluate not only our training abilities, but also our abilities to react and adjust.
It is difficult to make fitting plans for the elderly people, which is the first challenge. But during training, we will have to adjust plans based on current conditions. Due to the fact that the elderly have disadvantages in age and physical qualities, we must adjust plans faster and more accurately, which will allow him to test our reactivity. This is the second challenge.
Considering this, Dai Li shook his head slightly. He keenly sensed that things would probably be more complicated. Perhaps after they started, there would be third and fourth challenges waiting for him.
I know this Deputy Director is not easily gotten. Ping Wang, you really have prepared a feast for us!
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