The Bottom Line
Pros
- Ample, useful illustrations
- Practical
- Accessible writing
- Bulleted lists of recommendations
- Well referenced
Cons
- Occasional unclear or incorrect advice.
- Some techniques not adequately explained.
Description
- Paperback
- 424 pages
- Part One: Structured Training and Practice (warm-up, stretching, agility, balance, vision, strokes)
- Part Two: Structured Yearly Planning and Periodization (tapering, peaking)
- Part Three: Structured Environment (nutrition, heat, altitude, travel, footwear)
- Part Four: Structured Mental Training (coach's role, key points in matches, psychology of injury rehabilitation)
- Part Five: Structured Physical and Mental Assessments (self-assessment and functional testing)
- Part Six: Structured Recovery and Injury Prevention (back, core, overtraining, sleep, soft tissue release)
- Index
Guide Review - Book: Fit To Play Tennis
Fit to Play Tennis provides comprehensive coverage of physical and mental training and conditioning for advanced players and their coaches. The authors generally assume a fairly knowledgeable reader, but the writing is accessible and very amply illustrated, mostly with photos of exercises, stretches, etc. that combine with tons of bulleted lists of recommendations to make the book highly practical.At times the authors assume too much reader knowledge, for example when they repeatedly emphasize the importance of using imagery without ever explaining what a player actually does to use imagery. Some recommendations are puzzling, such as "Static stretching is best done as a separate training session after an appropriate warm-up," followed closely by, "additional static stretches after training and before bed resulted in 50 percent fewer injuries." (p.60) Does this mean that you should do a training session, with warm-up, before bed? If so, it would seem to contradict the "Sleep Smarts for Recovery" chapter, which says: "Avoid hot showers and exercise just before bedtime. ..." (p. 378)
Other advice is simply wrong, such as in the "Tennis Nutrition" chapter, where the authors list tuna as one of the recommended "High Carbohydrate Low Fat Snacks" (p. 215). Zero percent of the calories in tuna come from carbohydrates; it's all fat and protein.
The instances of unclear or incorrect advice are vastly outnumbered by the hundreds of useful recommendations in Fit To Play Tennis, but they point out the need to have additional sources of information on the topics this book covers.
