Practice! Practice! You Talkin' Bout Practice?!

Hola! Good to see that my Spanish is coming around right? Trust me, I know a few more phrases than that. I hope to be able to do a whole blog in Spanish before this season is all said and done. Hopefully that goal will become a reality after I work with our tutor. Yes, a tutor, which is ashame since I have taken Spanish in school since I was in kindergarten. It was almost my minor in college. This situation reminds me of a funny story back when I went to USC. I had a Spanish tutor tell me that I would starve in a Spanish-speaking country. Ha Ha Ha! If she could see me now. I am grocery shopping, catching cabs, and conversing with the natives in Spain! Jokes on her.

Well lets see, it has been about two weeks. I cannot believe I have been here for only two weeks. It seems like I have been here much longer, but that is due to the fact that we are only training right now. No games yet. So there is sort of a preseason feeling to all this. There are no games, its just training and getting a feel for each other out there on the court. We practice twice a day for about 2- 2 1/2 hours. So I wake up at about 8 am, grab some breakfast, and head out the door at about 9:15 for our 9:30am practice. Practice is pretty much focused on ball control and conditioning. My two favorites! And if you know me, you know I am lying when I say that. Being a middle blocker, my expertise is in protecting the front line as much as possible through attacking and blocking. You rarely see me in the back row passing (bumping) or digging. I'm 6'2. and its hard enough to bend down to tie my own shoes. But its great to be an all-around player and as much as it is uncomfortable for me to do it, I know it is making me better in the long run. Adversity builds Character! Plus who doesn't love conquering something they are supposedly not good at.

After morning practice its really important to put food back into my body. I usually sweat out about 2-3 Ibs every practice. Not exaggerating at all. I can wring the sweat out of my shirts. I call it my Patrick Ewing Syndrome. After lunch comes my favorite part of the day. Siesta! Its a tradition in Spain to take a short nap in the early afternoon after your midday meal. Usually stores and businesses are all closed for this past time. I think its great and we need to adopt this siesta time in the States as well. Our afternoon practice starts at 4pm. The gym's temperature is blazing by this time of the day, but nothing I cannot handle. The girls and coaches have been very accommodating to us. Sometimes we play American music and the other day we played basketball. Yay! Some days its hard because I do tend to miss a lot of things in translation. They are pretty understanding and encourage us to speak in Spanish as much as possible to ease the transition. The other day I was in a drill and I said something in German and totally forgot I was in Spain.

As much as an athlete loves to practice and get better, we also love to go out and show what we have been practicing for and play games. I believe there is about 5 or 6 more weeks until our first season game. It gets pretty redundant and repetitive after awhile. But you have to understand that whenever I slack off, someone else in some other gym is busting theirs so they can kick mine. Someone once told me that the acronym for FORD was Fix Or Repair Daily. I guess that's why after all of the tweaks and practice and daily repairs, I am still BuiltFORDtuff.


Our Practice Facility