By Dean Hollingworth, CTPS


It’s been a little over a month since I’ve come back home from the US Open. It took a bit of time to settle back into my routine and gather my thoughts on what was a great experience. Having gone over the month that I was on the road, at three different tournaments (Cincinnati, New Haven and New York), I found myself wanting to share my professional experience with others that have the goal of traveling with a tennis player. Training concepts remain consistent whether you are in your own stable home environment or on the road dealing with different gyms and surroundings each week. On the other hand, having the ability to deal with an always changing environment is where the challenge lies.

Here are three points that every strength coach should adapt to their training concepts and philosophies in order to succeed:

1.      Preparation: Like the famous quote says “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” -Benjamin Franklin. This is true at any level of coaching, whether on the road or not, but becomes increasingly more important at the higher levels of athletics. Do not expect to be successful if you plan on showing up and figuring out what to do within minutes of a training session. Elite athletes need to be precisely challenged for positive changes to occur. A plan must be set forth with goals and objectives that you, the coaches and the player have gone over. Without this path in front of you, the likelihood of spinning your wheels in one spot is inevitable. This means having a long-term plan with short and long-term goals. Weekly and daily planning is crucial. Being prepared for every training session is necessary in order to focus on the athlete and not guess at what you are going to do next. A good athlete is capable of seeing who is and who isn’t prepared. This preparation will give you and the athlete confidence in the training.

2.      Be flexible: So with all this discussion of preparation, now you have to be able to adjust on the fly. One of the challenges is that with every city comes new surroundings. Mostly it has to do with adjusting to the gym that you will have access to for training. This includes the warm-up, fitness training and recovery work. Each site will present you with different problems including space, crowdedness and lack of equipment. It’s great that it is supposed to be a box jump day, but what if there are no boxes, or a leg training day and the heaviest dumbbell is 25lbs. This is where preparing ahead and being malleable is crucial. This can be achieved by trying to find facilities to suit your training or by being creative and challenging the athlete in other ways to obtain the desired results. What also helps is bringing your own equipment (tubing, TRX, cones, ladder, recovery tools, etc.) to help out in difficult situations. It’s about making the best of a situation that is not optimal.

3.      It’s all about the detail: To me, attention to detail is what separates good coaches from great ones and good athletes from great ones. Yes, the planning should be very detailed, but I see detail in another light, detail to the athlete’s training and surroundings. When in a gym setting with your athlete, the gym is your office. When in your office, the person you are with should get all the attention. Focus should be on the athlete and not others around you. No detail is too small not to realign or correct. Other details to be taken into account are the sport specific needs of the athlete. This can be hydration, food consumption, appropriate rest and recovery needs. Understanding their individual differences, rituals or quirks assist in helping them achieve optimal performance. The difference that separates a lot of these athletes is often extremely small. In order to make up that difference, the details should be focused on and adjusted for success.

This was my third time traveling with a player and of course it was easier than the first. Like it is often said, “if I knew now what I knew then,” well now you do. Incorporate these tips and let them help you become the best coach possible. In the end everyone wins.

Marko Nieminen, CTPS

Marko has a broad knowledge of a variety of sports but more in-depth knowledge of tennis. He has been involved in strength and conditioning coaching in tennis since 2008,  e.g. coaching two-time Finnish national championship medalist and other elite/high level tennis players in Finland. He holds a M.Sc. degree in Sport Coaching and Fitness Testing Science, and is also an iTPA Certified Tennis Performance Specialist (2014) and a certified Massage Therapist. A few years back he studied the physical aspects of tennis - effect of neuromuscular functioning in fast response situation in tennis. Marko is currently conducting an ongoing sport psychological study for his doctoral dissertation, which is also a cooperation continuum with the International Tennis Federation (ITF) started during the preceding pilot study. He has adopted a holistic and evidence-based approach to help tennis players to maximize their potential (available on project basis or as a part-time coach). The iTPA CTPS course & course material provides one great resource to do that.

By Jonny Fraser (iTPA MTPS, MSc, CSCS), Owner of Science in Tennis

Medicine balls are often used in tennis helping develop, endurance, strength and power. They provide a good tool to add external resistance, develop torso strength and stability whilst allowing training of tennis specific movements through the kinetic chain. Understanding what the intention of using medicine ball training is important.

The first method involves using medicine balls to add external load. An example may include when players are performing squats or lunge patterns. The weight and position of the medicine ball can be changed accordingly to progress or regress.  Particularly at a junior level the introduction of medicine balls plays an important progression from body weight movements. Furthermore, for travelling players medicine balls may be an important piece of ‘on the road’ equipment to add external load when training. Small hotel gyms often also have medicine balls.

Medicine ball can be used to develop a stable, strong torso or core stability. From a fundamental movement perspective the trunk muscles can brace or rotate, whilst also being able to flex and extend. Often it is these rotational movements we train using medicine balls (Figure 1) alongside working the kinetic chain. Energy is transferred from ground force reactions, through the lower body to the trunk region, scapular, elbow and then wrist.

Rotation (angular momentum) and diagonal patterns of movements are foundations of tennis movements. Tennis requires large amounts of rotation from the trunk, shoulders, and contralateral movements across slings of the body - hence training these two methods seems important. Movements such as lunges with rotations (Figure 1) or diagonal pattern movements such as wood chops or cross body

Using medicine ball training in tennis requires awareness of how to train the torso and the whole body. Fletcher (2014) considers four areas in which you need to train the torso. These include ‘random perturbations’, ‘rotation and rotational control’, ‘diagonal patterns’ and ‘force through the kinetic chain’. Random perturbations predominantly involve the ability to brace and be stable when external forces are placed the body. An example when using a medicine ball may be an isometric hold in a lunge position (Figure 2). Perturbations are then added by the ball being pushed in various directions and the athlete stabilising his or her body.

Rotation (angular momentum) and diagonal patterns of movements are foundations of tennis movements. Tennis requires large amounts of rotation from the trunk, shoulders, and contralateral movements across slings of the body - hence training these two methods seems important. Movements such as lunges with rotations (Figure 1) or diagonal pattern movements such as wood chops or cross body lunges provide examples (Figure 3). They both help develop stability, motor control and synchronisation of the body. This will benefit tennis performance and help reduce the likelihood of injury through efficient movement patterning. 

The last type of training is kinetic chain training. Training methods provide an excellent stimulus for developing muscle synchronisation, motor control and utilising ground force reactions. This will all have benefits to performance and reducing injury risk. Example exercises maybe a soccer overhead throw or a sideways throw (Figure 4).  However for a true performance transfer effect we need to show an understanding of the biomechanics of tennis. This may include factors such as the stance, the type of shot (e.g. single or double handed backhand), weight shift, follow through and separation angles of the body.

When using a medicine ball for example to train a step in stance shifting the weight from the back to the front foot should occur (Bahamonde and Knudson, 2003). Another example is the open stance forehand where emphasis should be made to the player about the separation angle between the hip and shoulder. That is the shoulder rotates further round than the hip (by average by 13°) to allow the player to ‘wind up’ and maximise elasticity of the body and angular momentum (Bahamonde and Knudson 2003). Furthermore the separation angle between the hips and shoulders is greater in the single handed backhand than in the double handed backhand (Genevois et al., 2015). Therefore understanding the needs of your athlete, the intention of your training and specificity of the sport when using medicine ball should reflect the training methods used (Table 1).

Table 1: Training methods for medicine ball use.

References

Bahamonde, R. and Kundson, D. (2003). Kinetics of the upper extremity in the open and square tennis forehand. Journal of science and medicine in sport, 6(1), 88-101.

Fletcher, I. (2014). Myths and reality: training the torso. Professional strength and conditioning, 33, 25-29.

Genevois, C., Reaid, M., Rogowski, I. and Crespo, M. (2015). Performance factors related to different tennis backhand groundstrokes: a review. Journal of sport science and medicine, 14 (1), 194-202.