Tennis and All That

What was Venus Williams thinking! 😱 I was mid-writing my previous post when I saw news of Venus lying, screaming on Centre Court with a knee injury. I felt the pain! I gasped and exclaimed - oh no!!!!! out loud in public! Why oh why did she carry on? ☹️😓 I hope there's no permanent damage. Where there's a scream, there's a serious, massive tear, usually a tendon or ligament that doesn't recover in a hurry.  I limped on to finish my match in France with a knee injury, which was sprayed and taped by the trainer mid-match. But it didn't heal for ages and I was left with an oval burn mark under my knee, where he sprayed it, for years after! I hadn't slipped, hadn't fallen, wasn't screaming, it was just a standard knee pain/injury. But even so, it took too long to heal and so interrupted my rhythm, training and run of tournaments. So it was a bad decision to carry on. My mother didn't want me to carry on with the match but I did it anyway. It ended up b...

It's been ages since I've written about tennis, nearly a year. But over the past year or so I have been busy setting up and videoing my exercise routines that I did from an early age and continued into my tennis career and current fitness regime. Here's a photo from my fitness video I posted today on Instagram: Fitness Wellness Instagram Fitness Wellness Facebook I have continued to be interested in and  following what's been going on in both the women's and men's tours. Djokovic is finally allowed to play the full tour which is something he should have been allowed to do anyway, every year. That's the good news.  The bad news is the ATP and WTA should never have hounded Wimbledon for taking a stand against the invasion of the Ukraine last year and forcing them to reverse it this year. I don't think their unfair action against Wimbledon was necessary under Tour anti-discrimination rules and has simply resulted in depriving lower ranked ITF players of mon...

In my second video uploaded to my Facebook page on fitness and wellness (see post here ), I build on the first section of my first video, mainly how to use floor exercises to develop foot muscles in all three parts of the foot, termed the hindfoot (back), midfoot (connecting middle) and the forefoot (front). I try not to overcomplicate my videos with too much terminology as I'm chatting about things, so I'll be supplementing my fitness and wellness vlogging with further information on this blog.  For a quick visual of what the three parts of the foot look like anatomically, inside the foot, and where they are located, see the picture provided at the top of the page  here  . If you'd like to read an in-depth entry on this and more about foot and ankle anatomy, see  here  . For a fun, fascinating and complete explanation with 3D moving visuals, designed with fitness in mind, see this excellent video  here  .  The focus of this video was flexing...

I've just uploaded a video to my Facebook profile demonstrating and talking about an aspect of my fitness routine that I created for myself around 20 years ago when I was both preparing to start my tennis career on tour while at the same time training in Jazz dance. It was at this point it struck me how dance warm-ups and exercises can form part of general fitness as well as help athletes to strengthen all the muscles, tendons and ligaments and protect joints. I combined this with starting to learn about sports and dance injury prevention and treatment and later sports psychology.  You can watch the video on my personal Facebook,  here . And on my dedicated fitness Facebook page's post,  here. My tennis, fitness and wellness Facebook page is available at:  https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100084693246282   My fitness and wellness website, where you can keep up-to-date and find all my related blogs, vlogs and official fitness and well-being social media a...

Last day of Wimbledon and Novak Djokovic has done it! He's won the men's championship. Well done!👏👏👏👏👏 He's pulled away from Federer with his now 21 Grand Slam titles.🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆Congratulations, Novak! What can one say? Djokovic certainly deserves this one after the trials he's been through this year. He's an amazing player who isn't appreciated for his talent and athleticism. Like Federer, he's an all-court player. Hope he wins many more. A worthy winner. Legends were won by my favourites including, of course, one of the greats, Martina Hingis partnering Clijsters and Bartoli (partnering Zimonjic) in the legends mixed. 👏👏👏👏🎾All the legends were not just awesome players but also highly entertaining. Congratulations to all! 🏆🏆🏆🏆🌠🌠🌠🌠🎾🎾🎾🎾🎾🎾🎾🎾🤗🤗🤗🤗🍸🍸🍸🍸🍾 And the women's doubles were also won by my favourites: Krejcikova and Siniakova. Congratulations to both!👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏🏆🏆🎾🎾🌠🌠🤗🤗🍸🍸...

What a great final! Congratulations to Elena Rybakina! 🏆🌠🎆🎉🎊🎉🎊🎾She's an exciting player and I'm delighted she won the Wimbledon title! I think many were surprised by the result but I wasn't when I saw her bio. Rybakina has had some serious training in both tennis and fitness since a child. That's bound to help and keep you in good stead later on in your career. She's possibly better off that she didn't peak in her teens but rather in her early twenties. I think she's just 23 and ranked 23 although she has been as high as 12 in the world. With only a couple of titles to date this is a big one. Yes, she's Russian born but doesn't live there or play for Russia but rather for Kazakhstan. In 2018 she became a citizen of Kazakhstan, switched tennis federation and started to represent that country. This is an historic day for tennis in Kazakhstan and puts the country on the map. Hands up those who know where Kazakhstan is and can point it out on a m...

Krejcikova and Siniakova beat Ostapenko and Kichenok in style to reach the final against Mertens and Zhang Shuai. They played awesome tennis. The rest day obviously did them a lot of good. I think they both went for a trip to London which is always energizing. The Legends kicked off with Schiavone and Pennetta against Molik and Dellacqua. That was a fascinating match. It looked as if Dellacqua and Molik were on course to win but the Italians came storming back.  (I think you can get playback on iPlayer for Wimbledon, I checked and found they include Invitational matches (available for a month) as opposed to BBC Sport Live Catch-Up. Now why didn't I think of that earlier?🤦🤷Mind you that will only work if you know which court they were on.🤔 ) Schiavone and Pennetta are such an exciting pair and their tennis is top class. Schiavone is a wonderful coach to Martic. Flavia Pennetta has three children, (5 year old Federico, 2 year old Farah, and a 7+ month year old baby Flaminia) when ...