Having an accurate way to measure your training intensity (from a player’s perspective) or monitoring your player (as a coach) is one of the most valuable metrics to help design training programs and add/reduce volume and /or intensity. Although much technology exists today, this post is focused on a tried and true technique that has stood the test of time in the scientific literature focused on monitoring an athlete’s intensity.

What is RPE?

The Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) is  a very common rating scale used in the scientific literature. It is a simple scale of asking someone how hard or difficult was the exercise or session. It is a good measurement of exercise intensity.

Perceived exertion is how hard you feel like your body is working. It is based on the physical sensations a person experiences during physical activity, including increased heart rate, increased respiration or breathing rate, increased sweating, and muscle fatigue. Although this is a subjective measure, a person's exertion rating may provide a fairly good estimate of the actual heart rate during physical activity (Borg, 1982). Since the 1980s thousands of studies have used this scale to evaluate how difficult the exercise session, training or competition was. Over multiple decades it has held up to scrutiny and is one of the best measures available. Even with all the great technology that is available today, the RPE scale is still the one of the most reliable and accurate ways to measure how intense an athlete feels a workout has been.

From a tennis perspective, the use of the RPE scale is good way to quickly and easily gain a read on how difficult or intense the training session or match was. It has been used by coaches and tennis scientists for decades to monitor athletes to see the perceptions of different types of training programs and to provide insight into when to increase or decrease intensity of workouts. One interesting study has recently been published in Australia highlights that when tennis players and coaches both evaluate the intensity of e a training session, rather good consistency existed when training on hardcourts. However, when playing on claycourts coaches underrate the perception of the training session (Reid et al, 2013). This underrating is in comparison to player rating of the same session.

For The Player:

Monitor your sessional-RPE at the end of each training session and provide yourself a rating of the entire workout on a daily basis. Over the course of a few weeks you will start seeing some trends in the workouts and you can start using this information to adjust the difficulty of the workouts based on your goals.

For The Coach:

Monitor your player’s sessional-RPE daily and have the player monitor his or her sessions daily. Compare the ratings to see how close the player and coach and use this information to effectively adjust training sessions to continue to make weekly improvements.

The Scales

Two scales are commonly used. The original scale was developed by Gunnar Borg and follows a 6-20 range. Whereas, the modified Borg CR-10 scale follows a 0-10 scale..

Traditional Borg Scale (6-20) this information has been adapted from http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/measuring/exertion.html

The traditional Borg scale was designed to coincide with an athlete’s heart rate. Therefore, 6 represents a resting heart rate value (60) and 20 represents a maximum heart rate value (200). Look at the rating scale below while you are engaging in an activity; it ranges from 6 to 20, where 6 means "no exertion at all" and 20 means "maximal exertion." Choose the number from below that best describes your level of exertion. This will give you a good idea of the intensity level of your activity, and you can use this information to speed up or slow down your movements to reach your desired range.

Try to appraise your feeling of exertion as honestly as possible, without thinking about what the actual physical load is. Your own feeling of effort and exertion is important, not how it compares to other people's. Look at the scales and the expressions and then give a number.

6  No exertion at all
7
Extremely light (7.5)
8
9  Very light
10
11  Light
12
13  Somewhat hard
14
15  Hard (heavy)
16
17  Very hard
18
19  Extremely hard
20  Maximal exertion

9 corresponds to "very light" exercise. For a healthy person, it is like walking slowly at his or her own pace for some minutes

13 on the scale is "somewhat hard" exercise, but it still feels OK to continue.

17 "very hard" is very strenuous. A healthy person can still go on, but he or she really has to push him- or herself. It feels very heavy, and the person is very tired.

19 on the scale is an extremely strenuous exercise level. For most people this is the most strenuous exercise they have ever experienced.

0-10 Scale

0 - Nothing at all

1 - Very light

2 - Fairly light

3 - Moderate

4 - Some what hard

5 - Hard

6

7 - Very hard

8

9

10 - Very, very hard

Resources:

Current Comment from the American College of Sports Medicine on RPE - http://www.acsm.org/docs/current-comments/perceivedexertion.pdf

References:

BORG, G. (1982) Psychophysical bases of perceived exertion. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 14 (5), p. 377-81

REID, M et al. (2013) Physiological, perceptual, and technical responses to on-court tennis training on hard and clay courts. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 27 (6); 1487-1495

Richard Woodroof, TPT

Richard Woodroof is the owner and Director of Training for RAW Tennis Performance in Boca Raton, FL.  He is an ITPA-certified Tennis Performance Trainer; Speed, Agility & Quickness (SAQ) coach; a 20-year member of the USPTA and is USTA Sport Science Level-1 certified.  Richard worked with the ATP 2011 Most Improved Player Alex Bogomolov, Jr and other ATP players including Jesse Levine as well as WTA players Anna Tatishvili and Heidi El-Tabakh.  He also works with several Challenger and Futures pros.  Richard trains some of the top junior players in the USTA and ITF players from Italy, Monte Carlo, Brazil, Canada, Kazakhstan, Trinidad and Mexico. 

Richard played tennis at the University of North Carolina and spent 18 years as a High Performance coach.  Working in the tennis hotbed of Southern California, he worked with dozens of junior players who earned scholarships in every major NCAA conference.  He spent time coaching on the WTA Tour and was also a college coach.  Richard’s philosophy for training is “movement, not muscles” and he specializes in tennis movement. 

To find out more information please go to www.RAWTennisPerformance.com where you can sign up for newsletter updates and read his blog.  You can also follow Richard on Twitter @RAW10sPerform and like his Facebook page.

Check out clips from a recent audio interview with the iTPA.

New Workshop announced! Movement and Speed for Coaches will be held Saturday, October 5th from 9 am to 12 pm in Atlanta, GA. Let by iTPA Executive Director Dr. Mark Kovacs, this three hour on-court workshop will provide specific drills and exercises to develop tennis-specific movement speed, agility and quickness. Improving tennis-specific movement is paramount to success on the court at every level of the game. The format of the course is designed to allow the participant to learn the best methods and progressions and how to link these drills and exercises with strokes and strategy. The entire course will be on-court and in an interactive format to ensure a full understanding of how these drills and exercises can be implemented into your lesson plans.
 
Come and join your fellow professionals in a unique format that will allow significant interaction and case examples with scenarios that you encounter every day with your players. Worth 50 iTPA Continuing Professional Education Credits.

Visit this webpage to register

When: 
Saturday, October 5th, 2013
9 am - 12 pm EST

Where:
Georgia Gwinnett College Tennis Facility
100 Countryside Place
Lawrenceville, GA 30043
(404) 374-9750

Price: $30 for iTPA Members, $50 for non-iTPA members. If registered as a member, iTPA staff will check and if not a member send you an email with an invoice for $20.

Worth 50 iTPA CPE credits

iTPA Certified Members are the top tennis coaches, fitness trainers, strength & conditioning coaches, physical therapists, etc. in the world. Every few weeks we will be adding a new iTPA Member Spotlight with information on the member and interviews. These will be added to our new Member Spotlight Page.

Jonathan Fraser, CTPS 

Jonny Fraser has worked as a strength and conditioning and tennis coach for the past six years. He has a MSc in Sport and Exercise Science, is a certified tennis performance specialist with the iTPA alongside being a certified strength and conditioning specialist with the NSCA. He has worked with a range of players from delivering sessions to mini tennis to grand slam winning players. As a junior he has competed at National tennis competitions and was captain of his university tennis team.
 
Jonny's company Science in Tennis provides sport science support to tennis centres focusing on strength and conditioning, sport psychology and performance nutrition. He has a particular interest in youth development in tennis and the application of strength and conditioning support alongside managing the psycho social aspects of training in this age group. His company aims to provide a holistic approach to sport science in tennis utilising evidenced based practice. Jonny is going for his MTPS certification this fall.

Below are several audio interview clips on several topics.

Are There Any Bad Exercises For Tennis?

Over the last few months a number of sport science, strength & conditioning, athletic training, physical therapy and tennis coaching conferences have occurred all over the world. In all these conferences exercises and drills are presented for performance, stability, injury prevention, recovery, strength, speed, power, flexibility, etc. With so many exercises available to the Tennis Performance Trainer (TPT) or the Certified Tennis Performance Specialist (CTPS) one of the great discussions includes if there any bad exercises for tennis or exercises that should be avoided? Tennis has some unique requirements and the repetitive movements cause some significant imbalances over time. As a result, certain exercises are needed to offset these imbalances - but do certain exercises in the gym, on the court or on the track/field - do more harm than good for the tennis athlete? Some of the most discussed topics over the past few months have been around the following:

-              long slow distance running (>5miles, etc)

-              bench press & push ups

-              bicep curls

-              leg extension machine

-              Olympic lifting

-              weighted rackets for stroke practice

-              overhead shoulder pressing

Very interested to hear the thoughts about whether any of these (or other) exercises should NOT be implemented in a tennis athlete’s physical conditioning program. Knowing what to do is just as important as knowing what not to do.

Exercise: Slalom Agility Run in Sand

The “Slalom Agility Run in Sand” exercise shown in the video is one of the best overall movement exercises for any athlete who is looking to improve his/her ability to change direction quickly – especially in lateral and multi-directional movements. The exercise can be performed on grass, hardcourts, claycourts or sand. The exercise shown is performed on sand and this increases the recruitment of the larger muscles to help the athlete push forcefully into the ground and also stresses the smaller muscles of the lower body to help stabilize during the forceful eccentric muscle actions involved in the deceleration required at each of the cones. Then the athlete needs to push forcefully into the sand to be able to re-accelerate to move to the next cone. This is a challenging exercise for most athletes; it is rather common for athletes to feel some muscle soreness (DOMS) the first 48-72 hours after performing a series of sand movements. Start this exercise performing 6 cones spaced at 10 yards apart in a slalom pattern. Perform 10 repetitions of the sprint from cone 1-6 proving 60-120 seconds rest to work on explosiveness. If using this exercise for tennis-specific endurance work, then perform 20 repetitions with 20-30 seconds rest between each repetition.  

Watch the below video by iTPA Certification Commissioner Dr. Don Chu on Myths Surrounding Young Athletes doing Plyometric Training.  Current special on iTPA Plyometrics for Tennis DVD course: Through Sunday, August 4th, 2013, use coupon code Plyo and receive 20% off!

Watch the below video by iTPA Certification Commissioner Dr. Don Chu on Why Plyometric Training is so Important for Tennis Athletes. Also check out the Plyometrics for Tennis DVD course.

During the summer months it is not uncommon for tennis athletes to play more than six hours of tennis in very hot conditions. Although playing in hot and humid weather is physically and mentally draining, here are 7 practical tips that can help any tennis athlete prepare to compete in hot and humid conditions.

1.   Train hard before having to compete.   Getting in fantastic physical shape before competing is one of the best methods to prepare for hot and humid conditions. Physically-fit athletes handle the hot and humid conditions better because they are able to consume and utilize more oxygen per breath, handle moderate increases in core temperature better and recover better between points.

2.   Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.   Drinking high volumes of electrolyte-enhanced fluids will prepare the athlete and help limit the severe loss of fluids and electrolytes during play. Tennis is one of the toughest sports on the planet to maintain appropriate fluid levels during hot and humid conditions. Take precautions and train your body to consume appropriate amounts of fluid based on your sweat rate and body size. Unfortunately, as many as 50% of tournament players go into matches already dehydrated.

3.   Consume sodium rich food and drink.   Sodium is the major electrolyte lost in the sweat, and it is one factor that is related to an athlete’s likelihood of cramping. “Salty sweaters” have white residue that is left on dark-colored clothing or hats. This white residue is salt deposits released from the sweat. The higher the athlete’s salt concentration in the sweat, the more this white residue will show up on their apparel during and after a long match or practice session in hot and humid conditions.

4.   A balanced diet  is important for all athletes from a general performance standpoint and especially in regard to heat-related issues.

5.   Wear sunscreen! Sunburn increases skin temperature and makes the body less efficient at body cooling. Most of us have been sunburned and had the feeling of heat dissipating from the skin. This process limits the amount of heat that will be moved from the core to the periphery (skin) and limits the ability to cool as efficiently as possible.

6.   Acclimatization to the heat and humidity  (7 to 14 days prior to competition). It is known that children take a longer period of time to acclimate to hot and humid conditions compared to adults. If it is practical, it is recommended to practice the week before a tournament in conditions that are similar to what the conditions will be like during the tournament.

7.   Focus on tips 1 and 2  (train hard and stay well hydrated). These are two of the most important aspects of being able to compete effectively during the hot and humid summer months.

Watch the below iTPA video demonstrating and discussing the Overhead Squat Stability Progression. This is a rather simple exercise, but is an important exercise for tennis athletes as it helps to develop functional flexibility, strength and stability in the lower body as well as control of the muscles around the lower back and abdominals (core). All these factors are important for every tennis player. This movement should be taught to tennis players and if performed at least three days per week will provide a noticeable benefit in only a few weeks. It is recommended to add this movement to a weekly routine to improve and/or maintain stability and mobility. Performing 2-3 sets of 10-12 repetitions is recommended. As the athlete improves, greater range of motion can be attempted and even adding resistance may be appropriate for more advanced athletes. Speak to your Certified Tennis Performance Specialist (CTPS) for a personalized program and to develop a tennis-specific training program.