Did you know?
Junior tennis players are playing tennis for up to 3 or 4 hours per day. That’s 1000 hours per year!! That is not including the 30-60 minutes of agility and sprint training and on top of that we are trying to balance out their training with rotator cuff, core strength and plyometric training.
Did you also know …
“Juniors playing tennis 1000 hours per year get 3 injuries per year”
All this is great if the young tennis player has a dream of ever being competitive and in Australia for decade there is a bit of a “Make or break” attitude to training elite level players.
That’s just 3 hours a day for 365 days. So most athletes are going to end up injured 3x per year. That is definitely not productive. Worse in this study it suggests that junior tennis players get 16 injuries out of every 1000 matches. Most tennis players are aiming to play 70+ matches per year, that’s at least 1 more match play injury.
Injuries are so unproductive. They can be devasting to the athletes momentum, mindset and overall progress and most of the injures in tennis are overuse injures and muscle imbalances which are easily fixed and worked out with a general physical preparedness program like CrossFit 3018 offers.
We understand that juniors are sometimes specialising in their chosen sport and our goal is simply to teach them to move well, let them safely adapt to our program which makes tehm strong and balanced humans and keep them accountable to consistent on going training.
Spending 2 classes per week at our CrossFit box will do wonders for the kids.
Instead of them pounding the plexipave for an extra hour of shuttle runs they will be strengthening their leg muscle, tendons and tissues with suitable load back squats, shoulder press and pull ups in combination for rowing, throwing and core strength.
Every session will be different adding to the variety and bringing balance to their training which only show up with positives as kids develop progress, momentum and see improvement in CrossFit, they take that confidence into their tennis. Not to mention, they feel stronger, they are stronger and their bodies are more balanced (resilient to injury).
Tennis is demanding. The need for variety in training grows every year as the intensity and demand increases on players. It requires a high level of specifity in training. I know this through personal experience. What we also know now through countless studies is that general programming helps specific, unilateral sports like tennis, making athletes more durable, motivated and better.
Contact us if you’d like a group of your athletes run through an introduction to CrossFit training to support them in growing generally strong and more resilient.
Tristan
CrossFit 3018
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