tennis conditioning

Across the globe, tennis is a game in which many people readily participate in. Whether at a recreational, social, competitive or professional level, the game involves various complex movement patterns, moving in all directions that include a great deal of strength, speed, power, balance and endurance. Just by watching a game of tennis at a professional level, one can really appreciate the great amount of strain that is put on the body, especially when games last upwards of 3 hours. Unfortunately, as with most sports where this is long standing time of physical strain, comes a high risk of injury. There are many factors that can predispose a player to wrist, ankle, knee, hip spine, shoulder and elbow injuries such as differences in bio-mechanics and poor physical condition, equipment, weather conditions, muscular and structural or postural imbalances and repetitive movement strains on joints. In the general population, there is approximately about five injuries per 1,000 hours of participation, and 33 injuries per 100,000 tennis players require hospitalization. Thus, the importance of strength and conditioning for injury prevention is overwhelming. However it must be specific to you, the sport and your weaknesses otherwise the conditioning program will create your injury! And on top of that you are unlikely to play well without the best conditioning methods and techniques. In this article, I will look specifically at the role of conditioning to improve performance and why just using a random approach to strength and conditioning will set you up for injury and poor performance.

Read More