Apr 18, 2017Serve It Up
Although weight training has increased in popularity among high school sports teams, for some sports, it is important to first train fundamental movement skills. That is the opinion of Nathan and Giselle Martin, founders of Martin Method Tennis Fitness, when in comes to working with young tennis players. For the past 16 years they have trained players of all levels — from Wimbledon champions to school kids. When training high school-aged tennis players, the Martins focus on perfecting fundamental movements before they even consider weight lifting.
In an article about when athletes should begin weight training, the Martins explain their thinking.
“One of the biggest misconceptions people make is to train young tennis players like they would an adult,” they write. “This can be dangerous and often leads to tennis injuries. Players under the age of 16 should steer away from weights and heavy loading. Alternatively they should use body weight exercises, resistance bands and medicine balls (5-10% of their body weight).”
There are six fundamental movement patterns that they recommend all young tennis players perfect before moving on to weight training. These include the:
- lunge
- squat
- bend
- pull
- push
- rotation.
After athletes complete all of these movement patterns with good form, they will be ready to safely take on the physical demands of weight training.
“Performing these basic fundamental strength exercises on a regular basis, will give young tennis players a great platform to build on in the future, educate them on good functional biomechanics and help prevent tennis injuries,” write the Martins.
Even players that are 16 or older can benefit from low resistance training. If an athlete is struggling to do basic weight training exercises, they may need to take a step back and build up muscle with push-ups, pull-ups, resistance bands, and medicine ball work. This will give them the foundation they need to take the next step and begin higher intensity, heavier load weight training.
To help form the ideal strength training program for high school tennis players, here are 10 tips tailored towards the speed, agility, and power demands of the sport:
- Train in a standing position — While there are exceptions, the majority of your training should reflect the way you play the sport.
- Use multiple joints — Tennis players use multiple joints at a time when they compete and should focus their training towards multi-joint exercises.
- Train movements, not muscle groups — Instead of isolating certain muscles, work on strengthening the essential movements that will help athletes on the court.
- Train unilaterally and multi-planar — Tennis players spend a lot of time moving in different planes as they jump, run, and cut. This makes exercises such as split squats, step-ups, and lunge variations very helpful.
- Use all three methods — Balance your program by incorporating dynamic effort, max strength, and repeated effort exercises.
- Variation — As with any strength training program, variation is key to balanced muscle growth and injury prevention.
- Get out of the weight room — To help vary your exercises, don’t hesitate to take your strength training outside for some sled dragging, uphill sprints, or running stadium stairs.
- Don’t overload — It’s easy to think that adding more weight will only help your performance, but it’s important that you don’t sacrifice technique or else your training could do more harm than good.
- Push and pull — Make sure that you aren’t training in one direction. It’s essential that you push and pull on both horizontal and vertical planes and balance your loading.
- Train the antagonists — Training the opposing muscle groups is just as important as training the primary ones. This will help protect joints and decrease the chance of injury.
