I’m sad to report that Friday wasn’t a whole lot better than all my other days this week. I don’t know what is going on. I don’t know if I’m in my head or if it’s just that my routine has changed too much.
My knee is bothering me. Like, I got a lot of weird stuff happening. But, my paddle is down. I’m catching balls way too late, hitting them at the side of my body instead of out in front. I think I missed 3 service returns in the last game and that was my best game.
It was a rough day. I tried to use different paddles to kind of shake off any funk that’s mentally going on but I started going a little whacko with that.
I do believe it’s all mental. I mean, my knee definitely hurts and that’s concerning. My diet has positively changed but I don’t think either of those things are the actual reason that I am missing the shots that I’m missing.
In these situations, I don’t know what to do to fix it. I mean, I’m not playing tomorrow, I’m just drilling. I’m playing on Sunday but I’ve already questioned how that will go…my brain is just overwhelmed with too many thoughts. I’ve got to figure out a way to let it all go and just go out there and hit the ball.
I do need to figure out what the hell is going on with my knee or what I can wear to make it feel like there’s no real danger when I play. It was a little bit of a rough day but hopefully it’ll all smooth out soon enough.
Thursday – April 20
Well I think my magic has worn off. I played last night and I felt like I played really poorly. I wanted to blame being outside, to blame anything. But all I could really say was, oh, I had a bad day. I’ll get better.
But today I went to drill and I didn’t really have a good day drilling. So, I don’t know if I’m in my head or what. But it wasn’t one of my better performances. I mean it was drilling. It’s not like it’s normal games where I can say, oh man, I missed that shot high or whatever. We play these dinking games and I usually do really well in those strategically. Today, I just got hammered.
I missed shots. I wasn’t ready. And it happened to me yesterday, I got hit in the face because my paddle was down. Here today, my paddle was down again. I don’t know what the deal is with that.
I love a white paddle but my V2 Icon is already starting to stain. I freaking hate that. I like that paddle a lot, but I was really hoping the V2 would have the stain issue ironed out. See where my mind goes? All over the place. A stain on my paddle can consume thoughts.
I know I have to get my paddle around because I got beat a lot by being half a second late on balls I could put away. And then a second late on balls I should block. So I was really, really slow and that’s a problem.
We did our normal dinking drills and we did a cross court drill where we fed to each other’s backhand for a drive, then fed to the forehand for a drop shot. After that we worked our way in and played the point out. We did that for a while and I think we both liked that.
We also did the short rush shots that you drive. That’s always fun. We were lobbing like crazy. I was going to feed her shots to help her work on her backhand put-aways but I did a few of those and I don’t think it was helping her like she wanted. So we switched to volleys and practiced doing those under control.
We went a solid 2 hours and it was a good workout. I do feel like I’m getting in my head a little bit about when I mess up or when I lose these little games.
I’m not getting a lot of games, so I’m happy I get to drill. But then I drill and have a bad drill day and I’m like, oh crap, I need to play a game so I can see if any of this is working. It’s never ending confusion.
