Tennis Technology and Training Tuesday
Since the moment they first appeared, I have been a huge fan of the Bag Check short segments that run as commercial fillers on the Tennis Channel. Once you cut through the blatant product placement, some genuinely useful objects are frequently revealed in the series. This presents is the perfect opportunity to take a closer look at some of the gems that have emerged from the professional player’s bag over they years.
But first, a mini-rant. The Tennis Channel Bag Check inevitably starts with the tennis professional revealing that they carry… tennis racquets in their racquet bag. Wow! I mean, who could have seen that one coming? Spoiler alert! Basically all the tennis professionals carry tennis racquets in bag, and they always love the racquet they use. Additionally, some sort of assertion that they are important for tennis is inevitably uttered.
Recently I have been taking a walk down memory lane to more simple times and the earliest days of the Bag Check. The Tennis Channel logo was blue and black. Caroline Wozniacki was about twelve years old. Sorry, that is an exaggeration. The Tennis Channel logo was more of a teal color. Caroline Wozniacki would have been about 17 or 18 in this particular Bag Check video. In fact, it is the earliest Bag Check video that was uploaded to the Tennis Channel’s official YouTube channel. That release occurred a little over twelve years ago.
One very useful item highlighted from the very young Caroline’s bag were resistance bands. To the best of my recollection, fitness bands have made recurring appearances in the Tennis Channel Bag Check in the intervening years. However, this may be the first time of this particular piece of training equipment was featured in the series.
I never carried resistance bands in my bag during my ancient junior tennis days. In fact, I never even knew they were a product until about the time that they first emerged from Wozniacki’s bag. We literally pumped iron back in the day. This is where the umpire I gave birth to would interject the observation that my junior playing days came during in the Iron Age, after all.
As an aging adult, there are various forms of resistance training devices scattered across my world. My pandemic home office has a set artfully arranged just out of the line of sight from the prying eyes of the Zoom camera. Those bands are used for off-court general strength training. I also carry a set of fitness band in my tennis bag. Those bands are more generally used for activating the muscles as a part of my warm up routine.
Space and weight constraints dictate what players can reasonably carry in their bags. Items that are carried needs to produce a reasonable return against the space they take up. Fitness bands are pretty close to negligible in terms of both weight and volume. When you consider the benefits of having them, carrying a set in the bag is a worthy investment.
Every player should have a set of resistance bands in their racquet bag. And… if you are as lazy as I am, probably a second set in a household location where they can be consistently used for off-court fitness training.
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