A week of tough training but with lots of fun lies behind me. The second week in preparation for the World Championships was a good one.
Every day the training sessions are getting a bit tougher which is necessary with the World Championships to be done in a couple of weeks. Many exercises are based on explosiveness. Exercises in double combinations where you have to move rapidly forward and backwards from the middle of your side of the court playing a flat rally in which you try to get the shuttle on the ground by means of a net push or smash. We also do a lot of consistency training. From a service position we have to keep the shuttle low the first 3 to 4 strokes and then finish the rally off. Fortunately we make good progress in these exercises.
The Friday morning training was dominated by the so-called “Belgiums game”. A true double-game. You can play it either on a half or on a whole court. The back court is out and so is the front court unless you play the shuttle via the upper lining of the net. Then you do get a point. Actually you only cover the big service area of the court. As we were with seven guys we could play a small tournament. Everyone played one match against somebody else having one period of rest. The one with the least points had to clean the hall at the end of the training. As this is my favorite game I didn’t have to worry. I got enough points. But then round two came on the whole court. This is coming close to a single game and the people who know me well know that I played my last real single games when I was a teenager. The punishment this time? The two guys with the fewest points had to play a decisive game. The winner of this game should do a 2 ½ minute “wall sitting exercise” and the loser was the target for an “assy” standing in a handball goal waiting for the other guys to take penalties and hit him on the bum. Of course we all looked forward to the end of the game. It was Jelle Kelderhuis who won the goalie part and we, with a grin on our faces, were ready to give our loyal sparring partner the full blast and a blue ass. Well, I have never seen such bad penalties before, what a group of amateurs we were. One hit the ceiling of the hall and the other hardly reached the goal. The result of this remarkable penalty series was no hit at all. Jelle laughed his head off while Jim Middelburg had a bad time doing his wall sitting. We really have to practise for a next time because this was too easy for the loser of the tournament.
Monday is the draw of the WC in Kuala Lumpur. Last year Dave and I had bad luck when we were meeting Fang/Lee from Chinese Taipei. Hopefully we find some weaker opponents this year. I‘ll get back to you early next week!
Tags: badminton, draw, jorrit de ruiter, Papendal, World Champs