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 ext remely 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.
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?
The importance of core training for tennis players – Core training is a great way to strengthen and condition abdominal muscles, along with helping to build explosive power.
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
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.
Youths with autism take a swing at tennis – UCLA’s 10-week volunteer-based program aims to improve social and motor skills of children (outside link)
Are my sunspots AKs? – AKs are rough-textured, dry, scaly patches on the skin that can range in color and vary in size, and they are considered to be the most common form of precancer.
Acing Autism – There is a growing body of literature about the benefits of exercise programs for children with autism spectrum disorders. These youngsters struggle with social-interaction problems, as well as language impairments, repetitive behaviors and restricted interests.
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.
A shoulder to lean on – Shoulder impingement and tendonitis are common injuries among recreational athletes. The overhead motion of the tennis serve, for instance, is a provocative activity that places increased stress on the shoulder and predisposes it to injury.
The facts about overuse injuries and young tennis players – There are various ways to get overuse injuries while playing tennis; finding ways to prevent them is the key.
The young athlete – Intensive exercise and training may be associated with acute and chronic illness and injury. Children train harder and participate in sports year round. We are seeing an increased number of children with fatigue and ovveruse injuries.
How hard should my children train to improve performance? – Pushing our young athletes beyond the physiological limits of their body can be dangerous and disruptive to their health and well being.
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)
Find your inner ‘fun’ on court – How can we help our players enjoy the process and gain a sense of fulfillment, regardless of whether they're winning or losing?
Make Tennis as easy as A, B, C! Take negative emotions out of tennis for beginner player – Keeping the game simple for all levels and types of players will help them achieve success as well as keep negative emotions at bay.
NEW! Get your game on track with meditation and yoga – Since the words "yoga," "meditation" and "concentration" are so often used in conjunction with one another, it may be helpful to clarify their differences. Yoga can be thought of as an umbrella that covers physical poses, breath work, meditation, and concentration.
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)
How does caffeine affect your tennis game? – Tennis players, as well as general consumers of caffeine, should be careful. Benefits may occur with small to moderate levels of caffeine, however, performance benefits do not increase with increased consumption.
Senior tennis
Age respects hard work and will to win – How do older athletes maintain their drive and their rigorous training schedule?
Tennis can be tool to turn back time – Exercise can turn back the clock as we age.