Palm Trees and Tennis

Today I'm out of town on a quick adventure to the Bay Area of California for a UConn Athletics event, but while I was in town, I decided to walk around Stanford University.  I've never been to this campus and I always like to check out basketball arenas when I get a chance, but unfortunately, Maples Pavilion was closed.  I was so looking forward to a photo with the court wearing UConn attire, but I guess I'll have to come back for a game. 

On Stanford's Campus

Anyways, the campus is gorgeous and the sun was shining.  There are palm trees (and awesome Mexican food), something Seattle and Connecticut are both lacking.  I came upon the Taube Family Tennis Stadium, got in a few stairs to move around after my morning sitting in an airport from flight cancellations causing lots of waiting around.  Then the women's tennis team walked out to start their practice.  Opportunity!!!

I haven’t spent much time watching tennis live - a few matches in high school to support some friends and occasionally on TV when the big names are playing.  Beyond that, I've also only played a few times, so I'd be lying if I said I know much about this sport.  But I love to watch how people move and I have treated patients who played tennis so it's always good to consider the demands of different activities on the body and where injuries might potentially come from. Here's what I observed watching the first 15 minutes of their practice: 

First - I watched their dynamic warm-up.  I've recently been becoming an even bigger fan of the dynamic warm-up in my own training and also with my patient care.  I will admit that sometimes it becomes fairly routine and I'm not always creative - but sometimes the children I'm working with just need to get their heart rate elevated, get their bodies moving, and get some dynamic balance activities in before some more intensive loading.  I strongly believe that a warm-up has a functional purpose of getting you transitioned from the day to day tasks into the mindset of "I'm about to get to work" and also should serve as a primer for the movement patterns that are going to follow it.  It's also a good chance to include some rehabilitation activities or "activation" exercises, so when the tennis players started taking out their resistance bands to complete most of the "Thrower's Ten," my heart smiled. Shoulder Care in Tennis! I LOVE THIS!  They also put on sunscreen... which I appreciated.  Safety first Cardinal. 

Second - I was surprised to observe that all their players used two hands in their backhand stroke. I know I've seen players do this, but I didn't think it was used so commonly and for some reason it made me immediately Google if Serena and Venus Williams did the same.  I found this article which goes into detail about Serena's which is considered to be an old-school (traditional) back swing with an "unorthodox" stance and a "text book" follow through.  I guess Stanford's crew is not only on top of their prep work, but also on their use of two hands with the backhand stroke.  Photos popped up with Venus also using both hands.  Then I Googled Raphael Nadal and Andy Roddick- also using two hands.  Apparently I just thought everyone used one hand... and I was wrong. Ya learn something new every day.

I came across this article that discusses numerous hand grips for backhand in tennis and talks about how it mostly falls on player preference and the preference is usually based on where the most power can be elicited. It summarized 5 different grips!  There are pros and cons to each one, but the use of two hands adds stability and strength and can influence the spin on the ball.  Neat! 

All this reading helped me to consider one more thing that was easily apparent during their volleying warm-ups I observed but that I often don't think about: timing.  I've previously read a few articles about the timing of the shoulders and hips with baseball pitchers so this concept wasn't new, but watching how they let the ball come to them and timing the swing and how they ramped up their distances from the net and the speeds of the ball was really neat and gave me some things to think about. 

Back to the sunshine... hope I run into Coach VanDerVeer!