Lev Katsman was born on March 31, 2001 in Khabarovsk. Since childhood, he played football at the SKA-Energia club, started playing table tennis at the age of 9, and until the age of 12 he combined football and table tennis. The first table tennis coaches were A. Y. Sherman and O. T. Rea. In 2014, he moved to Arkhangelsk, where he trained at the Rodina club, where the head coach was Chinese specialist Liu Guohong. Since 2016, he trained in Moscow at sports school No. 93 “On Mozhaika,” which in 2015 was headed by his first coach A. Ya. Sherman.