Hard-working Sloane Stephens overcomes ‘judgy world'
The 2017 US Open champion, Sloane Stephens, talked to Sports Illustrated about her intensive training routine and how people tend to judge only what they see, ignoring the background sweat of a tennis player like her.
There is no surprise in the fact that Sloane is one of the fittest players on the tour. She trains five days per week to keep her physique on point. The American described how her training looks like: “A lot of plyo, a lot of cardio, obviously because I play a very cardio-intense sport. During the season it's more like strength and maintenance type of stuff. Because there's only like a few times during the year where you can like actually train.”
Besides the tough training sessions, recovery and relaxation play a big role in Stephens life. “I like after a workout just to lay there and do nothing and just contemplate my whole life, just for fun. Biofreeze (a pain relief medicine) is very convenient to just spray on before I workout and roll on after and just kinda lay around in like bed, but still be able to get in the recovery part of it.”
The American also admitted that she likes playing Bingo with her fiancée, Jozy Altidore: “Yeah, I love bingo. Super fun, relaxing. I can go with my boyfriend, well fiancée, you know what I mean. It's just like fun and something to do. [I go] whenever I'm home. It's kinda hard to go now because it's like in the middle of the season, but in the offseason, I can go like once a week at least.”
In spite of her efforts behind the scenes, Stephens feels like people fail to see what obstacles a tennis player has to face to perform in front of them: “It's not just like 'Oh you go out there and play and everything is great. You have to warm up, sometimes you play doubles, sometimes you're in all the tournaments and you go to the next city like a few days before. I think it's just really tough and most people don't see how it ... they don't see all the tough parts. They just see playing and they're like oh my god!”
“People are just like ‘Oh you're fat because you're not working out’. And I think a lot of people judge very heavily on just visually what they see and they forget that people are human and they're going through things and like with health issues and just things in general”, said the US Open former champion.
However, Sloane overcame all the taunting, even if she admitted it wasn’t easy: “It took me a while [to deal with it] because there's a lot of ... it's very judgy, it's a very judgy world so that's very tough but I think back like, OK whatever, if someone calls me fat, then that's just the way it is.”
from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2LLqwh2
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