Does rotator cuff training make your tennis serve slower?

In order to improve your sporting performance you may do some form of resistance training. This may be to make you faster or fitter, or to prevent injury.

If you are rehabilitating from an injury, you may be looking to isolate certain muscles to help get them stronger. The pain associated with injured muscles may interrupt the nerve signals and motor control of that muscle. Working these muscles in isolation at an early stage allows you to concentrate on regaining some from of strength and control.

However, in healthy athletes and for those at medium stage of rehabiltiation, working muscles in isolation will hinder your motor patterns, and could actually make them worse. Extrapolating data from the injured population about how their muscles work and then applying this to healthy sporting populations is tenuous at best.

In sport your muscles work fast and together. Trying to consciously "trigger" or "engage" one muscle group before another will not work in the heat of competition. Rotator cuff exercises commonly used in tennis training may slow your serve down because you are encouraging work in isolation and at the wrong speed.

Exercises such as press ups, dips and pull ups all use your rotator cuff muscles to stabilise the shoulder joint, in conjunction with a pushing or pulling action. In a healthy athlete, there is no need to isolate the core or shoulder- everything is working well together already.

A thrower, a boxer or a cricket bowler all do fast explosive actions with their shoulders, so this too should be incorporated into their resistance training programme. This can be with medicine ball throws, or with drops onto the ground that allows the shoulder girdle to absorb force and impact in a manner similar to the sport.

Using opposite leg and arm actions is the advanced stage of development for children- either walking or throwing- so enhance this pattern by incorporating such movement in the gym. Same sided exercises actually regress the motor learning pattern to a developmental stage. Athletes with some form of learning difficulties would benefit from opposite sided activities to help their fine motor control. Sitting down and doing exercises is also a regression- unless your sport requires you to sit down!

Finally, avoid jumping jacks like the plague, they are a completely abnormal movement pattern that does not occur in any sport.

Safe Exercise in the Heat - tips

Britain is currently enjoying 3 consecutive days of warm weather- this constitutes a heatwave in this country.

Exercise can lead to damaging side effects if done in hot and humid temperatures and without acclimatisation. Heat stroke and heat exhaustion are quite easy to induce if you are not careful.

Here are some tips to help you exercise more safely:

• Unless you are competing between 11am and 3 pm, then don't train outdoors then. Train when it is cooler, or indoors.

• If you do train outside, wear a hat, wear sun cream and keep drinking fluid.

• Try about 150ml - 250 ml every 15 minutes of exercise. If you are exercising for morethan an hour then a dilute electrolyte/ glucose drink is recommended to help absorption form the gut and replenishment

• Conversely, drinking too much fluid too rapidly can lead to hyponatremia, where the body is overhydrated by between 2 and 6 litres. This can lead to collapse. Hands and feet may feel puffy and swollen with this condition.

• Don't try any new activity, or one that you are not conditioned for, your body will be unable to adapt to 2 new stressors at once.

• Don't stop exercise suddenly as this can lead to "Exercise associated collapse". The vascular return of blood that is aided by muscular contraction is essential. Stopping suddenly means that the heart has to do all the work and may not be able to cope. A proper cool down is essential here. This can be done indoors or in the shade, but moving at about 50% of intensity, accompanied by hydration, for 10 -15 minutes is best.

Leland Trail, walking fitness and nettles.

A few pictures of South Somerset, including King Alfred's Tower, and to the left, Glastonbury Tor in the distance.

I set off on the Leland Trail yesterday, a 28 mile route from King Alfred's Tower to Ham Hill.

All went well for the first 8 miles, just a bit hot, until I reached a scene from the Day of the Triffids, just this time with nettles. I battled my way through shoulder high nettles for 30 mins, with many curse words and profanities. The blighters had a habit of coming back and attacking me from behind after I had beaten them down or stepped over them.
Not the best 30 mins of my life, especially wearing shorts.

Another couple of miles to Castle Cary where I enjoyed a cold drink. The stings were very annoying, but not life threatening, so walked up the next hill, over 2 more stiles, and then the footpath disappeared... into an ocean of nettles. At that point, I am afraid to say, I quit. I didn't fancy the thought of 18 more miles of nettle fighting. I am glad I didn't as I am very sore today!

The walking fitness isn't too much of a problem. As I have written before, if you do something like this, it isn't the central system that gets fatigued it is the localised muscle groups that are working differently than normal. Of course, it depends on how fast you walk, and the heat definitely had an effect yesterday.

I will tackle the rest of the route when the nettles have been cut back, and I will carry a very big stick.

Mental Toughness

A lot has been written about mental toughness, but how does it actually work in real life?
I saw a good example of this last week which reminded me why I coach, and gave me faith that the hard work I put in is matched by some dedicated young athletes.

A modern pentathlete I have just started training was treated pretty badly by her coach, and told they were dropped from the training group. This was done in public, not in private, and came out of the blue. There are two normal responses to this: give up and moan; or pick yourself up and try harder.

This athlete took the second option and she has been camping for the last fortnight at a different training venue so that she can continue training. Not many young people nowadays would do this, and bad coaching does contribute to the 50% drop out rate in sport at the age of 16.

Modern Pentathlon is an individual sport, that requires hard work and concentration, as well as all round ability. A lot of the young people I coach will read about "elite" athletes and what they do, but do not want to put any extra effort themselves into their training or manage their own lifestyle. I can't see them making it.

This Pentathlete may or may not win an Olympic Medal, but she is showing a very mature attitude and a degree of mental toughness that is impressive.

Rugby Fitness Training - Recovery Techniques

One of the most over looked aspect of training is recovery. In fact overtraining has also been described as "under recovery".

It is important to mentally recover as well as physically recover. One of the best ways to judge whether your athletes are recovered or not is to see how much fun they have.

This session I did yesterday with rugby players in Devon combined physical recovery of icy water, with the mental and emotional recovery of fun.

Or to put it another way, we jumped in a river, a lot. Some people spend a lot of money on supplements, or fancy skin tight pants, or expensive therapies, but sometimes the simple things are the best. One of the advantages of being a strength and conditioning coach in the South West is that the environment provides a natural resource for training.

It is just a matter of planning and time to get things sorted out. That has been my major lesson this year so far is to put the Fun back into coaching- not letting athletes do what they want willy nilly, but to get productivity, intensity and then fun.

Wimbledon Fitness Training

It's that time of year again, the sun is shining, there is a great British hope at Wimbledon, and people all over the UK start picking up tennis rackets in their new found enthusiasm.

The local club in my village in Devon has excellent courts, which are unused 90% of the time, and a good club structure. Those players are quite well conditioned to playing tennis, as they do it all year round. The likely injuries and strains are for those people who just pick up the racket and start playing matches.

Here are some tips for those people who are not regular players wishing to enjoy the game without getting hurt:

1. Warm up before playing, move round the court forwards, backwards, sideways. Practice your shots at different points on the court with just the racket.
2. Wear sensible shoes- flat with lateral support is best. If you wear your running shoes you may sprain an ankle when you move side to side (about 40% of tennis movement is this action).
3. If you are getting keen, then strengthen your lower body with body weight squats, single leg squats, and multi directional lunges. You won't enjoy your tennis as much if you rupture an ACL, and normal life does not prepare you for these sudden changes of direction.
4. Strengthen your body overall by lifting and rotating a heavy object, if you have access to a gym then you can use a weight disk or medicine ball, if not then use a sandbag or even a chair.
   
5. Play shorter games at first (1 set) then build up to your 5 set epics.

For competitive regular players, a lot of these points still apply, but you would need a specific periodised training plan to accompany your match practice.

Level 1 S&C course - booking deadline

Just to remind everyone that the booking deadline for the level 1 course in July in Taunton, Somerset is June 23rd.

An ideal opportunity for anyone interested in learning about: sports training programmes; strength and conditioning; and sports speed and agility.

More details are here: http://www.excelsiorgroup.co.uk/qualifications.shtml