Boon Heong reveals early morning Chong Wei spars to prepare for Lin Dan

The podcast, which was recorded in England where Tan flew over to catch the All England Open, saw the pair open up about their past experiences.

During the session, Ahsan enquired about how Tan trained to hone his smashing ability.

Tan responded: "Back in the day my job was only to smash. When my training started at 8:30am, I used to show up in court by 7am to spar with Lee Chong Wei.

"Lee's main opponent was Lin Dan at that time, so he always sparred with me because I was left-handed like Lin Dan. We did this often for 30 minutes before starting our regular training session."

The pair candidly spoke on various topics, including about playing with Hendra Setiawan, Ahsan's current men's doubles partner.

Tan, who previously played with Setiawan in 2017, with the pair making the final of the Australian Open that year, jokingly added that Setiawan's defence had improved after partnering him, to which Ahsan agreed and said attacking badminton was a staple of the Indonesians.

"We Indonesians rarely defend, we love to go on the offense. Between myself and Hendra, I am the more aggressive shuttler, while he stabilises our game with his drop shots.

"For me, a smash doesn’t need to be hard or extremely powerful. It just needs to be good enough to kill a rally and win the point. For myself and Hendra, we are just enjoying ourselves on court now.

"I admire my partner a lot because he is so calm on court. When we first paired up, I had not won my first world title, but he already had. I learned a lot from him over the years," added Ahsan.