This month, let's begin exploring the reasons that may explain why there's a 20 to 30 MPH difference in serve speed that separates the Top ATP pros from today's US college and junior players. But before we get into that discussion, I think it's appropriate to discuss a recent development in the pro game.
That recent development is the sudden rise of University of Georgia alumnus, and the 2007 NCAA D1 Singles Finalist, John Isner in the ATP rankings in the two months since he lost that NCAA singles final to Somdev Devarrman of the University of Virginia.
In the past two months, Isner has risen over 700 places in the ATP rankings after winning a Futures title in California in mid-June, a Challenger singles title in Lexington in mid-July, as well as the crowning achievement of his emerging pro career thus far, reaching the finals of the Legg Mason Classic in Washington D.C., a main tour event in which he beat four ATP veterans (Henman, Monfils, Becker, and Haas) in third-set tiebreakers before finally falling to Andy Roddick.
Is Isner's big splash in the pros a really big surprise? To some, it's surprising especially given his lack of pro experience. But, after watching Isner play in that final against Roddick, the fact that he made it to the finals should have been no big surprise, especially given the fact that Isner hit his first serve mostly over 130 MPH, and his second serve was hit routinely in the 115 to 120 MPH range.
In other words, Isner has the same serve speed capabilities of the top servers on the ATP Tour. When you know that you can perform at the same level as the top players in your sport, it becomes a matter of WHEN you make your breakthrough, rather than IF you can do it.
Likewise, the meteoric rise of the 2004 NCAA D1 Singles Champion from Baylor, Germany's Benjamin Becker, in the ATP rankings (Becker went from no ATP ranking to the world's Top 60 in just 12 months) isn't a real surprise either, especially when he showed everyone his 130+ MPH serve bombs (as well as his foot speed) in ushering Andre Agassi into retirement at last year's US Open.
Isner and Becker could compete physically with the big boys on the ATP Tour coming out of college. And that my friends, is the point that needs to be made and understood by aspiring American players, coaches, and parents...
If you cannot physically generate the same level of racket speed and foot speed ("you can't hit a ball if you're not there") as shown by the top pros today, your chances of competing successfully at the highest levels of the game are fundamentally slim and none. Physical inferiority demonstrated by the vast majority of American high-performance tennis competitors, especially to the extent that we have observed such as serve speed, cannot be overcome by mental toughness, tactical savvy and insight any more.
And based on our observations of both the racket speed and foot speed capabilities of many of today's top American college and junior tennis players over the past year, few, if any of them approach the level that necessary for them to stand on "level ground" with the top ATP pros.
So, why does this significant gap in physical capacity exist?
Based on our observations of the collegiate and junior game today, one explanation stands out. We believe that this gap is caused by the improper training of the vast majority of collegiate and junior tennis players by the football-oriented strength and conditioning coaches that populate collegiate athletic departments and private training facilities across the land.
The vast majority of collegiate tennis players are forced to perform strength-focused training exercises and drills that were intended for football or basketball players, and have only an indirect impact on performance on the tennis court. There is little, if any consideration given by the typical, "certified" strength and conditioning coach to the specific athletic performance demands and requirements of high-performance tennis.
The whole point of conditioning any athlete is to improve and ultimately maximize their physical attributes to help them perform their best in their chosen sport. The job of the conditioning coach is to maximize an athlete's performance capabilities.
Which would you rather be?
I often use this analogy to describe why conditioning is so crucial to tennis performance - through proper conditioning, we can "bring out the Ferrari that's trapped in your current Pinto body". However, the opposite is also possible, that is, if you condition yourself improperly, you will remain a Pinto, and if you continue to train improperly, over time, you will become a broken-down, rusted out Pinto at that (as a result of chronic injuries caused by improper training).
What's the result of having tennis players perform strength-focused conditioning programs that aren't relevant to tennis? Tennis players that lose serve and groundstroke speed as the season progresses, tennis players who injure themselves while performing the exercises demanded by the strength and conditioning staff, tennis players who are chronically plagued by common tennis injuries to the shoulders, elbows and knees, and teams who lose post-season matches because their conditioning programs failed to include exercises to increase and maintain their (speed) endurance.
In other words, we've observed a group of players who want to transform themselves into Ferraris, but are probably destined to remain trapped as Pintos.
Given what we've seen over the last 12 months, we cannot avoid considering the possibility that this de-training phenomenon we've observed over the course of a single tennis season may also have a CUMULATIVE effect over a player's career where they end up performing at a slower, and therefore lower level as their college careers progress - or regress, as the case might be.
In other words, as players are continuously exposed to improper conditioning practices over the entirety of their junior and collegiate careers, the intact Pintos they started with eventually become rusted-out Pintos with blown cylinders and gaskets with their wheels taken off so they're left to stand on four cinder blocks. Not a pretty sight, as you can imagine.
Is this the fate of your tennis game after years of improper training?
To sum it up, what we have observed at the collegiate level over the past year is the de-training of tennis players to the extent where they measurably decreased their ability to perform to their maximum level during matches. We saw tennis players who ran slower, who served slower, and who lost crucial stamina as the long tennis season unfolded. The goal of conditioning is to increase the performance capacity of athletes. We have mostly observed the opposite as far as college tennis is concerned.
Now that the source of the problem has been identified, what can be done about it? The answer is simple...
The strength and conditioning staff needs to become more knowledgeable about how to properly condition today's high-performance tennis athletes. It's not about adapting training philosophies and methods from the sports they are familiar with - namely football and basketball - and trying to configure them to "fit" tennis. They need to objectively study the quantitative and qualitative parameters that characterize modern tennis. They need to learn how to build an "ATP Ferrari", not an "NFL/NBA Ferrari".
First, the strength and conditioning staff needs to recognize and understand that modern tennis is characterized by athletes who can serve regularly over 125 MPH, hit their forehands and backhands over 90 MPH, play baseline points that last around 8 seconds long and requires, on average, 6 to 8 hits to decide the outcome of each point. They need to understand that a set between two equally skilled players typically lasts a total of 65 to 70 points, where average play time per set is around 8 minutes total per set where the players must sprint a total of around 600 to 800 meters in 2 to 3 yard bursts at maximum speed.
Armed with this knowledge of the true physical demands of high-performance tennis will then give them the ability to design and implement conditioning programs that will help tennis athletes perform at their maximum capacity as well as maximally protect them from injuries.
Now, there is a second "problem" faced by the strength and conditioning staff, how do they address the racket speed deficit that's faced by the vast majority of college tennis players? They do possess the knowledge to address the majority of conditioning issues facing today's tennis athlete with respect to lower body explosiveness and general fitness, but they lack fundamental knowledge in one very important area: how to increase a player's racket speed.
And they have a really sound, logical reason for not knowing how to increase racket speed. Why? Because as far as the strength and conditioning establishment understands the world, no known conditioning methodology has yet been developed to increase the execution speed of complex athletic movements such as tennis serves and groundstrokes.
So what's interesting is that as a regular reader of this column, you are already ahead of the strength and conditioning experts that populate the training facilities at the collegiate level as far as increasing racket speed is concerned. You already know that there indeed exists a conditioning concept and methodology that directly and rapidly increases racket speed for tennis, and increases the speed for other complex athletic movements used in sports like golf, baseball, soccer, and track and field.
The answer is called SpeedChain.
Finally, what's also worth mentioning is that the ideas we've covered here in the past two articles doesn't just apply to the high-performance crowd who aspire to compete at the college and pro levels. Increasing your speed - both your foot speed and racket speed - is a fundamental factor in helping tennis players of all levels increase their level of play whether you're trying to go from NTRP 3.5 to 4.5 or if you're a college player who wants to make an impact on tour.
So, if you want to find your "inner Ferrari", a good place to start is to visit
www.tennisspeed.com to find out how training with the Tennis SpeedChain helps you rapidly increase your racket speed. If you have general questions about proper conditioning methods for tennis, email us at
info@tennisspeed.com.
