In the Durban World Table Tennis Championships, which ended in May 2023, national table tennis star Wang Manyu suffered a crushing defeat, losing 0-4 in singles to teammate Chen Xingtong to the quarterfinals, and the doubles with Sun Yingsha were swept 0-3 by the South Korean pair Tian Zhixi/Shin Yubin; Less than two months later, Wang Manyu lost 3-0 to Sun Yingsha at the WTT Slovenian Star Tournament, and then lost the Asian Games singles, leaving Wang Yidi behind and surpassed by the teammate who had lagged far behind him.
With the collapse of Wang Manyu's two international competitions and the continuous weakening of the team's advantage, a topic that often causes heated discussions in the table tennis circle has been mentioned by fans again, that is, the masculinization of women's playing style.
Prior to this, Wang Manyu has been praised by many as the top representative of the masculinization of women's table tennis in the new era, and even considered by some fans to "point out the future development direction of female athletes", but her recent multiple defeats can't help but remind fans of several familiar national table tennis predecessors, that is, Li Xiaoxia, Guo Yue, Li Ju and others.
They have all been dominant, won many championships and honors, but they have not been able to become the most outstanding athletes of their time, will Wang Manyu also become a case of the masculinization of table tennis women's playing style "bankruptcy" in the new era? This is the question that this article will explore.
First, women's playing style, how to be masculine?
As we all know, due to physical conditions, the comprehensive strength of female players in various competitive sports industries is always inferior to men, and the table tennis industry is no exception. For example, Kong Linghui, the former head coach of the national table tennis men's team Grand Slam and women's team, made it clear in an interview after his retirement that Wang Nan and Zhang Yining playing at that time were "all loopholes" in his opinion, and some other table tennis celebrities also recognized similar views.
In fact, the national table tennis team has held many "gender battles", in addition to the nature of performance, the first-line main level of the women's team is roughly only equivalent to the second-line players of the men's team, and even the second team and provincial team players are difficult to win when encountering special plays, such as Sun Yingsha, who is already an Olympic champion, once lost to Wang Chence, the chipper who could not be ranked in the men's team, and Ma Lin, who was close to retirement, was almost "playing" Li Xiaoxia at her peak.
Objectively speaking, no matter how female players practice, it is impossible to fundamentally change the strength gap between them and male athletes of the same level, or even one or two ranks lower, which is determined by innate conditions, so some fans say that it is impossible for women to play masculinally to make male and female athletes equal in level.
Therefore, what everyone pursues is not to let female players challenge men, but essentially to let female players involvement each other, and this involution is reflected in two aspects.
First of all, many coaches try to keep the quality of female players hitting the ball close to that of male athletes in order to achieve the goal of surpassing other female players, which is also the simplest "masculinization". It is in this situation that we can see that Li Ju played a very wide open arc ball in the 90s, Guo Yue has a forehand attack comparable to that of male players, and Li Xiaoxia has received nicknames such as "sledgehammer", so many fans will think that their strength is stronger than the better performance of their contemporaries, which is not wrong.
Secondly, since female players cannot really catch up with the quality of male players' shots after all, it is necessary to increase their "masculine awareness", that is, to change the routine of most women to stabilize control and hold in the stage, and to use faster and more advanced shots.
The reason why Wang Manyu is the ultimate representative of masculine playing in the new era is that she has achieved the pinnacle of today's female table tennis players in the above two aspects, and the core is that her backhand twisting far exceeds her peers.
As we all know, twisting and pulling brought about the replacement of men's table tennis as early as more than ten years ago, and now Wang Manyu is the most mature person who masters this technology among female players, which also makes her almost invincible in 2021, almost invincible all over the world, but hidden dangers are also buried.
Second, familiar development model
As mentioned earlier, before Wang Manyu, there are many female national table tennis players who are also known as representatives of masculine play, including Li Ju, Guo Yue, and Li Xiaoxia. There is no denying that they are all outstanding existences, but unfortunately, none of them are the strongest of their contemporaries.
Li Ju was suppressed by Wang Nan in his heyday, and although he once made a comeback and was expected to participate in the Athens Olympics, he was still squeezed down by his juniors Zhang Yining and Niu Jianfeng.
Guo Yue is the top talented girl in the national table tennis and even the world table tennis world, less than 16 years old was selected for the Olympic doubles team and won the bronze medal, and then won the World Table Tennis Championships team qualification and won the world championship title, and then swept Zhang Yining at the age of 18, reversed Li Xiaoxia to win the women's singles championship of the World Table Tennis Championships, but opened high and low, and finally left the national team in a less decent way, becoming a "Zhongyong" type figure that countless fans regret.
Although Li Xiaoxia achieved the Grand Slam earlier than Ding Ning, she is obviously weaker than the other party in terms of the total singles results of the three major tournaments, and she is not as good as the previous Grand Slam Zhang Yining, and she is still the bottom of the five Grand Slams in women's table tennis.
When we review the development trajectory of the above four players, we will find a rule, that is, their strength can be recognized by peers and fans, and many people still feel stronger than Wang Nan, Zhang Yining, Ding Ning and others, but in terms of state durability, they are obviously inferior:
At their peak, these athletes were indeed stronger than anyone else of their time, but the problem was that their peak was so short that someone would always overwhelm them in terms of the number of World Series titles they won in singles and the time span.
Isn't this situation familiar? That's right, the current Wang Manyu seems to be retracing the old path of these predecessors, at her peak, she can beat Chen Meng, Sun Yingsha, Wang Yidi, Chen Xingtong, Ito Mimako, Hina Hayata and others to the ground, and even meet some male players do not fall behind, but once the state declines, there are various collapses, even to competitions such as the World Table Tennis Championships.
And these athletes are always tightly tied to two other words, and these two words are also an important reason for their performance fluctuations, that is, "injury".
Third, there are no injuries for no reason
Athletes have injuries, even athletes like Zhang Yining, who seem the least masculine, will be so painful that they have to frantically take closed injections. But relatively speaking, the injury impact of female players with masculine playing styles is more likely to be amplified, and even seriously affect their careers.
This is due to a different development model from theirs.
When a female player constantly pursues high-quality attacks, her physical load will naturally increase much more than that of ordinary people, and the accumulation rate of injuries will naturally be faster; Conversely, when injuries become more and more serious, the athlete's training will suffer, and her offensive quality in the game will definitely decline, and the decline in performance is inevitable.
The important guarantee of the masculinization of women's playing style is the amount of training beyond ordinary people, although the innate physical fitness is also very important, but the acquired training can promote them to complete the "metamorphosis", once they can't keep up with the decline in offensive quality, what do they take to suppress the opponent? Zhang Yining and Zhu Yuling can turn to attack while defending, Li Ju, Guo Yue, Li Xiaoxia, and Wang Manyu if they don't have a steady stream of high-quality output, how can they win?
In the two manifestations of the masculinization of women's playing style mentioned earlier, one is to quality, the other is to be conscious, but in fact, the weight of the two is not the same, of which increasing the quality of attack is the first, and improving the active awareness is the second, because material determines consciousness, technology determines tactics, there is no ultra-high-quality on-hand attack, just want to be in front is useless.
Why are men's first three boards so much stronger than women's? The reason is that the quality of their veneers is much higher than that of women, so they know that they have the possibility of a fatal blow after rushing to attack, and even if the female player wants to be in front, what is the point of snatching the past ball and hitting the "dead" person?
In order to overcome the lack of offensive quality, top female players began to constantly roll in, in the quality of the snowboard to launch an "arms race", coupled with the reform and progress of equipment, and the improvement of athletes' training conditions, if you look at the past, most of the top female players now actually have a masculine level, but the so-called everyone improves the quality, it is equivalent to not improving, and at this time if there are still people who want to continue to practice, then the body may not be able to eat.
Among all the female players in the current table tennis world, the most masculine is Wang Manyu, because she once practiced the quality of her snowboard in one of her technical links (backhand) to the point that she was much stronger than others, but now there is a situation of success and defeat, and the body has turned on a red light, which in turn has led to a decline in results.
Fourth, return to rationality
The article said so much, and finally points to another question, that is, in the new era, women's playing style is masculine, or what kind of way out will women's playing style be? In fact, the men's players showed the way to everyone more than 20 years ago.
In the 90s of last century, a group of European athletes led by French world champion Gaiting, Belgium world runner-up Seifer, German world champion Roscove set off a so-called "unreasonable" storm, these three players at that time table tennis technology was deeply transformed, it can be said that the forehand, backhand arc ball action to the extreme, unreasonable force to defeat many top masters (such as Waldner, Ma Wenge, Kim Zesu and others).
But over time, unreasonable players quickly began to decline, because they overemphasized the lethality of a certain technical link, but there will always be big holes or shortcomings here and there, and the injuries on the body are also very serious, among which the best Gaiting is the fastest declining.
Only a few years after the popularity of unreasonable play, male table tennis players still returned to the mainstream style with outstanding specialties but not necessarily overly prominent, comprehensive technology but indispensable - although it is men here, why is the unreasonable playing style of the year not an attempt to "be more masculine" in men's play? In the end, everyone still has to return to the old path of all-round confrontation.
The so-called world's best of both worlds, live up to the same as if it comes to live up to the secretary, men's playing style is unreasonable or not, women's playing style is masculine, in the final analysis, they all want to "roll" their peers in the quality of attack, but a person's talent and energy are limited, and it is absolutely impossible to strengthen all technical links to far surpass others, then the final result must only be a certain link to practice to the extreme, but other aspects will definitely be affected, and the distribution of physical strength and energy will also be problematic.
Obviously, Wang Manyu himself has long realized that it is impossible to follow the old path of the past forever, because if you want to maintain a high-quality attack all the time, it is easy to hurt your body; If it is not guaranteed, it is a decline in grades - no matter how you go, you can get into a dead end, and it is impossible not to make changes.
In the process of transformation, Wang Manyu and her mentor Xiao Zhan also parted ways, and she herself made it clear that the root cause of the disagreement came from "as we age, the changes in body and condition have made us unable to reach a consensus on training methods, coaching philosophy and future development", which also highlights her determination to completely transform.
At present, it seems that Wang Manyu is trying to weaken his dependence on the backhand and increase the threat of other links, but it has not yet shown too good results, and the consecutive defeats to teammates have proved that he still has not adapted to the new changes. Even if she is still doing this, the masculinization of women's playing style will definitely return to rationality in the future, and it will become extremely difficult to stand out through a certain specialty technique.
Fifth, the development direction of the new period
Therefore, in Quan Yan's view, with the development of table tennis equipment and technology, the direction of masculinization of women's playing style in the new era will be to comprehensively improve the quality of the snowboard in all links, plus a more active sense of attack.
First of all, the quality of attack and consciousness will reach the ultimate unity. Before this, although some female table tennis players can play very high-quality balls, their consciousness has not actually risen to the level of preemption, such as Li Xiaoxia, although she has great strength and stamina, but she is actually pursuing stable output in essence, and the on-stage attack is obviously not as strong as the current juniors.
On the other hand, the current top female table tennis athletes, backhand direct hand has become a norm, although it is difficult to achieve the "overlord screw" effect like men's table tennis, but the quality of the first board of the serve is enough to break the defense strongly, and the subsequent patch board is constantly increasing the quality, rather than stability-based, which shows that everyone has begun to abandon the ideas of Zhang Yining's era in consciousness, and has moved towards a development stage of all-out attack and almost no transition.
Of course, the unity of quality and awareness is not only the result that athletes can achieve by relying on individual efforts, the reform of inorganic glue and new plastic balls is also an important promoter, the so-called "generation version of a generation of gods", if the time goes back to before 2008, many male players are very "disgusted" backhand twisting, women's table tennis with this technology is not worth the loss.
Second, the physical fitness requirements for athletes will increase unprecedentedly. In fact, this situation has long appeared in the field of men's table tennis - before that, due to the addition of small balls and organic glue, table tennis equipment can greatly make up for the lack of strength of the athletes themselves, but with the promotion of inorganic glue and new plastic balls, now playing ball has to rely more on their own power, tearing is much more tired than before.
It is also very dramatic to say: it is precisely because of the above two reforms that the screwing and pulling in the stage began to be promoted, because the slowdown of speed, power, and rotation allows everyone to have enough time in the near stage to complete the full force of the screwing and pulling; But also because of the above two reforms, everyone has to enter the upspin stage earlier than in the past, and it is difficult to kill with one hit, which is naturally easier to consume physical strength.
Since the lower limit of the strength of male players is still relatively high, we can still see Ma Long, Lin Yunru and others who are not very powerful; However, the upper limit of the strength of female athletes is lower than that of men, and it is difficult to achieve the requirements of masculine play if the requirements are lowered, and as a result, many good seedlings suffer from physical fitness, such as Qian Tianyi and others.
In addition, stable injuries in high-intensity training and competitions are also an important criterion for judging physical fitness, who can maintain a good state for a longer time, who can win more initiative in the fierce competition, innate foundation and acquired physical training will also become an important factor to determine the upper limit of an athlete's development.
So what do you think about Wang Manyu and the masculinization of women's table tennis play? Welcome to leave a message to write your own opinions!