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Heather Watson opens up about her emotional eating habits & preparing for Wimbledon
Heather Watson sat down with WH to talk training, fuelling and keeping her headspace in check
She reveals that she can burn up to 3000 calories in one tennis match
She gets an average of nine hours sleep per night
Wimbledon is in full swing, and while she's now been knocked out by Germany's Jule Neimeier, Britain's last standing woman Heather Watson put up one hell of a fight. We caught up with her to find out exactly what her training regime entails.
Food is key, and while she describes her diet approach as 'strict', what she does eat sounds delish.
'Breakfast is a shake made with frozen banana or berries, a spoonful of high-protein fat-free yoghurt, skimmed milk and cacao nibs. Lunch may be salmon with quinoa, spinach and tomatoes and a drizzle of olive oil, while for dinner I love creamy pasta with prawns and scallops,' she tells us.
But her food certainly isn't being used to fuel a day of tapping away at a laptop like a lot of the rest of us.
'Normally, I train all day on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, I do a half day on Wednesday and Saturday, and I have Sunday off,' she tells WH. 'On full days, warm-up begins at 9am and I’ll hit the court for two 90-minute tennis sessions – doing drills and hitting the ball – interspersed with up to two hours of fitness.
'The latter can be any form of exercise that doesn’t involve holding a racket, such as running, cycling, swimming, boxing and strength training.'
As with any pro athlete the balance between food and training is finely tuned.
'I use a heart-rate monitor to check I’m fuelling myself correctly – during training, I can burn 1,000 calories in a two-hour practice session, whereas in a 90-minute match it can be almost 3,000. That’s because of the additional stress at a tournament – the way stress hormones burn through calories is huge.'
All those high stress conditions require a serious approach to recovery. Watson explains that she relies on good sleep above all else. 'To aid my recovery during tournaments, after the match I’ll shower and eat within 20 minutes, stretch and have a 10-minute ice bath. But it’s sleep that’s key – I’ll try to get nine hours a night,' she says.
'If I’m struggling to nod off, I’ll tell myself that if my body didn’t want it, it obviously didn’t need it. I can’t let anything affect my headspace.'
Back on the food front, like so many of us, back in the depths of the lockdown, Watson's emotional connection with food lead her to seek comfort in eating.
'I’m a food lover with the biggest appetite – and during the first lockdown, I gained quite a lot of weight because my activity levels nosedived and I was emotionally eating a lot,' she says.
Yes, very relatable content.
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