Tennis and your health
Conditioning
Developing your game
Health
Injury prevention
Mind-body connection
Nutrition
Senior tennis
Conditioning
Aerobic fitness testing for competitive tennis – General fitness guidelines concerning aerobic capacity
Abdominal muscles and the tennis stroke – The abdominal muscles are extremely active during a tennis stroke.
Training for agility and perturbation/balance – Running is the basis for many sports and has an explosive quality common to other movements. The ability to change direction and maintain stability is often more important.
Improve my game with explosive legs – Tennis is a sport that requires quick, powerful movements from one end of the court to the other. Quickness can make the difference in winning and losing.
Get stronger to stay independent longer – Strength training is truly the “fountain of youth” for adults over 40. Stronger muscles from strength exercise make movement of all kinds more inviting by raising the bar of capability.
NEW! Supervised training can benefit child athletes – but consider age – and use care – At what age should kids start working with a professional trainer in a supervised fitness training program that would include circuit training, light weights and stretching exercises?
Developing your game
Balance in tennis – Balance is a complicated function involving several different body systems.
Balance critical to better tennis – The only way to improve one’s capacity for better balance is to practice the things that cause a person to be out of balance.
Laws of motion can help or hinder tennis play – Newton’s laws of motion play a huge role in understanding tennis fundamentals.
Momentum – The key method to acceleration is using the body as a linked system or a kinetic chain, as it is sometimes called.
Recovery research reshapes concept of training – Research over the past half century has led sport scientists and coaches to realize that recovery is an extremely important component of training in today’s world.
Recovery rituals essential to game plan – Microcycles of recovery have both psychological and physiological components.
Health
NEW! Tennis can be solution to 'big' problem for inactive kids – 84 percent of parents believe their children are at a healthy weight, while the exact data show that nearly one-third of children and teens are obese or overweight.
Injury prevention
Lessen risk of tennis elbow with strong body, sound strokes – Most experts agree that, to truly prevent tennis elbow, a total body strength training program is necessary; one that involves the legs and torso as well.
Lighter racquet not necessarily better – Choosing a racquet is not as simple as just discussing grip size and racquet weight; technique, strength and many other factors also play a role.
Treating and preventing muscle cramps during exercise – Exercise-induced muscle cramps are painful, debilitating, and can take an athlete out of competition. They can occur in athletes in all types of sports and are usually associated with muscle fatigue and/or dehydration with an associated loss of electrolytes.
Mind-body connection
The evidence is in: Exercise your brain for mental fitness – Exercise increases oxygen flow into the brain, which reduces brain-bound free radicals, and acts directly on the molecular machinery of the brain itself.
Evidence keeps building: Tennis improves brain power – High levels of cardiovascular fitness, achieved by age 18, were directly associated and could actually be used to predict educational achievement later in life.
Mind-Body Exercise Connection – Exercise not only makes you healthier, it also may make you more intelligent. (outside link)
Nutrition
Sports nutrition – pushing your performance limits – As an athlete, you also need special nutrients to meet the physical demands you make that go beyond normal functioning to push the performance buttons to the limits.
Key hydration and nutrition tips for competitive sports – As you play sports in intense heat, remember in order to stay well conditioned, hydrate and fuel appropriately. When you follow these guidelines, you will be a powerful match to any opponent. (outside link)
Senior tennis
Age respects hard work and will to win – How do older athletes maintain their drive and their rigorous training schedule?