St. Vincent U18 ITF Grade 5, Day 6

Thursday 22^nd August 2013

We had a good day’s training today which started our preparation for next week’s event and marked our last day in St. Vincent.

In order to get a full training day in we were up early for breakfast at 7.45am and then at the courts warming up at 9am. Alex then trained with Stefan for just over an hour before Stefan stopped to prepare for his doubles semi-final. The main focus this morning was on maintaining the quality of the ball strike that Alex was producing so that he can be consistently aggressive for longer in matches. After Stefan stopped we continued for another 30 minutes to work on Alex’s serve and even though that was one of the best parts of Alex’s game during the week it’s important to keep developing it.

Following the on court session we went straight into Alex’s lower body strength and conditioning programme. The programme took around 45-50 minutes and due to the lack of weights available to lift we had to improvise and use Alex’s tennis bag! He wasn’t too impressed with that but it worked and was much more beneficial than just lifting a 3kg medicine ball.

During the middle of the day we had some lunch back at the hotel and relaxed before it was back to the club at 2pm for the afternoon session. The plan was for me to play a practice set with Alex but after warming up for 30 minutes (and being covered in sweat!!) Victor Gurevich asked if he could play the set with Alex. It was obviously more beneficial for Alex to play a set with someone of a similar age so I stepped down and the boys got stuck into quite a competitive set. From the start I explained to Alex that the score today was irrelevant and all I wanted him to focus on was his performance. Even though Alex took a 5-3 lead he wasn’t quite finding the high level that he produced in the first sets of his two matches. Victor then came back and took a 6-5 lead which was when Alex finally stepped up and produced a much better performance to hold serve and then take the tie-break 7-1.

After the session we headed back to the hotel and stretched out before he boys relaxed in the pool before dinner. There was then just enough time to watch the end of ‘Coach Carter’ before we had to pack and get ready to leave for Tobago tomorrow.

It’s been a good 1^st week and hopefully Alex can improve on his performance in our last event of the trip next week.