YCAC tennis – Play Smart Tennis

Quantifying training load series – Importance of understanding the concept of an individualization

February 8, 2023 play.smart.tennis

Quantifying the training load and measuring it helps the coaches and athletes to understand the process progression at the practice and during or after the tournament. Information about the progression is crucial as the coach can understand which of the practice elements the athlete has already implemented successfully into the game. Systematically monitoring the physiological and psychological changes of the athletes’ performances, helps to determine the effectiveness of the practice and based on that to analyze the efficiency of the training program

TENNIS GAME – THE GAME OF MOMENTUMS

November 24, 2022 play.smart.tennis

Momentum measures the ‘motion content’ of an object and is based on the product of an object’s mass and velocity. For players to perform accurate strokes with high velocity, there should be an optimal combination of linear and angular momentum. The optimal combination depends on the urgency of movement, level of balance, perception of the situation and even level of confidence. With a creation of a larger momentum, greater forces and abilities are required from a hitter to decelerate to set up and execute a successful stroke

What my Doctoral Thesis Taught me: Tennis Training for the Future Champions

August 20, 2022 play.smart.tennis

Coaches teach tennis from the point of “racquet-ball” rather than movement and timing. Interception has two aspects, movement towards the ball to intercept it and create an impact point. This can differ from the concept of the hitting in which player can wait for the ball to approach before the impact. Even with the perfect contact point in which the ball lands at the string bed at the sweet spot, if the momentum of the hitter’s racquet movement does not match the movement momentum of the incoming ball, the stroke will not be satisfactory in intensity and direction

Tennis Skill Acquisition and Long Term Development

August 16, 2022 play.smart.tennis

We are not teaching tennis players to be automative machines but intelligent athletes that can recognize and adapt to the constantly changing environment. From acquisition to stabilization phase, we can not teach technical skills separately from the tactical skills

SPLIT STEP AIR PHASE

February 21, 2022 play.smart.tennis

One of the greatest challenges of the dynamic tennis environment is a creation of a quick and accurate decision of the physical response (movement) corresponding to the technical-tactical intentions of the opponents’ striking actions. By prioritizing the needs of high-speed reactions, expert tennis players tend to decide of the movement direction and intensity while still being above the ground, at the air phase of the split step, as proposed by Uzu et al. (2009). From there the decision of the movement intensity and direction corresponds to receiver gathering information while increasing the much-needed muscle spindle sensitivity of the leg muscles before the ground contact, moving their center of mass away towards the edges of their support base.