Kertu Laak (22)

Hei, tüübid! Kirjutan vahelduseks ka kallis emakeeles, sest 1) miks mitte ja 2) mul tuleb enda arvates see palju paremini välja. Ja tegelikult tahan ju just eestimaiseid fänne oma Itaalia eluga kursis hoida.

Aeg on siin lennanud kiiresti ja juba vähem kui nädala pärast alustame Serie A1 liigamängudega. Oleme timminud vormi trennides - kus, muide, on olnud minusuguse põhjamaise hinge ja keha jaoks ikka LIIGA palav - ja ka sõprusmängudes. Samuti osalesime Itaalia Superkarikas, kus jäime pidama veerandfinaali. Andunumad fännid ilmselt lugesid, kuidas ma olude sunnil kaheksandikfinaalis põhikuuikusse sattusin ja ütleme nii, et oma ära tegin. Üle 20 punkti teha oli megalahe! Kuigi fänne saalis polnud, ootasid nad meid maskidega spordihalli aia taga, kaasas plakatid ja kõva hääl. Tegelikult oli nende kohalolu juba enne mängu algust kuulda ja ka tunda - mingi hetk lendles ninasõõrmetesse mingisugune pürotehnika õrn aroom, ja me olime üsna ehmunud, et mis nüüd põlema on pandud… aga treenerid olid rahulikud: “Ah, need on lihtsalt fännid.” Veerandfinaalis meil kahjuks sama hästi ei läinud, kui pidime 1:3 Bustole alla vanduma. Seega jäime ilma kogemusest mängida Vicenza linnas vabaõhuväljakul Final Fouri… aga tagantjärgi targana polnudki see võib-olla minekut väärt, sest vabaõhuväljaku taraflex muutus õhtuniiskuses libedaks ja mängud liigutati ikkagi siseruumidesse. Poleks arvanud, et ka võrkpallis võib ilm vingerpussi mängida.

Kuigi kätte on jõudnud juba september, ei ole kliima oluliselt jahenenud. Ainult öösiti ja hommikuti on külmemat õhku tunda, päeval on temperatuur endiselt 30 kraadi ringis. Suurematel higistajatel, nagu mina, on targem trenni alati üks varusärk kaasa võtta, et 2+ tunnnise trenni lõpuks saaks kaks särki ligumärjaks liigitada ja hiljem rohkem pesu pesta.

What about Covid? Still here! Testitud on meid üsna tihti ja kahjuks pean nentima, et ninaneelud ei tundu surkimisest eriti suurenevat. Iga kord on sama ebameeldiv. Meie seas pole seni ühtki positiivset tulemust ette tulnud, loodame, et nii ka jääb!

Üldises tänavapildis on asi üsna lihtne - siseruumides tuleb kanda maski ja paljudes asutustes mõõdetakse enne sisenemist ka kehatemperatuuri. Inimesed on olukorraga harjunud ja mõistavad “uut reaalsust”. Itaalia on vaikselt kevadisest šokist paranemas. Maske meil jagub, üleliia ja liiga pikalt me avalikes kohtades ei käi ja ühistranspordiga ei sõida (õnneks on meile auto antud!). Said vist enamus põhiküsimusi nüüd vastuse.

Nagu mainisin, ootab esimene liigamäng ees tuleval nädalal. Kohe esimesena võtame ette pika bussireisi ja läheme külla Perugiale, kellel on kokku pandud väga korralik mängijate list. Aga ega meiegi papist ole. Ilmaasjata me 6+6 tundi ratastel veeta ei kavatse ja läheme esimeste tabelipunktide jahile!

Pildil Superkarika kaheksandikfinaali highlight: SOOLOBLOKK!!!

Hey guys! Forgot to tell you all about the friendly matches we had with national team - a rare opportunity in this day and age.

We faced two opponents - Finland and Latvia - over the course of two weeks. So they were all battles between neighbouring countries. In total, we had 6 matches and I think that’s a decent count for a summer without official international competitions, as it later turned out.

Finland, although missing some of their players, was a tough opponent. They played a really fast-paced game and it was very appealing to the eye, but sometimes hard to follow. They had surely put some effort into trying new combinations, too. But how did we manage our own gameplay against them?

First game was a five-setter, from which I remember most vividly the row of jump services in the end of the fifth… which ended with a mistake on a match point. Which led us to losing the match with a two-point difference. To say I was sad after this… But hey, it was AWESOME to play a full match after who knows how long. And in front of a surprisingly big home audience!

For sure, the first match was not tactically what we had been training for during the summer, but after that first match we got more confidence and clarity in our game. Lorenzo had a great way of explaining the “team feeling” on the court - it’s like searching for a radio signal and the goal is to have the “thsthhsathcskahskvkh” sounds between the beautiful song as little as possible! (You really had to be there to hear him do the impression, it was perfect!)

The second match was a “rest day” for me, but I was on again in the third one, where we managed to crush the Finns 3:0! This game showed how we could finally push in the decisive moments and we were really out for one goal. Happy to have this kind of moments on court!

Then we had a couple of days off before Latvia came to visit. By then we were missing a couple of players on our side, but so did the Latvians. And we managed to push the opponents to the ground in all three matches. A very victorious end to our national team summer - an end that came way too quickly.

The European Championship Qualifiers were supposed to happen in the end of August in Belarus, but for safety reasons the games were pushed to January, like most qualifying groups already decided in June. Well. What you gonna do. Life is life. So we all went away to our home clubs and we will be ready to get together again with the NT in December!

But until then… it’s time to do great things here in Chieri!

Time.

It’s a thing that got put into a lot more perspective in the year 2020 and I’m sure that half of the world can say the same.

The period where I got a new viewpoint on the 24 hour day was the period of quarantine after getting back home from Italy. Staying alone at home and trying to make some use out of my day… for 14 days straight. How did I do that?

Fortunately, some chunks of my time were already planned for me. I had a good and inclusive training program sent to me by the staff of Chieri (in case we had to resume the Italian championships) and so twice a day, I got the chance to forget being alone and focus on the workouts. Sure, it wasn’t the happiest feeling doing all this sweating alone, but as time went by I started to enjoy it. I even took my time with the workouts, thinking “if I spend more time on the trainings, I will have less time to kill later!” Funnily enough this mentality kinda stuck with me and so now, doing trainings with the national team, I’m usually the one that finishes last in the weights room. There’s no rush, right?

At one point I started planning my days out by the hour. In the evenings I opened my Google Calendar and tried to find activities for the next day so I had something to do every hour. Whether it was doing laundry, eating lunch, or trying TikTok dances (yes, I did that). And if I finished my thing before another hour struck, I had some free time. You know, for scrolling and stuff.

Now, what did I learn from all the free time on my hands? Surely enough, I have never complained that I don’t have enough hours in my day to do all the stuff I need to do.

I used to think that training camps and athlete life in general was too “busy” for having a side project, like studying a Coursera course or managing a column on a sports news website. Well, I did both of them during quarantine and I still got my twice-a-day workouts done, so I figured to continue the pattern in our national team camp in Kääriku. Turns out that there’s exactly as much free time in a camp as there was in the isolation period at home! I guess my worrying point was if I could still get enough rest and be focused on the volleyball stuff if I had other responsibilities too. But maybe it even helped me get my mind off volleyball in the resting time, and thereby helped with the recovery?

Great to end with this little thinking point, I reckon.

Camping in the middle of nowhere, quite literally!

I’m sure some of my readers have heard of Estonia by now, but how about a place called Kääriku? Probably not. Well, for Estonians, this is a known place - especially among athletes. It’s a legendary sports centre from ages ago and this year it got even better, because it went through a massive upgrade and now has even fancier facilities. Located next to a beautiful lake, Kääriku offers both calming nature and amazing ways to do sports.
This paragraph was not sponsored by the way. It sounds like it is tho.
Anyway, we have been here for a week now with the national team and it’s been super cool. However, the weather has been a bit of a challenge - an unusual temperature of 25-30 degrees daily does not make it easy to work out in a gym with no AC, but hey, at least summer has finally arrived in Estonia! On the other hand, I would say that the coolest place (literally) to be in here is the sports hall - it’s brand new and has even better air than the outside.
So what have we been up to here? In addition to strength and volleyball practises, we have been mostly sleeping and eating. But sometimes also swimming, walking around, and on Saturday we even had a relaxing sauna evening with so much laughing and singing that my abs still hurt.
On Sunday we had some time to do our own stuff, so we decided to try out a SUP yoga class with some girls on a nearby lake (blessed by the dalai lama himself, by the way!) and it rocked! Try doing a headstand… on dry land… and now try to IMAGINE doing it on a shaky SUP board. Tired yet?
So anyway, we are enjoying ourselves here, thanks for asking! Can you imagine how much easier it is to survive that amount of sweating with all these wonderful girls around me? I’m sure I would be dead by now if I didn’t have them by my side. They might be laughing in practise about how much I sweat, but I know they’re laughing with me, not at me. And we are laughing with each other literally all the time.
To take you guys more into detail, I’ll tell you exactly how much it helps. I was upset after a practise because I expected more of myself, and I didn’t really know how to stop making mistakes. I got stuck in the “end result” and instead of focusing on what to do before an attack, I was already thinking about whether it would end up as a mistake or as a point. Not a great situation. So I was disappointed after the practise and I knew I didn’t have the attitude that would be helpful for the others, too. But I opened up about it straight after the practise. To my teammates. I realised that some of them had had the same problem, and some of them thought my performance was actually ok. Seeing the perspective of others made me forget it more easily. And talking about it made me open new areas of the problem in my own mind, too. Solutions started bubbling up. We had some laughs in the evening and next morning, and by the next volleyball practise I had a new breathing.
Moral of the story? Environment helps so freaking much. Talk about stuff with people who listen. People around you can help you in more situations than you realise.
Why do I know this? Because this team is freaking awesome. I’m so grateful to be here. You guys rock.

Photo shows a smaller edition of our assistance coach. Oh, and the dream team is also there.

A post in English, because why not. So what have I been up to lately?

I stayed my 2 weeks of quarantine in our old house and I really stayed there for the whole 14 days. At first I followed the club’s program - circuit trainings, shoulder and core exercises. Using my body weight and elastic bands, with the occasional help of a jumping rope. I also did some biking around the town and I even wore a face mask (but I covered it with a bandana so I wouldn’t scare the passers-by). And I walked in my garden, so when it was time to leave there was quite a trail left near the fence. Mom and dad brought me food and they even stayed for lunch, which we had in our yard at a safe distance of course.
After quarantine I moved back into my real home and I started to use the possibilities of the home gym my brother has built - a really good thing considering all public gyms were still closed at the time. I got to do a couple of Chieri’s gym programs, but after a while I switched to the programs of our national team. Team Estonia gave me directions for weights and cardio, just like the club had done before.
Working out alone like that is quite dull for a team athlete like me. Motivating myself when there’s no teammates coming to practice turned out to be pretty challenging. Sure, in the end we made a couple video trainings with my friends in the national team Hanna and Silvia - and it helped a lot! And by the way, from some point I managed to get into the mindset of “If I work out, I will have 2 hours of my day spent”. Which shows of course how bored I was with all this unlimited free time. I started learning Italian in Duolingo (so I wouldn’t forget all of it) and recently I found an interesting course in Coursera called “Social Psychology”. Gotta spend the days somehow, right?
And of course it was crucial to think about the development of the team. I want to be in the best possible form when we meet with the national team again. It’s a cliché, but it’s true - a time like this makes you stronger, whichever side of you it might be. I can already imagine the joy I will feel when we get the team together again. And how much more patient I will be - no small inconvenience will upset me ever again!