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,I am the Director of tennis and
strength and conditioning at FIT2HIT, and I work with professional athletes for a living.
Today I wanna talk about why core training for tennis players is important.
Do you know that core strength will ultimately determine how fast your service is going to
be? Let us take a look at the service motion of Swiss junior champion Alexander Ritschard.
As you can see he pushes off the ground, jumps up in the air, and hits the ball above his
head.
Ok, why is the core or trunk region important if he hits the ball with his right arm?
The answer has to do with energy transfer
also known as kinetic (movement) chain
efficiency
The reason that the trunk (the core) is important
during energy transfer is because there are the most connecting points in the movement
chain, which means that there is the highest potential for energy leakage, which
consequently leads to a loss in force production. Therefore, strengthening the core makes sense.
Everything in tennis is ground driven, meaning
the athlete pushes off the ground, transfers energy through the body, and hits the ball.
So there is a chain of events occurring before you hit the ball. It doesn't matter if you hit a serve
or ground stroke, the procedure is always the same. It's a
bottom-up transfer of energy.
You start with 100% of potential energy
at the feet. When you jump, some energy is transferred through various body segments
but some energy is lost due to heat before you hit the ball. So the available
energy above your head is definitely less than 100%.
How fast your serve is going to be depends on:
1. how much force can be generated from your feet
2. how much gets transferred through the body
3. how much of force gets applied to the ball. That's the focus of athletic conditioning
and core training! For more videos on strength and conditioning
for tennis check out our website at www.FIT-2-HIT.COM I'm Philipp Halfmann and thanks for watching!