LThe first symptoms began in 2015. “My left toes would stick when I was doing sports and then just when I was walking. My fingers were closing like a bird of prey, it was impossible to walk like that.“recalls Javier Prez de Albniz. He went from doctor to doctor until they finally found the diagnosis: Parkinson’s, a progressive disease of the nervous system that affects movement. “And ah it changed my life”, recognize. He was 55 years old. “If I don’t take the pill, I also have mobility problems in my legs,” he adds. In her case, there are no hand tremors.
He is a journalist and has spent his entire life working as a reporter and traveling from one place to another. “Suddenly I might not go on a work trip because maybe I would get up and have to wait two hours for the medication to take effect and I might move. And there are also times that Parkinson’s prevents me from even reading and being concentrated”, Explain.
The doctors told him that there were only two ways to stop the disease: with medication and sport. He had played football and badminton, among others, but discovered in table tennis the best medicine. It was following seeing a poster of the Talavera de la Reina Club on a lamppost in the city of La Mancha. He started playing there in September 2019 and two years later, he was proclaimed world runner-up.
Physical and mental benefits
“Table tennis helps you get out of the hole. When I play, I forget regarding the disease, it’s like I don’t have Parkinson’s, and you don’t pay for that with anything. Suddenly I feel perfect. My movements are more clumsy and slower than those of those who do not have it, but you forget for a while and on a mental level it is important“, recognize.
When I play table tennis, I forget regarding the disease and that is not paid for with anything
It has mental and physical benefits. “It is a sport that comes to me wonderfully, it helps to stop the disease. When I play, I feel better and when I don’t, I feel slower and stiff. It also helps me sleep,” he continues. “And it is addictive,” he says. Currently, he trains a minimum of three days a week with Nigerian player Tajudeen Salau.
World silver just two years following starting to play
The International Table Tennis Federation organizes since 2019 the World Table Tennis Championships for players with Parkinson’s disease.. That year was held in Pleasanville, New York. The pandemic left 2020 blank, and In October 2021, the second edition was held in Berlin, in which 135 athletes participated, including Prez from Albniz, of 21 passes.
Javier Prez from Albniz shows the world silver.
He was the only Spaniard and since he had been practicing it for such a short time – barely two years – he thought he would not make it past the first round, so he planned the trip to the German capital as a tourist trip with his family. For the first day, he was wearing a T-shirt from his Talavera club, some competition pants, sneakers and shovels. “I met a gigantic sports hall, full of people in uniformed teams, with tracksuits and bags with their names. The United States, for example, had trainers and physiotherapists, “he recalls. And he alone, with his family in the stands, reached the final.
“The first day I won and I had to wash my shirt in the hotel bathroom with shampoo to put it on the next day. And I was winning until I reached the final. Every day I was washing the equipment “he remembers laughing. And in the end, he came back with a piece of silver in his suitcase and with the Berlin guide intact. There was no time for sightseeing.
Acknowledge that got nervous because he lacks competitive experience and because he is not used to competing with public. In Spain there are no championships for people with Parkinson’s. Before traveling to Berlin, he took part in local competitions in towns with people without the disease.
Among his future plans is to publish a book on Parkinson’s and table tennis. No one better than him to tell in the first person how his life has changed.
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