iTPA's World Tennis Fitness Conference Raises the Bar

Conference summary by Oliver Stephens, CTPS, MTPS

iTPA’s World Tennis Fitness Conference raises the bar once again.
The International Tennis Performance Association’s (iTPA) annual World Tennis Fitness Conference has quickly become associated with excellence.  This year’s event was no exception.  For many Physical Therapists, Strength and Conditioning Trainers, Medical Doctors, Chiropractors and Tennis Professionals, this has become the one event that is a regular fixture in their calendars.   

This year’s event included a host of world class speakers such as Allistair McCaw, Page Love, Lalo Vicencio, Page Love, Joanna Goldin, Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, Jonny Fraser and more, and was headed up by keynote speakers Dr. Ben Kibler and Gil Reyes, who has worked with Andre Agassi for over 20 years! 

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Some of the highlights included:

• Gil Reyes, discussing how the athlete should have a strong degree of control in developing a fitness program, which really gave the audience a new way of looking at developing programs.
• Lane Evans, discussing injuries and injury prevention for the over 50 athlete.
• Dr. Neeru Jayanthi presenting Scientific Evidence on injury rates as they relate to frequency and velocity of training. Dr. Jayanthi has a great presentation style and can actually present statistics and keep the audience laughing and engaged at the same time!
• Dean Hollingworth, who gave an exceptional session on movement drills and emphasized the importance of incorporating the split step into movement training sessions.
• Lalo Vicencio, who gave a great presentation on movement patterns for the forehand and backhand, emphasizing that we have to teach our athletes to move in all directions in order to create space to make the appropriate strokes. 
• Dr. Paul Lubbers from the U.S.T.A. discussing the importance of developing a quality support team and the importance of the sharing of information among coaches, trainers and P.T.’s. 

There were too many golden nuggets of information to list here; however, one of the most significant impacts that the iTPA World Tennis Fitness Conference is having on the Tennis Community is the networking opportunity available.  The quality of the attendees, who were from several countries around the world, is very high and cannot be matched elsewhere.  There were several of the iTPA’s Master Tennis Performance Trainers on site and many College Trainers & Coaches, PhD’s and well-known tennis coaches were in attendance.  Over 26 Universities had staff in attendance including Princeton, Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Florida State among many others. Top coaches were also in attendance, and were all eager to share ideas and network with other attendees. 

Overall, this was another amazing event.  Dr. Mark Kovacs, Mary Jo Kovacs and their team have worked tirelessly to create a quality experience for all involved and we are all looking forward to the 2017 World Tennis Fitness Conference.