Transcription
Hi, Brent Abel
here, WebTennis.net and last week, what we talked about was I was
trying to get inside your head, thinking a little bit about, if
you're on a fitness program right now, does it enhance or does it
detract from your ability to visually track a moving tennis ball on
the court as you are also moving?
What I told you
then is I wanted to try kind of kick around, this week, let's talk
about one thing that I don't want you do, and something that really
will be great in terms of helping you out in terms of being able to
really improve your ability, really improve your skills to be able
to track that moving tennis ball.
I told you last
week, I used to do some long distance running. I'm telling you,
long distance running, all it can do is build up certain muscles
that have nothing to do with playing tennis.
So, if you want
to do a little bit of long distance running to either lose some
weight or maybe build a foundation, that's fine, but what I want you
to think about at some point, is that you're going to either have to
lower the miles or get into something else because the long distance
running really breaks down those muscles that allow you to move on
the tennis court in such a way that your head stays still, it stays
quiet; your eyes are nice and quiet where they get to really sort of
track that moving tennis ball.
So, if you're
doing anything more than two miles or three miles, I would encourage
you to stop doing that. I don't mind if you want to run a mile or
two, as long as you are incorporating some other things in your
fitness and training program to be able to help you really track a
moving tennis ball.
Now, the one thing that we can do and I do a lot of this, is I do a
lot of sprints. If you've got problems with your knees – the last
couple of years, I've had a little bit of tendonitis in the patellar
knee cap area, so I've had to back off of the types of sprints that
I've done – but what you can do is you can go out in of these
athletic fields, you can go to a big lawn area, maybe a park, and
make sure there aren't any chuck holes there or something where you
could maybe twist an ankle.
Make sure it's
good, smooth and stable, and what I want you to start doing are a
series of sprints, and they have to be specific. You are not going
to go out there and just sprint as fast as you possibly can.
What I want you
to add to your sprints is that somewhere out in your landscape;
let's say that you're on a football field somewhere or maybe you're
at a park; somewhere out in that landscape, you can find a
stationary object.
Maybe it's a
sign, maybe it's a tree, maybe it's a fence post; I don't know.
Something out there that you find that you can visually lock on
that's a stationary object, and when you sprint – when you do your
sprint, what you're to do is you're to see if you can keep that
stationary object from kind of jumping up and down as you are
moving.
So, I don't want
you working on your sprint in terms of just pure speed to see how
fast you can move.
What I want you
to work on is can you gradually work up your speed to where you can
keep that stationary object out there in the landscape as smooth as
you possibly can.
In the beginning,
it's really tough to do. In fact, if you start off with four
different speeds – you start off with a walk, where you walk for
maybe ten yards, and that will be pretty easy to keep that
stationary object moving up and down.
The next one, you
break into a little bit of a job, and I'll guarantee you that that
object will start to move up and down a little bit. Then, you kind
of go into a run.
Finally, the
fourth thing is going to be a sprint. Eventually, you want to get
to that fourth speed level, your sprint, to where you can really
keep that object as quiet and as still as possible, because really,
that's what we do on the court.
When we move on
the court, what are we trying to look at? We're trying to look at a
moving object, which is the tennis ball.
So, the smoother
you can learn to move on the court – and your training program is
going to help you do that, in terms of, let's start incorporating
some sprints as opposed to some long distance-type running.
That
long-distance type running does not help you at all in terms of
keeping a moving tennis ball from really kind of bouncing up and
down.
All right. So, I
hope this has helped. Any question –
Brent@webtennis.net. Thanks very much. |
