Ladies Hockey: a week in a life

As new members of the Team Warwick Performance Programme, and as Club of the Year 2016, Ladies’ Hockey are certainly feeling the pressure to perform.

There’s definitely one match in particular that’s playing on all of our minds: our showdown with Coventry during this year’s Varsity Super Saturday.

Hockey, like the university overall, have an unblemished Varsity record, but with Cov absolutely smashing their league (yes okay, it is 3A) and Warwick 1s still finding it tough in 1A (understatement), this year’s clash is certainly full of unknowns.

We can, however, take confidence in the fact that as part of the TWP programme, Head Coach Kali Takher and Strength and Conditioning Coaches Chris and Richard have been putting us through our paces since the moment we stepped foot on campus back in September. From early morning fitness sessions to hours spent out on the pitch, here is a taste of the average week of a hockey girl on the TWP programme as we prepare for Varsity.

On-pitch Training: Twice weekly, Mondays and Fridays. This is two hours of drilling and grilling by Kali Takher, hockey extraordinaire and Olympic athlete. These sessions are essential for team bonding, tactics, and skills, and are essential to making our match play slick.

TWP Fitness: Monday 8-9 am with Chris. Now, this is usually circuit training with a spot of that classic ‘roller netball-hockey’ thrown in for good measure – expect burpees, mountain climbers and a whole lot of sprinting. This is critical in ensuring that during the last five minutes of a game, our intensity does not waiver. Bleep test anyone?

TWP Strength and Conditioning: On Tuesdays, Richard puts us through our paces bright and early at 7am. This is in the purpose-built Godiva gym used by TWP athletes; each team is given a conditioning programme tailored specifically for them. We focus mainly on fighting-rotation and lower body strength, with Rich’s special core circuit inevitably finishing us off each week.

Matches: As well as big BUCS Wednesdays, all Ladies’ Hockey teams play in the Warwickshire League on a Saturday. This is a chance for us to hone our match play for BUCS clashes -maybe testing a new formation or set-play – and get in that all important extra fitness. There’s nothing quite like two matches a week to test our teams.

As you can see, the Ladies Hockey 1s are extremely active five days a week as part of the performance programme. Fortunately, TWP also provide recovery sessions and advice that run alongside this intense schedule, giving our girls the opportunity to partake in pool recovery sessions and free physiotherapy appointments as an aid to maintaining their hard work.

With all this is in mind, it has to be said that Ladies’ Hockey have certainly benefitted greatly from a demanding yet enjoyable programme: come our Varsity push on 25 February, we will be raring to go. We have sweated, push-pressed, depth-jumped and 30-30 shuttled our way to February and we will continue to push ourselves to the maximum until the face-off with the old enemy at the end of the month.

Join us at The Place on Super Saturday to see how we fare.