Monday 21st May 2012
It’s been a good training day today; we’ve managed 2 on court sessions totalling over three hours plus we both did a one hour strength and conditioning session and then we finished the day with a cool down and injury prevention work. I think I’m going to be feeling it in the morning though!
I’m not sure Dave is an early riser but he was up and at breakfast at 6.45am this morning before we headed the short 300 metre walk to the tennis club at 8am to warm up. We’d not arranged anyone to train with Dave this morning as we wanted to do a lot of work of his volleys in preparation for the doubles – unfortunately they didn’t get in as their priority was one of the lowest but it was still great practise for Dave as he looks to expand the variety in his game. It was a tough session and the legs took a bit of a pounding as so much was based around getting low and moving forwards onto the volley but Dave got a lot out of it. By 10am the players who were competing today started to arrive so we had to make way for them.
There was no resting for us though as we walked straight back to the hotel and down into the gym for a weights session. Dave had some tough super-set exercises whereby he would do two sets of dynamic exercises (e.g. pull ups) either side of a weighed exercise (e.g. lat pull downs) and then during his 1 minute 30 seconds rest he’d also have band work to do. He had 4 sets to do like that and then had another 4 sets of 2 different super-set exercises to do afterwards – it was a hard session but one of the biggest areas players neglect when on the road is strength and conditioning. Players tend to just concentrate on the tennis side of things but once you’re out of the singles event you should be getting back in the gym to make sure the hard work you’re doing during your training blocks is not deteriorating too much when you move into a competition block. It’s all about educating the players and getting them to buy into how important physical conditioning is – if they start doing it at a young age they’ll continue when they get older.
After the session we had a good lunch at the club while watching the last round of qualifying matches before having another few games of Pool and then relaxing at the hotel.
At 3.30pm Dave was warming up again for a point play session with Canadian Antoine Richard who had also lost in qualifying yesterday. Luckily they managed to get a full court to themselves for almost an hour and a half so they were able to get two good sets in which is exactly what we want to do each day this week to get Dave to the best possible level before next weekend. After the session we were back in the gym to cool down, stretch out and go through Dave’s injury prevention work before finishing a solid day’s training.
Dave serving against Antoine Richard during practise today
When we played Pool at lunchtime I managed to take the 4th set so as soon as we’d finished dinner we were back at the bowling alley to finish off our match!! After the best set we’d both played I managed to sneak the win to take the match 2-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 – a very proud moment for me 🙂
It’s going to be an even earlier start in the morning as we’re playing sets at 8am with Artur Completo so it’ll be a 6.30am breakfast followed by a 7.30am warm up – time for an early night then!!
