Tennis players need to develop awareness, focus and fast decision making. They must have all these three skills well developed. Further on the “speed of action”, the “speed of execution” and a “high level of alertness” are necessary to develop the frontal brain lobe and the executive-cognitive functions which take place in that area of the brain.
The player must be able to take the right decision in fractions of time (for example returning a serve with the optimal movement solution and tactical intention). Before the decision is taken many processes take place in the frontal brain. The higher the quality of the information, the brain gets, the higher will be the quality of the decision making. There are three important information systems for the brain.
The Visual system
The Vestibular system
The Proprioceptive system
Highest percentage of information is visual.
With your Visual System you should be able to:
See clear and sharp
Be able to control your eye movements into every direction
Be able to see the depth relation to an object (moving object) precisely
Be able to have a good peripheral vision
Detecting the position of the body in space.
The Vestibular system works on both sides of the body. The left ear (left organ of equilibrium) is responsible for the left side of the body to gather all necessary info to keep it in balance. The same also applies to the right ear (right organ of equilibrium). It is responsible for the right side of the body. The training of this area gives important info about the spatial orientation. The system gives information about controlling the movement in space. It also stabilizes the eye movement and the coordination and fine movement of the moves.
Detecting the position of the joints and muscle tension intensity.
The Proprioceptive system detects the positions of the joints, the grade of the intensity of muscle tension and provides a permanent updated three-dimensional picture of the body posture for the brain. Poor information leads to shutting down the performance because of possible danger (imbalance). The better the quality of the information, the less the brain will turn down the performance. Our brain always acts like to protect the body. When the input of the three systems is poor, the brain is alert and restricts the possibilities for the body.
The brain and body permanently scan inside and outside of body.
The following exercises are raising the quality of information for the brain and support it to calculate faster to be able to make the best decision movement solution wise.
In the first video, we warm up the Visual system to be ready to train the different eye muscle movements in order to be ready to track fast and sharp a moving object like it is the tennis ball in our sport. Here the different movements are saccades (horizontal/vertical/diagonal), pursuits (smooth eye movement following a track or an object) with additional work out, with implementing the vestibular system and convergence (also with additional work out). Important is also the accommodation training for the eyes to differing between objects which are far away or nearer. Every exercise starts easy and gets more difficult with additional rhythm task or step patterns. At the end of the video, the player works also with visual cues to improve decision making.
In the second video, the player is working on the strengthening of his neck muscles to be able to super fine-tune the upper cervical spine to support the visual system. A laser is great to use for those exercises. The range of the movement should be adapted with different sizes of charts. The training of peripheral perception is another big element to support the visual system. Here the player keeps the focus onto the fixed ball in front of him (letter on the ball must be seen sharp) and has to react as soon as he detects the laser to the left or to the right. There is no limit in progressing the exercise with additional tasks like step patterns or swings. At the end of the video, there are some great exercises to work on the overhead orientation. Many players are limited in their footwork when having to look up in the sky to track the ball. This is due to not enough quality input through the vestibular and proprioceptive system. The exercises here train both systems to support the visual system in the best way to be able to handle overhead balls (smashes) better.
THIS KIND OF PRACTICE IS, IN MY OPINION, MORE IMPORTANT THAN PRACTICING ATHLETIC AND TENNIS SPECIFIC ATHLETIC SKILLS BECAUSE IT GIVES A SO MUCH HIGHER SUPPORT FOR THE BRAIN TO HAVE BETTER COORDINATION AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS (ON 1H OF ATHLETIC OR TENNIS SPECIFIC ATHLETIC TRAINING THERE SHOULD BE AT LEAST 1H OF NEURO-ATHLETIC TRAINING IMPLEMENTED (HIGH-PERFORMANCE TENNIS).
Thank you for your precious time. All the best COACH DIMI