Mental conditioning helped me give tough fight to Ma Long in Olympics: Sharath Kamal

"This exposure trip would be the testing ground for what we have been preparing for and evaluating our position and I believe it would be the best setup for the Commonwealth Games," he said.

The CWG gold medallist was speaking to the media during an interaction facilitated by the Sports Authority of India.

"We have come to the final phase of preparation and thus we would be having a lot of training and match practice with the Portuguese team. Following that we will be going for a WTT event in Budapest, Hungary before we head to the CWG," he said.

The entire 10-member Indian table tennis contingent for the Birmingham Games will train in Porto from 3rd July to 10th July 2022.

Sharath Kamal, who has been part of the Indian national team for two decades now also said that mental training and conditioning, just like physical training and conditioning is a daily process.

"It (mental conditioning) has to be done in every session. There are techniques that our mental conditioning coach teaches us that we follow pre-session, during the session, and post-session," he said.

Sharath gave the example of his Tokyo Olympics third-round battle with Chinese legend Ma Long.

"If you look at that match, you will see that there was nothing technical, it was just the fact that I was standing up for that fight and not giving up. It was the intent that everyone was talking about. That doesn't come overnight. There is a particular way you train in each of your sessions and that helps you. All this is a very essential part of mental preparation."

Sharath, who so far has 9 Commonwealth Games medals (four Gold, two Silver and three Bronze) in his trophy cabinet, would again lead the Indian squad at 2022 Commonwealth Games later this month.