Click here to see more about how Jelena prepared for the French Open, including her work with Etch!

“  ‘Etcheberry has been helping me a lot as he is in charge of my body and my fitness. I think I can tell that I’ve grown physically stronger, which is of highest importance when it comes to clay court tournaments. It’s good news that improvement has already come in terms of results. My next goal is to try and win the forthcoming Roland Garros event, and whether I pull it off or not, we’ll see. My biggest opposition in Paris will be Jelena Jankovic herself [laughs]. If I manage to impose my game and if I’m not injured or ill, everything will be much easier,’ says Jelena.” -T. Dragojevic for Blic Online
 

Keep checking back for daily updates on the 2008 French Open for Pat’s current and former players:

Round 1

• Jelena Jankovic defeated Monica Niculescu 7-6 (7-3), 6-2.
• Raluca Olaru lost to Stephanie Cohen-Aloro of France 7-6 (7-4), 6-3.
• Victoria Azarenka defeated Edina Gallovits 6-1, 6-3.
• Mardy Fish won his first round match against Agustin Calleri 6-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4

Round 2

• Jelena Jankovic defeated Marina Erakovic 6-2, 7-6 (7-5).
• Victoria Azarenka won against Sorana-Mihaela Cirstea 6-0, 6-0.
• Mardy Fish was defeated by Lleyton Hewitt 6-4, 6-3, 6-2.

Round 3

• Jelena Jankovic beat Dominika Cibulkova 7-5, 6-3.
• Victoria Azarenka defeated Francesca Schiavone 6-1, 6-1.

Round 4

• Jelena Jankovic defeated Agnieszka Radwanska 6-3, 7-6 (7-3).
• Svetlana Kuznetsova defeated Victoria Azarenka 6-2, 6-3.

Quarterfinals

• Jelena Jankovic won against C. Suarez Navarro 6-3, 6-2.

Jelena Jankovic, who is currently on the road with Pat getting ready for the French Open, won the Internazionali BNL d’Italia this past weekend, defeating Alize Cornet of France 6-2, 6-2.

This is her second time winning this tournament.  For more information, click here.

Jelena Jankovic made it all the way to the Sony Ericsson Finals on Saturday, losing only to Serena Williams with a score of 6-3, 5-7, 6-3. 

For more information on the tournament, and to see how Justine Henin, Victoria Azarenka, and some of Pat’s other players did in the tournament, visit the Sony Ericsson site!

Pacific Life Open 2008 Results

• Mardy Fish, one of Pat’s former players, made it to the 2008 Pacific Life Open finals, defeating Roger Federer in the semi-finals.  In the finals, Mardy lost to Novak Djokovic in a tough match of 6-2, 5-7, 6-3.
• Jelena Jankovic made it all the way to the semi-finals, losing to Ana Ivanovic, who resulted in winning the Championship.

Good luck to all in Miami!

Come join Pat at his latest Etcheberry Certification Clinic May 3-4, 2008 at the Saddlebrook Resort right outside of Tampa.  Meet Pat and other coaches to learn and discuss training techniques, drills, and ideas to help make your players better!  You can even get a look at Pat’s new training equipment, the Etch-Swing!

 Sign up today, limited space is available!

COACH ONAGA’S INSIGHTS:

I coach my two daughters, the oldest is a high school senior and the other is in the 7th grade.  Neither of them wants to be in a typical weight room. That’s characteristic of many of the players on our girl’s tennis team, too. The high school in which I teach has a newly renovated campus, including two gyms, but the thought of going in with your basic football-baseball-basketball “jock” repulses them.  We also have a new training room with the newer medicine balls and large bouncy balls, and they don’t mind those so much. But the bottom line is our players feel it’s better to be on a court, ready to hit a ball within minutes.

–Kirby Onaga, Men’s Head Tennis Coach, El Segundo High School, CA

PAT ETCHEBERRY’S RESPONSE:

               “It’s pretty amazing what we can accomplish in an hour. I mean,

                 you can have a really long recovery, but it’s not very often we

                 do that in a workout. In tennis we have twenty-five seconds

                 between points, so during a workout it’s very important to keep

                 to that. Only if you go forty-five minutes, you have to go 100%.

                 “Short and sweet”, like you say, Pat.

                                                                      -Justine Henin-Hardenne, 2007 US Open and French Open Champion

In tennis, I am convinced that quality is far more important than quantity in strength training and conditioning. Many players try to train too long and lose their concentration. That’s when they begin to make errors that can quickly turn into bad habits.  This loss of concentration and boredom is particularly true with younger players.

And it’s very true that many of the top players are not the ones who train the longest. Agassi, Sampras, Hingis now, and even Justine – players of that quality – don’t workout for hours and hours. But when they go on the court, they’re all business; every ball they hit has a purpose. And they approach their off-court training with the same intensity and purpose.

You mention medicine balls. I especially like using medicine balls to train younger female players because it’s easier for them to accept that they won’t become too muscular (like they perceive they will with weight lifting). And medicine ball exercises and drills give them a more functional strength that allows them to swing the racket better while getting in great shape.

Young women need to do more shoulder strength exercises, whether that’s with the medicine ball or rubber tubing.  You see many young girls having shoulder injuries because of a lack of proper shoulder strength. You want them to be able to hit the ball harder AND have their shoulders withstand the return from their opponent and the pounding of the ball on the racquet. Strengthening the shoulders helps them absorb that kind of continuous shock.

So with tubing and medicine balls, players and coaches get the results they want while making it easier for the players to understand that they won’t bulk up and get too muscular, thereby overcoming that innate fear of bulking up that young women have with weight lifting.

And even when there is no fear of lifting weights, we don’t want to have players spend too much time in the weight room and not on the court. Generally speaking, this is probably more of a red flag for the boys then the girls. After all, the purpose of fitness is to make better tennis players. People should be impressed with what you do on the court with your racquet, not what you do in the weight room, or how you look at the pool. So the goal is to focus and get the most out of an exercise program in the shortest amount of time so that players have more time to train on the court.

COACH LORING’S INSIGHTS:

            I think more emphasis needs to be given to preventing injuries through proper strength and conditioning training, as much as to the strength-gain aspects we all know about. If you look back at all the women who turned pro at an early age (16-18), with the exception of Evert, they were all off the tour with injuries after only one or two years. (Mascaren, Yeager, Austin). The list goes on and on, even to the current crop of pros.

            During my 33+ years of coaching, I’ve found that it is very common for freshman and sophomores to get injured in college and be out for a while. That is the same age (18-19) that all the girls that turn pro are off the tour. There is something magical about that 18-19 age. All the pounding seems to catch up with them and they fall apart.

            What are your thoughts?

-Mr. Lin Loring, Head Women’s Tennis Coach, Indiana University &  TheMost-Wins coach in Division I women’s tennis.

PAT ETCHEBERRY’S RESPONSE:

          “Juniors need to build their base while they are young. First build the base, and then they can add on to it as they grow and progress.” -Craig Boynton, ATP Player and Coach

The earlier Junior players learn to train the muscles needed specifically for tennis, the better chance they have of avoiding injury when they enter their mid to late teens. This has to begin by high school. Many players see injuries spring up when they are sixteen to twenty years old because they haven’t done the proper injury prevention training when they were younger. An injury to a young player often becomes a chronic problem throughout the player’s entire career, or ends it. The way to avoid this is to initiate the proper training at younger ages.

Preventing injuries early on is facilitated by coordinating the training to meet each of your player’s specific needs and characteristics. Is the player strong? Is she quick? Is he tall or short? And what do they need tennis specific for their game.  Start age appropriate training at an early on to meet the specific needs of that individual player, and that will assure that they have the proper muscles needed for the game of tennis their entire lives.

Both boys and girls share a need to strengthen their shoulders, back and abdominal area early on in their development to prevent injuries and allow them to perform at their optimal level for years to come.  I prefer using medicine ball drills and bench exercises with junior players to work the core of the body; exercises like those like the ones we included in the DVD series. They’re healthful for everyone, and help prevent back injuries. Plus they have the tennis-specific advantage of resulting in a more functional strength that allows players to swing their racquet better.

As coaches, we need to remember that sometimes we train girls differently than we do boys, and that requires using exercises that recognize the gender distinctions in their muscle groups. For example, girls tend to develop more knee problems because they have smaller quads than boys, and that can result in more frequent knee injuries. The lunges and medicine ball exercises I use help develop the young players’ quads and reduce the risk of knee injuries. Boys, on the other hand, seem to be more prone to injury in the wrist area because they often play with western grips, which place added pressures on the wrist that commonly lead to ligament and tendon problems later on. The wrist curl exercises in the series help combat this. And they have the advantage that they can be started at an early age with lighter weights, increasing the weight as the player matures.

Another important aspect of injury prevention is simply communications. Specifically, communications between the four key elements in a young player’s career: the player, the tennis coach, the fitness coach, and the player’s parents. They are each part of the “team”, and they need to communicate amongst themselves so that the player is not being over-trained. All parties need to converse so that the player is not doing so much on-court and so much off-court that we are burning her out or wearing him down. That’s when injuries occur, or careers are destroyed.

Remember, the purpose of training in the first place is to produce a stronger, quicker tennis player who is free of injury when they enter the important years from fifteen to adulthood. Coaches, but equally importantly parents, need to understand that pushing a child to win when they are ten or twelve does little for the player if they become injured by the age sixteen and are forced to give up the game they love.

A special thanks to Coach Loring for raising this important issue and for sharing his perspective.

COACH KINYON’S INSIGHTS:

            I do think the players coming out of high school would benefit greatly by better addressing their physical needs in order to compete at the next level. A less acknowledged but equally important aspect of this is learning and implementing the proper eating habits that would help them prepare for competition. 

            I think it would be helpful, Pat, if you would address this issue in terms of (a) the proper general diet for players, (b) the pre-match diet for optimal performance, and (c) match hydration and feeding. Coming from you, my players will be more likely to heed the advice. And the more specific you can be, the easier it will be for them to do what you suggest.

–Chuck Kinyon, Dartmouth Tennis Coach

PAT ETCHEBERRY’S RESPONSE:

            Coach Kinyon is absolutely correct in pointing out the importance of diet in success in tennis. Eating the right foods helps players maintain desirable body weight, stay physically fit, and establish optimum nerve-muscle reflexes. All of your players should have a healthy diet of a nutritional balance of carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats, but they have to be in the right amounts. The ITF recommends that carbs represent 60% of the calories in your diet, proteins only about 10-15%, and fat 20-30%.

            Participating in sports can drastically increase your players’ food energy needs.   Increased physical activity calls for more food calories. Also, when they train, they increase muscle tissue relative to fat tissue, and muscle tissue requires more calories than fat tissue. Going out for sports can easily increase the daily calorie needs of a teen athlete by 2,000 or more. And because of their rapid growth and development and higher levels of physical activity, many teen athletes should eat the higher levels of servings recommended from each food group — especially from the bread, cereal, rice, and pasta group and the vegetable group.

                 What your players eat every day affects their performance, and what you eat immediately before a match can be vital. The right foods at the right time can actually give them a competitive edge. Players of all ages need to eat the proper foods for days before a tournament to charge their muscles with glycogen. They need foods high in starch to help keep muscle energy up. 

           Coaches and trainers should monitor a player’s weight, and if he or she loses body weight during a competitive season, it’s a good indication that they aren’t eating enough energy-providing food. Weigh your players once a week throughout the season to guard against unhealthy weight loss caused by inadequate food intake. Hydration is another sensitive area. Many coaches and athletes once believed that restricting water during a competition or practice session toughened an athlete — that somehow athletes needed less water. Without enough water to cool itself, the body can overheat to dangerous levels.

            As conditioned athletes, your players are able to store and burn more energy in a shorter time. That means their bodies release more heat, require more cooling, lose more water, and need more water to replenish its stores. Also, they sweat more, which means they lose even more water. The truth is, well conditioned players need more water than other people.

            Drinking moderate amounts at frequent intervals is the best strategy during competition or practice; about six to eight ounces of cool water every 15 to 20 minutes during a match. Cool water (40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit) is best because it helps absorb body heat. And it empties from the stomach into the intestine at a faster rate, allowing it to be absorbed rapidly into the body. Water is the drink of choice for activity less than 60 to 90 minutes. But many tennis matches go beyond that time frame, and then sport drinks containing carbohydrates and electrolytes may offer players an advantage.

            The goal of nutrition is to fuel your players’ bodies for greater efficiency. Coaches shouldn’t use food as a reward or a punishment, i.e. dieting or feasting. Your players require a well balanced program which accommodates both on court and off court needs. And Juniors in particular need it to maximize performance now and to minimize the potential for career threatening injuries in the future.

            I hope I have made it clear how critical it is that your players maintain a proper diet to support all of the conditioning and training they do daily. Without it, their bodies can’t perform at an optimum level during crunch times. Put another way, Champions are what they eat.

            Here are some websites where you can find more tennis-specific nutritional information from real dietary experts.

www.usta.com/juniors/fullstory.sps?iNewsid=28344

www.itftennis.com/juniors/usefultips/nutrition/

www.athletes.com/fun/peak18.htm, www.ais.org.au/nutrition 

www.sma.org.au/mediareleases/2003%2001%2022%20-%20Tennis%20Preparation,%20Nutrition%

www.ais.org.au/nutrition/documents/FuelTennis.pdf

www.health.arizona.edu/health_topics/nutrition/sports/wtennis.pdf

www.ushsta.org/PLAYERS/PUBLICAREA/HSTMAG/2002/30.htm

            And for a veritable smorgasbord of information and suggested meal plans, go to www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/hsnut/hsath2c.html for pregame menus, www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/hsnut/hsath1d.html for energy-packed main meal menus, and www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/hsnut/hsath4g.html for hydration hints.

            And thanks to Coach Kinyon for raising this most important issue.

For those wishing to learn how Pat makes champion tennis players, how to make yourself better, and to enjoy the warm Florida weather, the Etcheberry Experience has just announced a new Certification Clinic May 3-4, 2008 at Saddlebrook Resort in Wesley Chapel, Florida!

 Click here for more information or to sign up today by filling out an application!