AOS 1 Unit 4 Fitness Components Flashcards
Agility
● Agility is a combination of speed, flexibility and dynamic balance. It is the ability to change direction quickly and accurately. Agility is important for a tennis player because lots of movements in tennis recruit agility.
● Throughout the tennis match, the athlete constantly needed to speed up, slow down and constantly change direction while maintaining balance
● Throughout the game lots of movements performed by the tennis player required agility. Such as the 12 percent of strokes that were made within 2.5m -4.5m of movement, primarily requiring a sliding type movement pattern and 6 percent of strokes made with more than 4.5 m of movement required a running type movement. Agility is very important for a tennis player as the average directional changes per point was 4.
● There were multiple times also in the youtube video where the tennis player had to travel from one side of the court to the other side of the court after returning a shot. :
Muscular power
● Muscular power is the ability of a muscle or muscle group to exert a maximum force in the shortest time possible.
● Muscular power is very important to have as a tennis player as many skills require muscular power. Such as the 2 “smashes” completed and the 12 aces completed. For the tennis player to serve fast which the fastest serve was 205 kph muscular power is required in their muscles. These muscles include and quadriceps, hamstrings, gastrocnemius and glutes when jumping to hit the ball as the player wants to push off the ground to gain height and deltoids, biceps and triceps need to be exerted when swinging their arm to hit the tennis ball. These are all explosive, maximal intensity actions.
Muscular endurance
● Muscular endurance is the ability of the muscle or muscle group to perform repeated contractions for an extended period with the potential for fatigue being quite high. This is evident in the tennis match as the longest rally was 12.6 secs according to figure 1. This requires having good muscular endurance (arms) in many muscles such as biceps, triceps and deltoids to hit back the ball and for that muscle group to perform repeated contractions for an extended period.
● There is also muscular endurance (legs) needed for many movements such as sprints and many movements in tennis require a running type of movement pattern (6% of strokes) both of which need strength in gastrocnemius, quadriceps and hamstrings are very important.
● Having good muscular endurance also helps the tennis player to quickly recover from prolonged points and be ready to perform again with minimal rest. This was important as during the game there were 20 seconds between points, 90 seconds between changeovers and 120 seconds between sets.
● It is also important to have muscular endurance as there is no set length of a tennis match, with the longest ever tennis match lasting 11 hours and 5 minutes, and it is important to be able to continue at the good intensity and hit the ball with power with power even at the end of the game.
● For example to be still hitting forehand (15) and backhand (6) winners at the end of the game when fatigue starts hitting.
Aerobic capacity
● Occurs when large muscles work repeatedly over a period resulting in a large amount of oxygen being delivered to them. Aerobic capacity depends on the capacity of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems to supply nutrients and oxygen to the working muscles. ADD HR DATA
● Aerobic capacity is always very important for tennis players for maintaining and playing at a high intensity throughout long games.
● It is evident in figure 2 that the aerobic energy system was predominant over the tennis match as the duration of the game went to 1:18:55 and relies on the athletes aerobic capacity .
Anaerobic capacity
● Anaerobic capacity is how much work can be done by both the ATP-PC system and the anaerobic glycolysis system.
● Tennis requires anaerobic capacity as it requires speed and explosive, powerful movements that last for a short period.
● Anaerobic capacity is needed for short, quick, explosive movements such as aces (12) and forehand (15 and backhand (6) volleys.
● Anaerobic capacity is also important for long rallies in the game and the longest one went for 12.6 seconds. This rally consisted of anaerobic capacity as the ATP-PC system would have been dominant for the first 10 seconds of the rally and then the anaerobic glycolysis system would take over and produce the most energy for the last 2.6 seconds.
Speed
● Speed is the rate of motion.
● Speed is very important to complete many movements in tennis. This is clear by the data presented in Figure 1.
● Speed, particularly in the tennis player’s legs, is very important in the match as seen in the video by the sprint to make up ground to return a ball
● Speed is the tennis player’s arms are also needed to perform serves and for the athlete to get as much power and speed (max speed = 205 kph) on the serve as possible. Also for the 2 smashes performed and to win the first serve which was done 79% of the time.
● Also from watching the video it is evident that there were multiple sprints performed during the match while also requires speed
