COURT IN SESSION

“We have three court work sessions a week, each lasting two hours. On Monday nights there’s a bit of specialist work involved. We have a shooting coach, a mid-court coach, who is also our assistant coach, and then we have Roselee Jencke, our head coach. She obviously oversees everyone, but will take the defenders because she’s a very good specialist defence coach. We’ll split up for about 20 minutes for our zone-specific training. From there our attackers will link with the mid-court. All the while the defenders will still be working, but they like to poach little attackers here and there to ... abuse, I guess! When the defence needs attackers, you know those attackers are going to get double-defended, and that the attacker is going to get killed for that session. But it’s really good. We love it. If you show them up when you’re getting double-defended, it’s great.”

TIME-OFF TUESDAY

“I’ll go and do hot yoga or something on an off day. It just makes me feel so relaxed. It’s yoga for an hour in a room heated to 32 degrees. It’s different to Bikram, which is in 42-degree heat and can last for an hour and a half. My flexibility has improved completely from hot yoga, my awareness of my body and what’s tight has gotten better. I walk out of there happy and refreshed and relaxed. Hot yoga makes sure you concentrate on yourself and listen to your body. They’re so relaxed about it where I go. You can go to some yoga classes where they’re extremely strict. It’s like, ‘Don’t have a sip of water until we tell you you can have a sip of water!’ Flexibility is such a big thing for me because I’m always so tight with the way I train. I’ll go do hot yoga and have a deep-tissue massage in the morning, then rush off to uni.”

WEDNESDAY WEIGHTS

“It’s always an extremely hard day. We start about 3.45pm and finish at 6.30pm. We do strength work, then court work. The strength session is a ‘45-minute-get-in-there-get-out’, working our legs. Because of my knees – I’ve }had a reco and clean-out on my left and two clean-outs on my right – I’ll do single-leg squatting, super-set with a box jump. You have to make sure you’re landing lightly; you don’t want to land like an elephant. You’re using proprioception landing, which is making sure you’re bending your knees correctly, taking care of them and your ankles. The box jumps get our fast-twitch muscles going. Counteracting with the heavy weights, you’re jumping and you’re springing. You’re doing five reps of those

over three sets. You’re leg pressing, box jumping and single-leg squatting. If you’re getting to say, six reps, then your weights

are too light. Again, our trainer would prefer to see us fatiguing and just doing four in the middle with much heavier weights than see us do more reps than he’s asked.”