From on-court training to lung-bursting sprints, gym and yoga studio work - Andy Murray

Andy Murray has added four kilograms of muscle in the past 12 months. He put his body through hellishly punishing twists, tweaks and bends inside the exercise equivalent of a kiln. And the results are showing, as he is challenging the top players for the top prize.

From on-court training to lung-bursting sprints, gym and yoga studio work, Andy Murray has worked tirelessly with his dedicated team over the past 12 months to transform himself from tour danger man to a genuine contender for the top spot in world tennis.

Perhaps the most symbolic of his rise was his second round performance in the US Open (he reached the final). Andy Murray had beaten Jurgen Melzer of Austria in five exhilarating sets, having been within two points of a defeat that would have rendered so much of his back-breaking effort of the previous nine months more than a touch wasteful.

Perhaps as he stepped up to serve, at 5-5 in the third set tie-break on the Grandstand court at Flushing Meadows, trailing by two sets to love, what flashed through Murray’s mind were those 400-metre interval sessions (75 seconds on the track, 75 seconds recovery time), all that core work, the Bikram yoga sessions when he put his body through hellishly punishing twists, tweaks and bends inside the exercise equivalent of a kiln. With a guttural roar, he unleashed a 138 mph serve. Melzer was rocked back on his heels; the match had turned. Murray would go on to win in the fifth.

At match’s end, he flashed his right bicep, something he had done at Wimbledon after his fourth-round victory over the Frenchman Richard Gasquet, the most momentous recovery from two sets down he had achieved before his triumph over Melzer. It was meant as a gesture not to torment the already tormented but to show to the team he had assembled to take care of his physical welfare that he had done all they had demanded of him, and more.