Sam, a 55-year-old male league tennis player, comes to the fitness center three days a week for strength training. His trainer, John, has him perform an exercise that he has found successful with his high school football players. While training, Sam hears a “pop” in his lower back and is out for the rest of the tennis season. Did John do something incorrectly? Is his club now liable for his lack of knowledge error? This scenario highlights why it is very important for tennis coaches and fitness trainers to be educated and certified for the sports for which they provide training to members.
Tennis is seeing a resurgence in popularity throughout the country: nearly 30 million people participated in the sport last year. Tennis is the fastest growing traditional sport and includes a large number of adults picking up the game later in life. This is a great opportunity for clubs to broaden its appeal by improving the quality of its tennis-specific training and services.
As the game of tennis continues to change, the knowledge that is available to train tennis players continues to improve. How are club employees kept current on the latest, safest and most effective methods needed to train tennis players? More importantly, is the club protecting its members from inappropriate training, unskilled fitness trainers and poorly educated tennis professionals like John? Today’s marketplace has become increasingly competitive, and members are looking to work with the most qualified tennis and fitness trainers.
Finding and keeping certified, competent and qualified fitness trainers and tennis professionals should be a priority for club managers. Ensuring that club staff obtains and maintains appropriate education is vital to providing a high level of member service. Well-educated staff can help reduce the likelihood of inappropriate training, member injuries and possible lawsuits for negligent oversight of basic educational requirements.
After a fitness or tennis professional is employed in a club, it is very important that the club encourages and requires continuing professional education. This continuing education is important to maintain high quality standards by ensuring that your staff has the appropriate skills and abilities to perform the safest, most efficient fitness and injury prevention exercises.
Understanding the Physical Demands of Tennis
Many tennis-based injuries stem from a lack of understanding of the demands of the sport or how to address those demands with regard to different member populations. Fitness trainers must address similar issues, especially when training members of different ages. Effective and efficient training program design can help circumvent these injuries. Differences in gender, age, maturation, equipment, court surfaces and level of competition all contribute to different movement patterns, strokes and imbalances and deficiencies that need specialized training. A Certified Tennis Performance Specialist (CTPS) is someone who has the knowledge, skills, abilities and understanding of the demands of tennis and can design appropriate programming to improve on-court performance while reducing the likelihood of injury. CTPSs can help the club to:
- Develop tennis-specific training programs focused on injury prevention
- Develop tennis-specific training programs focused on performance enhancement
- Provide specialized education and skills that can create higher return
- Increase staff education to help reduce lawsuits and club liability
Injury Prevention
As the majority of club members who participate in tennis programming are looking to have fun, get or stay fit, and improve overall health and wellbeing, the role of the tennis or fitness professional in a club setting is to keep the member healthy, happy and injury free. Unless trainers have specialized tennis-specific education, the programming they create will be generic and may not focus on the needs of individual club members. Implementing tennis-specific injury prevention training programs can help increase member satisfaction and retention. If members are able to prevent injuries and stay fit and healthy, they are more likely to play and be happy with their overall club experience. Appropriate continuing education programs that are specific to the sport can provide evidence-based information from credible sources with academic, scientific and practical expertise. The most common injuries in tennis such as tennis elbow, shoulder pain, lower back pain and ankle sprains can largely be prevented with appropriate, consistent training from qualified individuals.
Performance Enhancement
Although the number one priority in most physical training programs for tennis club members should be focused on injury prevention and keeping members healthy, a very close secondary priority is the ability to help members improve their on-court tennis performance. Hitting the serve 5-10mph harder and improving on-court movements to cover more court in less time are both important components of tennis-specific skills to most members. To help members with the performance enhancement aspect of tennis training, coaches and trainers need to be well-educated in the demands of the sport and specific movement patterns, strokes and other tennis-specific aspects of training, that need to be improved. Encouraging and supporting tennis-specific performance enhancement education for tennis and fitness professionals is something that members will appreciate and can help them to achieve results through their training.
Higher Returns for Specialized Education and Skills
In any industry, specialized skills demand a higher remuneration. Having Certified Tennis Performance Specialists on staff provides a specialized service to tennis membership, allowing for more detailed programming, better and more specific results, and the overall the ability to increase returns from these services due to the specialization and skills of the staff.
Reduce Lawsuits and Club Liability
Having staff with specialized knowledge and certifications in tennis training can help reduce the potential for lawsuits and liability concerns. If staff are working with tennis athletes on the tennis court and/or in the gym without a good, credible educational background in tennis performance and injury prevention training (called working outside their knowledge skill set and possibly outside their scope of practice), this often results in clients performing inappropriate exercises, inefficient training or sometimes dangerous exercises/movements that may greatly increase the likelihood of injury or surgeries. This scenario is all too common around the country and can be highly problematic; clubs should take this into consideration when hiring and planning their ongoing education.
As a leader in a club with tennis players, it is very important to ensure that staff has the appropriate education and training to effectively, efficiently and, most importantly, safely work with the tennis membership to increase member satisfaction and retention and to reduce the risk inherent in employing training pros wit a lack of knowledge. John, the fitness trainer in our scenario, chose to become CTPS Certified and now has the knowledge and skills to train Sam safely and effectively specifically for tennis.
Dr. Mark Kovacs, Executive Director of the International Tennis Performance Association (iTPA), is a renowned performance physiologist, researcher, university professor, author, speaker and coach with an extensive background in training and researching athletes at all levels.