Tennis and All That

Great news again: Serena Williams is back! She’s playing in the Mubadala World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi against Jelena Ostapenko, the young sensation from Latvia and winner of the French Open, this Saturday 30 th December. I love watching both players but obviously am more familiar with Serena’s game having watched her since she started on the WTA tour. Jelena is a great opponent for Serena to have first up as she returns to the game because they don’t seem to have ever played each other on the WTA tour to date so making it impossible to predict how their games will match up. I wish them both a great, enjoyable match! Jelena is a hard hitter with blistering forehands and backhands. For me, she was the best in the game in 2017 because her ground strokes are so effective. Why? I think she has outstanding technical ability to accelerate the racquet head through her ground strokes which generates such incredible power. I noticed the speedometer stats for groundstroke shots ...

Great news: Schiavone is staying on the WTA tour and has signed on to the Australian Open and Marion Bartoli is coming out of retirement to return to the WTA tour next spring! I have always enjoyed watching both these players. I love their focus and determination in matches as well as their style of game, even though they have quite different styles. Bartoli has a similar style to Monica Seles, who I based my game on, so is another great example of how to play doubled-handed, as I do. She has a similar way of constructing points, I admire the way she creates great angles with explosive power and laser-guided accuracy! Schiavone has a style closer to Mauresmo (an amazingly creative player) and Monfils who I adore watching for his eye-popping leaps, and sheer athleticism. He reminds me of basketball players and I think is the best example of how to do the kind of explosive, elastic energy jumps I described in my previous post. He simply has to be the most entertaining player on the ATP...

At the end of my workouts, after running around the cones as described in my previous posts, I use the same cones for jumping exercises. When jumping or hopping, I keep my upper body including my arms quite still and make the jump come from a springing action originating in the legs. I do this by trying to get the jump from using elastic energy which is when you make your legs store up and then release energy for explosive energy propelling the jump, rather like a coil spring being compressed and then released. My jumping action is based on ballet technique and exercises (and used in most if not all forms of dance) where you roll from the heel to the toes and spring-load the ankles from a plie knee bend to create a strong, controlled, high jump without using the upper torso and arms to help lift-off.       Cone jumps: I line up 3 cones (the triangular ones) all equidistant from each other and jump over them one after the other in quick succession in a variety of w...

I’ve been thinking up variations on the exercise I described in my last blog post and assessing what differences I notice when I adjust the exercise. Then I decide which ones I’ll add to my exercise routine and at what stage of my workout I want to incorporate them. I’ve decided to keep all these 4 variations to build different types of fitness and strength. While keeping my tennis footwork intensity the same as in the previous post, doing small, fast footwork around one cone (triangular type), shadow swinging with one of my tennis racquets but without actually hitting a tennis ball, I have tried the following variations: One: I substituted the thick resistance bands (3 levels of strength) for a resistance tube/cable wrapped around my waist (which has handles at the ends for the person holding me back to grip onto which is a good, comfortable feature for the person holding it!). What I preferred about this was that this equipment was more flexible so I found it easier to run a...