I get a fair amount of questions sent my way on a weekly basis and this past week was no different. But I thought it would be best to share them on the blog for others to benefit from as well (especially given that the questions were quite good and very relevant to what I often hear from coaches and players).
Let’s get to them!
There’s no secret that tennis is demanding but how demanding, we don’t always know. What I mean is, how do we measure on-court training load? Traditionally, time on court has been the go to method - but does this sole metric give us enough info? On the other side of the training spectrum we find physical preparation. Off-court training is arguably easier to manage than on-court training as specific loads, reps and sets are prescribed based on an athlete’s maximum abilities. But what about a 3-set tennis match? How do we measure the stress that has on a player? Many of us would assume that a 3-set match is taxing. But what if the scoreline was 6-1, 2-6, 6-2 and finished in about 1.5 hours? While another scoreline looks something like this - 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 and lasts for over 3 hours? Surely these 2 scenarios aren’t the same. We have a similar dilemma in practice settings. What if player A is playing all out during a session while player B brings the intensity down a notch?