Hi LDM7
Hope you are well !!
How’s the training and match play going?
Here in England, the season has started up, local leagues, tournaments etc
Week before last I had 3 league matches and 2 coaching nights, (by the way a club mate and myself passed the TTE level 1 coaches course!! So now we can ‘officially’ coach!!!)
My knees had been feeling pretty good but I think I was being over optimistic about playing 5 nights on the trot (even though the coaching session are fairly light when just feeding and blocking they still take a toll)
The week started well !!
Monday match, won all 3 + the doubles, never really felt pressured, moved well.
Wednesday match, won 2 lost 1, won doubles. Knees were feeling tighter, not moving as well at the end of the night, the last singles of the evening was my last game, we were 8-1 up, the 1st end I lost 10-12 then I just rolled over!! wanted to take It easy, knees were getting really tight!!
Thursday match, lost all 3 !! Didn’t move well at all, knees had not recovered from the previous nights match!! Opposition was the strongest of the week, lost to 2 higher ranked players, which was sort of expected, but I had hoped to push them harder than I did, 3rd player was ranked lower than me lost 3-1 but didn’t play well, when you can’t move you are pretty screwed!!
Week ended badly !! Knees and calves were tight, couldn’t make the Friday coaching session!!
It took about a week for the ole knees to recover, luckily last week, I only had 1 match, which was Friday, On the Tuesday coaching session knees were still tight thankfully they eased right off over Wed / Thur.
we lost the match 6-4, I won 2 lost 1 and lost the doubles. Tight match, 5 games went to 5 ends, of which we only won 1 of the 5!! Could have gone either way!!
My teammate had a 100% average before this match, he lost all 3 singles!!
So what have we learnt??
For myself - don’t play too much !!! I have to be realistic, so unfortunately I am going to have to drop out of being a ‘regular’ match player week in week out for 2 clubs and pick and choose when I can play for them, I don’t ‘expect’ to play when I want just let them know which matches I am available for, if I’m picked then that’s fine, as is not being picked!! Playing for 1 club week in week out, which is more a case of having to because we have only have 3 players available with 1 player who will stand in if we are desperate!!
Away matches can be awkward, especially for warming up, My team mate who had a 100% win rate didn’t play well, warm up was too short for him, ideally he would have 15+mins warm up, on Friday he had 5mins max and never got his timing right, this showed with the amount of miss hits during his matches, this then had a knock on effect on his confidence!!
He was playing as our number 1, so went on 1st, he lost badly 3-0, well 1st 2 ends 11-7, 11-6, 3rd end was 14-12, later in the evening I beat the same guy 3 zip quite easily game 6/9/3.
There are always time constraints, and pressure to get the match played, in future we’ll try and make sure that he has a longer warm up!!!
Analysing / looking back how I played in the matches ( of 4 matches, 12 singles opponents, only 2 were ranked lower than myself)
good aspects
- serves were good and rally construction 3rd / 5th ball attack was good.
- reigned in power on attacks, more consistent attacks.
- read and received opponents serves quite well
bad aspects
- sometimes a little too negative - not opening up enough, especially to longer serves, pushed too many!!
- movement - ok knees ain’t great, but even though I moved well/better when they were ‘fresh’ there was still room for improvement!!
- poor open ups - when I did get in position!! This I put more down to practice, haven’t spent enough time training on them - hard to achieve as I’m coaching rather than being coached at present.
Looking forward to an up date from you LDM7 !! Plus Der’s analysis!!!