Hi Roger,

Just thought I would give you my thoughts. Get on court whenever you can and hit lots of clears, lifts and smashes – shots that improve as you improve your timing and get your eye in. It means you will be timing your shots nicely when the time comes to play. This is about knocking up on court – just sneak on when you can!

The biggest problem people tend to have on tournament days is that their muscles get tight and tired. In my view, this comes from the build up of lactic acid in the muscles, which happens when you use the muscles lots and then they cool down. So, my view on this is to do lots of dynamic stretching during the day, but avoid raising your heart rate too much. As an example, going for a job is a good dynamic stretch – it gets the body moving. However, it also raises your heart rate lots – you will break a sweat, which means you will cool down and may get tight. Ideally, you want to avoid the warm up until you are going to play soon. However, you want to keep doing stretches throughout the day. An example of a warm up is bouncing up and down on the spot or doing some shadowing, Yes its a dynamic stretch, but its also a warm up. Alternatively, you could do some back and forward lunges – this is a dynamic stretch but is not likely to get your heart rate up. You will continue to retain a good range of motion, the muscles in your legs will not tighten up, you won’t get stiff.

Thats my take on it! Lots of dynamic stretching throughout the day. Try to avoid static stretching – it breaks the muscles and makes them work less effectively. But its easy to avoid static stretching – just do the same stretch but do not hold it – move in and out of the static stretch and it becomes dynamic.

Good luck!