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Tennis Weight Training
Is Your Tennis Training Still In The Dark Ages?
By: Paul Gold
Are you still training the same way you have always trained or worse still seen other people train?
Well if so you could well be holding yourself performance back!!
Let's be honest we all know that we need to train to improve our game and we should all know that strength training is the cornerstone of our training program as it provides the platform upon which all the other fitness components are built.
However, far too many people are harming their game by engaging in old school bodybuilding type exercise programmes that were not designed for sports performance enhancement and are only good for isolating muscle groups and making them bigger NOT better!
It is far more important that to improve your tennis strength you engage in training that works your "tennis muscles" in ways that reflect the way you move when you are playing or that engages the core to a greater extent to help train the body to stabilise itself when you are moving.
This is where the old school training methods come unstuck!
Anyone still using weight training machines to do their training should run and hide now because if you think about it for a second, what relevance do these machines have to the sport of tennis?
The answer is NONE!
They restrict your range of motion because they are fixed and therefore do not allow you to balance and stabilise the weight for yourself which is exactly what you need to be doing to help yourself on the court when you play.
Answer this one for me - the leg extension machine, when do you perform this motion on the tennis court? NEVER!
So, basically if you use this machine for your leg training you just get better and stronger at this motion.
Think of it another way and let's look at the squat. Does that look like anything you may have seen on the tennis court?
Of course it does, so for that reason alone it is a better choice of leg exercise than the leg extension ever will be.
Finally, if you want to work the upper body, the press up is still a great exercise to do and there are so many variations to the humble press up that make it far cuperior to exercises like the bench press, or God forbid the machine chest press.
I would go so far as to say that unless you can do 20+ press ups on your own you should not even consider going near a bench to do any upper body exercises.
The fact reamains that too many people are too quick to get into the gym to try to help their game which is great but with a little more knowledge they would find themselves not only spending less time in the gym but they would also be achieving better results.
So drag your tennis strength training into the modern era and reap the rewards of learning how to train smart and not in the dark!
Paul Gold is a Performance Enhancement Specialist and Speed Agility Quickness trainer. For info about products and services contact via http://www.tennis-training-central.com He has just released a special report on strength training for tennis, go to http://www.tennis-strength.com for details. He also has a tennis footwork special report, go to http://www.footwork4tennis.com for more details. Copyright © 2000-2007 Tennis Training Central
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