Marco Bitran - Fitness Training: The Secret of Success in Tennis

 
By Giselle Martin

Tennis has changed as compared to a few years ago. To excel in this sport, a tennis player needs to undergo extensive fitness training to improve footwork, speed, strength and performance. In order to out-stand the cut-throat competition, tennis players need to follow a tennis specific fitness training program that will help give them that slight edge on court.

Let us have a look at how tennis fitness training assists a tennis player in climbing the success ladder:

Types of Fitness Components

Tennis is a very diverse and complex sport. If you are serious about being successful, training for tennis should address all fitness components, rather than just focusing on court drills, or running fast. Depending on the time of the year, (pre-competition etc.) on an average a professional tennis player should dedicate, 30% of the total work time, to an effective tennis training program. A good fitness program will include strength training, agility training, power training, speed training, aerobic / anaerobic training, core training, balance training, coordination training and flexibility training. For a tennis player to make and see an overall improvement in their game, the key is to address all these individualized fitness components with correct intensity and load.

Develop Overall Strength

Up and coming young tennis players need to work more on developing strength, core, and balance. They need to focus on some basic full-body strength exercises, which will help them gain speed and flexibility.

Players who feel weak, and slow around the court, should dedicate more time on agility, and reaction drills and overall strength. This can help you feel lighter and quicker around the court, placing minimal stress and load on the body, thus reducing injuries.

Tennis is a sport that can last for hours, so tennis players need to have a high energy level as well as persistence. Many players will notice the benefits and a marked improvement in their level of strength and power endurance, deep into the last set, after following a specific tennis fitness training program.

Prevent Injuries

Range of movement exercise's and keeping the body supple should be one of the main focuses with all tennis players. They should incorporate stretching as an important part of their tennis fitness program. Self- myofascial release exercises are also very important, as this will help maintain a healthy muscle. Performing tennis exercises regularly, not only helps in overall performance, but also helps, prevent and reduce injuries within tennis players. Doing some stretching exercises everyday after practice will boost muscle flexibility, this would further decrease the risk of injuries in the future.

The Perfect Solution

Often players can be seen giving excuses that they can not give time to training due to their tight schedules and continuous tournaments. A perfect solution to this is to perform a 20-30 min (Starter) tennis fitness workout prior to your regular tennis practice. Over time this will not only help improve your level of tennis fitness, but these starter workouts will have you warm, get your feet moving, and have you ready to go for the start of each practice. (no more wasting 10mins of your court time). If you can do these starter workouts 3-4 times a week, prior to each practice, you and your coach will be surprised how much more effective your time on court will be.

At Tennis Fitness, we provide training for tennis and tennis programs for players of all levels. We offer specific exercises for tennis fitness and online tennis programs that are proven to work. We help improve tennis footwork, speed, agility, core, power and strength.

Marco Bitran: Off Court Tennis Training For Young Players

By Giselle Martin

It is always recommended for young players from the age of 8 years and up, to do a thorough fitness assessment and postural analysis to determine their height, weight, flexibility, physical strengths and weaknesses. It also gives them the ability to look back in subsequent years and see areas they have improved on, track their growth and development etc. After the assessments a tennis program should be designed to target certain areas such as strength, speed, cardio vascular endurance, flexibility etc.

If tennis is the main sport of a young player, then training away from tennis should be structured to help gain benefits for tennis, this is what we call specific tennis training.

Tennis Training programs should take into account the movement dynamics e.g. high speed, agility and power endurance and dimensions of tennis e.g. lateral, forward, backward, up and down, rotational etc.

Strength is the foundation for development in all-young players. Increases in muscle strength will help to improve movement, power, endurance, injury prevention, co ordination and confidence. There have been 100s of times I have had a coach or parent tell me their young player needs to move quicker or have more power. Doing power and agility exercises will help to a degree, but without a solid strength base benefits will be minimal.

Examples of strength exercises for tennis are;

1. Body weight: (push ups, squats, planks, lunges etc.)

2. Suspension training: It is highly recommend for young players and has many benefits and very low risk for injuries. We use suspension training with the majority of our young players and get great results in strength, balance and co ordination.

3. Resistance band training: Resistance bands have been around for decades and are a great way to work certain muscle groups in the body. They are commonly used for rehabilitation from injuries, injury prevention and to challenge the musculoskeletal system (muscles, bones, tendons and ligaments) to promote muscle strength. Resistance bands are low cost and are good to travel with.

4. Muscle loading: It is using weight (dumbbells, weight plates, barbells, machines etc.) to challenge the musculoskeletal system. This form of training has huge benefits for athletes, but for younger athletes it can be very dangerous, particularly on the joints of the body. It is hard for a coach or parent to know when a child should start lifting weights. Research tells us, this form of training should be avoided until the age of 16. In most cases it would be accurate, however we need to take into account the body type, physical maturity and natural strength of young athletes before determining when to start their strength program. Obviously working with a specific tennis conditioning trainer will help make that decision. A tennis conditioning trainer should start all players off by lifting no more than 5% of their body weight for upper body exercises and 5%-10% for lower body exercises. Until you have seen a trained professional avoid using weight training for players under the age of 16 years.

As important as strength is, it is also necessary to look at other areas of training for tennis to help boost a young players development. Cardio vascular endurance (running, swimming etc. ) Anaerobic cardio vascular training (agility) flexibility (stretching), co ordination and core stability should also be targeted and structured into the off court tennis training plan.

Young players should be encouraged to participate in a range of structured sports (soccer, basketball, netball, gymnastics, swimming etc.) and also fun unstructured exercise/play. Participating in other sports (e.g. Basketball, soccer) away from tennis will often give young players an increase in cardio vascular endurance, co ordination and strength.

It is best to consult a qualified tennis conditioning trainer to help structure a plan for off court tennis training. Getting them to work in with the coach is highly recommended, as the coach will have some knowledge on areas of strength and weakness.

We provide fitness training for tennis players of all levels. We offer tennis specific exercises and online tennis programs that are proven to improve footwork, speed, agility, core, power and strength.

Marco Bitran: How to Develop Successful Athletes

By Marcin Bieniek


Parents sign their kids for tennis lessons for many reasons. Mostly, the most important reason of a new activity for a kid is to make him/her interested in this sport and to help developing different physical abilities like coordination, speed and agility. As parents have different expectations according to the participation in tennis lessons, coaches also vary with their methodologies of what they should teach. Some coaches focus solely on tennis skills while others believe in a broad approach while trying to also improve life skills and develop good character traits. Which approach should we take? Can we say that one is better than the other? Do we have to make our job harder by focusing on more things? In my opinion, the hierarchy on the court looks like this: human being-athlete-tennis player.

I am a strong believer of developing character and life skills at first place. Why is that? To understand my point of view, let's face the real situation of most tennis coaches. We work with variety of kids, from highly motivated and dreaming about the professional tour to typical amateurs who are happy to be on the court and play tennis once a week. Focusing solely on developing tennis skills and making champions is a tough process and only small percentage of players will ever have a chance to come close to make their dreams.

What about the others? Are we going to teach them only tennis skills knowing that they will never achieve level of performance that guarantees big amount of money from winning tournaments? When career is done, skills acquired on the court can be used in a life to achieve successes in other fields of business. Making proper decisions or respecting others is a trait that can bring you more friends and benefits for your job. On the other hand, knowing perfectly how to play forehand will not give you an edge over your business' rivals e.g. while opening a restaurant. These examples simply show that coaches should focus not only on tennis-related skills but their approach to teaching should be much broader.

Many coaches deny teaching life-skills because "they are not parents, psychologists and they don't get additional pay for that". Unfortunately, it is quite hard to change the mentality of this kind of "coaches" but there is always a hope. We have to understand that we don't need to get a trophy for every small good thing we are doing for someone else. It should come from within us that we want to make our players improve as much as they can and our personal satisfaction for achieving these goals is the only reward that we should expect. Some players and parents are grateful for teaching their kids more than just to hit the ball and they buy gifts for the coach at special occasions e.g Christmas time. In my opinion, it should never be a priority for coaches while thinking about what pathway to go. During the tournaments, there are many examples of actions when we can observe if players spend more time on tennis-skills or maybe their priority is put on life skills and character development. Let's see these situations below:

Winning at all costs

It doesn't matter how but you have to win! To develop successful human beings, winning is important but not at all costs. There are rules that we can't break to get want we want. During the tournament, we can see some players who are able to cheat on crucial points to get the point and finally win the match. Is this behavior really the action that we want to teach? Are we (coaches) proud of our players if they win this way? Can we honestly tell parents that they kids are good at cheating and that is why they are so successful? Serious coaches know that players have to focus on giving 100% of their effort in order to achieve best results; if it is not enough to win - you have to deal with it and work even harder!

No respect from the star

This problem is visible when the first big achievements come. Players feel like stars and they don't respect other people. Players with low ranking positions? LOSERS! Referee who gives a call against this player? CHEATER! These actions are common for players who are not taught to respect other people and their practice time is solely direct towards improving tennis-specific skills. Coaches have to make sure that proper emphasis is put on teaching right behaviors to make better human beings and develop skills far more important than forehand or backhand.

Are you kidding me?

"I am not going to practice with this boy! He is too weak for me. I am not going to improve... " Another situation that shows lack of strong character and weak life-skills by the player. Coach has to prepare the player for the post-career life and make him/her understand the reality. If you don't work hard in each situation, you have a really small chance to achieve anything great on any field. You can't focus on external factors because there is always something to complain about. Narrow your concentration and get the most of each work and you will see astonishing results. This skill will help players not only improve tennis skills in a faster way but it will also pay off in the future.

These 3 examples are just few of many that coaches and parents can see on almost every tournament. If your coach is not focused on equipping your kid with life and tennis skills, probably he/she is not the right person to spend so much time with your youngster. Professional coaches understand their power to build and change kids' lives so character development and teaching life skills come in package with great forehands and winning serves. Next time you are on the court as a coach and see your player acting improperly, don't look for excuses. Intervene, teach right actions, be satisfied and observe the benefits!

Check Tennis Island website (http://tennisisland.us) for more inspirational and instructional materials. Over 1500 tennis drills, articles and video lessons to improve your tennis and life skills.

Marco Bitran: Tennis Superheroes - How to Train a Top Performer

By Karolina Sznycer, PhD

Being an excellent performer is neither natural nor easily mastered. It is an effortful project that requires a meticulous plan, mental discipline and plenty of grit. If you wish to achieve extraordinary things, you need to start thinking in a way which high-performance people do. And top performers do not think in an ordinary way. When involved in tasks they need to perform, they take on identities which are quite remarkable and have little to do with mundane lines of thinking.

The formation of an optimal performer, a complete tennis player and a strong individual is a multi-dimensional undertaking. It calls for a super powerful mix encompassing customised tennis instruction along with physical skills development, a mental skills programme centred on attention control and positive life skills coaching.

The process of creating a mentality that would foster high performance may be stimulated by emulation of top performers' patterns of thinking and behavior. More specifically, it may rely on the integration of concepts, strategies and perspectives which are most frequently employed and prioritized by elite professional tennis players. Such a selection, amongst others, comprises the growth mindset, task mastery and powerful self-presentation. The most significant benefit of such a broad and multi-faceted modelling approach is not only its emphasis on the already tested models of efficacy for sport performance. Also, what counts is its demonstration of transferability of life skills through tennis players' powerful identity construction and communication in non-sport settings.

 There is a close mesh between the cultivation of the growth mindset and performance and process orientations. The growth mindset and performance orientation consist in the continual self-development and persistent working towards the maximization of potential. Each case of planned effort exertion, however small in scale, breeds a little transformation. This improvement, in turn, can only be achieved through process goals which involve the calibration of focus on the task at hand. What unites these approaches is immersion in the here and now, complete abandon in the act of doing, total absorption in performance rather than its outcomes. Crucially, this is how these perspectives contribute to inciting the ever elusive state of flow considered optimal for the attainment of peak performance in all life pursuits including not only sport, but also academic, professional and interpersonal endeavours.

What significantly complements the combination of the mental strategies is powerful self-presentation. That you can talk yourself into thinking strong by adopting the communication style of top-notch performers is a potent idea from a psychological perspective. Power talking leads to power thinking. Tennis players' forceful communication entails adamant sticking to their principles and values, decisive rejections of unproductive thought patterns and their creative replacement with a range of psychologically fruitful solutions.

Inspired by outstanding sportspeople, this model of the top performer's identity may serve as a tool to achieve all-around greatness and act as a blueprint for an optimal mindset, which facilitates effective performance, promotes positive life skills and nourishes general psychological well-being.

Karolina Sznycer is a researcher working at Barcelona Tennis Academy in Spain where the program 'Developing strong individuals - Play2Inspire' is implemented. For more information about the program check out the website http://www.bta-tennis.com.