How To Assess a Tennis Player for Strength & Conditioning
Last year, I was visited by a new client we’ll call James. He came into the gym with the goal of getting stronger and gaining a bit of lean muscle. When we went through our assessment process, we learned that he is an avid tennis player, regularly playing in leagues around the city all year round and practicing a few nights per week. He even goes out to see a coach in New Jersey once per week for private lessons.
While James downplayed his tennis prowess, I came to find out that he was not only dedicated, but also very accomplished, and was competing that year for a national title in his tennis association (one of many he competes in). This wasn’t the first time he’d done that, either.
Needless to say, James is very much an athlete, bordering on full-time territory as a competitive athlete, even as an amateur in his 30’s.
Once we got going, I asked him, “Do you want to get stronger and gain muscle for tennis, or is this more of a personal goal?”
He responded it was more of a personal goal, but he was intrigued and interested in how we could improve his tennis performance as well.
TENNIS PLAYERS
We have seen a number of tennis and padel players the last few years at DiSalvo Performance Training. What is especially unique about these athletes is that their bodies truly do not lie. What I mean by this is I’m usually able to tell how much time they’ve spent on the court by a few “tells.”
Namely, tennis players often are stuck in extension patterns in their backs because of the general tennis stance, and if they aren’t taking care of their lower bodies, they often have incredibly tight or overworked hamstrings. When their hamstrings can no longer take the strain of the tennis stance, they start to cheat their stance by compensating elsewhere. This often leads to a forward leaning or flexed posture that no longer segments at the hips, but instead somewhere else in the spine. This pattern manifests itself in the gym as making hinge patterns (e.g. deadlifts), extremely difficult. They often confuse spinal flexion with a proper hinge (in other words, they round and cave their torso forward instead of hinging at the hips).
Because of the rotational demands of tennis on top of this profile, this is often why you see lower back pain in tennis players, or the aforementioned hamstring issues.
Seeing more and more tennis players and golfers at DiSalvo Performance has also shown me that athletes in sports that require exceptional rotational ability produce very different movement patterns and strengths in the gym. These athletes often have a very good ability to create force quickly, but it’s not maximal force. This shows up by them being able to move modest weight quickly, jump high, or show fast reaction speeds, but it doesn’t show up in terms of lifting the heaviest weight.
This is due to two things:
Lifting heavy weight requires very large amounts of force that is applied relatively slower in comparison to moving your body (or something lighter) quickly.
Tennis players are good at staying lax in key joints to help create velocity and speed. This is the opposite of what’s required of lifting heavy weight with a barbell, for example.
So what do you want to do with the tennis player?
First, assess which end of the spectrum they exist on. Do they possess a great deal of whip and laxity, while also showing great swing and ball speeds? Is it coming at the expense of some stability and strength which may help their durability?
Or perhaps they are quite stable and adept at producing force, but not quick or mobile enough to achieve the level of mobility required for a faster serve and more agile game?
As is often the case, people exist on a spectrum, but the ability to identify where they are will dictate where you start with your program.
Using James as a Case Study
James is unique in this regard. His cardiovascular fitness is exceptional, as you’d expect, but his posture and movement resemble a more general athletic and “stable” frame. By “stable” I mean that he not only hinges well, but he creates a lot of stability through his hips, shoulders and other joints. It’s led to him being a quick study of movements in the gym like a squat, bench press, or deadlift.
Ironically, he’s said this lack of mobility costs his serve power and speed, but I observe that it has kept him remarkably healthy for all the strain he puts on his body on the tennis court.
This lack of mobility was most concerning in his shoulders, as he lacked external rotation range and strength required to serve properly. Because his shoulder external rotation was both alarming from a general perspective, but also got in the way of his sport, we made this the priority in his training.
One way we did this was to take the barbell bench press off the table while he’s in competition season. The reason being is that the bench press has no shoulder protraction by design, and reinforcing that lack of shoulder mobility would be detrimental to James’ tennis game. Instead, we use movements like cable chest presses (standing, 1 arm kneeling, 2 arm standing, etc), and dumbbell bench presses in all ranges (incline, flat, decline), as these are a little less restrictive on the scapular movement. We are still able to work in rep ranges that complement his goal of gaining muscle.
Through a healthy mix of moving his scapula through all its functions, mobilizing his shoulders and working his core, James has slowly been able to increase his external rotation and make connections in the gym that have served him on the court.
Flash forward less than a year later: James has logged more tennis hours than the previous year, competed nationally twice, and is showing marked improvement in both strength and mobility.
Conclusion
Tennis is an incredibly dynamic and demanding sport that requires athletes to be not only mobile and quick, but also stable and strong enough to withstand the wear and tear of all it’s varied movements.
Assessing tennis players should start by figuring what end of the continuum they’re on: lax, whippy, and quick, or strong, stable, and maybe a bit too stiff. While we didn’t mention endurance and cardiovascular capacity, this is also a consideration, but that’s an article for another day.
Need help? Reach out and we would be happy to talk with you!
About the Author: Mark DiSalvo, CSCS
Mark is the founder and owner of DiSalvo Performance Training. He brings over a decade of experience training clients and athletes of all backgrounds and is the strength and conditioning coach to athletes of all levels and disciplines, from youth to professional and Olympic-level.
A graduate of Northeastern University, he’s an NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and Sports Performance Expert. He’s also a Steve Maxwell Certified Kettlebell Instructor (Levels 1 & 2).
You can read more about him here.