Media Figure: No CBA Club Opposes the Resumption of Physical Testing; Decline in Training Quality of CBA Players in Recent Years Is an Inevitable Fact

On September 14, media figure @FuZhenhaoMVP shared his views on the recent heated discussion regarding the resumption of physical testing (physiological tests) in the CBA.

The original content is as follows:

Although players and fans have different opinions on the comprehensive resumption of physical testing in the CBA, when the Basketball Association proposed this plan, none of the 20 CBA clubs opposed it. Many club general managers even explicitly expressed their active support.

In recent years, the decline in training quality among CBA players is an undeniable fact. Especially during the off-season, some executives reported that some players use various excuses to politely refuse to participate in unified summer training sessions organized by the team, leading to inconsistent quality in self-training, with some players lacking self-discipline.

Some executives believe that the CBA should have a basic threshold. While drafting internet celebrity players through the CBA draft can increase the team’s topic appeal and attention, such players often do not play many games throughout the season and clearly lack CBA competitiveness. Therefore, physical testing serves as a threshold for weeding out the unfit and retaining the best. Based on these considerations, no CBA club opposed the Basketball Association’s proposal to resume physical testing. Of course, the intention of the Basketball Association is not to set up barriers for players or make any category of players unemployed but rather to promote the improvement of player training quality within clubs. The physical testing threshold is not high; as long as the quality of summer training is adequate, players will surely pass.

Thirteen years ago, in 2011, Gong Luming, then director of the Scientific Training Department of the Basketball Management Center, proposed a feasible plan to resume physical testing for all CBA players. With the agreement of Xin Lancheng, then director of the Basketball Management Center, the decision was made to reinstate the physical testing that had been suspended from 2005 to 2010. Thirteen years later, in the summer of 2024, Gong Luming, with the support of the leadership of the General Administration of Sport, finally obtained actual authority in his position as vice-chairman of the Basketball Association, responsible for men’s basketball training and preparation. Subsequently, the CBA resumed physical testing for all players. However, this time it is more of a consensus among Chinese basketball circles and leaders of the General Administration of Sport.

As mentioned above, during the voting process, no one in the CBA family raised objections. Leaders of the General Administration of Sport repeatedly emphasized “three major principles and one large principle” during the preparation period for the Paris Olympic Games, calling for scientific and rigorous training, exploring the development model of “three major sports” in China while inheriting and promoting the excellent traditions and valuable experiences of competitive sports.

No matter how world basketball evolves, improving performance cannot be separated from scientific and rigorous training. This is a fundamental law in the development of competitive sports. Rigorous training and scientific training are not contradictory but organically unified. The concept of “three major principles and one large principle” (difficulty, rigor, practicality, and heavy load) is gradually being improved into a scientific “three major principles and two large principles” (difficulty, rigor, practicality, heavy load, and recovery).