Saturday 5th February 2011
Another great days training today as the temperature got hotter and the balls couldn’t handle the pressure!
We were up early again for a 7am breakfast which consisted of a banana, a slice of Watermelon, a slice of fresh mango, some scrambled eggs, two slices of toast and some very thin looking corn flakes. The girls were in a better mood too (which is always a bonus) except one of them said they struggled to sleep because the room was now too cold! I did explain that 17 degrees is pretty cold so they might want to turn it up a little.
We met Felix at the courts at 8.30am, went through some tough skipping followed by going through our dynamic stretching and finished the warm up off with 10 sets of sprints. Just before hitting we used a wall by the side of the court to really sharpen up the players reactions and then got stuck into the session. We trained for just over two hours with a few “friends” looking on;
Apparently not as scary as the one in the girls bathroom!
After the session we went through some band work, cooled down and had a thorough assisted stretching session for 20 minutes.
After lunch we were back on again and even though the wind has been picking up in the afternoon so has the temperature. The concrete courts haven’t been helping either but we’re here early to acclimatise and get used to the surroundings and all four players have been working hard to make sure they’ll be ready for Monday.
Warming up for the afternoon session with Team Bath
We teamed up again with Jim, Craig and the Bath players for points in the afternoon but due to there not being a qualifying event in either boys or girls (due to lack of numbers) there were a shortage of practise balls. Jim decided to buy some from a local sports store and despite them being pressurised in a standard “Wilson US Open” tin the balls just didn’t seem right:
Look ok so far!
They looked more like the kind of balls you get down at the beach rather than official Wilson balls and after literally 20 minutes this happened:
Was it the balls or Beth's huge forehand?!
The temperature really picked up and made training very tough but we stayed on the court for over two hours and everyone was happy (in the end!) with the quality of their hitting. We stretched out again and left the club at 5pm to get ready for a well earned dinner.
The day ended by watching Man U lose 2-1 to Wolves – Jim’s not going to be happy tomorrow and hopefully Chelsea can close the gap with Torres getting a couple against Liverpool.
If anyone has any questions about the trip or playing ITFs please drop me an email via the “contact me” page and I’ll get straight back to you or add the information into the blog.
