Major components of our off-court training include strength, conditioning and overall physical fitness. Our players learn that competitive success at higher levels of the game can only occur if they are the strongest athlete on the court. To accomplish this we introduce consistent and age appropriate fitness routines that emphasize developing good training habits in the younger age groups, and then utilize this strong foundation to add complex movement and functional strength for the older age groups.
Our training routines follow methods recognized by the National Academy of Sports Medicine. These methods employ the principles of specificity (the body adapting to imposed stresses) to safely and effectively advance athletes through various phases of physical development in preparation for higher levels of competitive physical demands. Skill sets emphasized within these phases include; flexibility and range of motion, coordination, movement, dexterity, stabilization, speed and quickness, endurance, and strength.
Beyond traditional physical training routines, a number of cross-training activities are introduced to enable our players to further enhance their physical development while also creating fun, exciting, and very unique athletic challenges and training environments. By utilizing traditional and unconventional training environments, enhanced proprioceptivity can be achieved among our athletes. This also becomes a learning opportunity for our players and is quite fun.
These principles enable us to establish the proper fitness base for our athletes so that, as they develop physically and technically, they will be well prepared to increase the rate of muscle force production, commonly known as power or explosiveness, when executing complex technical skills to produce overwhelming tennis weapons on court.
All methods utilized are recognized by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the National Athletic Trainers Association (NATA), and other athletic training and high performance organizations.