Sport-Orthopädie - Sport-Traumatologie - Sports Orthopaedics and Traumatology
Originalarbeit/Original paperConception for Fitness Testing and individualized training programs in the German Tennis Federation
Introduction
In tennis, the sport-specific technical skills are predominant factors (e.g., racket and ball handling skills and stroke techniques) [28]. However, the player's fitness can be a key factor that may make a difference between victory and failure. It is widely accepted that to execute advanced shots and to compete effectively against progressively more elite opponents, players require higher levels of physical fitness [8]. It has been suggested that tennis players require a mixture of speed, agility, and power combined with medium to high aerobic and anaerobic capacity. Thus, successful performance cannot be defined by one predominant physical attribute; tennis requires on a complex interaction of several physical components and metabolic pathways [8], [12], [18].
It is important that the player and coach obtain objective information about the players’ physical performances to clarify the objectives of training, plan short- and long-term training programs, provide objective feedback and motivate the player to train harder [29]. Competition naturally provides the best test for an athlete, but in an athletic activity as complex as tennis it is difficult to isolate the various components within the sport and get objective measures of performance. Thus, fitness testing can provide relevant information about specific parts of the sport [23]. Moreover, specific training programs can then be designed based on the players’ fitness testing results. From a practical point of view, the goals of testing are to enhance a player's performance (i.e., providing individual profiles of their respective strengths and weaknesses), reduce the risk of injury and design an appropriate training program so that the athlete's playing career can be as long as possible [18], [27].
During the last few years, tennis players have been observed to devote a great amount of time to improve their tennis skills throughout technical and tactical training, with an average of 15–20 h of technical training per week even at a young age [6]. Because technical and tactical skills are predominant factors in tennis [10], coaches tend to place their training priorities on technical/tactical contents, and therefore, only just a minimum of specific physical training sessions per week can be programmed. As a consequence, training strategies aiming for fitness improvements (i.e., based on the individual profiles of strengths and weaknesses) are warranted.
Norm values and percentile tables for junior tennis players which have been generated and used to assess a given performance are commonly based on chronological age [3], [17], [26]. However, since there is a large variation in physical, emotional and cognitive development of athletes in adolescence (i.e., fundamental changes in biological characteristics at the age of 12-15 years) [19], it seems that chronological age is not a good indicator on which to base athletes training programs. A practical approach to design optimal individual training programs which are related to certain periods of trainability during the process of maturation is the use of an athletes’ peak height velocity (PHV) as a reference point [13]. The PHV is the fastest rate of growth during the adolescent growth spurt, and can be a useful reference point providing valuable information about an individual's stage of maturation, enhancing the efficiency of development training, competition and recovery programs [1]. Established profiles just based on the chronological age do not consider the individual stage of maturation, thus obviously representing a weakness in the testing procedures.
Thus, the aim of this study is to establish percentiles based on normative data of physical fitness testing for tennis players based on chronological and biological age and to present the concept for fitness testing and training design of the German tennis federation including player profiles which in addition to chronological age consider the stage of maturation and which can be used as a reference to design individualized training programs.
Section snippets
Participants
Between the years 2009 and 2013, the sample of the 1052 best male and female junior players in Germany was evaluated using a battery of standard anthropometric and physical performance tests (i.e., The German Physical Condition Tennis Test). Players were recruited from their respective regional federations and all the athletes were tested twice a year in a three week period (March and September). Players were tested at their respective federation base and passed four stations of different
Results
Table 4 shows an example of the percentiles obtained for male players from 15.0 to 15.5 years old.
Table 5 shows an example of (all percentiles can be downloaded from www.spowiss.rub.de/traiwi/) the percentiles obtained for male players -0.5.o to 0.0 years before PHV.
An example of individual player profiles are presented in Figure 2, Figure 3.
Figure 4 shows an example of the development of height (5.a), CMJ (5.b) and Hit & Turn performance (5.c) from 11.8 to 15.2 years old. Mean values (±SD) for
Discussion
The concept of fitness testing of the German Tennis Federation provides a useful frame for the development of an individualized database and a more efficient program of the physical fitness training in junior tennis players. Results obtained from the testing protocols and the age-group percentiles developed, coaches and physical trainers can have individual profiles of the players, with their respective strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, the established testing schedule (i.e., 2 times per
Conclusion
To the best of our knowledge, this is a unique approach analyzing an entire youth system in tennis. The German Physical Condition Tennis Test allows to compare the physical fitness of the players nationwide and helps to minimize the training volume focused on fitness training. As shown in the present manuscript, and following the individuality training principle [15], the response of one athlete to a training program might vary considerably from that of another athlete. Therefore, coaches must
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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