General physical training for beginners
Do beginner tennis players need physical training? This question requires an answer and, perhaps, clarification, since parents of beginner tennis players, for the most part, are well aware that this sport is very labor-intensive. However, many who understand believe that the time spent on the court with a coach, whether in group or individual training, is enough to develop the necessary physical capabilities for success in competitions. And how sad it is to see the offended faces of parents whose children do not win and, despite the efforts of the coaches, will not win for a very long time. Those not privy to the details of a tennis player’s skill may think that their child plays no worse than his opponents, to whom he constantly loses and they have to make unjustified conclusions. The child is constantly unlucky or... he is not talented enough. And this destructive, but completely false postulate passed from mouth to mouth, inspired by careless coaches about the need for special talent, destroys all hopes. Below, most readers will understand why the only true indicator of the so-called talent of a tennis player is his endurance. In this article, I will not touch on the qualities of an athlete necessary for a successful game such as will, determination, perseverance and other often identified signs of talent, because if a child is not endowed with the strength to produce speed and do it for quite a long time, then he realizes his talent in other disciplines, but not in tennis. Force I believe that the subject of discussion will not be clearly understood if we do not give clear definitions to the concepts included in the title. So what is power in tennis? In other words, how do you form a judgment about how strong or weak your child is? You need to invite your child to do several physical exercises that do not require special technical skills. For example, jump from a place in length, upward. Run 30 meters for a race. Pull up on the bar. Do push-ups from the floor. Strength is the ability to move one's body or weights equal to or greater than one's body weight. In order to imagine why a person, a child, playing tennis needs leg strength three times greater than the leg strength of a sprinter, it is enough to see that a tennis player constantly has to change directions of movement. At the same time, most often the change has the opposite, opposite direction. Alas, to change the direction of movement of a body, it must first be stopped, that is, an effort must be made to extinguish the inertia. It’s sad, but at the speeds of movement of a body along the court, the force of inertia, which consists of the mass of the body multiplied by the square of the speed of its movement, is 2–3 times greater than the gravitational force. That is, in order for a tennis player running from one corner of the court to another to instantly stop the movement of his body and start moving in the opposite direction, a force is required that is 3-4 times greater than the force required for running. That is why in tennis there is such a thing as the last possible blow - this is a blow made at a speed of movement of the body that excludes the possibility of a sharp, quick stop and change of direction to the opposite. Beginning players have a countless number of such shots during the game. Regular features of strength gain. Strength is increased by constantly increasing and increasing loads! Even relatively high loads carried for a long time, if they are not increased, do not provide an increase in strength! An example of this is thousands of amateurs who play tennis for 2-3 hours, 1-2 times a week at the same loads for 30 - 40 years, the same and not very well. That is why we do not see much growth in the skills of tennis players, scratching and shooting the ball quite quickly a maximum of 2, 3, 4 times in a row from almost the same point over the course of several hours of training. While taking the minimum possible number of steps and a millimeter step apart, but producing deafening, I would say, impressive claps. Where does the power of their punches go during a match? To the whistle, of course. During training, these athletes use the pressure of an incoming ball hitting a powerful spring (the strings of the racket). What do we see in the real game? A player who manages to receive the first serve, served at a speed of 190 km/h or more, at a speed 30 - 40% lower than the serve speed, immediately wins a point, almost regardless of where he sends the ball (to the corner or to the feet) . Why? The opponent does not have enough stamina to quickly take the starting position after a powerful serve, and even jump 2–3 meters. But this happens quite rarely and among a very small number of players. You all know their names. Receiving the second serve, at a speed of 160 - 175 km/h or lower, usually sends the ball at a speed of 90 - 110 km/h. And here there is no time for popping, and not because the spring has weakened, but because you need to run and jump, and most importantly, the strength to produce a blow at a speed of 130 km/h or more on a “hanging” ball, as there was no, and simply no. I used to be perplexed. And where does it go with such tennis players when they have to hit a high ball that arrives relatively slowly. You can't look without tears. Speed Let us note right away - there is no force, there cannot be speed. However, there is a sport, weightlifting, in which the champions are recognized as the strongest people on the planet. However, ask a weightlifter to compete with a runner or javelin thrower and you would not be wrong if you decided that the weightlifter, all other things being equal, would lose. So what is speed? Speed is the ability to quickly move your body, head, arms or objects held by the hands over the greatest possible distance in the minimum unit of time. Endurance It should be noted here that endurance, i.e. the ability to make extremely fast movements for a long time always competes with speed. This is why we do not see runners retraining from sprinters to stayers and vice versa. In tennis, the lack of ability to move quickly and make other quick movements for an extended period of time always dooms the athlete to failure. As a result, it becomes clear that without the force that produces speed, endurance is out of the question. Essentially, the measure of a tennis player's success is his endurance, i.e. the ability, if necessary, to maintain or even increase the speed of movement towards the end of the game, set and match. Endurance is placed in third and last place, although the above states that it is she who is of paramount, paramount importance in increasing the combat effectiveness of a tennis player. And this is no coincidence. The coach does not even dream of fruitfully working on endurance in the first two or even three years of regular training three or four times a week for an hour. Why within an hour? Yes, only because the rapid depletion of strength and speed determined by human nature does not allow him to keep the student in the mode necessary to develop endurance, i.e. for much longer periods of time and under increasing loads. The coach is forced to dream about working on endurance, but only thinks about it when the student achieves the ability to move quickly for fairly large periods of time over 2 - 3, and sometimes more hours. And when such an opportunity arises, the reader will ask a question. I also asked this question to existing, strong and productive coaches. And they answered - this will take 10-12 years. In other words, although endurance is the main requirement for a tennis player, it can only be developed after strength and speed have been developed. You can bend and straighten your index finger all day long, but you won’t be able to hold 10 or more kilograms on it without special training. By the way, to hold the racket handle in a stationary position relative to the palm during a strike, the strength of the thumb, index and middle fingers is required, capable of withstanding 25 or more kilograms. Is it possible to start working on a tennis player’s endurance earlier, i.e. at the beginning of his career? Specialists from the tennis school of the Odintsovo municipal district answer this question positively. Their experience shows - to exercises that quickly increase endurance, i.e. Long-term activities that require high labor costs can be started without harm to health two to three years after a substantive acquaintance with tennis on the tennis court and mastering a fairly large list of physical exercises off the court, i.e. in physical training classes. An analysis of the rate of strength gain in tennis players of various muscle groups shows interesting patterns, without knowledge of which it is not possible to hope for a lasting increase in endurance. So, without special physical training off the court, a beginning tennis player first strengthens the muscles of the foot, then the lower leg and shoulder. But the first successes do not justify hopes for rapid progress in the development of technology. Because the thigh and gluteal muscles are waiting for their time, and only then the abdominal, side and lower back muscles. Why are they waiting? Only because the loads offered to him during training on the court are negligible to strengthen them. Anyone who watched a coach work on the court was amazed that the coach was forced, sometimes for several years, to dictate with hysterical doom that you bend your knees in preparation for a shot. Yes, and the child carefully follows the command several times. But a week later you see the child in real play and are surprised that he walks on straight legs. It looks like he is playing on stilts. Why? Yes, only because for the necessary strengthening of the muscles of the thigh and buttocks responsible for squatting and standing up, you need 50 - 100 - 150 rhythmic squats and stands up per day, and this is in addition to what the child does on the court. For quite a long time, the picture of the interdependence of strong and weak muscle groups is blurred and is not perceived adequately without qualified analysis and due to the fact that the muscles that hold the spinal column and rotate the vertebrae are initially the strongest and most powerful, they ensure survival from birth. But as soon as the underlying muscle groups become so strong that the jerks take on the character of an explosion, a period of disappointment begins. The trainer did not strengthen the muscles of the spine, abdomen, lower back, and back in advance? Get injured, which often acutely and painfully interrupts tennis forever. Recently, an increasing number of articles have appeared warning coaches against teaching open stance striking before the age of 14. Thousands and thousands of injured children and tennis-cursing parents. Sadly. But this is not all that seems necessary to know. The last to come into play are the intercostal muscles and the diaphragm, which provide the depth and frequency of inhalation and exhalation. Just recently, I was dumbfounded while watching an 8-year-old child who was the strongest in a group of 15 children in all muscle groups. After finishing the game, he breathed at a rate of at least 80 breaths per minute for the next 15 minutes. Inhalations and exhalations were more like convulsive twitches. He was absolutely unable to heed the command to hold his breath or exhale. The breathing muscles were uncontrollable at this time. Well, we have come to the climax. What provides an athlete’s endurance and how to train it. It can definitely be stated that with the weakness of the muscles that ensure the depth of inhalation and exhalation, there is no way to control the frequency and depth of respiratory movements, and without appropriate control, breathing becomes shallow and very frequent, which, with continued or increasing stress, ultimately leads to fainting, although technical elements fall out much earlier than a fainting state is achieved. And that doesn't make it any easier. So how can you train endurance and at the same time increase the strength of your respiratory muscles? I once watched the completion of a thirty-kilometer marathon by a modern Olympic champion in long-distance cross-country skiing. He drove up to the parking lot, took off his skis and his breathing was deep, measured and not at all frequent. I asked him what his lung capacity was. He said 11 liters. I remembered that when in my youth I played table tennis and won all sorts of awards and places, my lung capacity was close to eight and a half liters. A tennis player from the top ten in the world ranking runs 13 -15 - 17 kilometers during a match. But he cannot run at the same rhythm and is not allowed to run without 2 minute rest stops. These are the rules of the game. Those. A tennis player needs special (discrete) endurance. There are coaches all over the world, there are not many of them, but they know how tennis endurance is developed, read talent. We know this too. It should also be noted that the development and power of tendons and ligaments is definitely of great importance in the implementation of the speed-strength qualities of a tennis player. Without going into details in this material regarding stimulating the development and strengthening of the tendon-ligament apparatus of movements, we note that neurons (sensors) are built into the tendons and ligaments, instantly immobilizing or relaxing muscles, the tension of which exceeds the permissible load for the tendons and ligaments and thereby protect them from ruptures. And here it is not difficult to guess that if you do not “look after” them, weak tendons and ligaments will prevent the application of the loads necessary to strengthen the muscles. We also know how to maintain and enhance the power and elasticity of tendons and ligaments. It should also be borne in mind that the child is growing and at the same time he is constantly training on the court. Yes, now children play with rackets adapted in weight and size. But the load in tennis during the training process is quite stereotypical, the child runs and hits the ball, as a rule, from different positions, but at the same time using the same muscle groups. If compensatory work is not carried out, the child’s development and growth can become one-sided, the skeletal system can become deformed from constant loads, and we don’t need this at all! For proper development and growth, children simply need a varied load on different muscle groups, a variety of physical activity that can compensate for one-sided tennis training. Strengthening, developing, and preventing asymmetrical development of the skeletal system is a primary task. Therefore, at the initial stage of education, and subsequent ones, special physical training, as a rule, comes to the fore and determines the superiority of one child over another, all other things being equal. In our case, the main thing is health, which is precisely what the correct additional, I would say necessary, physical activity provides. We wish you to enjoy your children's play, their health and academic success.
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