Simona Halep reveals her weak points and hate for long runs

Simona Halep often looks like an indefatigable player, but behind that status stands a huge amount of training hours spent on the practice court, in the gym and in many other innovative places, that Darren Cahill and co. finds useful for the Romanian player to improve her fitness on.

Now, we know that, while working out, each athlete has to be careful of what exercises they incorporate in their routines, so they won’t hurt themselves. For example, Simona doesn’t like to run for long periods of time, so her team found a way to adapt it to satisfy the two-times Grand Slam winner.

“I never liked running for a long period of time, like running 10 km. My knees and ankles hurt, I am bored, I hated it. So my new team thought I should do more short and intense training. Darren came up with it because he said you don’t really have to run that much in tennis. You have to run in intervals, as we call them, at high intensity. I liked that a lot. It gives you muscle tone, energy and it doesn’t use your joints that much.” Halep said in a feature video made by Banca Transilvania.

Besides running long distances, there are other workouts as well that give Simona a hard time, and these ones involve lifting weights.

“Gym exercises do (use joints) because you’re using your tendons a lot, especially your wrists. When I do them, my wrists, my back and my spine hurt. I have my problems there and if I put heavy weight on my shoulders, my back hurts instantly and I can’t perform at my best for a week or two, so that’s why I try to avoid this type of strength exercises.” Halep said, pointing out her weak points.

However, Cahill doesn’t let Simona Halep leave the gym behind as strengthening the muscles is very important, especially at her level.

“But now I started again, because, as years pass by, I’m getting old, as Darren says. I have to build up my muscles so they could hold my tendons and my bones better.” Halep explained.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/2uKQfiM