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By,Paul Landi, Personal Trainier at Moore
While I am an advocate of young athletes playing multiple sports, I understand and appreciate the dedication many have to developing their skills in a specific sport like tennis. Playing multiple sports gives the body different types of stresses and helps avoid overuse injuries and builds a more versatile athlete. An alternative to multiple sports would be to utilize various training methods to optimize speed, strength, power, and conditioning. Combining those methods with optimal recovery time and adequate flexibility work is essential for the athlete to reduce the risk of injury and achieve their long term goals, not just get ready for the next tournament.
As a Pat Etcheberry certified trainer and a 10 year employee of Moore, I have been very successful in training nationally ranked and high level High School and College tennis players. I have experience first- hand that using all the right disciplines results in a well rounded and successful athlete.
A properly written and applied strength program can help to improve specific muscles structures involved in tennis. An appropriate speed and agility program can complement the strength program and help the athlete improve footwork and agility. The athlete will not only get to the ball fast, but they will stay fast through the last point of the match. These two components combined with timely implementation of power development techniques, will help the athlete hit through their shot with more force and efficiency. Maintaining a good focus throughout the program on flexibility will allow the athlete to move freely. The flexibility will enable the athlete to use all the tools in their arsenal without restriction due to tight joints or muscle structures. An added benefit is a decrease in injury potential and minimized soreness and pain.
Tennis specific strength is easily over looked, due to the fact that a tennis athlete doesn’t want a bulky, restrictive build, or unnecessary weight to have to carry around the court. Specific strengthening for tennis is so much more than simply applying a body building routine to build size and strength. The exercises must be chosen and utilized to not only improve strength for performance, but to also minimize injury risk. A major component is core strength. Core strength must be improved to help with strength and power during ground strokes, serves, overheads, and volleys. It must also be strengthened to help protect the spinal column during all of the above. Upper back and shoulder strength must be improved to help all strokes, and volleys, as well as protect the shoulders during all of the above. Low back strength must be improved to help protect the low back from the brute force applied to the spine, during serves especially, but ground strokes as well. Leg strength must be improved to help with strength and power of shots, and to help with conditioning during movement on the court. Legs must also be strengthened to protect the athletes’ knees during the pounding and cuts being made around the court. Every tennis athlete wants to avoid ACL or cartilage injuries. Specific strengthening is much more than just lifting weights to get bigger and stronger.
Tennis specific speed and agility is more than just running on the road or the track, or running suicides on the court. Specific speed and agility needs to involve training “first step quickness” to improve reaction time and minimize wasted motion. It needs to involve visual cues to react to, whether that is dropping a ball to react to, or mirroring an opponent during footwork drills. Ladders and cones are a great idea if they are set-up to mimic tennis specific movements, like attacking to a forehand or backhand, not just lateral or forward and backward suicides. When Pat Etcheberry teaches proper footwork around the court for speed, I combine that with MOORE’s philosophy for appropriate techniques to change directions safely, and optimally stay fast and protect the athlete. Time durations must also be taken into account. The athlete should be working for roughly the time a typical point could last and only resting the amount of time typically between points. As the athlete progresses the work times should be increased, and the rest time decreased. This way the athlete will be used to working for a longer duration with less rest, thus decreasing fatigue levels during a match
Tennis specific Power development is more difficult to explain. Power is defined as (Force X Velocity) which translates to (How fast can you move a resistance?) In this case the resistance would be either the racket head or the athlete themselves. How fast can you swing the racket, or how fast can the athlete get around the court and hit through their shots. This can be improved several different ways. Gaining power to swing the racket can be improved by utilizing medicine balls to mimic the rotational motion of a ground stroke. You can also slam the ball down to mimic a serve or overhead shot. Improving the overall lower body power of the athlete can be attained by utilizing different hops and jumps in specific moderation. An athlete can also improve their power by performing different explosive lifts (for advanced athletes ONLY!) As Pat Etcheberry teaches proper hip positioning for a powerful closed stance forehand, I combine that with MOORE’s teachings of proper posture mechanics of your core to optimize power transfer through your lower body into the racket head. These explosive training techniques used in moderation along with the speed and agility techniques mentioned above will definitely help improve overall power in the athletes’ game.
Properly combining all the training elements creates a very well rounded athlete. Though without a proper stretching and flexibility plan, the athlete will not achieve all the benefits and could experience muscle tightness and soreness. Specific flexibility must be utilized to help keep the athlete on their feet, and progressing. A foam roller is an excellent tool to help roll out any tight muscle bellies on the athletes’ legs, hips, and back. Lower body stretches need to be used as well, to help lengthen the hamstrings, glutes, and hip flexors to keep the hips mobile and pain free. The athletes back can get very stiff from all the running and swinging. To loosen up their back, the athlete can lie on their side, with their knees tuck in front and rotate their upper body back to try and be flat. This will help stretch out their lower and mid-back. All stretches should be done for a minimum of 30 seconds, and only to the point that the athlete just feels a stretch. Don’t be overly aggressive with any stretches or it will be counterproductive, causing more stiffness and discomfort.
A properly written and implemented tennis specific program should include all of the above elements to improve the all around athlete and help them improve their game and stay safe on the court. Working with Pat Etcheberry, and Moore has helped me to take multiple disciplines and combine them to complement each other extremely well. Taking multiple disciplines not only helps the athlete to become more versatile, but the trainer as well. Don’t be afraid to step outside the norm to try and grow as an athlete and a person.
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