Second serve

Continuing journey to the Pan Pacific games in 2024. Weight loss, Garmin and the first match of the term,

Doublefault a journey to the Pan Pacific Masters games 2024

Transcript

Hi there. Welcome to Double Fault. My name is Andrew, and I'm on a journey to compete in the Pan Pacific Masters Games in tennis in November 2024. That's 540 days away. So come with me. As I tried out my skills and try to win my age group. I started playing at 61 years old and I'm now 63. Can't be that hard for sure. I weighed myself. I weighed in at 107.1kg. That's about as heavy as I've ever been. That's really heavy. I just look at that and go. No wonder I'm getting injured and I've got a bad Achilles now and getting other problems and having troubles chasing down the ball. I really I'm speechless. I'm gobsmacked. I went to the Health New South Wales website to check my BMI, and my BMI is at 30.6, which puts me just in the obese area. Obese. I can't believe it. I play sports for hours and hours each week, but I reckon my diet is just just awful. My maximum healthy weight is supposed to be 87. That's 20kg away. 20kg. That's the weight of a bag of cement. Try carting that around the tennis court and making any speed Anyway, so the plan is to lose some of that weight as much as I possibly can over the next few months. I'm going to do that by going on no white diet. And for those of you that don't know what a no white diet is, I'll basically not be eating any white bread, pasta products, potatoes, you know, rice, all the foods that I really, really like eating, it's all going to be a goner.

I'll also be keeping track of my daily calories, which is something that is a bit of a pain, but I'll do it just just so I can keep a track of it and get just so I can keep an eye on it and get it get it right. I'm actually using a app on my phone called called the Easy Diet Diary, which is pretty good. It's an Australian product and I can look up most things that I eat in there and and log what I do and it'll actually keep a track of how many calories I've consumed during the course of the day. And my phone. Garmin Watch keeps track of how many calories are burnt during the course of the day. So the idea is to make sure I'm in deficit every day, preferably be between 501,000 calories. I read somewhere that a kilogram is 707,700 calories, so I might be able to get up to losing a kilo or maybe a little less each week. And if I keep that up for a few months, that way it'll come down. I'm going to report my progress every week. So I'll start off with my weight and my BMI and how that diet thing is going. I spend a lot of time doing service practice. Service is just one of those things that, you know, everybody seems to struggle with, especially at the beginner level, getting a continental grip and getting a loose, you know, comfortable swing.

That's just doesn't come naturally. I don't think. It's just something that I've been working on for ages, you know, gets gets to the point where the serve just goes really, really bad and it just feeds on itself. I've done nine double faults in a row. I mean, there was a game in between, so it's basically two two games and a bit of a third one. That's just, you know, I'm not going to win any games doing that. I haven't done that for quite some time. My my serve is getting more reliable. But you know how it works. You do. You know what happens. You do a serve and it goes into the net and you do another serve and it goes long and next thing you know, you're trying to instruct yourself on how to fix your serve. There's a book called The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallway, and he calls your inner selves self one and self two self. One's the one that tries to tell you what to do and self two is the one that does the job. But but what happens is self one gets in the way of self two and and it spirals downhill until it's just, you know, not working anymore. I read a book a while ago called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, and she's kind of saying the same thing, but she's talking about the left and right side of the brain, which is proven to be a bit of a myth, even though it feels like there's two halves to your brain sometimes when you talk to yourself.

I think the theory is still there, though. I think if you can quiet that voice that tries to tell you what to do and try and concentrate on other things, then maybe you can get over that dip in your service game and fix it, or at least calm it down a little bit because, you know, trying to train yourself in a game, it's just it just doesn't work. So maybe I'll get part of me to focus on something that's not tennis. Maybe I'll play some music in my head or focus more on my opponent is doing, which is probably be useful or concentrating on the ball as I toss it and try and read the letters of the manufacturer's logo, I'm going to maybe, maybe I'll do a count to three. I'll try some other things that might work if my serve gets into that era of depression. I think a lot of it comes down to practice and practice until the action becomes so mechanical and predictable and boring to your first self that wants to tell you what to do, that it'll leave you alone and you can just go through the motions and get it right most of the time and.

When I say most of the time at the moment, if I do a set and I have 2 or 3 double faults in the set, I'm kind of okay with that. I mean, there's a lot of games in this set and that's a lot of serves. And you know, even the best players, they have double faults. Anyway, I'm off to play a competition game tonight. My UTR is currently 2.36. The lady I'm playing is 3.56. The theory is that she'll beat me. I'm not sure about that. Last time I played her was almost exactly a year ago, in June of 2022. I played it twice and the first time she beat me six love 616 love, which was a bit of a clobbering. And then the second time I played her, about a month later, it was. It was six love, six love six three. So she's she's got a history of beating me. And this might be a good this might be a good indicator of whether my game has improved or not. I think I've put on a lot of weight since then, but I've also gained some skills. A reasonably reliable working first and second serve. They're not rockets, but they're okay. And they go in and we'll see how we go. And this lady, actually, she was looking at me going, How old are you? And I told her and she says, Oh, I feel really bad for Flake because she was like half my age, like everyone else's.

I feel really bad for playing against you and making you run around the court. I said, Okay, well don't make me run around the court. Let me have some easy shots. She goes, No, no, I'm not doing that. Anyway, um, I'll be wearing a label tonight and I'll do a report afterwards and we'll see how, how we, how we, we'll see how we go. So, so join me on the court later on. Okay. So here we are at Taylor Street Tennis courts. I've got a new lapel mic because my old one broke. The lighting is great here. They've got all new lighting. It's a pleasant night and we'll see how we go against my opponent for the evening. It's a little early, so I'll just stretch a little bit while I'm waiting. Kids are all still playing at the moment. Kids squads before the adult squads, I guess. Hopefully the battery in my mic lasts the time. It's best last three hours. A fair share of double faults in this morning's friendly with a mate of mine. Hopefully we won't do a repeat of that. So a bit of a warm up. It's very still tonight after a windy day today. It's warming up here. There's always a lack of fences between the courts. And you've got to wait for people next court to pick up the balls.

It's okay, but it's annoying sometimes. I think she ran me ragged last time, but we'll see how we go this time. Times change. Things change. Oops. Sorry. Shall we do some serves then? He said. To the little 12 year old kid is killing everyone right there. Okay, here's the valleys. Valleys you can serve. Good luck. Okay, here we go. Watch those short serves, but you might sink in all that long, so watch that as well. No frustration, assumptions. One point to me. Low. She smashed it. Watch those two. Because if she had a good forehand smash. I've been caught out by that before. Try and make a run a bit. I think she hit the net up 30. Here's the forehand smash right there. 1530. Got one. 30. 40. Just hit it wide again. I'm scared of the forehand problem. So I just want to talk a little bit about this match. I mean, obviously sped up the recording a little bit so you don't have to listen to an hour and a half of gameplay, which is about how long it took. The game was actually really good and a lot closer than it seemed from the scores. A lot of the games went to Deuce and I just couldn't get them over the line. I think there's a bit of a mental barrier that let's it stops me from, you know, pushing that last hard little bit to win games. I've noticed it before where I'm winning and then all of a sudden I'm just not quite getting it over the line.

Or maybe the other player just digs a little bit deeper. Anyway, I also want to talk about the match that was going on on the court next door to us. There was an adult playing a well, basically a child. And I've seen this kid play before. He's 12 years old. He's got a he's got a ranking of, I think around six and a half, six and a half. And he plays you know, I've seen grown men get so frustrated at this boy. He just hits beautiful shots with wonderful follow through. He's got the flexibility of being a child. He he just hits fantastic serves and he just grinds the other side down. And I've seen that happen to a few of players that I would regard as pretty good players. And this kid, he stands basically chest high to the net. It just goes to show that when players do get on the world stage at an age of 17 or 18, they're at this kind of level where they're just playing so incredibly well and they get out there and, you know, I guess the only way, especially in Australia, the only way up is to work your way up through the ranks on social competitions like this one. I think this this kid will go a long way, but he, you know, I dread the day, if ever it comes to it, that I have to play him.

He just covers the court really well and he's a nice kid as well. I've had a chat to him before, 12 years old. Imagine that. He's absolutely punishing players in their 30s and 40s and it's not through power because he doesn't have that much. It's just through great technique. And it just goes to show you don't have to be a big powerful man to to hit a rocket of a serve to win games because he's not doing any of that. He's hitting good serves. They're not rockets, but they're awful good. Much better than mine, that's for sure. His forehand and backhand, they're all rock solid, reliable strokes. Then it looks super fast. But he hits them and they go super fast because it's all just down to that technique, you know, I'd like to say when I get a few years down the track, I might be able to play like that kid, but, you know, I'll never be too old again. So. So, you know, it is an education. There's there's a lesson to be learned there that if you want to really excel at the game of tennis or guess at any sport, you really need to start at a fairly young age. Okay, so there you have it, lost six two, six three. But to be fair, this woman beat me by quite a bit last time, so I think I've actually improved.

She's got a killer forehand and it just does me in. It goes really deep or really fast cross court. And it's just it's just impossible for me to get sometimes maybe when I get a bit fitter and faster and lighter. I actually got one tonight. It was a cross court. It was going out really, really fast. But and I actually got it in and I got a winner out of it. But she got a lot more winners out of those things than I was managing to return. But it was a good night. It was a long night, to be fair, with A6263 score, it doesn't quite show how much of a battle it was. A lot of those games weren't up being deuce or 30, 40 or even more than one deuce. So it's not really indicative of how the game went. And as I said, it wasn't a wasn't a slaughter. I didn't get my butt kicked. I think I did all right. I think I actually discovered myself. I think I think I've discovered something about myself over the last the last few months of playing tennis. I think I have I have something I want to call assumption affliction. That's not really a word or really a term or a medical term, but it's this thing where you you see the ball coming and you assume it's going to go out and you just watch it go in and bounce out and you're well and truly within reach.

But you just assumed that it was going to go out or you hit a really good shot and you go stand back and go, That was a great shot. That person on the other side of the net, they're not going to return that and they run in to return it because you're just standing there on a baseline watching it. There's other assumptions. You know, the opponent can hit a ball and look at it and go. I can't get that. I'm just assuming I can't get it. And sometimes they actually go for it anyway. And I wound up getting these balls and I let far too many of those things slide. So that's another thing to add to my wish list of things to improve in my tennis game, which is becoming quite a long list anyway. Onward down the road to my goal for next year, I am going to lose some weight over the next month or two. I'm hoping that will be about ten kilos. Maybe that's wishful thinking. Or maybe it's an assumption that I'm going to stick to something like not anything as I really want to eat. I turn my Garmin Sports Watch on while I was playing because I was interested to see how much running I actually do and how fast I go. Garmin's really clever because when you stand still for a while or don't move, it doesn't actually add it to you.

It takes it into account and it's giving you your stats. During the course of my game, I ran 2.4km with an average pace of seven minutes and 21 seconds/km, which is, it seems slow, but you're doing a bit of walking, a bit of standing. And, you know, Garmin does its best. But I played for an hour and a half and I was only moving for 17 minutes and 42 seconds, so I wasn't actually moving that much, which makes sense because quite often you're standing there or you're serving or you're picking up balls or you're having a drink, so it makes sense. Garmin also said, says that I burnt 899 calories, which is pretty it's pretty good. I think that's more than I would have thought. My average heart rate was 146 beats per minute. And yeah, so I think that's an interesting metric to, to keep an eye on. When I when I play these games, I'll set my watch off and see if that changes over time. So as I get lighter and lose a few kilos, maybe my average pace will go faster and maybe my distance will be longer, for example, and maybe my average heart rate will go down. It'll be good to take that information along with to my journey to the games next year and see how that improves over time or even if it improves over time. Thanks for coming by and we'll talk to you next time. This is double fault. I'm Andrew.