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.