Podcast 84: Dr. Jack and I are joined by a panel of tennis players (Part 1)
Welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast. If you love tennis and want to improve your game, this podcast is for you! Whether it's technique, strategy, equipment–or the mental game– tennis professional Ian Westermann is here to make you a better player. And now, here's Ian. [music]
Ian : Hi, and welcome to the Essential Tennis podcast: your place for free expert tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game.
Today on the show I'm going to have back Dr. Jack Kripsak , who is a sports medicine expert, and we're going to be joined by several listeners of the Essential Tennis podcast who have questions for him having to do with a wide variety of topics having to do with innjury; also weight-lifting and training for tennis; and other specific things as well. So let's go ahead and get right to it. Sit back, relax, and get ready for some great tennis instruction.
Dr. Jack Kripsak back on the show . It's always great to have you on the show Dr. Jack, and you've given us a lot of good information over several podcasts here on the Essential Tennis podcast. Welcome back to the show again.
Dr. Jack : Thank you very much Ian. It's always fun to be on the show. Ian : And Dr. Jack and I, in doing our last episode, we were talking afterwords, and though t that it would be a lot of fun to have some listeners with us on the program that could actually interact with Dr. Jack and ask him follow-up questions–and also so Dr. Jack could ask them questions as well, because a lot of times it's difficult for Dr. Jack to give–really the best advice he can–without knowing some specifics from the person who's asking the question. So we're both really looking forward to having several listeners on the show with us. And we're going to go through and give a brief introduction here . First of all we have Royce. And as we go down the list, I'd all of you guys to just briefly tell us your name; where you're located; and a brief history of your playing background. How long you've been playing, etc. So that everybody gets an idea of who we're talking to, and how we can kind of most closely relate to their own game. So Royce–everybody knows a little bit of information about yourself–but why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us how long you've been playing, and what your playing background is. Go ahead buddy.
Royce : I've b_een playing for as long as I can remember. And my first experience on a tennis court, back when –actually as soon as I could walk, in diapers– that I would be on the tennis court . I didn't have my first lesson until I was 8 though . Beyond that, just played some college tennis with you Ian, and frustrated you to no end. [laughter]
Ian : You did. Congratulations on that!
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Royce : [laughter] I've got to get any cheap shot I can get in there. I've been teaching now for a little over 7 years , and just currently working out in Tacoma, Washington. Ian : Alright, good stuff. Next up is Angie. Angie, tell us a little bit about yourself. Angie : OK. I'm in Edmund, Oklahoma. I've just been playing a couple of years , really, just trying to get better. Before that, I played just, oh occasionally. Pick up a tennis racket–somebody would say: ‘Let's go play tennis. ‘ But the last couple of years, I've been taking lessons, and then really just from probably around the first of the summer until now, I went from playing like, once a week then with a lesson, so twice a week to five times a week. Ian : Awesome. [laughter]
Angie : Yeah. Getting into the leagues at the place where I play and doing some double strokes , so I've increased it quite a bit just in the past few months. So…and it's fun! Ian : Alright, great. Great to hear that you've really kind of got the bug, and you're starting to really get into it. Next up we have Joe. Joe, tell us about yourself. [silence] Ian : Joe, are you there? [silence] Ian : OK. [laughter] We'll try to come back to Joe. Next up, we've got John. John, what's up? John : Hi guys. I'm 47. I got dragged kicking and screaming into tennis about 5 years ago. And I wish I could
have Dr. Jack as my doubles partner–because I get all kinds of those little nagging injuries that we talk about on the forums. [laughter] I love playing doubles! Any time you want to hit, let's go! [laughter] The problem is: we're on opposite coasts. Ian : I know. That's a shame. [laughter]
Ian : John, I didn't know you'd only been playing for 5 years. And what, you're playing at around a a 4.0 level right now? John : Yeah, I'm right on the border. I don't really know what my rating is. Ian : OK.
Great Good job. And Angie, what level would you put yourself at right now? Angie : Oh, right now , I just kind of… I just moved in to 3.0. Ian : OK.
[05:00] Angie : 3. 0, not real high , but you know, getting there. Ian : Awesome. And we'll try to go back to Joe. Joe, are you there?
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Joe : Yeah. Can you hear me now?
Ian : Yeah. Yeah, sorry about that. Go ahead tell us where you are; where you've been playing; just a little bit about your playing background. Joe : I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I've actually only been seriously playing tennis since April, so about 5 or 6 months. But I have become totally obsessed with it, so… Trying really hard to get better. Before that, it was pretty much just some casual hitting around with my wife, and things like that.
Ian : OK.
Awesome.
Well this really makes me happy. It's really cool to hear from such a wide range of player types. We've got Royce , who's actually a teaching professional. He's been playing his entire life . We have players who've been playing just a couple of years, and somebody who's just been playing a couple of months. The questions that these guys are going to ask are probably going to be very applicable to many people listening . And this is going to be a lot of fun.
So let's go ahead and go in that order that I introduced everybody. And we'll start off with Royce. Royce, go ahead and ask Dr. Jack your question and we'll go from there. Royce : Alright. I guess, from a teaching perspective, that people tend to mimic what they see the pros doing. And you know, one thing that's becom ing more and more common are the pros using smaller grips to kind of allow the racket to whip through the strike zone. In essence, make the shots a little more ‘wristy. ‘ What impact do you really feel like this will have with the casual player developing a more serious wrist issues outside of just like the tendinitis, etc. Stuff dealing with the ligaments. You know: TFCC tears, etc.
Dr. Jack : Well that's –that's interesting. There have actually been two studies that can address that.
The first one would show –or has shown–that the actual size of the grip , whether you use a larger or smaller grip than the measured grip that would expect to use, really won't make a difference in incidence of injuries to the wrist o r forearm. So the actual grip size will not really matter.
What will matter is the type of grip. And I've told Ian about an article that was published a few months ago . And it compared Eastern grip; Western grip; semi-Western grip ; and Continental grip; and a group of non-professional –relatively competitive– tennis players in Italy. And it showed that the Western and semi-Western grips had the highest incidence of injury, mostly along the , or the pinky side of the wrist , as compared to Eastern injuries, which had a lower incidence of injuries along the radial, or thumb side of the wrist. And the Continental grip ended up not having any injuries.
Ian : Hmm.
Dr. Jack : Based upon this , based upon those two studies, I would say that it's your grip style more than your grip size that will dictate what type of injury that you have. And if you're concerned about the TFCC's injury, or the Triangular Fibrocarlogous Injuries, they weren't really that common, but did show up in, umm… Let's say 10% of the injuries that were there , and there was an overall 13% incidence of wrist injuries in a group of ..let's see, what do we have here… In a group of over 300 players. So while you wouldn't think that wrist injuries are that common . They accounted for almost 1 out of every 10 players had a wrist injury. And the grip did have the biggest –the type of grip–had the biggest reflection of injury for that.
