By Jonny Fraser, Owner of Science in Tennis, Strength and Conditioning Coach Claudio Pistolesi Enterprise,
CTPS, MTPS

Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD) refers to the athletic progression of young people improving health and wellbeing, physical performance, reducing the risk of injury and enhancing psychosocial development. Without doubt it is very multifactorial, non-linear process and requires coaches and sport scientists to be adaptable and understand how children’s anatomy and physiology varies (Lloyd et al., 2016). Recent evidence has been published with updated position statements from various organisations and highly respected practitioners about LTAD (Faigenbaum, 2017, Ford et al., 2013, Lloyd et al., 2016). The aim of this blog is to consider the challenges many coaches face within tennis centres such as coaching large groups of young people across various chronological, biological and training ages and how can they practically apply this evidence every day and longer term in their coaching programs.

Consideration one: motor skills and strength are the foundations.

Figure 1 U16 Mesocycle for Training to Compete Phase U16 Group   High, Medium, Low

The development of technical skills in tennis requires the ability to produce and reduce force through a synchronised neuromuscular coordinated action. Without having this base of solid motor skills and strength an increased risk of injury may occur alongside a negative association with tennis.

The implementation of a strength and conditioning program or ‘multiskills (SCM)’ programs can provide a long-term solution to tennis centre programs.  Sessions can vary based on ages from 30 minutes before or after the tennis session for younger players combining fundamental movement skills within a game based approach, to more structured and individualised sessions, multiple times a week as part of tennis squads or stand-alone sessions. These sessions will have greater emphasis on tennis specific training as players get older  (Figure 1). Alternative activities within a structured program also provides diversity, continually helping develop fundamental movements skills and may reduce the risk of injury and provide ‘time out’ from the challenges associated with larger volumes of tennis training.  Examples may include yoga sessions, rock climbing and/or team based games within the program (Figure 1).

For this to be effective it requires long term planning from a range of parties including the tennis manager, coaches and sport science support team involved. Coaches must also have a philosophy or ‘vision’ that can be communicated to the parents and players. It is essential that parents of players are educated about the benefits of SCM. This can be done via the use of traditional methods such as information or parents evening, or using screencasts and webinars as alternative options (Figure 2).

Within everyday setting the use of warm ups provide a very effective time to deliver SCM. This may involve 10-15 minutes of fundamental motor skills such as hopping, jumping and landing to working on tennis specific movements. The dynamic warm up also allows an effective time to develop lunging, pushing, pulling, bracing, rotating or hinging exercises, the corner stone of strength training. Effective progressions and regressions can be used to challenge players of all ages. Furthermore, providing players with ‘home workout’ or ‘on the road’ training cards can also provide a simple, yet effective method to integrate SCM at an everyday level across a large number of players. This can be set as ‘homework’ or as the ‘coaches special’ (see consideration four ‘embrace the teaching’ in the following part of this blog).

Figure 2: Screencasts can be an alternative option to provide parents with information.

Consideration two: Tennis Centres can be used as hubs to promote lifelong health and wellbeing.

The NSCA Position Statement (2016) below explains health and wellbeing is one of the ten pillars of LTAD:
“Health and Wellbeing of the Child Should Always Be the Central Tenet of Long Term Athletic Development Programs”
Tennis centres and coaches have the important role to understand the benefits that tennis has on the health and wellbeing, the holistic elements that surround that such as cognitive, affective and lifestyle elements by providing both an environment for psychological and physical development.

Process orientated goal setting with players can be one way in which to do this both short, medium and long term (Lloyd et al., 2016). For example, at the start of the term, players who attend regular coaching but play a lower volume of tennis can set simple process goals which can be written down and reviewed at the end of each term. This may be just one technical, tactical, mental or physical goal. Where, more detailed goals may be set with players who have higher training volumes focusing on developing several areas, alongside setting outcome goals.

The language in which coach’s use is also very important. The aim is to use language which creates an environment to promote a growth mindset and embrace challenging scenarios. This may be praising the strategy that students have come up after you have observed a technical area to develop or to reinforce the positive of being unable to perform a task, for example:“I like the way you worked out how to get more top spin on the ball from that position, what did you do?”
or “Great work keeping your shoulders back during that deadlift, how did you work out to do that?”or
“I really like how you maintained focus throughout today’s session and really worked on the theme of our session”or
“You can’t quite manage that power clean technique yet, let’s just work on that start position and it will come.” Within longer term planning setting out sessions where the players are the ‘teachers and coaches” can be one way to develop the feelings of autonomy to facilitate learning. This could be a week where players are given a challenge such as setting up an injury reduction circuit or planning the week’s lessons linked to the current theme in the mesocycle. This will help create a motivational climate which players can embrace.

Longer term planning may involve the organisation of sport science workshops such as nutritional and mental skills workshops being incorporated within programs to support player’s development. This can either be done through workshop or online mediums and may be scheduled monthly (Figure 1). Workshops should first promote the health and wellbeing of young people such as how the mental skills or nutritional information will help players throughout their lives (such as what is healthy eating) to more performance related strategies for players competing regularly in the sport. Some workshops can be open to all players and parents, where others may be more tailor made to different target groups. As mentioned above this requires well-structured macro and mesocycles with tennis managers, coaches and the sport science team supporting the tennis centre.

Part one of this blog was to consider the evidence of LTAD and how this can be implemented within tennis centres with focus on motor skill and strength development, alongside the vision that tennis centres can be used as hubs to promote health and wellbeing to young people every day and longer term level. Part two will focus on other considerations including “embracing the teaching “and “monitoring/assessment tools for young players.
 
 
References
Faigenbaum, A.(2017). Resistance exercise of youth: survival of the strongest. Paediatric Exercise Science, 29(1), 14-18.
Ford, P., De Ste Croxi, M., Lloyd, R., Meyers, R., Moosavi, M., Oliver, J., Till, C. and Williams, C. (2016).The long term athlete development model: physiological evidence and application. Journal of Sport Sciences, 29(4), 389-402.
Lloyd, R., Cronin, J., Faigenbaum, A.D., Haff, G., Gregory, H., Kraemer, W.J., Micheli, J.l., …Oliver, J. (2016). National Strength and Conditioning Association position statement on long-term athletic development. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 30 (6), 1491-1509.

The presentations by Dr.  Neeru Jayanthi focused on an areas of great interest to me which considered injury prevention in elite junior tennis. With my main philosophy being that tennis can help develop young people positively whilst having great interest in talent development, I was intrigued to listen to the session. Indeed one of the first points made was that coaches (45%) have the most influence on players wishing to train at a high level in comparison to the player (35%) and then the parent (15%). This straight away made me think with coaches being the most influential person determining how intensely the player considers to take the game, even with the best intentions are coaches educated to a level where they understand volume, levels of appropriate intensity and how growth effects a young person’s body? Indeed the thoughts of children not being miniature adults sprung to mind. Jayanthi went onto discuss a number of research articles he has published in recent years including considering risk factors for medical withdrawals from USTA National junior tournaments and training and sport specialisation risks in junior elite tennis players. A host of possible conclusions can be made from these two pieces of research. For example cumulative match scheduling and competition without adequate recovery and rest (approximately two hours) can be detrimental for junior tennis players. Despite this many systems across the world which rank and rate players are based on volume such as how many matches you win within a certain time period which ultimately may lead to excessive volume. Other conclusions were that players should consider delaying early specialisation until middle or late adolescence due to a potential increase risk of burnout and injury alongside playing only one or two tournaments per month, having adequate time away and recovery from the sport. Thanks must go to Jayanthi for his passion and drive to delivery outstanding research in this area of youth development.

There were a host of other fascinating presentations attended by myself and Mike James. Page Love delivered a session on nutrition focusing on recovery and reducing the potential risk of injury for tennis players. Much of the focus was on tart cherry juice and the antioxidant nature of this to reduce muscle soreness and aid recovery. Indeed this would be a very interesting research topic for anyone in tennis considering the benefits of tart cherry juice during intense match play and recovery. Ollie Stephens then considered the important factors when working as a team to develop competitive tennis players and Dr. Larry Lauer discussed bringing back players from injury. This lecture provided a great insight into the stages an athlete goes through when being injured, such as going through the grief stages and how a team can respond in a way to create a supportive, nurturing environment to help get the athlete back to full fitness. This included factors such as clear and transparent communication, education and listening to the athlete. Other excellent sessions discussed injury and illness data from the US Open for the past 15 years and the age eligibility rule and managing WTA players. Both gave a great insight to working with elite professionals.

The practical elements from USTA Head of Strength and Conditioning Satoshi Ochi, Director of Strength & Conditioning at the University of Georgia, Katrin Koch, and Spanish Director of Education for the iTPA Lalo Vicencio gave delegates an opportunity to actively get involved and take home tennis specific drills and exercises. Focus on these areas included the split step and the opening of the hip and initial step, footwork and agility movements and co-ordination exercises to use with both younger and older tennis athletes. It must be said that with the great range and diversity of presentations and break out groups unfortunately we couldn't make each one, but based on other delegates thoughts and reviews every researcher or practitioner must be recognised for their excellent delivery and information either on a coaching, sport science or medicine level.

Away from the presentations the forums provided delegates to ask questions related to tennis science and medicine questions with two themes. The first one focused on developing young healthy tennis athletes. Indeed the topics varied from ways in which to strength train, manage volume and nutrition such as supplementation. The second panel discussed working with elite full time tennis professionals. It was also a pleasure to hear Atlanta based ATP tennis professional Robby Ginepri give his opinions on how tennis has changed over the past decade since he began his career on the tour. There was great acknowledgement that sport science and medicine has a larger part now to play when developing players and this is due to the advancement of the game physically. Ginepri explained that within his academy sport science plays an important role with the use of physical conditioning and performance psychology and nutrition sessions. This gave me great confidence with me recently starting my own business (www.scienceintennis.com) which is a sport science business solely focusing on tennis.

Ultimately both Mike and I feel there were a number of take home messages for practitioners working in tennis to be aware off. First of all you have to know the game, be aware of the common areas of injury, the challenges both junior tennis and senior professional players face alongside understanding the uniqueness of how to train a tennis player. Secondly, every tennis player is different and knowing your athlete and allowing them to feedback to you and the team you work with is essential to develop a strong professional relationship and maximise their potential. Thirdly don't over complicate things, tennis is a difficult sport to plan and periodise for so use the most effective ways of training but keep things as simple as possible. It was clear that educating players, coaches and parents alongside communicating with and understanding the roles of practitioners who can help develop tennis players, reduce injury and enhance performance is essential, the goal of any of us working within tennis. 

Over 11 Hours of Presentations from the 2014 Tennis Medicine & Performance Conference available for download at the iTPA Dartfish Channel

http://www.dartfish.tv/CollectionInfo.aspx?CR=p90378c98277

By Josh Bramblett, iTPA Staff

Planning of elite junior tennis players’ development historically has been based either on the coach’s personal experiences or on the schedules of well-respected, successful pros. However, as the training of tennis athletes become more advanced and technology allows for more data-driven decisions, effective periodization as part of training and competition is one factor that separates the development of many good junior players. With so many variables affecting the schedule of a player’s program (weather, number of matches, training status, diet, health of the athlete, etc., effective coaches, Certified Tennis Performance Specialists (CTPS) and trainers must be able to adapt programs to the athlete’s individual needs.

How can you plan a Periodization training schedule with all these factors in play?

Be able to adapt!

Most juniors that have the goal of playing at the collegiate or professional level are part of a high-performance program. These programs are very structured and often have scheduled competition plans. The plans are normally focused on three competitive routes: state/national tournaments, ITF junior events, professional tournaments (ITF/ATP/WTA). Most high-performance juniors will be a combination of all three levels of tournaments during the junior career. For example, when Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer were 17, Nadal competed in 20 professional events while Federer competed in 14 junior events and four professional events.

Of course all plans should be made and customized to the individual player, but typical plans range from 16-30 tournaments a year. Therefore, training blocks between tournaments become very important. “Training blocks feature between these clusters of tournaments, providing coaches in the region of 20 weeks or almost 40% of total tennis time to focus on specific (technical, tactical, physical, or mental) goals.” (Reid) This is where being adaptive comes into play.

Benchmarks

Age (y)

15-17

17+

Tournaments/ competitive foci

18-22 tournaments (assuming competitive foci [a] but more likely [b] or [c])

20-30

(a) professional events only

20-30 tournaments (assuming competitive foci [b] or [c])

(b) Professional events with a small number of ITF junior events

(c) ITF junior events with a small number of professional events

Matches

65-80 singles

80-100 matches

Doubles as agreed by player and coach

25-45 doubles

Win to loss ratio

2:1

2:1

Reid et al (2009). Strength and Conditioning Journal


So with all the variability that can affect periodization programs how can coaches adjust?

It involves working backwards. You may be a familiar with the leadership expert Stephen Covey’s famous work “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” In his work Dr. Covey outlines 7 important habits. All these have great merit; however, the most important habit when it comes to periodization is:

HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND.

Understanding an athlete’s tournament schedule and determining the priority tournaments for the year, and the priority training periods, allows for a structured and effective periodized plan. Without beginning with the end in mind, constant and longitudinal success is difficult.

See the iTPA Inner Circle website for more information on this topic (members only). Also the iTPA certification programs provide full modules on effective tennis-specific periodization and planning programs for junior, collegiate, professional and adult league players. Check out the resources at www.itpa-tennis.org

References 

Reid, M., Quinlan, G., Kearney, S., Jones, D., (2009). Planning and Periodization for the Elite Junior Tennis Player. Strength and Conditioning Journal, 31 (4), 69-76.