What playing and training for all 7 days does
The gym days end with twenty minutes on court, and food, water and sleep count as training now.
Every day of the week I’m on a court or in a gym. Two days a coach works on me, three I play points and matches at my academy, Tennis Guide, and the other two are gym days.
There’s no rest day in the week. I don’t think it needs one. I never worked out a mix of hard days and easy ones either. I’ve kept this up for six months now and it hasn’t burnt me out. I’m faster and stronger than I ever got when I trained fewer days a week.
Table of contents
Coaching
On the two coaching days the coach puts the ball exactly on my weak side, at a timing I can’t read, and watches every rep. My toss, my split-step and my recovery step all get corrected at the same time. These are the hardest days of the week.
I have to move before my head has worked out what happened, because if I have to think “forehand, cross-court” first, the ball’s already past me. After two sessions a week of awkward, unpredictable feeds like that, my feet go as soon as I see where the ball is going.
Academy play
The other three tennis days I play points and matches at the academy, against players who want to win as much as I do. Live points have a lot less to do with clean hitting than I’d assumed. Playing points is where I learnt to time my split-step off the other player’s contact, instead of guessing when the ball will come. It’s also where I learnt to start the recovery step before my last shot has landed, and to change direction hard without falling over my own feet. It took a very large number of points before I stopped having to think about any of it.
The gym days
The gym days are power, strength and endurance work. Each one ends with twenty easy minutes on court, so I never go a full day without hitting a ball.
The power is for the split-step and every change of direction. Late in a match, when I’m tired and the technique starts to go, strength keeps my serve and groundstrokes together. The endurance is for the rallies that run past ball ten or twelve.
Food and sleep
I eat a balanced diet with lots of fruit and vegetables, and no junk or fast food, as far as I humanly can. For a long time I didn’t think about food, water or sleep at all. Now I count them as part of the training, and food matters the most. A bad meal the night before shows up at the next morning’s coaching session, where I’m flatter and slower. I drink water all day. Tender coconut water used to be a treat for me and is a habit now.
Sleep is the one I don’t compromise on - eight to nine hours most nights. If I skip it, the tiredness just adds up from one day to the next, however well the rest is planned.
Six months in
Points that go past twelve balls used to be the ones I dropped. The biggest difference six months have made is that I now win more of those than any other kind of point. At around ball fifteen I’ve still got legs. My feet also still get me to balls I’d have reached half a step late a year ago. The game costs me less effort now at the same intensity.