A new textbook offers tennis training techniques for optimal strength and conditioning.
Being a strong tennis player isn’t just about perfecting your shots on the court. It’s also about how you train your body in the gym to prepare for what you do on the court. There are a number of tennis-specific movements that require functional training, and it’s important to know how to develop them for optimal tennis fitness.
Enter author and tennis coach Philipp Halfmann’s new textbook, Advanced Concepts of Strength & Conditioning for Tennis, which offers a developmental approach to athletic conditioning that can be easily understood and implemented by tennis players and coaches of all skill levels. Advanced Concepts provides readers with more than 700 pages of valuable tennis training tools, complete with information on nutrition, fitness assessment tests and principles of exercise physiology.
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Exercises and activities are broken down into major categories including warm-up and stretching, resistance training, and speed, agility and quickness training, all complete with full-color images and detailed descriptions on how to perform the activities. Most of the exercises are also shown with various degrees of difficulty and levels of progression so that athletes can gradually adapt their training over time.
Overall, Advanced Concepts offers recreational and professional tennis players and coaches alike with a valuable resource tool to enhance strength and conditioning training. The following resistance training activity is a sample exercise from the book, detailing the “reverse lunge to medicine ball diagonal reach,” which mimics complex tennis movements and improves core stability and balance.
REVERSE LUNGE TO MB DIAGONAL REACH
Summary: The Reverse Lunge to MB Diagonal Reach is a functional training exercise that focuses on improving the synergy of the neuromuscular system, trunk stability, body control and coordination, as well as improving skill and balance foundation for complex movements.
Purpose: Results in more powerful stroke production on the court, as well as improving overall change of direction and agility.
Description:
1. Take an athletic stance, standing straight with feet shoulder-width apart and knees slightly flexed.
2. Hold a medicine ball (2 lb. - 14 lbs.) naturally in both hands, and push the chest forward.
3. Step into a reverse lunge with the right foot and externally rotate the trunk to the right. Lean forward with the upper body, elbows extended. The medicine ball should be positioned laterally to the right hip.
4. Return to the starting position, pushing through the heel of the front foot while simultaneously internally rotating the trunk and extending the shoulders, thereby raising the med ball diagonally across the chest and over the left shoulder. The med ball should be positioned to the left of the head.
5. Do 3 sets of 10. Repeat and switch sides.
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