Tennis Camp!

Twelve of us from my tennis teams went to Wintergreen Resort this past weekend for tennis camp.  We rented a big house in the resort.  We arrived Friday afternoon and left Sunday afternoon.  It was great!  We had a tennis clinic on Friday 6 - 9pm.  We had three instructors for the twelve of us, so we really got a lot of personalized instruction.  They emphasized court positioning a lot (for doubles).  We also played some games.

On Saturday, some of us played some tennis outside around noon to try to practice some of what we'd learned.  It was a beautiful day, albeit a little brisk.  Then we had another clinic 5 - 8pm.  We learned another layer of court positioning.  The idea of following the ball not only left to right but also forward and back was great.  It was something I used to do more, but then it seemed like I wasn't "supposed" to.  However, when put together with the other strategies we were learning, it worked really well.

Sunday we had our last clinic from 11am - 1pm.  This focused on shot selection:  which shots to hit at the net person, and which to hit back to the baseline.  Also, between the three clinics, I learned something that may fix my forehand, if I can stick to it:  stop running toward the ball when it bounces.  That keeps me far enough away from the ball to be able to hit it well.

We all really liked the clinics and definitely want to go back in the spring.  I hope that everyone is able to put into play some of the strategies we learned.  We also had a really good time because it was such a friendly and easy-going group.

Once we got home yesterday, I had a tri-level match.  I got to put into play a lot of what I'd learned, and overall it worked pretty well.  I did have some overheads into the net (because I didn't turn sideways) and some other errors, but mostly I felt like I played really well.  Unfortunately Justine and I lost, 2-6, 6-2, 0-1.  We really turned things around in the second set - I switched to playing the deuce side - and we did pretty well in the match tie-breaker, but had a few too many unforced errors in the end.  Fortunately, our team won the other two courts, so we won the match overall.

This morning I did the second workout in Stage 3 of NROLW.  Again, I did 3 sets of each move, with 6 reps per set.

• Barbell Romanian deadlift and row: This was not extremely difficult in terms of the weight.  I had a hard time remembering to do both moves in a row, the deadlift and then the row.  I used 53 lb.
• Partial single-leg squat: This was done with bodyweight, and it was mostly a balance move.  My left leg was much better than my right leg.
• Pull-ups:  I did 3.5 in the first two sets and 4 in the last set.
• Prone cobra:  I did manage to do this for the required 90 sec in each set.
• YTWL: I knew this one was going to be hard, so I used 5 lb per hand.  Hopefully it's going to be good for my shoulders, because they need it.
• Swiss-ball crunch with weight: I used a 10-lb weight plate, but with only 6 reps, this wasn't difficult.  I'm not sure if I'm not doing it right, or just need more reps.
• Prone jackknife: I did these in Stage 1.  It wasn't difficult to do them for 6 reps.
• Hanna side flexion 2:  This one was difficult, because it was a kind of side crunch.  I didn't feel like I was getting myself off the ground, but I'm not sure if I was supposed to.

I was also supposed to do a HIIT sequence after these moves, like in the second workout of Stage 2.   However, the moves listed above took about 70 minutes even though I didn't really follow the 105-s rest requirement between each move, so I didn't have time for the HIIT.  I'm not sure I really need that, given how active I am, anyway.  This workout overall was not very interesting and didn't seem very intense.  Most of the moves were bodyweight or very low weights.  Well, I have to hope the designers of NROLW know what they are doing.