* AGM on Thursday
* Tennis: DnA Tournament Saturday 11 May
* Squash: Club nights & Superchamps
* Gym exercises to improve racket sports performance
* Pilates on the Court: book online
* Welcome to new and renewing members
* May renewals
* Visitor fees
* Our People: Jayne Bailey
The AGM will take place at the club on Thursday 9 May 2018 at 7pm. We look forward to seeing you there.
This Saturday 11 May 3–5pm David is running a DnA (defenders and aggressors) tournament. Contact him on 021 476 606 for more info. Spaces are limited.
No organised club night this Thursday due to AGM. Club day runs Sunday from 1pm, new members welcome.
Winter interclub is now underway and all players will have received information on how to roster their availability for the season. Please register and update your status as soon as possible so team rosters can be made for the season. Any questions please contact Simon at tennisVP@hernebayrackets.co.nz.
For info on junior programmes and coaching contact club professional David Mustard on 021 476 606.
Senior club night starts at 6.30pm on Thursdays. Come along and meet fellow club members. Due to the AGM this will just be a social event with no organiser this week.
Join Jarrod and his team on Friday nights from 4pm to 6pm for coaching, fun games and just a little bit of competition.
The 2019 National Finals will be held from 25-28 September at the following venues;
B Grade – Whakatane Squash Club
C Grade – SquashCity Invercargill
D Grade – Whangarei Squash Club
E Grade – Tawa Squash Club (Wellington)
F/J Grade – Cambridge Rackets Club
For more information visit http://www.squashauckland.org.nz/Competitions/SuperChamps
This is a great starting point for both new and experienced players to ensure you can be confident of the rules.
All players competing in competitive play such as interclub and tournaments are expected to have completed and passed the exam.
The exam consists of 50 multi-choice questions and can be fully completed online through the Squash NZ website. The Club Referee qualification is valid for two years from the time of completion. Both players and non-players are able to complete the exam.
Link to online Club Referee Exam - Click here
List of current qualified Club Referees - Click here
A great video library to help you with your refereeing - Click here
HBPRC Personal Trainer Siggy Brookland continues his series of exercise tips and information for improving racket sports performance
Mastering the push-up
The push-up hands down is one of the most popular exercises of all time when it comes to simplicity and effectiveness. It doesn't require any equipment, just your own bodyweight yet targets a large array of muscle groups. But most people tend to neglect the crucial steps that allow us to build strength in the push-up and perform them safely and effectively.
Push-ups performed with the right technique have huge benefits in yielding long-term shoulder health, durability and performance. But too often people get stuck with two main positions of the push-up, the top and bottom position.
With the top position, the common issue here is proper positioning of the body. Setting a solid plank position is the foundation of the push-up for the best possible chance to perform it with the lowest chance of injury, while developing strength and power. First we want to keep our gluteals (buttocks) and core engaged. Now to position the scapular (shoulder blades) think about 'pressing the ground away'. This allows them to retract and sit in a strong and more stable externally rotated position. And finally the biggest technique flaw, where do my arms/hands go?
Typically people tend to adopt the 90-degree arm position and the trapezius (in the shoulder and neck) shrugging up towards the ears (as seen in the top picture). What this does though, is places the shoulder joint in a vulnerable position often leading to shoulder discomfort, pain as well as over-engaging the upper trapezius muscle which is commonly already an overdeveloped muscle in many people.
In the bottom two photos, you can see that I am in an anti-shrugging position, which creates space between my upper trapezius and ears. Forcing greater activation of the big latissimus dorsi (major back muscle) relaxes the upper trapezius, and loads the shoulders in a more optimal position.
The tall plank is the foundation of a good push up and is often overlooked. So, if you're not too comfortable here yet start spending some extra time developing this position. Some exercises to do this are:
- Tall plank
- Tall plank with shoulder taps
Which are demonstrated in the video below.
The second trouble spot during the push-up is the bottom position. Having the muscular strength to hold and control your body weight throughout the lowering stage as well as pushing back up, out of the bottom of the push up is challenging for a lot of people, especially with proper technique.
So here are a couple of strong exercise progressions to help build push-up strength.Try implementing these in your routine and you will have them mastered in no time.
click the link to check out the video
https://www.brooklandperformance.com/blog/mastering-the-push-ups
Pilates classes are held on Mondays and Wednesdays at 9.30am and Saturdays at 10am.
Need to speak with Pia? Call her on 029 6277 437
5 classes for $50 - Introductory Offer.
"Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness” Joseph Pilates
We also have three new little members that have just signed up.
Calling all May membership renewals. If you could please respond to the email sent from Pia that would be grand.
If you believe your membership is due in May and have not received an email or call, please contact the office. We are keen to have you all back this year!
We love that you want to share our Club with your friends. If they are not a member of the Club, they are welcome but please put $20 cash in the drop box next to the Pro Shop with your name on it if there is no one in the bar or in the office. Perhaps even entice them to join to avoid further visitor fee charges.
Peter Cross considers the achievements of a member who walks the talk.
Eight years ago Jayne Bailey’s comfortable life in Ponsonby was challenged. A former student from a bible college in Kampala, Uganda came calling. During the 16 years since Jayne left Uganda, Emmanuel had become a pastor and set up projects including providing food for street children. He had secured an acre of land and wanted Jayne to return and organise the building of an orphanage and get it established. She refused.
She had good reason to turn down this offer. She had a good job as a graphic designer, a large comfortable house and drove a company car. What she was being asked to do was well outside her comfort zone: the proposed role included fund raising for the build, designing the structure, project management and that’s even before you consider the thousands of decisions involved in getting together the right team to run such an enterprise and Jayne had no expertise in any of this stuff. But Emmanuel wouldn’t take no for an answer and continued to drip feed her with information about the plight of the young women he hoped the project would help and slowly Jayne found herself coming round before finally agreeing to take on this massive undertaking.
I don’t know about you but I’m a glutton for TV programmes like Grand Designs which tracks the progress of couples who buy a dilapidated building or land for a new build and, over a couple of years, the camera crew documents how the poor sods struggle to convert a pipedream into a liveable home tested by inexperience, a shortage of money, unrealistic deadlines and expectations, harsh weather and possibly the arrival of an additional child. More often than not these couple usually come through no doubt helped by the wise words of George or Charlie or Kevin.
But building or renovating a building in Scotland or Wales like ones featured in these shows is chicken feed compared to the task Jayne took on. We’ve put hyperlinks to Project Moroto and Jayne’s inspirational TED talk which gives you a sense of what is there is now but there isn’t much about the struggle getting there.
Jayne is remarkably matter of fact about the difficulties she encountered. Getting materials to the site took forever, concrete had to be mixed manually and she had to watch over her plumber at every stage as not doing so ensured that taps were fitted away from sinks and towel rails put up inside a shower cubicle where they’d get wet. But the local engineer she employed was sound and the first building was erected in 5½ months which is a remarkable achievement.
The site is fenced in and a borehole (well) has been dug so they don’t have to go outside for water. After I’d switched off my recorder Jayne told me something along the lines that if you knew in advance the difficulties you would be facing you’d never start. But start she did and the project evolved in one of the country's poorest regions. She worried about being ripped off as can happen to gullible foreigners but you don’t need to spend more than a few minutes with her to realise she is no soft touch. She made light of her efforts to fund raise and spoke highly of the generosity of Kiwi donors. As far as I can see a lot of this comes down to a belief that the person in charge of this project is someone who identifies what needs to be done then makes it happen.
Four years ago Project Mototo opened and took in 18 girls. That number has since grown to 24 orphans aged between seven and 17 and there are plans to increase the number to forty in the near future. The starting age of seven was decided as they haven’t got the resources to look after children younger than this. They also exclude girls who have a good extended family preferring to take in ones who have been physically and mentally abused or exploited. I wondered if there were on-going psychological problems for young women exposed to such traumas but Jayne tells me it there hasn’t been an issue. Everyone is grateful to be allowed to live in a caring and respectful environment.
Jayne hates the word ‘orphanage’ which I didn’t ask her to clarify but thinking about it since it occurs to me that this word denotes an institution and what she has always strived for is a home. There is a manager who looks after the place especially when Jayne isn’t there but the key appointment is the Muma who cooks and cleans for the girls. The girls each have their chores around the home or in the garden and attend school. Jayne pulled back the sleeves of the Nike jacket she was wearing to reveal colourful bracelets that are produced by individual girls and these are sold to fund projects that girl have started.
I asked Jayne what she missed of Auckland when she is in Africa. She misses her family here of course and the food the rest of us take for granted. What she eats with her girls is basically the same everyday: meals made with maize flour, beans and sometimes rice. They only get to eat meat once a week.
When I embarked on my interview all I knew about Jayne Bailey was a line in an email from Pia suggesting that this was someone I ought to interview and that she’d only taken up a six month membership as she was returning to Uganda. This didn’t prepare me for the story she told.
Before I left the club I poured myself a pint. By this time Jayne had joined a trio of men and was warming up before a game of doubles. She stood out not because she was the only female in this quartet but to my eyes was the strongest tennis player. She struck the ball hard yet it landed unerringly just inside the baseline every time. Work has taken her to many parts of the world and she has played everywhere. Sadly tennis is one more thing that she can’t do in Moroto.
On the other hand Jayne has no regrets at what she took on eight years ago. As she states in her TED talk she was childless but now she has a huge new family. She doesn’t just want to be involved with fund raising but being with the girls and help nurture their growth. She is a remarkable woman and a wonderful addition to our club.
Jayne’s TED talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzQSZmedcfs
Project Moroto website: http://projectmoroto.com/about-us/
Our web site: www.hernebayrackets.co.nz/
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Additional Info:
David Mustard Tennis: www.mustardtennis.co.nz
Double Dot Squash: www.doubledotsquash.com
Pilates on the Court: www.pilatesonthecourt.com
Herne Bay Fitness Personal Training: www.hernebayfitness.co.nz
