We moved house after 10 years in June, to a community with thousands of homes and lots of facilities (yes, we are paying through our nose for it!).
The environment really affects what you do. Moving house proved that to me. In our old place, my daughter’s cycle mostly lay unused. Here she’s out with her cycle a couple of hours every day!
I’ve also been walking much more because there are many paths I can take and it is not as boring.
I’ve been going to the gym regularly twice a week. It usually buzzing without being overly crowded. The one in my older apartment would be quite deserted and demotivating.
Looking at the tennis courts on my daily walks tempted me to start playing again. I have written about playing tennis before. I had to stop because the injuries mounted. After a long recovery period, I am trying it out twice a week. I’ve joined an academy to get back into rhythm.
I am keeping it to twice a week instead of the 5-6x per week I used to do in 2016. My physio has actually told me to do 4 sessions of fitness work for every session of sport! Right now, my ratio is 2:2 per week. I hope it doesn’t come back to bite me!
I’ve also been watching YouTube videos to get better at it. The cliche of “you can learn from the best of the world on YouTube” is actually true.
Patrick Mouratoglou (who has coached Serena Williams) has uploaded some awesome coaching videos. Even if you don’t care about tennis, you can enjoy watching him teach others and cooing ooo la la or super good all day!
There are others like Tomaz from Slovenia teaching much more beginner level stuff like wrist positions and the basics of shot making.
The weakest part of my body are my left glutes and they are already showing some strain but the upper body is holding up fine. I am getting fatigued in about 30 mins of play due to low cardio fitness. But my muscle strength after many months of working on it is pretty good. I don’t wake up with aches the next day like my first stint.
Here’s hoping I can sustain this stint.