The 2010 season is nearly upon us and this year will be a big one. The international tournament schedule will be busier than normal this year with Oceania Championships (Aus, NZ and the pacific countries competing), World Team Championships, Australian Open and Commonwealth Games in India in October.

 The domestic calender is also heavy. We'll have qualifying for the Commonwealth Games, Australian Nationals, state championships, local tournaments and for the first time, I'll be playing in the Victorian Premier League. Premier league will host many of the top Australian players like Simon Gerada, Miao Miao, Robert Frank, John Tawadrouas, George Tang, Heming Hu and more. I'll be playing with Brian Berry and Andrew Gilbert in the St Kilda Cricket team. It's great that TTV have encouraged the concept of starting fees and prize money for the top players as this is a must for providing at least a little incentive for the players to put in the enormous amount of time and effort required. The first match of the season is against the strong team of Miao Miao, George Tang and Eugene Lim. I've never played Miao in a competative match but we are usually pretty close in training.

 For the past few months some of the national team players have been doing a new gym program put together by physio Paul Ness. We first met Paul at the Commonwealth Games in 2002 where he was one of the physios working on the Australian team. Since then we've been to see him regulary to treat our aches and injuries. The new program is focused on improving our core strength. 'Core strength' is a term that's been thrown around so much over the past 10 years but I've never really given it a serious try. Paul has us doing a circuit of around 10 exercises which we do for 30 seconds each and we do two laps of the circuit. The exercises are a mix of twisting and stability and your abs are aching in pain by the end. Robbie and I do some extras at the end which involve throwing a 3 or 4kg medecine ball to each other with your body in a similar position to what is in when you're playing. So basically we are simulating topspinning with a heavier load than a table tennis racket in our hand. We've stuck to the program 3 times per week for the past 3 months and I've been really positively surprised by the results. My upper body is able to stay much more stable than previously and I have much more control when twisting. Twisting is so crucial for so many shots and every little bit of stability and strength you can get is a massive help. It is especially useful when I'm late to the ball and I'm trying to get every last milisecond of time to play the shot.

 My training for this year has started well and I've been able to stick to 5 sessions per week. I'm going to try to keep to 5/week this year as it's as much I can do with my time and work commitments. The big goal is to be in the best possible form for the Com Games.