An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
I… couldn’t have picked Edina Gallovits out of a lineup before recently reviewing her Tennis Channel “Bag Check” video from 2010. I knew even less about her. She is a former WTA professional player who achieved a career high ranking #54 in 2008. She represented both Romania and the United States in international play. Her most important distinction is that she was the first player to whip out a jump rope on a “Bag Check” video.
The tennis ball machine is a powerful tool for fine tuning stroke mechanics and building consistency. Effective ball machine use starts with the identification of the purpose for each drill. In the absence of that, machine sessions can regress into simply standing flat-footed while playing easy balls from the center of the court. There is an art to getting the machine settings “just right.” However, the real skill is identifying an objective and coming up with an appropriate pattern to work on it.
The cardio fitness stations that I stumbled across last month at a DFW area tennis court continues to provide fodder for the “Tennis Technology and Training Tuesday” coverage. Last week I started in on “Squats” and assumed that the direction was simply to perform body weight squats. However, in the interim it has occurred to me that for a cardio workout the intended squat variation might have been “Jump Squats” which are also great for tennis.
Last Tuesday we discussed “Wall Sits” which was a cardo fitness station I stumbled across scrawled onto a tennis court with chalk. Today I am exploring another station labeled simply “Squats.” There are a lot of good variations of squats that are good for tennis. Today we will assume that the this station was for the simple body weight version.
A couple of weekends ago I played a practice match at a DFW area high school on a court that had obviously been in recent use as a tennis cardio circuit station. The description of the exercises to be performed were scrawled on the court with chalk. The station for 30 seconds of wall sits was nestled in the corner next to a cinderblock backboard.
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My home gym is equipped with a 10 pound slam ball. A slam ball is distinguished from normal weighted medicine balls because they have thicker and softer surfaces which make them great for high impact throwing exercises. You can wing a slam ball at a training partner or static surface that would be prohibitively dangerous with the harder medicine ball.
Strong forearm muscles are essential for tennis racquet head control. That translates very directly into shot consistency. A player without adequate forearm strength will be unable to effectively move the racquet through the proper contact point.
Maria Sharapova once famously described her clay court mobility as a “cow on ice.” My own footwork on clay is not nearly that graceful. A few years ago one of my doubles partners who is a clay court specialist recommended
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A dampener is a device placed into the string bed of a tennis racquet that reduces vibration. The dampener simply mutes the effect of hitting the ball. Contrary to marketing claims, there is no dampener that will lessen the symptoms of tennis elbow. Similarly, assertions that using a dampener reduces power have also been debunked. In other words, the use of a dampener makes no material difference when playing tennis. I know all that, yet I can’t play without one. It is maddening.
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A recent Wall Street Journal column recommended a tennis swing training device for developing a smooth service motion. Of all the gadgets recommended in that piece, the most clearly useful item is a tennis service swing trainer. The commercial version of the device is made of molded rubber into the form of a racquet handle connected to three tennis ball sized lumps via a cord. A correct serving motion keeps the tennis “balls” in continuous motion.