Dairy for 29th June 2008
I had a great week of training last week, on and off the court. In the gym I'm feeling so much stronger, 4 weeks ago I struggled to bench 85kg, the other day I benched 100kg which is the most I have ever lifted :). The kind of court fitness I have been doing you cant really time or anything but I certainly feel quicker of the spot. It's time to mix things up a bit now to go to the next level, so my fitness trainer from Australia has sent me a new programme which will start this week and in-between the tournaments I have coming up.

When ever there's good tennis on TV it always makes me want to play even more, so with Wimbledon on at the moment I have been on court about 4 hours a day as well as gym and fitness and been loving every minute. But I have been a right plonker and over done it and the other day an hour into my hit with Tom and after having a couple of sets in the morning with Lloyd, my elbow started to really hurt, I tried to carry on with care as I didn't want to cut Tom's hit short, but 5 minutes later I could hardly feed the ball in with out strong pain and had to stop.
I've had the last couple of days off with just sticking to fitness and plenty of icing my elbow but after speaking to Linda (James mum who is a physio) and still feeling pain in my arm with curtain movements, I've had to pull out of Nottingham :(.
Unfortunately Nottingham was an important tournament for me as I needed to win some money and also more important get my English rating up so I have more of a chance to get into the British futures this summer. I'm sure it will be ok though as I'll just try and find a job for a week so I'm able to get to the Felixstowe future next week and Frinton (the next future on the following week) is 20 minutes away from there so I'm sure I'll get into at least one of them and as there both on grass which is my favourite surface I'm hoping to do better than I did in Europe and get some world ranking points which if I do get some, my English rating wouldn't matter anymore anyway :)
Until then I'm going to give my elbow a complete rest over the week end and just stick to fitness, then have a very sensible week of training with no more than an hour and a half a day, along with hopefully a bit of work to get some petrol money in my hand so I'm all 100% and ready for Felixstowe.

I'm sure my elbow will be fine, I just got a bit carried away with playing, so with a proper week of looking after it, I'll be hitting the ball just as well as I was last week.
Watching Wimbledon has given me allot of confidence, especially watching Chris Eaton win the first round. I was playing in the same tournaments as Chris in Portugal and he was only getting a few rounds further than me, in fact he hasn't made a quarter final in a future all year, so I'm only just behind him. I like to think as he's a year older and one step further, by the time I'm his age I would have taken that extra step and be playing at Wimbledon next year, in my mind there is no reason why that shouldn't happen.

Off the court has been great. A great friend of mine James Godfrey and his family have been awesome by letting me spend my time off round their house and treat me like part of the family :)

Diary For 12th June 2008
Since I've been back in the UK I've had a bit of a cold, but nothing serious, then to my bad luck the weekend before I was to go up to Sheffield it hit me hard and as Sheffield is a bit of a treck away and I still wasn't 100% guaranteed to get in as I was a late entry and the best they could do was put me 1st on the reserve list, I thought it would be better to hold back and get well and back to 100% for the next run of tournaments starting in July. I haven't been ill for so long and I forgot how horrible it was, I had no strength at all for a good 5 days. But I'm all good now and touch wood that will be my cold over and done with for this year, and nothing like that will hold me back this summer!
I haven't raised enough money yet to by my self a stringing machine, but I've been hitting with this kid called Tom Gill here and in exchange his dad re-strings and buys my string for free for me, so that's been very handy, and Tom still hits a good ball, so it's a win win.
I joined west Hants the other day. Its got a good gym, lots of courts, clay, indoor, ect, and there are allot of players there who I can train with and also a few young kids who I could hit with for money, and as it's only 30 pounds a month I thought it was worth every penny.
I've been really enjoying being a member of West Hants, 2 of my mates who don't play tennis go there for the gym, so I've got someone to go with now which makes it a bit more fun and helps to have someone there so you can lift heavier weights with no risk you might drop them on yourself with no one around to help :). I've got one more week of the 4 week fitness programme I'm on at the moment then It'll be time to mix things up again. This week I will chart all the times and weights to see if I've improved from the first week I started this programme, usually there is a big improvement, but with me being ill for a week, my weight training suffers so this time I don't know what to expect.
On the tennis court I've been hitting for a good couple hours every day with either Lloyd or James Whike. Since I've recovered from being ill I've been moving around the court and serving really well which always gives me a big boost for when I go and play matches to know that I'm fit and my main weapon is feeling strong. It's a good sign that my fitness level can bounce back this quick after being off for the other week.

My tournament schedule for the next couple of months is :

NOTTINGHAM BRITISH TOUR
30 June -5 July

FELIXSTOWE FUTURE
5 JULY - 13 JULY $15,000

FRINTON ON SEA FUTURE
11 - 20 JULY $15,000

ILKLEY FUTURE
25 JULY - 3 AUGUST $10,000

WREXHAM FUTURE
1 - 10 AUGUST $10,000

WOKING FUTURE
8 - 17 AUGUST $10,000

NOTTINGHAM FUTURE
5 - 14 SEPTEMBER $15,000

NOTTINGHAM FUTURE
12 - 21 SEPTEMBER $15,000

They are all played on grass, so as long as I serve well, I should hopefully do well.


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