Fit to Play Tennis: High Performance Training Tips
304
Fit to Play Tennis: High Performance Training Tips
304eBookSecond Edition, Second edition (Second Edition, Second edition)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780983511113 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Usrsa |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2006 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 828,747 |
| File size: | 13 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Carl Petersen is a physiotherapist and fitness coach for players ranging from club-level to ATP-, ITF-, and WTA-ranked pros. He is a former director of sport medicine and science for the Canadian Alpine Ski Team and traveled on the World Cup circuit from 1984 to 2003 as a physiotherapist and fitness coach. He is a partner and director of high performance training at City Sports and Physiotherapy Clinics in Vancouver, Canada. Nina Nittinger is a former professional tennis player, a certified tennis coach for the German and Swiss Tennis Federation, and a mental trainer for professional athletes.
Read an Excerpt
Fit to Play Tennis
High Performance Training Tips
By Carl Petersen, Nina Nittinger
USRSA
Copyright © 2006 Carl Petersen and Nina NittingerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9835111-1-3
CHAPTER 1
The ABCs of Smart Training
Carl Petersen
When designing your training program, it is wise to follow the concepts outlined in the ABCs of smart training. Apply the ABCs of smart training during all off-and on-court training and all daily activities, including school and travel. Following the ABCs will increase training potential, improve skills, improve recovery time, and decrease injury potential.
A1–Athletic Stance and Alignment
Proper athletic stance means being prepared for the sports activity ahead. Think of keeping the knees soft (slightly bent), switch on your core (pelvic tension like a dimmer switch), and keep your shoulders relaxed and down and head neutral. Correct anatomical alignment must be attained and maintained to allow for proper force distribution upon the weight-bearing structures during activity. This can be facilitated by:
• Actively stretching muscles that are usually short and stiff (e.g., hamstrings, hip flexors, calves, and pectorals).
• Actively strengthening muscles that are usually long and weak (e.g., lower abdominals, upper back and posterior shoulder girdle muscles [infraspinatus], and hip external rotators [gluteal muscles]).
Proper alignment starts with excellent spinal alignment. To align your spine:
• Imagine someone pulling you by the top of your head, lengthening out your spine.
• The neck should be long and the shoulders relaxed, back, and down.
Checks on proper alignment include these:
• During movement emphasize correct knee alignment, with knees always tracking over the toes but not going past them.
• When doing lunges or split squats, keep the line of gravity through the pubic bone of the pelvis to avoid shear forces on the pelvic joints.
A2–Adaptive Training
High performance and superior levels of fitness are the result of many months or years of well-planned training. Adaptations occur to the body's systems when they are challenged by new stresses. If the workload is not high enough, no adaptation will occur. If the workload is too high, maladaptation occurs, possibly leading to over-training, overuse, and injury. The following are some principles of adaptive training:
• When designing a training program, one must respect the time frames for anatomical, physiological, and psychological adaptation to occur.
• Regular participation — at least 4-6 days per week — in a planned activity outside of tennis.
• Overload:
* The training load must be high enough to tax the body's systems during a training session.
* Overload encourages physical change and promotes adaptation.
* To achieve overload, the duration of the activity must be long enough to produce a training effect and the intensity of the workouts must increase in a gradual and progressive manner.
* A good rule of thumb is to increase intensity 10 percent per week.
• Regularly scheduling rest or recovery days (at least one per week):
* Helps tissues such as muscle, tendon, ligament, and bone to adapt to the new stresses being placed on them through training and sports.
* Helps prevent staleness or over-training.
A3–Agility Training and Acceleration (quickness) Drills
Playing and training for tennis often find you off balance and in a uncontrolled environment such as wind, playing surfaces, and unpredictable opponents. Tennis requires stops and starts, lateral movements, backpedaling, crossover turns, and pivots. But with the decreased physical education in schools and lack of multi-sport involvement due to early sport specialization, many young players do not get the agility training needed. So, some form of agility and coordination training should be included as part of your daily sessions; you do not want to be an athlete who can play but cannot move. Points to remember when training for agility are these:
• Always start with an athletic stance.
• Agility and acceleration (quickness) drills must be structured so the muscles learn to fire quickly and in a coordinated manner.
• Quickness within two steps in all directions is key in tennis.
• Straight line sprinting may serve a conditioning purpose and helps fire the CNS (central nervous system), but it has little use in tennis.
• Agility and acceleration allow smaller players to be able to compete well and give larger players another weapon in their game.
• Agility can be gained by playing other sports and dynamic games that involve lateral movement and quick stops and starts, or by doing circuit drills that incorporate different exercises.
• Explosive first step side shuffle and crossover steps are essential to tennis quickness.
• You must give your body the opportunity to practice and play with changed and strengthened muscles.
See Chapter 4 for more ideas.
B1–Balanced Training
Balanced training means a correct ratio of time spent on the different components of fitness and performance: flexibility, stamina (aerobic and anaerobic), strength, speed, coordination, and tennis-specific skill exercises. All are important components of fitness and should be included in your program, depending on the phase of training you are in. Obviously, different activities have different demands and will require more emphasis on one type of training than another.
Example:
Each training week or cycle should include the proper amount of rest or alternative activity to allow for adequate adaptation to occur. Training-to-rest ratios vary depending upon the energy systems used, the event or sport, and the personality and training age of the athlete.
B2-Balanced Body Strengthening
Balanced training ensures that equal stress is put on the different parts of the body in different planes of movement. This achieves a good balance of stress for the body's upper and lower extremities and three-dimensional core cylinder. Work both sides equally to get a good balance between:
• Right and left sides.
• Flexor and extensor muscles.
• Medial and lateral rotators.
• Upper and lower body and core.
Example
Strength training should include exercises for all of the above areas. Try 2-3 upper body, 2-3 lower body, and 3-4 core exercises to ensure a good balance.
B3-Balance Exercises
Balance exercises are a fundamental component of functional mobility and dynamic activity and should be a part of everyone's training routine. Working on balance training is even more important as you increase strength and speed because you want to continually reset the balance clock and have the opportunity to practice and play with your newly adapted and strengthened muscles. Balance exercises:
• Work on joint sense (proprioception).
• Reset the balance clock with a variety of exercises.
• Stimulate the complex interactions of the neuromuscular system when incorporated with closed chain and functional exercises.
• Are especially important after injury where there is any joint swelling and decreased proprioception.
• Should be included as part of the daily training plan as most activities depend on an element of coordinated balance in many planes of movement.
See Chapter 5 for more ideas.
B4-Before and After: Sequencing Your Training and Practice Sessions
• Follow a logical sequence from easy to hard training and simple to complex exercises.
Example:
* Continuous running before sprint training.
* General strength training exercises before hopping and bounding.
• Properly sequencing your training and practice during the day is important to avoid them from interfering with each other.
• Correct sequencing also helps minimize central nervous system (CNS) fatigue so you will be better able to learn new skills.
• Sequence your warm up, fitness training, and strength and practice sessions as shown in Table 1.2 to improve your ability to perform.
C1-Consistent Training
Training should be consistent enough to force adaptations to the cardiorespiratory system (heart and lungs) and the musculo-skeletal system (soft tissue and bone). Table 1.1 gives guidelines for the necessary training consistency necessary to induce the desired adaptations. Consistent training means:
• Knowing what you are doing.
• Having confidence in your training program and plans.
• Having confidence in both on- and off-court training plans.
• Being able to justify what you are doing and why you are doing it.
Consistency doesn't mean "the same." You will continually individualize your program based on your needs and you will progress your training based on fitness gains, your goals, and feed-back from your coaches, therapists, and strength and conditioning coaches. Consistency is one antidote to the principle of reversibility: If you don't use it, you'll lose it. The training effect will be lost if training is stopped or spaced too far apart to trigger the adaptations.
C2-Core Control
You must train to improve the body's ability to stabilize the core and generate power outward to the limbs.
• Core musculature helps create movement at the spine and also exerts a stabilizing muscular force to maintain a neutral spine and pelvis.
• Use a variety of movements and training types to ensure a balanced approach to core training.
• Always switch on your core (low background tension — like a dimmer switch of the pelvic floor and lower abdominals) during all exercise and activity including tennis, training, and playing other sports.
• 3-Dimensional core stability is important to give you the strong platform to execute movements with the extremities.
• In health, there is a pre-anticipatory contraction, but with dysfunction, there is a timing delay or absence, so the muscle must be actively switched on by appropriate exercise.
• Remember, efficient movement needs optimal stabilization and requires intact bones, joints, and ligaments; efficient and coordinated muscle action; and appropriate neural responses.
See Chapter 6 for more core training ideas.
C3-Chain Exercises: Closed, Partially Closed, and Open
To understand the concepts surrounding closed, partially closed, and open kinetic chain, view your body as a length of chain. Open kinetic chain exercise occurs when the end of the chain (arms or legs) is not fixed and does not support the weight of the body. Open kinetic chain exercises are best characterized as isolation movements — for instance, leg extension, leg curls, or bicep curls.
Closed kinetic chain exercise occurs when the hands or feet support the body weight. Closed kinetic chain is best referred to as dynamic and functional with the whole body working as an integrated unit. Examples of this would be a lunge or a squat.
Partially closed chain exercises would be any that partially support your body weight and require an integrated response from the muscles of the body. Examples of this would be a push-up position where the hands and feet partially bear the weight or any activity that loads resistance through the hands and arms and into the torso, as when using resistance bands, for example.
In all ground-based sports such as tennis, all of the body movements work within a kinetic chain linkage from the ground through the trunk. Understandably, then, problems most commonly arise with weak, tight hip flexors and weak gluteals. All three types and mixes of kinetic chain training should be utilized based on the needs of the individual and the demands of the sport. Exercises should be performed with the following points in mind:
• Exercises should be done in a controlled, coordinated, and functional manner.
• Exercises should work the hip in an extended position because it is the position of activity and function (see D2).
• Exercises like step ups, split squats, and lunges can be made more functional by adding elastic tubing to partially close the upper core chain.
• Activation of the kinetic chain sling patterns from the legs through the hips and back to the shoulder restores the force dependent motor activation pattern and normal biomechanical positions.
See Chapter 6 for more core training ideas.
D1-Diversity in Drills and Training
Training with diversity means using a variety of methods in your weekly program. For example, aerobic training may use a mix of running, cycling, swimming, or in-line skating to get the desired effect of aerobic fitness. Besides offering a greater range of non-weight-bearing alternatives for training, diverse training promotes development of fundamental skills. For example, core training may use a mix of floor, standing, ball, and cord exercises. Diversify training by:
• Analyzing the sport-specific movements and adding movement and challenging balance in ways that mimic the activity without introducing a high element of risk for injury.
• Altering exercises.
• Altering sequence of exercises.
• Changing the tempo to avoid drudgery and avoid over-training.
• Adding weights, balance equipment, balls, and stretch cords to increase the core component.
• Have specific training goals that make sense and have appropriate application to the sport.
D2-Dynamic Hip Extension Exercises
• Hip-extended strength is the position of function for sports.
• The competitive posture shortens anterior muscles so athletes must have strength and stability into hip extension.
• Training should include exercises that promote both dynamic flexibility and strength.
• This type of exercise improves general fitness and helps you in your normal activities of daily living, such as lifting, stepping, carrying, pushing, or pulling.
• Utilize exercises that focus on connecting the core to the activity and that combine upper body, lower body, and core moves.
D3-Deceleration Control
Tennis requires control during highspeed movements to allow you to quickly stop on a dime (decelerate) and then explode laterally or forward (accelerate) to get to a shot. Deceleration control occurs during:
• Quick stops.
• Direction changes.
• Follow through.
Muscles provide deceleration control by creating counter-force by lengthening (eccentric "contraction").
E1-Exercise at a Slow and Controlled Tempo (sometimes)
• Some exercises should be performed slowly
• Controlled repetitions that take three to four seconds to complete help increase tension in the muscle fibers and build strength without too much stress on the soft tissues.
• Avoid using momentum to perform an exercise or doing exercises that are uncontrolled.
• Remember, training is not necessarily playing. Don't confuse the two when doing exercises.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Fit to Play Tennis by Carl Petersen, Nina Nittinger. Copyright © 2006 Carl Petersen and Nina Nittinger. Excerpted by permission of USRSA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements,Preface,
Introduction: Making Yourself a Better Player and Athlete,
Part One: Structured Training and Practice,
1. The ABCs of Smart Training,
2. Dynamic Warm-Up and Cool-Down Guidelines,
3. Smart Stretching Guidelines,
4. Agility and Quickness Training,
5. Balance Training,
6. Upper and Lower Core Training in 3-D,
7. Fast Eyes — Visual Fitness 123,
8. Cross Training — Water Training and Recovery Workouts,
9. Stroke Fundamentals Training,
10. Tips for Tennis Training and Tactics,
Part Two: Structured Yearly Planning and Periodization,
11. The Yearly Training Plan and Periodization,
12. Tapering and Peaking for Major Tournaments,
Part Three: Structured Environment,
13. Tennis Nutrition,
14. Hydration For Tennis,
15. Playing and Training in the Heat,
16. Playing and Training at Altitude,
17. The Traveling Athlete and Jet Lag,
18. Footwear for Playing and Training,
19. Traveling Medicine and Fitness Kits,
Part Four: Structured Mental Training,
20. Mental Training,
21. Mind Games — Psychological Skills, Spills, and Thrills,
22. Weekly Training Diary,
23. The Psychology of Injury Rehabilitation,
Part Five: Structured Physical and Mental Assessments,
24. Self-Assessment and Functional Testing,
Part Six: Structured Recovery and Injury Prevention,
25. Common Back Problems and the Malaligned Player,
26. Core Training To Hold Neutral,
27. Outsmarting Your Injuries,
28. Overtraining and Recovery Guidelines,
29. Sleep Smarts for Recovery,
30. Soft Tissue Release (Muscle and Fasciae),
31. High Performance Recovery Tips and Strategies,
Index,
About the Authors,