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Give Yourself the Pro Treatment
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03/27/2009 - 1:06 PM
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 In the May issue of TENNIS we have an article called “The Pro Treatment” about the different health professionals who help keep the pros in playing shape. But what about rec players? What can the health pros do for your game? While some of the services they provide may seem a bit indulgent, especially in this economy (a session with a sports psychologist, for example, starts at around $150 an hour), they do work wonders for the pros. Here’s a look at what they can do for you.
Trainer
If you have a hard time motivating to work out off the court, a personal trainer can help. While it may be hard find a trainer who’s an expert in tennis, sessions with any strength and conditioning specialist should improve your overall fitness. And the more fit you are, the better you’ll feel and perform on court. “A trainer who’s played tennis would be very helpful, so they know what type of muscles they should work on,” says Jeff Michaud, owner of Fitness by Jeff in Atlanta, where he coaches tennis and does personal training. If you can’t find someone who plays tennis, tell a regular trainer that you need total-body strengthening, with specific attention paid to your core, shoulders, upper back and legs. “For weights I’d recommend anywhere from 20 and about 35 reps,” Michaud says. “You want to do more reps, less weight. You’re not playing football. You want to build endurance and lean muscle mass.”
Physical Therapist
A lot of us have gone to a physical therapist to get treatment for injuries, but many don’t realize the other purpose of P.T.: injury prevention. “Before you’re injured, a physical therapist can provide a preventative evaluation and do things to screen flexibility, strength and balance,” says Todd Ellenbecker, M.S., D.P.T., the ATP tour’s director of sports medicine and the chairman of the USTA Sport Science Committee. If they find a problem, like a muscle imbalance or a weak rotator cuff, they can design a “prehab” program to prevent an injury. So if you’re getting back in the game after time off or if you let yourself get out of shape over the winter, a P.T. evaluation could keep you from getting injured and spending more time away from the court. If you are injured, a physical therapist can perform in-clinic treatments for rehabilitation and prescribe exercises to help you heal and strengthen the injured area.
Nutritionist
Let’s face it: Many of us pack a few extra pounds. But moving around court is much easier if you’re not overweight, and that’s where a nutritionist comes in. The most obvious role of a nutritionist for someone who’s not an elite athlete is to design you an eating plan to help you reach and maintain the proper weight. Dietitians can also counsel you on the proper fueling and hydration for the best performance on court and detect and help you correct any deficiencies in your diet.
Sports Psychologist
Say a certain opponent has you spooked or you just can’t get your forehand to land in. It may not be that your opponent is better than you or that your forehand needs to be reworked; it might be mental. And sometimes mental blocks are the most difficult to break down. You may need help from an expert. “I think it’s an illusion that sports psychology is only for elite athletes,” says Dr. Alan Goldberg, Ph.D. “Pro and rec athletes have the same kinds of issues.” The Massachusetts-based Goldberg does his work primarily over the phone with athletes all over the country, hearing the history of their performance troubles and helping them work through them. “If I’m doing my job well, I’m going to be able to teach them to self-correct,” he says. “I teach them to identify when they’re beginning to make those mistakes on the court and teach them some skills to deal with it.”
Massage Therapist
Anyone who’s ever had sports massage knows it’s not a relaxing experience. The deep pressure can be downright painful. But from tight muscles and bands to scar-tissue buildup, massage therapists can push all the right buttons on your body to prevent injury and help you recover faster. For a full report on how sports massage can help you, check out this TENNIS article. This doesn’t mean that regular spa massages don’t have benefits for your tennis. Like yoga, massage can relax both your muscles and your mind and be almost meditative, which can lead to better concentration on court.
20 Comments
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Posted by robert |
03/27/2009 at 11:01 PM |
1st |
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Posted by TENNISSANCE |
03/28/2009 at 08:34 PM |
Is Tennis a Mind / Body Exercise? ( Yes and No ) |
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Posted by TJ |
03/29/2009 at 01:25 PM |
What about FINDING someone to play with? What about not wanting to/not being able to pay 35$/hr for a trainer. Where can you go to meet people playing tennis for free? In NJ this is hard. |
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Posted by Guy R |
03/29/2009 at 10:25 PM |
We all want to train as hard as we can for our sport, but over training can have a very negative effect. The reason why is because as we increase the intensity of out training, so too dose the stress of that training also increase. If you look up the psychological effects of stress you will see that it not only suppress the bodies maintenances system, it is also a neurotoxin on the brain, especially in the hippocampus area and will lower the cognitive functions that are so important to sports performance. And so as the intensity of sports training increases, which raises the level of stress hormones in the body, the more the bodies ability to recover from that training is decreased until one hits that plateau, where, no matter how much one increases the training intensity, one will have little gains in sport performance.
Not only does increasing the intensity of the workout increase the stress level, which lowers the bodies ability to recover from sport training, the same thing can happen from psychological stress, which will also increases the stress hormones which in turn will suppress the bodies ability to recover from sports training. You can investigate the hormonal causes on the Internet for the reasons behind all this but the bottom line is, no matter how counter intuitive it sounds, to make maxima gains in training in the shortest amount of time, one must keep the physiological and psychological stress levels as low as possible.
There are a lot of strategies one can use to train with this concept in mind; just think about it and let common sense be your guide. |
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