Editor's blog...

25 February, 2008 | 13:02

Solid day of training for Andy at Roehampton today - the philosophy that getting fitness under your belt when you can is definitely alive and well…

When he arrived at around 10:30am, Judy was in the building working with some of the little kids, so he headed down to quickly let her listen to a voicemail message he’d got from his little cousins…

….I haven’t heard it, but seeing as Cora and Ailsa are both five, it’s probably very cute. He loves it.

Mind you, no time for hanging about, because Andy Ireland was waiting to loosen up the muscles…

Sadly for AI, he missed Treacle on the weighing scales. It’s not a moment Andy would ever miss…

Treacle’s target weight of (under) 80KG’s slipped over the weekend. He reckons it’s because the original reading was taken from a different set of scales. I’m not convinced, but thanks to the British Institute of Heavy Objects for the loan of their scales all the same.

Anyway, from Treacle’s fitness battle to some pre-hit exercises. Not sure of the science part here, but it’s plenty of stretching and aimed directly at tennis players…

Right after that, Andy Ireland was back out to do something with Andy’s knee. It’s a two stage process that involves (1) drawing on the knee…

Then (2) measuring it…

Might not look scientific, but the staff keep a close eye on his knee just to make sure everything is fine. Prevention is better than cure and all that…

Once that was done they headed out to the courts - for a solid three hours.

The guys covered everything under the sun: approach shots, serves, volleys, forehand/backhand drills, smashes - you name it, they did it…

So you know, Treacle has this daily routine which involves winding Andy up about something, anything actually. Typical banter something along the lines of “nah, you couldn’t do that, couldn’t hit that, couldn’t ace me X times” etc.

Sadly for Treacle, he normally does. Treacle laughs it off…

…If only laughing burned calories…

Something else I’ve noticed is that a funny thing happens to the dynamic of the court after about three hours: Andy’s up for doing something else, but the old guys start to grab a bit of ‘lean time’…

Not sure about the thoughtful stare there guys…

Hitting over and done with, everyone headed down for lunch at around 3pm, so late in fact that the kitchen had closed. Opportunity for Treacle to catch up on some reading whilst the kitchen staff very kindly rustled up some more pasta…

That’s Treacle’s ‘I’m hungry, feed me’ look.

Andy was a bit preoccupied - turns out he’s getting this old school arcade machine with hundreds (literally) of the classic games all bundled together in the same unit.

He read them all out from his phone whilst Treacle and I took a trip down nostalgia lane on the computer games front; If you remember Frogger or Paperboy, you’ll know how excited we were at this point….

Plenty of time to let the food digest, and then back upstairs to the gym to finish off with another pretty testing session. First part of that involved a load of 40/20’s: I’ll explain what a 40/20 is so you never make the mistake of doing them.

In a nutshell, the treadmill gets set to an incline of ‘6′, the speed gets set to 16KPH, and you do a load of ’sets’ where you run for 40 seconds, then jump off and rest (if you can call it that) for 20 seconds.

In Andy’s case today, that was 15 sets, after over three hours on court. The guy was pushing it, but don’t worry; all the stuff he does is very closely monitored by Matt and Jez Green.

And, as you do, nice to finish with some swiss ball press-ups…