Athletic capacity is of high importance. Not only to overcome the demands of practice and matches but also to have shorter recovery times and less injury risk. You also need to have a clear understanding of the different movement patterns and how to train them for speeding up your improvement on the court. At last, you want to be more efficient. Our athletic demands for tennis are flexibility, strength and power, speed and agility, endurance, dynamic balance, an optimal composition of the body and aerobic and anaerobic fitness.
Today I want to give you an insight into integrated and complex training during a forehand groundstroke session. A well functioning kinematic chain with optimum use of ground reaction forces is crucial to be able to transfer the energy into a high outcome with the least amount for wasted energy. The core stability is of high value here, because the core transfers the energy from the lower body to the upper body. If the core is weak, the whole system collapses and the outcome is weak.
All exercises should focus on eccentric muscle groups as well as on concentric muscle groups. The work of the eccentric muscle groups not only brings more joint stability, but it reduces also the risk of injuries. In the first video, you can see that both groups are worked out with a higher demand on the concentric muscle groups important for a high-quality forehand stroke.
The next two videos above show two great warm-up exercises for the core and to prepare the body for loading and exploding action on the forehand stroke.
After warming up the core the up shown exercise is perfect to work the lower body isolated from the upper body for executing a good level of explosiveness on the acceleration of the legs when pushing off the ground. Have in mind that the shoulder axis should stay horizontal on the same level to have a better balance while moving (here it still goes up and down too much).
Starting with a resistance band before working with heavier tools is perfect to work on a smooth movement of the muscle groups for eccentric and concentric power.
Alternate the exercises with working on the stroke with feeding balls, playing rallies, etc. Here the player must also adapt to the placement of the ball and has to move up the court (position 2), parallel to baseline (position 1) or not more than a step back (position 3) depending on the length and spin of it. Two yellow poles give him extra visual support with what minimum net clearance the ball must pass between them.
The next step is to use a Dynamax ball for eccentric force training and a basketball (progression with the med ball up to heavy Dynamax ball) for concentric acceleration force training.
Now let the player execute a series of forehands again. Let him recover from the backhand corner and feed the ball to the different court placement (1-3). The player has to track the ball and has to call the area of bounce before hitting it.
At the end of the first progression of exercises, the player is playing a cross-court game. Every ball inside the court crosscourt (between t-line and baseline) counts for the player (e.g. 15:00). Missing counts for the coach. Here the player executes four good shots in a row and wins the game to love. You can make it harder with having the player to play two or three in a row cross-court for winning a point. Like that you work also the mental aspect during a forehand groundstroke session.
That`s it for this time!
All the best
COACH DIMI