Step-up needed in fitness needed to return to highest level according to Murray: "The reality is I need to work harder"

Andy Murray says he needs to work harder admitting that he's not been working that hard since the US Open.

The British player suffered another early exit at the Paris Masters where he was beaten by Gilles Simon. It was only the 3rd time ever Simon was able to beat Murray and it looks even worse when you add the fact that the French player is set to retire after this event.

After the match, Murray admitted that he needs to work harder to combat the cramping issues that keep coming up:

“Having that happen after a set and a half on an indoor court where it’s not particularly hot is not really not acceptable. There’s no guarantee that I win that match, but when you lose matches, and it feels like it’s down to your physicality, it’s really, really disappointing."

He continued:

“It’s nothing to do with my hip. I think just the reality is I need to work harder. Obviously, there’s certain things I can and can’t do nowadays, I need to be a bit more careful with some of the training that I do. But I can certainly do more than what I have done and push myself harder than what I have done recently. What I’m trying to do is extremely hard. I need to do exceptional things to still compete."

Explaining furhter, Murray added:

“If I’m being completely honest, I don’t think the last four or five months that that’s necessarily been happening, since the issue sort of started in Newport, Washington time,’ he said, later adding that he had barely done two proper gym sessions since New York. Usually I would dedicate more time to my training and more time, you know, like training blocks in hot climates and things like that. So it’s something that I’ll have to look at.”