Wednesday 8th October 2014
The weather today was a lot better than it was yesterday; we still didn’t get the doubles played but we had a very good training day and the boys studied hard too!
While Nils stayed in the apartment and continued to plough through his school work, Toby and I were up early to get in a really good couple of hours in the gym. Toby continued to follow his strength and conditioning programme which dictates exactly what he needs to do depending on how many days he has until his next singles match. The programme includes 3 strength sessions, 2 conditioning programmes, 2 injury prevention programmes, a pool recovery session and a stretching routine for each day which doesn’t leave him short of something to do on a rainy day!
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Toby starting his 3rd set of ‘Sumo Deadlifts’ this morning
Sometimes it can be hard to keep motivating yourself as a player, especially when training gets tough in the gym, and that’s why I always try and workout alongside the players . . . after all, I can’t have them beating me too easily can I?!
At 11am we left the gym and went back to the apartment where Nils had lunch waiting for us – he’d only ordered room service for us, not actually cooked it himself! Once we’d finished lunch we watched the start of ‘Bad neighbours’ and then at 12.30pm we went over to the club to have our pre-match training session.
We’d planned on training for an hour and a half before the boys had their doubles match but due to the amount of rain we had yesterday the clay courts were still extremely soft. That meant that we had to train on the hard courts and we knew that if there was another downpour while we were training then the doubles would again be cancelled.
After warming up Toby and Nils pushed themselves very hard this afternoon and it showed in the quality of their ball striking throughout the session. Both boys had struggled with their consistency at the start of the trip but since then they have both improved a lot and it’s obvious that their confidence has improved more each day. As the session went on we worked more specifically on their doubles tactics and in particular their hand speed around the net. Unfortunately just as we were about to move into serve and return the rain started and within minutes the court was completely soaked!
With that we left the court and were immediately told by the referee that the doubles was cancelled for the day so the boys changed and then we headed straight back to the hotel.
Much to the boy’s disappointment I decided that they could get stuck into their school work from 3.30-5.30pm and then we headed out for an early dinner at TGIs near the Old Dutch Hospital.
Dinner was pretty good but the entertainment was even better! For those of you that read the Blogs from Namibia in May you’ll remember some forfeits involving a hair net – well this time Nils was on the receiving end of that one while I had to eat my dinner with a balloon on the back of my head – I’m not sure how Toby got away with not doing one this evening – he must be hooking the game somehow!!
When we got back to the apartment we watched the end of ‘Bad neighbours’ and then much to Nils’ delight we watched the start of ‘The Inbetweeners 2’.
Schedule for tomorrow:
(1) Indra Patwardhan (IND) & Arjun Ramakrishnan (IND) vs (WC) Toby Huffer (GBR) & Nils Larsson Regnstrom (SWE) – 3rd match after 8.30am (not before 11.15pm)
