Programming Considerations for Tennis Players

I have had a number of people asking me about the obstacles that are faced when working with tennis players. At the moment this is how I am approaching the programmes for the tennis players Im looking after. Let me know if you would like me to put up any specific info on anything. For more information on programming I would encourage you to check out ‘Practical Programming for Strength Training- RIppletoe’, ‘Optimising Strength Training- Kraemer’ and ‘Designing Resistance Training Programmes and Facilities- Boyle’, all these books are good reads and have helped me over the years.
I thought I would outline some of the issues faced with the players at the Leeds High Performance Tennis Centre.
There are a few major factors that need to be considered perhaps more so in tennis than a lot of other sports. These are outlined below, but first I think it helps to understand the background of the sport in this country as this does affect the programming somewhat.

Here we go!

Tennis is slightly different to some others sports in the UK. The nature of the sports infrastructure in this country is that from a very young age (6-8 yrs), players are identified as possessing talent, coached intensively with minimal athletic development work through these key developmental years, they compete on the tournament circuit until they are no longer talented enough to compete anymore (might be 11 yrs old, might be 16) or they burnout from consistently high volumes of training in one sport, or they discover other fruitful alternatives (use your imagination!) and play tennis recreationally. This means that all the LTAD (Long Term Athlete Development) literature does not really apply at the moment in tennis. We are working with populations that are specialising early and that is that! Therefore the work that we do with these players needs to counteract the adaptations that players experience for many years. This is the focus of the programmes for the younger players I work with.

This background then leads into the key factors when looking at programming a players programme. There are three key factors I look at with my players:

The competitive level of the player: Rightly or wrongly, across all age groups, tennis players compete many times in the year. A 12 year old high performance player will be chasing ratings in order to keep their funding which forces them to compete in a substantial amount of tournaments. (This is another post entirely). Clearly some of these are more important than others and I try to get the coaches and parents to prioritise these tournaments so that we can programme training in alongside. Needless to say this is a process that at this moment in time has a lot of improvements to be made, lets leave it at that!! Irrespective of age, training experience or other factors, the impending competition does need to be planned for and generally speaking I will lighten up for 2 days prior to the minor tournaments and up to a week with the more significant tournaments. This does depend on point 2 though. (See below).

The training experience of the player: Do you need to periodise with any detail the training programme of players who have 2 months training experience? My thoughts are not really. They are going through progressive overload in every session with me whether that is strength work, conditioning, plyometrics or any other training component. This does apply to several of the junior players I work with. When they reach the point that they cannot progressively improve on a session by session basis I will implement a basic periodised programme. I like to use a 4 week block. 3 weeks of increased loading followed by 1 week of deloading. The deloading weeks are best slotted in before the more significant tournaments otherwise the whole phase is disrupted. This is one of the biggest issues in tennis though and a lot of senior players never find the time for continuous periods of loading due to the demands of the competitive circuit. Might be why there are so many overuse injuries in the sport! I am lucky in that I have a very supportive head coach who believes in the physical side of tennis and finds time for the players to do it!

The age of the player?: I work with a number of players across an age group ranging from 8-26 years old. What I typically implement for the younger players age 8-11 is general training consisting of the major movement patterns, general conditioning work if required otherwise I won’t go near conditioning for this age group, and if i'm working with a player in conjunction with the tennis coach I will do tennis specific movement work. In terms of periodisation I really don’t bother. They just need a small taper before the tournaments at weekends.

For the 12-16 yr olds, the tournament schedule gets a little more intense with a talented player competing internationally several times in addition to their domestic schedule. Clearly if the player is still on the pathway at this age they need to travel further in order to test themselves. Unfortunately there is still a lot of ratings chasing going on which means that the players compete far more than they should in my opinion. This is somewhat out of my control and you just have to deal with it. If the player has a good 2 year training history (see point 3 below) they will require more advanced programming and this will need to be periodised both for loading and tournaments. Bear in mind that the 12-14 yr old boys will be experiencing the growth spurt and will need to monitored closely. I can categorically state that for my players at this age the focus is on strength and athleticism. They will be training all the components but the emphasis will be on relative strength.

For the 16 and above players this can be as simple or complex as the players require based on points 1 and 2 above. These players will need some work on specific areas and frankly if you don't have a good 3-5 years of solid training behind you it is difficult to make the changes you want in the required time frame. If they don't have this background you may want to spend some time building general strength before you even think about programming extensive agility development phases or conditioning work as you simply will not see the results you want. I have inherited some players with a poor training background and all Im doing at the moment is working on flexibility, mobility and movement patterns. This will continue as long as necessary!

There are other factors that need to be considered such as injury history, player availability, logistical issues and others but the points should give you an outline of the issues faced. I will put some more info on the tennis programmes up in the near future but thats enough rambling from me for now!

	Author:	BrendanStrength (BrendanStrength's profile, BrendanStrength's blog)
	Posted On:	Tuesday, 19th January '10, 4:10pm
	Tags:	Agility Training, Coaching, Exercise, Fitness, Injury, Overtraining, Physiology, Power, Speed Training, Strength Training, Tennis, Training, Training Programs, Weight Training and Winning
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