Podcast 84: Dr. Jack and I are joined by a panel of tennis players (Part 3)
Ian : Alright. Angie, thank you very much. And let's move on to Joe now. Joe, what's your question for Dr. Jack? Joe : Yeah, my question is regarding weight-training specifically for tennis. There's a lot of ways to weight-train depending on what your goals are : size, power, definition, etc. For instance, you can use more weight with less reps. Less weight with more reps. More time or less time between sets, etc. So I'm wondering which weight-training strategy would best complement training for tennis. Dr. Jack : For tennis I want to make you the best athlete you can be. That's the most important thing. So as opposed to a football interior lineman , defensive or offensive lineman, where you're going to want to do those 3 sets of 6-8 , maybe 10 reps, really pushing it hard to gain size and strength. Which even now is not as often utilized as it used to be.
Or as opposed to an endurance runner, where I might have you do 15-20 reps , one set each muscle group twice a week, because I just want to tone up your muscles. I would say I wanted to see you on a good, well-rounded exercise program where you're doing some weight-training; some biometric training; some speed training. There's a lot that's important in becoming a good tennis player. There's a lot of different movements that you have to perform on a tennis court. You have to be light on your feet. You've got to have quick feet ; a lot of movements; have quick acceleration with your … If you have a drop-shot that you have to attack or serve and volley. You need to explode off that volley and get to the net . You have to maintain good balance when you do that split-step so that you have to cut
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one way or the other to address a ball coming at you. So there's really a lot of things that you need to address in terms of your conditioning and training. That T90X thing that a lot of your guys have written in about is very nice. Another thing you can do is go to Nike and they have that spark program, [empty] speed, power, agility, your reaction to quickness.
Those are two good places you can go , and of course our website that we sponsor through Ian's tennis website summersetsportsperformance.com. You can get a lot of information there also as far as programming if you sign up for an online personal trainer.
But what you really want to do is you want to have a well-rounded program. You want to do some weight work ; you want to do some biometric work; you want some speed and agility work and just keep things well-rounded. I would say if you did…
footwork; you want to do speed and agility work–j ust keep things well rounded. I would say if you did on your weights, 1 set, 12 reps, each muscle group. Always remembering to do antagonistic, or opposite muscle groups whenever you do your weights. That would be great.
Also always remember, you don't want to do the same thing every time you go to the gym or work out. Because you want to do different exercises to strengthen the same muscle groups just for variety so that your muscles don't get stale. How many times have I seen people–and even myself–you go to the heath club 3 days a week for 2 months and you are showing an increase in strength then you go out and play a game of flag football or soccer with your kids . All of a sudden you are cutting and turning in different ways that you don't do a the health club , and you are sorer then the last month that you've been working out , even though you've been lifting more weights. It's a totally different movement patterns and recruitment of different muscles. So you really have to try to do a lot of different things to get a very well rounded exercise. When you play good tennis, that's a pretty aggressive sport. I mean you see those guys going all out, and some of the balls that those guys track down at the US Open were just phenomenal. It's just amazing the shape that these athletes are in. And to be able to cut and twist and turn and your reaction speed–it's very important to be well-rounded with that. I hope that answers your question.
Joe : That sounds like a lot of work. I mean what if I just want to be an average tennis player? D o you have something for that?
Dr. Jack : Do you belong to a health club? Are you working out regularly?
Joe : No I was just kidding, but I used to work out but I had different goals in mind , so it's great trying to get back into it now so I'm wondering how I should be going about it. But I think that answered my question.
Dr. Jack : OK, basically if just want to stay in shape, and have fun with your tennis, go to go to the health club or work out at home? What are you going to do?
Joe : At home on weekdays.
Dr. Jack : Do you have any kind of aerobic activity like stationary bike, rowing machine, treadmill, something like that?
Joe : I have a jump rope.
Dr. Jack : A jump rope? OK well then here is what you do. You want to warm your muscles up a little bit. So start with maybe 25 or 30 jumping jacks. Spend a good 10 minutes stretching after that. There is a great book called Stretching by Bob Anderson that will teach you the correct way to stretch so you don't injure yourself in stretching in ways you shouldn't. And they have a nice routine for you based upon whatever sport you are going to play.
Then go ahead and hit your weights–do all your muscle groups. You always start with your largest muscle groups
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first, then your smaller groups second , so you might want to start with a leg extension followed by a leg curl. Maybe do a bench press , followed by a row type of exercise, a military press then a lat pull down then maybe some biceps and triceps and then after that, do some aerobic work.
You can then go a little faster on your rope or maybe you want to go out and do some running if the weather is nice or even if it's not if you don't mind going outside. Go out for a run and don't just jog at a steady pace, mix it up. Sometimes with a little– throw some sprints in, do some backward running, do some side-to-side shuffles. Just kind of mix up your movements , so you don't become stagnant with what you do. How's that? Joe : That's pretty good. So you're thinking instead of doing, for instance, weight training one day , then aerobic exercises the next day, you should mix it all up in one workout? Dr. Jack : You can. You'd want to get at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise in every day, if you can– which is great. I mean that's just good for your health . The Surgeon General says you should do it twice per week but if you are going to be out there playing and being competitive , you probably should try to get something more often than that.
You can get everything in in one day. You can alternate also . A lot of it depends on your time –if you have two or three hours, yeah, do it all except for the weight training.
Although , I went to a course in Miami about 10 years ago and all the lecturers were NBA team doctors . And the guy from the Chicago Bulls said the reason Michael Jordan was in as good of shape as he was, was because he worked out every single day of his professional basketball career. Even on game days, he was in the weight room working out. Which is just amazing, but if you get into that type of mentality, and you can get into that great physical condition, then you can do it. Although all of us with jobs and family that might be next to impossible. So, I guess you just have to budget your time with whatever is best for your schedule and lifestyle.
Joe : Alright.
Ian : Any other questions Joe?
Joe : No, I think that covers it.
Ian : Alright, well thank you very much and let's go on last panelist who is John–and John had a couple different topics on his mind and was going to pick one . We'll see where he goes with this . John what do you think? What is your question for Dr. Jack?
John : Well I had about 16 questions, 15 of which Dr. Jack probably already answered for us. So, I'll go to the 16th and that is– and bare with me here, like I said, I'm 47 years old . I've had lots of experience with lots of different injuries. I had 18 months of golfers elbow; I've had hip muscle problems that have kept me out for weeks at a time . Little bit of reoccurring knee tendinitis or tendinosis. I don't really know. So here is my question:
There are all kinds of sports injury information we get from all kinds of sources, and it starts on the courts. All of your friends seem to know exactly what is wrong with you when you tell them about your injury– especially with tennis elbow. We have all kinds of information on the Internet, and as you said we can Google these articles , we can go on to websites like Ian's and talk to you Dr. Jack. We can go to our primary physician who usually only has about 15 minutes to spend–and their answer always seems to be stop playing tennis. Or you can go to a sports injury specialist or a physical therapist where they tend to take more time and really figure out your problem. And, as I get older, I have different degrees of injuries–a little nag here, or something that will keep me off the court for weeks at a time.
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With all this information Dr. Jack , how do we become informed, cautious, sensible consumers of this information? Because I know a lot of it is bad information.
Dr. Jack : OK, first of all, when you are talking to your arm-chair quarterback doctors on the tennis court–remember a little knowledge is dangerous. So that's my first piece of advice. The second is, WebMD is a very reputable website and you can always go there to get reliable information. So to just look something up , you should be able to find some good information from WebMD. And that's a free website, there is plenty of advertising on it, which is why it's free. So that's a good source of information. Then if you go to your primary care doctor and he is not all that well versed in sports injuries, ask for a consultation or a referral to a sports medicine specialist, and they will usually be more willing to spend the time and really tease out exactly what is wrong with you and I think you'd get a lot of information from there. I'd say that would be the approach to go with.
