Tennis Players & Coaches – Apply Sport Science Basics to Tennis Specific Training. How do different athletic qualities fit into the program of a tennis player? This is a complex question but one that deserves an answer. With information being so readily accessible, there are countless videos of players doing all kinds of things off the tennis court. But just because a top 100 or 50 player is doing X or Y, does it mean it’s effective? Is it driven by some underlying scientific basis? Often times, it’s not. It’s a regurgitation of someone else’s training or a drill that was once seen before. If you’re a player, and someone is telling you to do squats on a stability ball…or ladder drills to develop footwork and speed…seek alternatives as these are merely gimmicks that have little transfer to elevated sporting performance.
How does a player increase power, explosiveness and racquet head speed? Before we can truly understand how these different abilities make their way into the training program of an elite tennis player, we must first understand a basic principle of sport science…the force-velocity (F-V) relationship – aka the F-V curve.
This is an article by Matt Kuzdub, who studied the role sport science research can have on peak performance in tennis players. Meanwhile he is working as high performance tennis coach in Munic. I very much like his attitude, being still a student, and always will be. More about Matt on http://www.mattspoint.com .