Change of season means a change of schedule

The USCA Lady Pacers are into their off-season! A change in season means a change inNCAA rules, which means a change in our schedule. We now have fitness scheduled four times a week and you must go to at least two of these sessions. Besides fitness, we have a two hour team practice once a week, and a singles match against another player on the team. We are also required to hit on our own at least two more times per week. 

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but with us more than half way through the semester it’s quite busy with school work. Each player has to manage their time well to be able to meet their training requirements. On the upside, it makes it really easy to see who is motivated to play and improve and who needs to be motivated which is good to monitor with our season starting in January. 

If you're thinking about making a new training schedule, also think about this: "how does your diet affect your performance?" Most of us are working, in school, and a high performance athlete - doing all that requires A LOT of energy. Each of our energy needs are different and our bodies respond differently to the food we put in it. This makes the food you eat a very personal as well as important aspect to your success! 

I’m not going to say what you should and should not eat (everyone and their uncle’s dog has an opinion on that these days), but I am going to say that maybe you should think about what you eat.  A good idea is to try journaling what you eat for a week and see how your performance changes. You may realize on the day you ate three chocolate bars before practice you didn’t play very well, but the day that you had a bowl of pasta for lunch your practice was great. Monitoring it may cause you to change your eating habits which may also cause you to see improved performance on the tennis court! 

I challenge you to try record what you eat for one week and see how it affects your performance. You may think of recording your findings in a table like this, or simply use your journal.

	Sun.	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.
Breakfast
Snack
Lunch
Snack
Dinner
Notes on Performance

 Try it out and your tennis may take a big jump by realizing what you eat can really change your performance.