Article Details

Effects of Same-Day Strength Training on Serve Performance In Female Collegiate Tennis Players |

Rajneesh Nanda, in International Journal of Physical Education & Sports Sciences | Physical Education, Health, Fitness & Sports

ABSTRACT:

Tennis has become a highly competitive sport requiring atremendous amount of power and accuracy in order to be successful. One of themost important strokes each player must learn is the tennis serve. The serve isthe start of each point and is the only aspect in which a player has totalcontrol over its outcome (2). However, it is the most difficult stroke to learnbecause of the complex and coordinated movements involving the trunk and upperand lower extremities (2). The coordination of body parts has been termed thekinetic chain (8, 15), and allows generation, summation, transfer, andregulation of forces from the legs to the hand (12). It is well known that inorder to increase serve performance, muscle strength of the entire kineticchain must be increased without affecting serve accuracy. Proper strengthtraining has, therefore, become a vital aspect of tennis training. Due to themultiple competition seasons that occur in tennis, it is inevitable thatplayers may be scheduled to strength train on the same day as a match. Manyathletes and coaches choose to forgo such strength training sessions on thepremise that strength training the same day as competition will decrease performance(17).