January was for us about goal-setting. We had talks with all our players about the upcoming season and all the goals and objectives they would want to work on and accomplish during the year. We drew up tournament schedules for every player and in February we started our preparation.

We believe that for every goal you wish to achieve, you need to have an action plan which is a set of process goals or small steps leading you closer to your vision. For every day and month of training, there is process goals for each and every one of us as goals need to be set on a regular basis, not only at the start of the season. A player needs to have short-term, daily and monthly goals, which are the means of accomplishing long-term objectives.

The underlying idea is that “You need to train how you wish to compete”. For us the quality of preparation is what separates good and average players, so that is why we want our players to have specific training goals for every training session and we expect from them the highest quality of effort in practice. It is the key step towards achieving competition goals, performing optimally in tournaments and developing as players in general.

In February our players took part in two tournaments here in Catalonia. Amina, who is only 13, got to the final of the open category of the Monty tournament, which is a great accomplishment. Aadi reached the semis; Ciata and Paige made it to the quarters. There is plenty of positives and lessons we can take from these performances and just continue consistently working towards our goals. 

Aryan and Simran who joined us in January work hard on their game day in day out and it is great to see how they are improving. In addition, in February we trained with Zac who came back to our academy for a weekly training programme - we look forward to seeing him again!

Zac and Aryan