Rodney Marshall, a Strength and Conditioning Coach for USTA Player Development, is currently in Europe traveling and training with American star Jack Sock as he prepares for the upcoming French Open. This week, Marshall (pictured above far left) and Sock are at Rafael Nadal's tennis academy in Manacor, Mallorca, in Spain. Marshall is blogging for PlayerDevelopment.USTA.com during his time in Europe. In his second entry, he details Sock's third day of training at Nadal's academy, which included a competitive game of padel tennis that capped off the day.
By Rodney Marshall
It's 6 p.m., and we just wrapped our third training day at Rafa Tennis Academy. Uncle Toni Nadal stopped by today to check out our practice and sent over some juniors as hitting partners for Jack Sock.
It was a pretty physical day on court for Jack, as tennis started at 10 a.m. and finished at 1 p.m. We did three straight hours on court, with 2.5 hours tennis and 30 movements of conditioning as a finisher for Sock. Our goal is to get Jack ready physically for Roland Garros and the demands of three-out-of-five sets.
After lunch and recovery time, we hit the gym for an hour-and-a-half from 3:30-5 p.m. I don't think Jack was pretty thrilled about a lower-body lift after this morning's practice, but we got the work done, and, overall, it was a pretty successful day.
The day was almost over until we decided to sneak in a set of doubles padel tennis. Teams consisted of myself and Sock vs. Troy Hahn and one of the academy coaches. The game is actually pretty physical and lots of fun. Check out the picture. But it was fun, and we split sets, 6-4, 1-6... to be continued.
Now time for dinner and recovery.