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.
How To Add Up To 15km/hr To Your Serve!
There are many things to consider when trying to develop a formidable serve as a weapon.
Obviously technique, practice, ball toss, and even your physical genetic make up play a role in determining your overall service power. But there is one common movement to both male and female players with big serves and that is the ability to produce explosive kinetic energy and explosive internal rotation of the shoulder.
It is in the action of internal rotation that approximately 40% of the racquet velocity is produced at impact.
This is also true within the forehand to generate the heavy top spin used by players like Rafael Nadal. So all you have to do is lots of shoulder internal rotation work right?
No.
Unfortunately it is not that easy. And also this is where many shoulder problems with rotator cuffs will begin to surface.
The rotator cuff muscles are quite small and are predominately stabilizer muscles needed to provide stability to the shoulder and the ability to decelerate the arm so you don’t throw your arm out!
The power really comes from the legs, through the entire body and out through the arm. If you improve your squat you will go a long way to improving your serve as the timing of the muscles used in a squat is very similar to the service action. When a player serves well, they use both of their legs to drive up to give a higher hitting point, but also enabling a much more explosive shoulder over trunk rotation to strike the ball harder.
This is why it is critical to develop your squat technique and strength to eventually transfer this into explosive power. There are lots of factors to consider when trying to improve your squat movement pattern and some people may find it very difficult to progress to their full potential if compensatory weaknesses are not addressed first.
To prevent the article going too long I will not discuss all those factors but you can read more about the squat in this article – Why the knees should go over the toes when you squat
Watch the video below to see what the best method to learn if you want to progress to explosive squats.
Internal Rotation & Rotator Cuff Injuries
Anyone who has played a lot of tennis would be very aware of the forces applied through the shoulder and how easy it can be to develop a serious injury. Careful use of various strengthening exercises is critical to ensure you remain injury free and these will involve pushing, pulling, and rotational exercises.
One thing to be really careful of is over-use of the external rotation exercises commonly used for the rotator cuff. I see a lot of problems with this exercise as explained in my recent article about this as it tends to create stiff trigger points with teres major and infraspinatus if not used correctly. This eventually leads to chronic injuries that can take considerable time to rehabilitate.
As for developing more explosive power with internal rotation, the use of power training is required. However this type of training comes at a high risk if you do not have adequate stability so make sure you are certain your body is up to the challenge before rushing to this.
The Tornado ball (medicine ball on a rope) is by far the best piece of equipment for delivering awesome power as it relies on the speed and force for it to work. The faster and more powerful you are, the better the exercise result.
Of all the joints to injure this is definitely the most complex, as there is just so many potential factors at play, and the fact that tennis requires explosive movements in all directions means you have to look after your shoulders or you will pay a big price. I will not go into detail of all the little things to do for your shoulder in terms of rehab or injury prevention as this article is more about performance, but if you do currently have an existing shoulder injury you will find our special report on shoulder injuries essential.
Click the image below to see more.
Improve Your Leg Drive & Improve Your Ground Stroke Power & Consistency
We have mentioned this already so far and a lot throughout this website but it is really the secret to your game.
Leg drive is what provides the power! Not just for tennis players, but for boxers, javelin throwers, shot put, hockey and even golf. Pretty much anything that needs a throwing action needs significant leg drive with perfect timing and coordination.
It is referred to as the Kinetic Chain that produces a flow of energy through the body from little toe to the racquet.
Watch how low a professional player is when they hit a ball at impact and in their back swing versus an amateur player who tries to use their arms to do all the work. We already mentioned how the squat helps to generate power for the serve but does the squat help the ground strokes in the same way?
Well, yes and no. Let me explain.
The stance in ground strokes versus serving are different, even a forehand to a backhand has a slightly different position and timing to it. In many cases it is more of a lunge than a squat. In ground strokes the back leg and hip are the first part of the chain. They begin trunk rotation and drive the torso upward and forward. This enables the trunk and the arm to build racquet speed. Without the leg drive minimal power is produced.
Exercises that then target leg strength on the back leg moving into an explosive rotation are where you need to focus. Firstly you need to be sure you can complete basic lunges and multi direction lunges with loads before progressing to faster versions.
Once you have done this you can progress to many more complex and specific exercises to fully integrate the body.
Watch the video below to see ideas of how to do this.
Exercises To Improve Your Speed, Agility & Endurance On The Court
Make no mistake that balance and stability is so important to a tennis player. In fact it is important to everyone, for without stability you cannot move correctly.
In order to cover the court as fast as possible, but remain well balanced with the head position in order to hit a perfect shot, the skills of balance, speed, and agility must be practiced and perfected over and over and over. When your center of gravity or mass is lower to the ground you are well balanced and almost immovable.
In tennis nearly every movement is begun with what is known as a “split step”, when the player makes a small jump into the air.
At the top of the jump, the player can make a decision as to which way to move, forward, backward etc. When the player lands, the first step is the slowest and shortest. Meaning that if you can find a way to make this first step faster you are one giant leap forward in terms of your speed around the court. Using exercises with speed ladders, hurdles, cones that require this split step while emphasizing “keep low” will develop an incredible strength and ability to move fast, using split second reactions and skills.
Agility drills are great for helping the tennis athlete to improve these skills.
There are many different hurdles or plyometric exercises you can use, they just have to have a focus on lateral movement and keeping low.
Summary
The days of using traditional strength training exercises, (which by the way are based on body building principles) to improve your sport are over! These exercises serve to make you big and look good, but not move fast, efficiently and in ways specific to your sport. You must use an approach that takes into account ALL of the necessary skills to your game, what your weaknesses are have a program to correct and improve them. We spend considerable amount of time working with many athletes and also in rehabilitation to deliver these programs and provide people with the education that is somehow lost in the community about how to train correctly.
I also encourage you to watch our detailed video on the Complete Sports Conditioning Assessment as this will give you a great idea as to exactly how we prepare Elite Tennis players for competition.
About The Author
Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 20 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.
References
•Movement – By Gray Cook
•Tennis Science – by Maghar Reid, Bruce Elliot, Miguel Crespo
•Athletes Acceleration Speed Training & Game Like Speed – by Lee Taft
•Knee Injuries In Athletes – by Sports Injury Bulletin
•Tennis Biomechanics Manual – by Leigh Brandon & Paul Chek
•Anatomy Trains – by Thomas Meyers
•Motor Learning and Performance – By Richard A Schmidt and Timothy D Lee
•Advanced Program Design – By Paul Chek
•Twist Conditioning Sports Strength – By Peter Twist
•Twist Conditioning Sports Movement – By Peter Twist