Today was my first time playing since Thursday. We had a new person with our group and he was very nice and pretty good. It’s always fun to play with humble, talented people.
Everyone in this group has something they can do better than everyone else, whether it is lobbing, backhand smacks, trick shots, backhand rolls, serves, poaches, you name it, it’s all an option with this group. But the individuals don’t use that one thing they can do best for every point, that is too predictable. People mix up shots, show variety and try different things to win points. When everyone is doing that it’s awesome. The opposite of that is when people try the same thing, that hasn’t worked in months, over and over. It definitely can cause frustration and has a tendency to mess with the rotation flow.
Today I got stuck in an unfavorable rotation but I did manage to get a few games with some stronger players. I had a play where my opponent hit an amazing lob with a ton of topspin. I thought I could chase it down – I did catch up to it – but that massive topspin kicked the ball too far and I couldn’t do anything. When the ball hit the ground and kicked I immediately stopped from a sprint, planting hard and tweaking my right knee. I’ve been complaining about my knee all month but that time it was an official uh-oh moment.
About 5 or 6 plays later something felt like it got stuck in the wrong position on my knee. That’s pretty concerning because I don’t know what it would be. It’s a brand-new knee, what in the world could be stuck? It was very painful after that. I was babying it, scared to accelerate. I need to correct that, like immediately, because one of my few strengths is my mobility. If I can’t move around, that’s a problem.
I had fun even though I did not play great. I think I lost the majority of my games today. I should be ok, I imagine I can wipe away most of my mistakes as long as my knee straightens up.
I’m supposed to drill later and will need to be careful that I don’t mess up my knee even worse. I’m not playing tomorrow which will give it some time to rest but I think I have to start paying attention to what I do when because this is super concerning.
After I played I took some Meloxicam, iced my knee and added a ton of compression. Everything felt better so I went to my scheduled drilling. It was a good workout with a lot of dinking.
Our 2 friends were there practicing and we played a few games with them. I did feel bad because I was trying to be helpful and suggest that we change our serves so that they can actually work on certain shots and certain things. I think that may have come across wrong as if to suggest that what they were doing was bad. I wasn’t but because I was suggesting a little bit more of collaborative play, with the intent of them working on things, it very easily could have been perceived incorrectly.
In our drill session we dinked and played the driving game which ends up with skinny play. That was a lot of fun (you get 2 points if you let it go out, 1 point if you win the exchange). We also hit each other baseline to baseline shots and then served to each other, working on returns. I had decent control when we were just hitting to each other but on the serves I had a little less success. It was nice to mix in ground strokes to our session because it seems like everyone I drill with only wants to dink. I love dinking but I have a lot of other shots (all of them) that need work.
My knee was mostly alright but I did wear a sleeve for peace of mind. I tweaked it again attempting an ATP (moving to the right) in one of our drills but it wasn’t as bad as earlier in the day. I want to believe something is swollen but I just don’t know. I’ll ice it and take some Advil to try to get it under control. It truly shouldn’t need rest because I had the last 3 days off but I’m off tomorrow so we’ll see if that helps as well.
After I returned from my D.C. weekend trip I decided to hop on Weight Watchers again. My thought that I could do more exercise and eat the same wasn’t playing out like I expected or hoped so I took stronger measures to get that in order. I knew I was getting close to what I would consider the red zone but when I hopped on the scale this morning alarms went off. I had massive (minus 50+ pounds) success with Weight Watchers 2 years ago but I have a little bit of a negative Nellie thought process when it comes to dieting tactics. I always feel like what worked once won’t work twice but I’m going to give it a go and see if it can work magic again. I have a lot of clothes I’d like to wear again and maybe that will help my knee as well.
